#new project!

[cupofzo]

Do we think he’s the sheriff or doctor? Lol

[gatesofminrathous]

WIP Wednesday

Thank you to the ever delightful @slothquisitor for the tag (and for sharing some content I am very excited about).

I'm still getting over my post-No Rest hangover/depression but I've been using my newfound freedom to start on a project that's been in the back of my mind for a couple months now. It currently has no name (it exists in Ellipsus as "Untitled Gymnastics AU") nor do I have a meaningful blurb for it, so I'll just give you the elevator pitch which is "Lucanis and Illario are Olympic gymnasts in Soviet immigrant Caterina's gymnastics dynasty, and someone has impersonated Lucanis to hire Neve as a private investigator looking into possible foul play in Lucanis' near career-ending injury five months ago." Don't know when I'll start publishing, but I've got the first chapter done. And because it's new and I'm excited you get two excerpts.

It is seven a.m. and Lucanis almost doesn't answer the door. "Cartoon donkey" was the phrase Illario had used to describe the doorbell's death-rattle of a bray. It still makes Lucanis jump out of his skin every time he hears it, but it rings so infrequently it's forgotten until the next time it plays its unwelcome song. He's had exactly three visitors in the year since he bought this house. This time he's fairly certain it's neither Caterina nor Illario, and it's definitely not the third—the elderly neighbor who'd asked him for help shoveling his driveway back in December—given he went to his funeral. He's not even certain who else has his address other than the anti-doping committee. It could be them, he supposes. He tries to remember the name of the man who always visits—Don or Dan or something else with three letters that is forgotten as soon as Lucanis hears the words "random test" and leads him inside so Don/Dan can watch him piss in a cup. He's been twice in the last six months; another would be more than usual but Lucanis is only months off major surgery and an expired therapeutic use exemption. He wouldn't be the first gymnast caught with opiates in his system to stave off the torture that is training on a cocktail of only ibuprofen and naproxen. It's all a very reasonable assumption. Sweat from his run still clings to his skin in a sticky film; Lucanis tries to wipe the worst of the sheen away with the back of his hand but mostly spreads it around like one of those K-beauty serums Illario uses. An early spring heat wave has ensured there is sweat on every inch of his body. He'd been lying beneath the fan on his bedroom ceiling, counting his own heartbeats when the doorbell rang. It's only because be assumes it must be Don/Dan that he doesn't bother to put on a shirt. "Lucanis Dellamorte?"

Second excerpt below a cut as a kindness to people's dashes.

"I get a lot of mundane requests—a lot of people wanting proof their partner is cheating on them, proof an ex is breaking a custody agreement, that sort of thing—so chalk up my lack of credulity to being sucked in by an actually interesting case for once." Lucanis could have read ahead, could have preempted this question, but he's feeling lightheaded and can barely focus his eyes. "What was the request?" "You—or whoever this is—thinks your accident at Worlds last year wasn't exactly an accident." Maybe it's because he's not expecting it that for a moment he is back in that gym, disoriented in the air for an impossibly prolonged moment as sharp, disembodied gasps blare out like a Klaxon. Then he's hurtling toward the ground and he can't fix his rotation quick enough to prevent the way his leg hits the mat with enough force to catch his patella between the sickening crush of his tibia and femur. Career ending. That's what they'd called it when he'd been laid up in the hospital so high on morphine he'd only been able to half-parse the words. Four surgeries later, the x-rays of Lucanis' left knee so full of pins and plates it resembled war documentary scenes of grenade shrapnel, the future prognosis had shifted from "career ending" to "unlikely to place on the podium." That tiny window of hope was all Caterina had needed. Injuries happen. It's a professional hazard. But Illario isn't the one with an Ambien prescription or a Costco-sized bottle of ibuprofen in his cabinet.

Tagging @sorrygoldfish @genjyoandgojyoandhakkai @armoredinmoonlight @dracoliskline @falonwithbenefits @serialsforbellara @mustardprecum and @skogrr to share what you've got cooking this week.

