Everything sings.

Sometimes you do things and nothing stops you.

[pi-slices]

Winter Forest.

[xiketic]

Something I haven't seen many people talk about in PHM is the fact that Eridians probably don't have the same attitudes towards time as humans do. Think about it: Erid is an inherently dayless place, having an atmosphere that allows no light and thus no concept of day or night. We don't really think much about how our entire lives are structured around this cycle that Earth life has been experiencing for eons. Erid life has no concept of this at all. Eridian sleep schedules are somewhat irregular and not synced to each other (they can't be, not if someone always stays awake to watch). They don't track birthdays like we do, they can't unless they're paying attention to their solar cycle, which I'd expect is a relatively new thing for their culture. Maybe they base age on their near-perfect memories or how many layers their carapace has or how big they are, or experiences/accomplishments. They may have an idea of an Eridian year, if their planet has seasons or something like that, but I doubt it has a whole lot of importance to them.

I'd image having an alien who relies so heavily on cycles and repeated patterns in order to function normally would be mind-boggling to the Eridians. What do you mean it celebrates the exact day of its birth every so often, just because? Wait we need to program a reliable change in light levels to simulate its planet, which has almost no atmosphere? And we have to schedule any interactions we have with it around this cycle? Wait it tracks its age by the scientific year, not by life experience and physical aging?

Constantly being reminded that this guy Rocky brought home that saved their entire planet is, in fact, a complete alien.

[emotion-xp]

It's not just sleep. It's festivals. Holy days. Seasonal foods. Weekends! So much of human life is orchestrated around cycles of days, weeks, months and years.

How do Eridanians live, if their life is a continuous line where ours is a series of regular intervals? How do they conceive of something like an annual check-up, a weekly D&D game? Conceivably, work meetings and machine maintenance might just be done whenever someone is available and it's been long enough since the last one, but there's no such thing as a "regular schedule" on Erid. Humans knew what minutes and seconds were before we had clocks that could measure them accurately -- and every human culture has calendars. But before the Eridanians invented mechanical clocks, did they even have the concept of quantifiable time?

Rocky was up there alone for 46 years before Grace arrived, but on some level he thinks of that as barely any time at all. He mourned his colleagues, maintained the ship, and did what research he could, but after the first year he didn't gain any new life experience or develop as a person. Those days just blur together for him That stretch of time blurs together for him because he doesn't naturally subdivide it in any particular way. He only knows it's been 46 years because he's keeping track of the time left before Erid finally freezes over from the Astrophage crisis.

[kaijufluffs]

She's being so big and brave.

[probablybadrpgideas]

A world where the gods are very present, their miracles are self evident, they've even been known to speak for themselves

But one of them has been quiet for a while, speculation runs wild, perhaps they went on some epic quest, maybe another god smote them in a fit of jealousy

Reality is, they fell in a hole and have been stuck for a couple hundred years

­

[emotion-xp]

This is why Mimics keep surviving for so long in Nobilis. You'd think a new god who nobody recognises suddenly showing up and claiming to be Light, Health, and Stuffed Animals would cause people to raise their eyebrows and ask to check her credentials, but actually gods often go missing for centuries at a time so it's not inherently suspicious.

[prokopetz]

Inadvisable tabletop RPG jam premise #137: Game jam where each entry consists solely of paratextual discussion of the mechanics of a hypothetical or invented RPG; examples include an errata document, a developer Q&A, or a forum thread debating the correct interpretation of a particular rule.

[prokopetz]

@shoutyourporpoise replied:

I could SWEAR you’ve made this post before, or perhaps this is such a characteristically “you” concept that I already imagined a world in which you had

I don't think so, no. I did once (unintentionally) curate a game jam about writing supplements for invented or hypothetical games, the product of which you can find here, but this is a different thing.

[prokopetz]

(If anyone really wants this one to be a thing, though, feel free to toss your entry into the reblogs. I'm not going to do a proper game jam on itch.io or whatever because its UI really wants you to have cover art and a promotional blurb and such, and this doesn't feel like it warrants it!)

[morkaischosen]

Last Argument Of Gods Update v1.03

Errata

Words of Denial, pg. 47. Change the first sentence to: "When another theurge you can sense within your Magisterium Radius enacts a miracle, or when an enacted miracle's instantaneous effect that you can sense manifests within your Magisterium Radius, you may spend one Dictum and use your reaction to Struggle and attempt to deny that miracle."

