squeaken1

I'm just some crazy chick that loves cartoons, and is eagerly trying to make them. I love Trolls, geah, DuckTales, and Star Wars!

[kiwipeel]

this shit sucks. wish bulbasaur was real . 

[the-original-b]

Here’s one good thing to come out of 2020:

Paleontologists completed a life-sized replica of Sue, the most complete T. Rex ever found.

And she is freaking GORGEOUS!

As I read more about this beauty, I found out some new details regarding things I thought I previously knew about the beast that was Tyrannosaurus Rex, and I’m going to share them with you.

First, and most obvious, her size:

This is nothing new, we all figured T. Rex was big, but I for one never stopped to consider exactly how big it was. Nobody ever really knows what to imagine when they read about something the size of a whale that walked around and ate everything it could kill. 

Speaking of eating things, I just want to remind you all that T. Rex had–by miles–the strongest bite of any terrestrial animal living or dead, somewhere around six and a half tons of force. That’s over six times greater than the current estimate of what Allosaurus was capable of, and three times what was delivered by the highest measured reading of the living title holder–the estuarine crocodile. It didn’t have to waste time swinging its head open-mouthed like Saurophaganax for a little extra oomph, or grow fancy serrated teeth like Carcharodontosaurus to cut pieces out of its prey. It opted for the simplest approach: get its mouth around something and crush it to death; imagine the full weight of an elephant on whatever was between this thing’s jaws.

“How did it find something to eat?” I hear you asking. “It can’t see something if it doesn’t move, right?”

Listen, I love Jurassic Park too, but that’s a big crock of shit.

Notice how both her eyes face forward. That gives her binocular vision (the ability to focus both eyes on one target, like you and I). More importantly it means she has impeccable depth perception due to overlapping fields of vision from each, large, eyeball. Researchers agree that T. Rex not only had incredible vision, but that it was probably better than most modern animals–including eagles, hawks, and owls–and that she could likely spot something three and a half miles away. If something that big can see that well, it doesn’t matter if you move or not, she’d be able to tell if it was an animal trying to hide or a piece of vegetation. So pray she isn’t hungry if she lays eyes on you. And even if by some miracle she didn’t see you, she’d still smell you. 

If she decided you looked tasty, you probably wouldn’t hear her coming as much as you’d feel her. Modern science indicates that T. Rex didn’t roar like in Jurassic Park, but rather bellowed or maybe even hissed like crocodilians. If she were on to you, you’d most likely feel this sense of unease creep up your spine as a low-pitched rumble in the air permeated through you. You wouldn’t know what it was or where it was coming from until you hear her footfalls. By then it’s too late–you could try to run but she’d probably catch you. There’s plenty on YouTube that reconstructs what T. Rex may have sounded like, and it’s legitimately haunting.  

To wrap all of this up, the one bit of good that came out of the cursed year that is 2020 is that this wonderful child of science and art came into the world, and reaffirmed my respect and admiration for the eight ton slab of muscle and teeth that is this magnificent creature.

…and it is nothing if not magnificent.

[the-original-b]

I honestly expected like three notes, what happened!?

[milkfreaker]

sue goes by they/them :)

[squeaken1]

I got a new sleep mask. I love it! Even though it looks huge on my tiny head! Lol.

You are SO ADORABLE Squeeken!!

[6kate6kate9kate]

OMG that’s cute!!!!!!!!

[6kate6kate9kate]

Add this and you’ve got yourself a whole Poppy face.

[squeaken1]

@chellionnette omg. It's perfect

[clickbeetle]

wasn’t expecting “exploding pussy candles” to be a trending topic today but here we are

[clickbeetle]

anything can happen at this point

[prokopetz]

Seven inadvisable genies for your Dungeons & Dragons campaign:

A genie who will grant a given wish only if they can be presented with a sound argument that it would be ethical to do so. They categorically reject arguments founded in utilitarianism, but are willing to entertain most other ethical frameworks, provided they’re internally consistent.  