[milkywayan]

New Project:

A 15th century short-sleeved kirtle with Grande Assiette sleeves

I have a few motivations for this one. First, my only other short sleeved dress is very thick and heavy, which is great for events on colder days, but in the summer it is very hot. i also have three pairs of detachable sleeves and only one dress to wear them with. My other two, thinner kirtles are both some degree of peasant brown, and as I have a yellowish skin tone, it makes me look sickly. also, the sleeves will provide me with a lot of movement ability, which is nice

In the images you can see the kind of sleeve I want on the left. Big armholes and the sleeve is trumpet shaped

i started out by tracing my trusty kirtle pattern, and then increasing the armholes to a size I liked

cut it out, sewed it together and made some fitting corrections

Then came the sleeve construction. Like for my 15th century jacket, where I also made these sleeves, I used this great tutorial, although i always modify the distribution of width for the gores, because i think this tutorial makes the front gore waaay too big, and the back gores tiny

i constructed the pattern and cut it all out, and then sewed it together

i had hoped i can finish all the pattern images here, but i reached the image limit

Anyway, i put it onto the bodice, and it fits, so now i will take it all apart and make a pattern out of it, so i can cut the actual fabric

[knitsandnonsense]

[basilhomebrews]

Heyo and a-hello, my name is Basil and you're watching the- *LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER*

In all seriousness, I've not had much creative energy to really homebrew anything for a while now (i.e. me and that friend of mine never really finished our entry for the Fabula Ultima game jam thing we joined, which kinda bummed me out), due to irl stuff taking up a lot of my time. So, instead of agonizing over making and balancing homebrew mechanics for TTRPGs, I've decided to just *play* TTRPGs! (what a concept, amirite)

Specifically, me and a couple irl friends are gonna try and play oneshots using a bunch of different systems and record our thoughts about them, which I will share with y'all. It's not gonna be anything scientific or follow super rigid review guidelines, it's just gonna be a measure of how much we enjoyed the system, how easy the system was to learn/play, and the specific things we liked and disliked about the system. This post'll be the first one in the series, which I am calling-

Givin' it a (One)Shot: Savage Worlds Adventure Edition

Resources Used: Savage Worlds: Adventure Edition core rulebook, Official SWADE Character Sheet, SWADE Science Fiction Companion

TL;DR

Fun We Had: 3.6/5

Ease-of-Learning*: 2.8/5

   *We are of average intelligence and have semi-busy schedules

Ease-of-Use (Actual Play): 3/5

Session 0 Necessity for Longer Play: 4.3/5

Would recommend for groups with 1-2+ years of experience playing crunchy/semi-crunchy systems looking to branch out to new “medium crunch” systems, would not recommend to groups with less experience looking for something quick to pick up and play, unless they really take the time to read through the rules and pick what works for them. For oneshots, either ask the players to make their characters ahead of time or make premades.

In-depth stuff under the cut:

Adventure: Xenos Misadventures on the ISF Galway (Unofficial/I made it the fuck up)

Session Time: Roughly 4 hours, with around an hour dedicated to creating characters for half the party (2 people)

Summary: The party is composed of the surviving crew on the ISF Galway, a Peregrine-class transport ship tasked with carrying refugees and prisoners from one star system to another. Halfway to their destination, they collided with a mysterious asteroid that flew under all their detection systems. Upon closer inspection by everyone higher up on the authority ladder, Xenos (Legally Distinct Aliens) burst out and ravaged the ISF Galway’s crew. The party holed themselves up in the cockpit until the ship grew quiet once more before trying to escape, or worse yet, to fight back. 

Cast of Characters:

Delusional Sanitation Officer turned “Captain”, armed with pilfered Sec Officer armor and a service pistol;

2,500 kg (important [not]) Rynocerant (intelligent rhino race) ship security officer with a grudge against one of the Polarian (intelligent polar bear race) prisoners being transported;

Private security android employed by Unnamed MegaCorp to guard corporate interests (read: POWs for experimentation) on the Galway; and

A straight up elf wizard. Stowaway from one of the Galway’s pit stops, is just a straight up space elf wizard.

All Rank 0 Characters using mostly premade races (Rynocerant is custom, made before the session) following the flowchart detailed in the Character Creation Summary of the core rulebook.

Expectation: Stealth-focused session owing to the fact that there are 3 male juvenile Xenos and 1 queen on the ship. More about navigating through the ship and collecting info and parts necessary to escape while avoiding detection or running away from the Xenos.