Death of a Theurge sidebar, pg. 53. Add to the end: "A dead Theurge cannot perform mundane actions. Their only legal actions are miracles manifested according to these rules."

Invictus accolade, pg. 131. Modify the text to: "Your soul rises to any challenge, invigorated by the joy of contest and victory. When you win a Struggle against one of your Miracles, you may use an additional reaction before your next turn."

Laughter of the Wind-God accolade, pg. 133. Modify the text to: "Your miraculous spirit dances free, never more alive than in motion, never more despairing than in stillness. In a conflict, add one to any Dictum costs you pay for actions during your own turn, and subtract one from any Dictum costs you pay outside your turn, to a minimum of one."

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What type of action is used to manifest Cast Down The Pivot's Pinnacle? A. Cast Down the Pivot's Pinnacle is tagged as 'permanent'. No action or reaction is needed to activate it; it simply makes your Physical Attack actions into miracles whose effect is to allow you to spend a Dictum to blaspheme and immure the target when you hit, in addition to the normal attack effects. For timing purposes this choice is made during attack resolution and cannot be responded to.

Q. Do Sanctum Sanctorum and Ascendance of the Most High stack? A. Yes, Magisterium Radius follows normal stacking rules, so it is multiplied by the square of your Radiance in this case. Note that Sanctum Sanctorum requires you to be within the sanctum and you therefore cannot sense anything happening beyond it.

Q. How does Barque of the Moon interact with Anoint Prophet-Delegate? A. Each Prophet-Delegate receives the effects of the Panoply item as if they had it, as normal (so they can each count as providing moonlight within line of sight). When anointed their Barque will be in the same phase as yours. However, the Cycle of Phases ability has a "four times per month" limit. This is treated as less than once per day (even though you can use them all within a single day, as the refresh is monthly), so Prophet-Delegates share the activation limit with your own Barque, so most will not change phase.

[deep-state-partisan]

[non-state-actor]

[enquined]

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[prokopetz]

Honestly, tabletop RPG frameworks where your vehicle has way more mechanical detail than the character driving it are wasted on giant robots. I want a game about Prohibition-era bootleggers where the inadvisably hot-rodded Studebaker you use to outrun the cops has a three-page character sheet and the mobster behind the wheel fits on a postcard.

[prokopetz]

(Before you roll your eyes at the prospect of Yet Another Shitty Car Chase RPG, bear in mind that a lot of the thorny problems inherent to doing long-distance road chases in tabletop RPGs go away if you ditch the theatre-of-mind shit and play it out on a real roadmap. A game about Prohibition bootleggers is well suited to this approach because you can use actual, historical roadmaps. You could even freely include them in your scenarios – all published roadmaps from the 1920s are juuuuust old enough that they're now unambiguously in the public domain.)

[emotion-xp]

Are there any car chase RPGs worth mentioning? Yet-Another-Shitty or otherwise.

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played DETECT OR DIE ?

By Ben Klug

I'm just going to let the game's blurb on itch speak for itself:

A tabletop RPG of neo-noir empiricism, unstable detectives, and total ego death & resurrection. Inspired by science fiction stories of memory and detection like Blade Runner (1982) and Disco Elysium (2019), Detect or Die places the players as the various inner voices of the Detective, collectively embodying the fractured psyche of an amnesiac protagonist attempting to solve the Case. One player takes on the role of the World, laying out the setting and mystery for the rest, using a bespoke variation of the Powered by the Apocalypse game engine influenced by Blades in the Dark and Bluebeard's Bride. The rest play Personality Components, the fragments of the Detective's Ego who combine investigative competencies with erratic coping mechanisms, trading off control and emotional stamina to make it through the Case to the ultimate revelations - about the World and about the Detective.

Have you played ?

Yes I have played it

no but I've read it

no but I've heard of it

never heard of it

Voting ended onApr 4

[jennamoran]

today years old when I learned that you can use an allen wrench in the belly button to tighten or loosen your spine

[celestialartifice]

I apologize for nothing.