A genie who exclusively speaks a long-dead language, the surviving corpus of which is very small. They don’t deliberately try to warp the wisher’s intent, but they’re a bit unimaginative, and make no allowances whatsoever for the limits of a given speaker’s fluency or vocabulary  

A genie who can grant an unlimited number of wishes, but will only grant any particular wish once. They’ve been around for a very long time, and all of the obvious wishes have long since been used up; lateral thinking may be required to get any useful results.  

A genie who has a strange preoccupation with horses, and attempts to incorporate them into the granting of any wish in some fashion if it can even remotely be justified. Trying to explicitly specify that a wish should not involve horses leads to arguments and sulking.  

A genie who possesses boundless endurance, total invulnerability and comprehensive mastery of every mortal skill, but no magical powers as such. Any wishes they grant must be carried out the long way around. They do not feel the need to advise prospective wishers of this.  

A genie who’s aware of their kind’s reputation for maliciously twisting wishes, and is determined to overcome this stereotype by granting what the wisher meant, not what they said. Their insight into mortal psychology is unfortunately not quite as profound as they think it is.  

A genie who can only grant wishes if the outcome would be funny. Exactly whose sense of humour this is measured against is not entirely clear, though the criteria seem to include a strong predilection for sight gags and slapstick and a notably limited appreciation of irony.

[prokopetz]

More inadvisable D&D adventure premises, princess rescuing edition:

A seemingly conventional quest to rescue a young princess from the dragon who rules the mountain reaches to the north of the kingdom takes a sudden turn when it transpires that a. the princess is a latent sorcerer of considerable power, and b. there is definitely something the Queen neglected to tell the party about the princess’ true parentage.  

The party is hired to act as wedding crashers and disrupt an arranged marriage between a princess and a foreign noble. The party will easily learn that the arrangement was the princess’ idea, and that the ”rescue” is a ploy to secure more favourable terms in an attendant trade deal. What they may not learn so easily is that princess intends to deny knowledge of the party’s involvement and have them all executed.  

The princess is an aspiring wizard possessed of more ambition than good sense, and has managed to banish herself to gods-know-where thanks to a badly mistargeted summoning spell. The royal advisor has a short list of places she might have ended up, and the party isn’t going to like any of them! For extra fun, the spell might linger and continue to go off at inconvenient moments as the party is escorting her back.  

An ancient curse upon the land’s royal blood has been awakened. What it’s supposed to do is send the princess into an enchanted sleep and bring ruin upon her domains; however, as the monarchy was abolished generations ago and there are hundreds of descendants with plausible claims to the former throne, the curse is erratically hopping from person to person, bringing ruin on whatever it thinks each victim’s “domain” is.  

Owing to a series of misunderstandings that will probably seem hilarious in retrospect, a princess who ran away from home to become a masked vigilante has been hired to find and rescue herself. She can’t refuse a royal commission without having her masked identity branded a rebel against the crown, and she really doesn’t want to have to overthrow her parents, but she wants to go home even less. Maybe these passing adventurers can help resolve her dilemma?

[prokopetz]

More inadvisable premises for low-level Dungeons & Dragons adventures:

The party has been hired by a local inkeeper to clear a infestation of giant rats out of their basement. Upon investigation, however, the rats demand parley, and produce documents which – they allege – establish that they themselves are the legal owners of the inn. As far as any player character in possession of appropriate skills is able to determine, the documents are genuine.  

A group of townsfolk ask the party to liberate them from their terrible wizard-king. When confronted in his private sanctum, the “wizard” breaks down and confesses that he’s a failed apprentice who’s been running a Wizard of Oz scam with the aid of a few minor cantrips. He begs the party not to expose him, claiming that the countryside is home to a band of vicious marauders who’ve only refrained from ravaging the town because they believe he’s the real deal.  