Reality: PCs in Savage Worlds can hit hard, huh. They immediately took down one juvenile out of combat owing to a success with raises, and were able to dispatch the other two with only the space elf sustaining a Wound. They escaped pretty handily, getting in the escape pods just before the queen managed to get her claws on them.

Overall a fun experience, though whether that was because of the system or because we were friends bouncing off of each other’s energies, that remains a bit muddled. We had basically 1 1/2 combat encounters (the other one was resolved so quickly that it was barely a combat scenario), and the rest of the session was mostly the usual player-GM back-and-forth fare.

Highlights:

The rynocerant smashing the cockpit doors open so hard that it sent a juvenile xenos careening down the stairs, which the "captain" took credit for;

The "captain" fumbling his revolver shots so bad that it ruptured a fuel tank for one of the ship's Heavy-Duty Cleaning Armaments (flamethrower), filling the hallway with gas;

The space elf taking one Wound and deciding "fuck that" and casting Bolt straight at one xenos so good that it just died on impact;

Said elf asking me if he could choose what element Bolt can take since the book doesn't specify, then subsequently igniting all the gas in the hallway to absolutely destroy the last juvenile;

The rynocerant somehow tanking the above explosion perfectly, no Shaken or nothing;

[EXTREME RYNOCERANT ON POLAR BEAR VIOLENCE]

The pros, cons, and opinions that came up before, during, and after the session:

Pros:

Playing card initiative is fun. The randomness it provides each round is a breath of fresh air for our group, coming from systems with fixed initiative or ones where PCs and enemies alternate taking turns. Also, it’s just cool to deal out cards for initiative.

Bennies are fun to spend and give. As a metacurrency, they can do a lot: my players mostly used them for rerolls and Soaking, but I like that you can spend them to influence the story, after some hopefully constructive back and forth between the players and the GM. Giving them felt intuitive for me, as I like rewarding players with stuff when they play their characters accurately or advance the story in interesting ways.

Wild Die is useful, helps mitigate failure due to bad stats; the Wild Die is a useful representation of how the players (and some NPCs) are big name characters in the narrative, how they are generally more important and more likely to succeed than other characters. Really helps to ease the chance of failure when a player tries something they’re bad at it, makes it feel like they’re more competent than the setting’s average Joe.

Rolls exploding (Aces) is fun for players and GMs. Not much else to say about this, exploding dice is just a fun mechanic to have for most games that use dice.

Raises are an engaging and simple mechanic to play out higher degrees of success; in my experience, I like giving control to players when they succeed more than normal, so raises let me explicitly do that here. Whenever a player got a raise, I gave the floor to them to dictate what additional effect happens on their success, after a bit of back and forth to make sure that it makes sense and it’s not too much.

Cons:

Character creation is crunchy to the point of being a bit confusing. Lots of points to move around, but the allocation system was mostly intuitive save for when a skill went above the soft limit set by its corresponding Attribute. We had to double check our math a few times, just to be sure. This would probably be solved if we had the system more internalized, had more sessions under our belt, but otherwise it seems like a lot to consider when approaching it at an entry-level of familiarity. Might have also been easier if the character sheet listed all the skills instead of just the core ones, and what attributes they were tied to (i.e. Athletics (AGI) or something similar), so that players can easily reference what they might need to pump to get past that soft limit.

Adding to the above, picking out Hindrances especially (and consequently, Edges) at character creation proved to be tedious or an exercise in min-maxxing. I would suggest highlighting the optional nature of the Hindrances rule; make sure players know that you are allowed to take up to four points of Hindrance for the benefits, and that taking none, more , or less is a valid option. Not every negative character trait needs to be codified into a game mechanic, and good roleplaying should still be rewarded with things like Bennies or contextual advantages, regardless of what you've got written down on your character sheet.

Book layout could be better: there’s a decent amount of going back and forth across the rules, and there’s some important things that are hidden or in small text. It helps that page numbers are clickable, but it still definitely feels like you benefit more from having the physical book on you with bookmarks since you might need to go back and forth.

The core rulebook seems really interested in WW2/modern era equipment, to the point where the options for medieval or futuristic settings are dwarfed by the wealth of options available to modern gear. I know that other genre-specific rulebooks exist, but if you tout yourself as a system that can handle a lot of genres, it seems reasonable to expect equal arsenals between genres. Could possibly be fixed by giving a quick rundown of how to make your own gear for different time periods using the options in the core rulebook as examples.