[luisonte]

Adaptador hdmi para ver la imagen más fluida

[manjaro-official]

mhm mhm that's right

[kazieka]

was outside earlier and a bird Came Up, squatted down, fluttered it’s wings at me and opened its mouth like a hatchling begging for food (it was a grown female) so I went and checked the seed cube in the feeder and the thing was completely covered in mold. this is one of the weirdest things that’s ever happened to me. how did she know im the one in charge of the birdseed. How Did She Know To Pantomime Hunger At Me. Hello.

[kazieka]

i have spent my afternoon confusedly getting dressed, driving to the store, purchasing a new seed block, driving home, washing the cage, and getting the feeder set back up. i don’t take this much care for my Own nutrition. ive been bullied into a grocery store run by a tufted titmouse. i feel so loved

[morkaischosen]

Friar Tuck realised too late that he was being followed.

He stopped as if to adjust a shoe, and hid the bundle where he hoped his pursuers wouldn't find them- to no avail. No sooner had the Sheriff of Nottingham's men clapped friendly, ungentle hands on his arms than one of them (who'd clearly been watching more closely than Tuck hoped) went to the spot, pulled out the package, and brandished it with a sly, mocking grin. "You dropped this, brother! Wouldn't want to lose it, I'm sure."

His face fell, before he could think to conceal his distress.

All that time spent cajoling the few local priests he trusted to scribe a few lines from the Merry Men's families, in the hopes of reminding them they hadn't been forgotten and keeping their spirits up - wasted, or worse, incriminating.

"You'd better come with us, brother. There's bandits around, and the Sheriff would have our heads if we let a man of the cloth get hurt. Come and see the boss and he'll make sure you're well."

---

The Sheriff of Nottingham was, if anything, worse than his ruffians. The air of civility he affected only served to inflame Tuck's temper - which, he suspected, was the point.

"Roderick here tells me you were very upset when he picked up this bundle. Being so moved by piety, I am of course, friar, at your service, and that of every churchman - is ought amiss?"

Tuck forced a smile onto his face. The Sheriff's long fingers were toying with the oilcloth wrap, slowly unfolding it, so honesty was called for. Just a crumb, to make the lie go down smoother.

"Letters, sir. A few keepsakes from my family to remember them by - the one indulgence my vows permit, and I thought the mud would ruin them."

"Of course, of course." The Sheriff shuffled through the stack, then pulled out a note and read. "I missed you last harvest, brother, for your strong back - and at the festival, with nobody there to drink me under the table."

Tuck smiled. "My vocation has taken me far away but I farmed, before."

"Is that so." The Sheriff nodded indulgently, put that note to the back, and continued, "Sweetheart, I miss you terribly and I long for the day we may be together again."

Features fixed in a faint, pious smile, Tuck replied, "Ah, young love! But a vow of chastity would be no devotion at all if it didn't cost anything. We never married, of course, but perhaps God will see fit that in the world to come..."

The Sheriff raised an eyebrow - Tuck swallowed the urge to talk back at the disdain on that face - and pulled another note out. "Father, for all that I have been working this farm for long enough that the village calls it mine, until the day you die it will be yours in my heart. I will take care of it for you until that day - god willing far away."

"Well- I-"

The Sheriff cut Tuck off, that eyebrow rising further and now accompanied by the most condescending smirk the old brigand had seen in his many decades on the Earth. "Save your excuses. Clearly you don't have an heir, friar."

[retroactivebakeries]

Ten Thousand Days For the Sword by Emily Zhu 朱保敬

fighting for the future

my beloved friend @xxxdragonfucker69xxx has made the best fucking wuxia tatterpig there is. remember the lady giving her horse gasoline? this is it

[flowerbleedme]

fanfic is extremely hard

[prokopetz]

Ways Deltarune can conceivably have only one ending in spite of the Weird Route diverging so wildly, in ascending order of Fuckery:

The two routes somehow converge after a certain point

The Weird Route dead ends in a developer-intended softlock

The planned ending is such a huge non sequitur that it genuinely won't matter what you've done up to that point

The game's final shot is a live-action FMV of Toby Fox waking up and saying "wow, what a weird dream"

Sans shows up and kills everyone

Roguelike mode

[emotion-xp]

2b. The Weird Route is the route with an ending, and the normal route gets stuck in a loop.