The party receives the opportunity to enter themselves into a region-wide martial tournament whose returning champion has promised to bestow her magnificent enchanted blade on anyone who can best her in single combat. The usual tournament shenanigans are afoot, of course, but the true intrigue is that the champion is really just a luckless merchant who’s been possessed by the malicious intelligence of her sword – and it’s looking to trade up to a better host!  

A village is afflicted by an apparent curse that’s transforming plants, animals, and eventually people into grotesque monsters. The victims typically aren’t dangerous or hostile – just terribly confused. It’s eventually discovered that a local hedge witch has been improperly disposing of failed personal enhancement potions, and the resulting trasmutative effluvium has tainted the village well.  

An evil sorcerer has crafted an army of unstoppable behemoths of iron and bone to rampage through the countryside spreading terror and devastation as a prelude to eventual conquest. However, the sorcerer in question is a member of a very, very small race, so the behemoths are only about three feet tall.

[prokopetz]

Low-level diplomatic incidents for your Dungeons & Dragons game:

Two villages on opposite ends of a great valley have become embroiled in a dispute over hunting rights that’s about to boil over into open war. Each community is flat broke and can scarcely field a dozen men-at-arms, but neither can bow out of the approaching confrontation without losing face. Both village leaders attempt to hire the party as a secret weapon; neither is aware that the other has also done so.  

The local lord’s contemptible offspring has resolved to slay the dragon that lairs nearby. The townspeople, however, have secretly entered into a mutually beneficial arrangement with the dragon; they would prefer to resolve the situation without revealing the bargain, and ideally also without getting the awful brat killed and thereby sparking a vendetta that would likely result in real dragonslayers entering the fray.  

The party is accosted by robed acolytes who declare that one of the party’s number is the Chosen One, destined to defeat their god’s foes. The god in question proves to be a very minor deity whose domain consists of a stream that’s been polluted by a nearby smelting operation. In response, the small god of the hill the mine is sunk into – who benefits from the miners’ propitiation – soon nominates their own Chosen One!  

A gang of phantoms haunting the local graveyard have taken to holding nightly festivities so raucous, they’ve been declared a public nuisance. Being spirits, however, they’re immune to any force the townspeople (or the party) can bring to bear, and exorcism has thus far proven fruitless because – metaphysically speaking – they have every right to be there. How do you enforce a noise complaint against immaterial perpetrators?  

An enormous sinkhole opens beneath the town courthouse and plunges the building deep underground. Upon investigation, the party discovers not a monstrous incursion, but a Deep Gnome geological expedition that’s become lost due to a math error and ended up much closer to the surface than they thought they were. They don’t really want to hurt anyone, but they also don’t want their mistake to become public!

[sonneillonv-deactivated20220218]

I personally love how many of your campaign ideas boil down to, ‘why assume malevolence when you can assume incompetence?’

[prokopetz]

I find it’s easier to achieve moral nuance when everyone involved is a colossal fuckup.

[prokopetz]

More inadvisble D&D character concepts, transtemporal edition: 

A fighter who’s the last survivor of an apocalyptic parallel timeline. They knew versions of the other party members in that timeline (all sadly deceased), and it kind of bothers them that they themselves don’t seem to have a counterpart in the new timeline. Their Action Surge class feature is described as them experiencing temporal drift and performing two different actions at once.  

A wizard who placed themselves in suspended animation for a thousand years, expecting to awaken to a world of wonders – instead finding, well, the campaign setting in its present state. They’re egotistically convinced that their own absence from history is the reason things have ended up in this sorry state, and are constantly searching for ways to send themselves back to fix it.  

A rogue whose misdeeds have resulted in them being cursed to live the same stretch of time over and over again, which happens to be the exact duration of the campaign. The loop never plays out the same way twice, but they can sometimes exploit their recollection of situations they recognise from previous iterations, represented mechanically by their various class features.  

A monk whose unique martial discipline revolves around small-scale temporal manipulation, stepping a heartbeat back in time to perform a coordinated attack with their past self (i.e., use the Flurry of Blows class feature), or evading an attack by jumping a split-second forward and vanishing from the timestream. They’re definitely going to paradox themselves out of existence some day.  