Opinions:

One of the players say that SWADE’s brand of setting agnosticism feels confused, at least for the core rulebook; they say that reading through the core rulebook gave them the impression that it was more of a grocery shelf of mechanics that let you pick and choose what you want to play with instead of a cohesive system that has no fixed setting. Another player agrees with this, calls it too broad; there’s a wealth of options in the core rulebook that newer players might think is fair game for any campaign, instead of an option that may or may not be allowed depending on the group.

A different player says that SWADE does not feel beginner friendly; while the core resolution mechanic is simple, getting to what Trait you need to apply can be tedious. Going through all the skills and remembering what each one does/where it applies can also be a hassle for new-to-semi-experienced players alike, considering how many there are and the overlap that they have (riding, driving, boating, and piloting are distinct skills which in their opinion seems to chase realism too hard).

Same player as above said that Hindrances specifically feel like an unwelcome crinkle; they complained that Hindrances feel like an unnecessary codification of character traits you would probably already have just making your character, and that you can easily min-maxx your way into getting max Hindrance Points for Edges and other benefits.

Personal opinion, what is up with the Obese and Yellow Hindrances. They gave me and another player the ick because: 

Obese seems like a pretty fatphobic Hindrance. The flavor text doesn’t even seem like it’s talking about obesity, just being large and clumsy in general; 

Yellow is a very outdated word for someone being very fearful, and with the book’s obsession with WW2, might be interpreted otherwise; and

There are definitely better names for them out there, like Bulky or Oversized for Obesity and Cowardly or Craven for Yellow.

In conclusion, SWADE embodies the system’s tag line of “Fast! Furious! Fun!” ok enough; it’s easy to pick up and play if you’re more familiar with TTRPGs in general, and it provides a bunch of tools to make game time dynamic and pulpy,  but getting there can be a slog; character creation can be hard to parse through if you don’t have the patience or experience with crunchier systems, and the skills list can be a bit daunting if you don’t familiarize yourself with it ahead of time. 

Highly suggest taking the time to sit down and give the rules a thorough read through, take notes if that’s how you operate, before running or playing this system. For GMs, especially those running this for the first time, I would suggest drip feeding the various mechanics found in the Situational Rules section to your players slowly/as they become relevant; there’s a lot of additional stuff in this section that may or may not come up, and you would be saving yourself a lot of hassle if you just kept bookmarks (for physical copies) or have the pdf handy to reference each one as you see fit instead of familiarizing yourself with all of them ahead of time.

That's all from us, hope this was useful/fun to read through. Til next time, space cowboy~

[echoes-bookshelf]

Hey You! Do you want a funky selfship tumblr ID card? 

Reblog this post if you would be interested in getting a fun little card like this! It does involve a lot of back-and-forth questions to get a sense of your aesthetic and dynamics, so please only reblog if you’re okay with me DMing you a bunch of questions!

These sample cards are for me and for @grave-avis​!

Anyone can reblog but I’ll be starting with mutuals and working from there, depending on how much energy I have for this project ^-^ 

[ladysawblay]

"Anything new yet?" Shouta asks, voice like gravel.

The head spy of the royal family and Shouta's long time friend, taps the tips of his fingers along the bottom of the window sill. The man shrugs, blue hair fluttering in the morning breeze.

"I'll need more time than that, Shou," he says, returning to his desk covered in various rolled out scrolls. He picks one up and nods. "This one's damp enough to read now though, so let's see what it has to say."

Shouta rubs at his eyes, and leans back with a groan. He hadn't slept well last night, not after his Prince had pushed the line so thoroughly, leaving him with thoughts no knight should have about any member of the royal family.

(Yet, it happens all of the time.)

Scrolls are flipped through, scribbled on, all while Shouta taps his armoured foot against the stone floor. "Oboro, I need something. A hint. Anything," he presses.

Oboro throws him an unimpressed glare before returning to sifting through what Shouta believes are reports from the night before.

"Look, I get this is bad, but you've got to relax. What would Prince Izuku say if he saw you like this?" It's nothing more than light-hearted teasing, Shouta knows. But, right now, it only rubs salt in the wound and leaves him growling to himself.

Izuku can't say anything if he's missing.