A warlock whose patron is their own future self, their ascended consciousness echoing back through time and manipulating events to paracausally bring about their own as-yet-hypothetical existence. This might not be as terribly concerning as it is were it not for the nature of the patron in question.

[prokopetz]

(Bonus: A cleric of a god of knowledge and history who’s been tasked with preventing the preceding five meatheads from unwittingly destroying the space-time continuum.)

[prokopetz]

I love Dungeons & Dragons magic items with obnoxiously prosaic names. Like, the sword of wounding, you say? As opposed to what, exactly? The bag of holding? I sure hope it does! The rope of climbing? Bro, that’s literally just a rope.

[tiwaztyrsfist]

Sword of Holding - the two ends of the Quillon end is small open hands. The are capable of grasping small items like a potion bottle or scroll. Items held by the sword can be passed to the wielders other hand as a free action. Bag of Climbing - This small belt pouch contains 200’ of rope, 50 pitons, a set of crampons, and a hammer. Any of these items can be pulled from the bag at any time. If you attempt to pull one of these items from the bag but it’s already out, the item disappears from the world and reappears in the bag. This means you can always recover your pitons and reuse them, even if you run out partway through the climb, taking the ones from the bottom and reusing them. Just, don’t try to take more rope out when you reach the end of your current rope… Rope of Wounding - a 50’ length of seemingly normal hemp rope. If a section is cut to the correct length, and the command word spoken, the rope stiffens and functions as a melee weapon. 8 inches of rope functions as a dagger, 2 feet functions as a short sword, 3 feet functions as a long sword, and a 10 foot section functions as a Short Spear. Sections can be commanded to soften and reharden again at will.

[prokopetz]

If you’re playing a paladin and you don’t use the word “smote” at every reasonable opportunity, what is even the point?

[prokopetz]

@stumblngrumbl replied:

Maybe we don’t like living in the past

“I can’t help but feel you’re not treating your god-granted powers with the gravity they deserve.”

“I have no idea what you could possibly be talking about.”

“You smote Steve for eating the last brownie.”

“That’s in the past.”

“It was ten minutes ago.”

“Ten minutes ago is the past.”

[prokopetz]

More inadvisable NPCs for your Dungeons & Dragons game, royal court edition:

A sinister advisor who constantly schemes against, well, basically everybody. It quickly becomes apparent that everyone at court knows the advisor is betraying them, and they often compare notes when the advisor isn’t around to hear. The advisor, however, has no idea, and honestly believes they’ve got everyone fooled.  

An honoured guest of the court and celebrated dragon-slaying knight who is, to all appearances, roughly nine years old. Their heroic credentials are thoroughly corroborated, and no amount of inquiry by the player characters can establish whether this is some elaborate pageantry, or whether the kid actually killed a dragon.  

A long-suffering servant who seems to be responsible for literally everything. Given the volume of work they perform and the impossible speed with which they get from place to place, the player characters may guess they’re dealing with multiple identical servants, but can never provably catch them in two places at once.  

A robed human wearing an elaborate, heavily reinforced hat which serves as a perch for a rather grumpy-looking owl. The owl is the court wizard, and the human is their personal assistant; the other members of the court regard this as perfectly obvious, and will affect shocked dismay if the player characters assume differently.  

A hulking ogre, nearly ten feet in height, garbed in a jingling fool’s cap and disconcertingly tight particoloured motley. Though their jests are often remarkably clever, they’re delivered in a humourless monotone and radiate a sense of palpable menace; however, the King inexplicably finds them hilarious, so nobody can say anything.

[prokopetz]

Reasoning purely from the standpoint of game-mechanical similarity, Santa Claus is a bard.

[prokopetz]

More inadvisable Dungeons & Dragons campaign premises, Exploring The Implications™ edition:

A setting that inverts the customary relationship between species and character class; a fighter or a wizard or a cleric is something you’re born as, but being an elf or a dwarf or a halfing is something you have to learn – and yes, you can multiclass!  

A setting where humans live in dungeons and venture forth to explore the mysterious “surface”; the perils of the surface look exactly like their real-world counterparts, but have the stats of high-level monsters, like a squirrel has ten hit dice and breathes fire.  

A setting where all crafted objects are randomly imbued with weird and generally inconvenient magical powers, and the highest mark of mastery is being able to create something that only performs its intended mundane function.  

A setting that takes all those jokes about the XP system where killing monsters making you better at shoe repair to their logical-yet-absurd conclusion and establishes that yes, in fact, the only way to improve a skill is to practice it as a combat art.  

A setting where character classes are contagious in the mode of Hollywood vampirism – e.g., getting mugged by a rogue may turn you into one yourself – and the world is secretly ruled by a sinister council of the classed, with each class as a separate faction.

[teaspiiier]

You had me at fire breathing squirrel

[prokopetz]

Based on some of the responses, I feel I should clarify that I’m not talking about giant mutant squirrels there. I mean just a regular-looking squirrel, which has a metric tonne of hit points and breathes fire. It’s not “monster versions of regular critters”, but “regular critters are the monsters”. I’m talking about a game where a high-level party can get their asses kicked by a flock of chickens.

[prokopetz]

More stock NPCs for your Dungeons & Dragons game:

A hulking paladin voiced in your best Patrick Warburton impression who uses the names of obscure polearms as expletives  

A ranger who aspires to be a fashion designer, and hunts rare beasts to obtain their hides and fur for use in dressmaking  

What initially appears to be a dwarven runecaster with a badger familiar, but it turns out it’s actually the badger who’s the runecaster, and the dwarf is her personal assistant  

A compulsively stealthy rogue who insists that all their thievery is in support of a sick relative; it’s not entirely clear whether there’s one sick relative or many involved, as the details change every time they tell it  

A bard outlawed from their home village after making a pun so terrible that it killed the blacksmith  

A swashbuckling fighter who enjoys lavish hospitality on account of their fearsome reputation, but is secretly just very skilled at stage combat and can’t actually fight their way out of a wet paper bag  

A star pact warlock with maxed out Bluff impersonating a cleric of a benevolent sun god  

A mysterious druid dwelling on the outskirts of town who everyone politely pretends not to notice is actually three dire raccoons standing on each other’s shoulders in a feathered robe

[prokopetz]

Concept: stereotypical fantasy metropolis, except instead of being segregated by species the neighbourhoods are segregated by Dungeons & Dragons character class.

[prokopetz]

Serious version: Not every single person who lives in each neigbourhood is necessarily a member of that class – in fact, most aren’t. It’s more a combination of each neighbourhood having a concentration of businesses and service providers that cater to the interests of a particular character class, and the way that some real-world neighbourhoods develop a Theme and decide to run with it.

The version you’ll probably actually play: Yes, everyone who lives in each neighbourhood is in fact a member of that neighbourhood’s class, including the rats.

[prokopetz]

@warkipinetree replied:

I don’t know if this is strictly good city planning, but it’s fun city planning, so I approve wholeheartedly

Tabletop RPG cities are obliged to have good urban planning to precisely the same extent that tabletop RPG dungeons are obliged to have plausible ecologies.

[prokopetz]

More reverse Dungeons & Dragons adventures:

A wizard has become trapped at the bottom of their own dungeon, and magically summons the party to free them  

The party must resurrect a dragon, who had served as guardian of a nearby town before dying in a bizarre accident  

A clan of famed goblin artisans are relocating their village; the Queen has hired the party to ensure that the site the goblins choose is within her territory  

The party must create a magical artifact in order to prevent the death of a benevolent deity  

A local population of endangered Golden Owlbears is suffering from the depredations of an unknown trophy hunter; the party has been asked to put a stop to it  

The party must find a non-violent way to get rid of an unwelcome princess who refuses to leave