my name kiki, she/her (hän tai se suomeksi), 18+ years old. I like posting on the internet, it's full of fun people. Maoist struggle session enjoyer. silly Rolemaster girlblogger. my interests include RPGs (both of the Japanese and Tabletop variety) and languages. sometimes I cause problems on purpose.
Hello! It's mentioned in the influences section of Deathbed that you have a masters in medieval studies!! That is so immensely cool. I'm really curious how you moved from that pursuit to writing ttrpgs? Does it impact your writing do you feel? Outside of taking historical inspo for Deathbed of course!
The thing about higher education is that it is a scam and will also change your life. I was lucky enough to get a significant scholarship and was able to get out without massive debt, so it mostly changed my life only for the better.
I ended up writing TTRPGs because my medieval studies degree didn’t help me get a job in any sort of actual history-focused field like research, museum curation, etc., because it turns out those job markets are extremely competitive. There are very few job openings.
Fresh out of my degree program i could only get a job teaching, which was totally miserable, and then I ended up doing archival work (which is a job my degree actually did help me get).
TTRPGs and game design in general were things I always had an interest in, and Eureka started as something just for fun. But when that archival work dried up, it became a way for me to take control of my own career by utilizing a skill I am both good at and enjoy using. I have never had hardly any success with any other more conventional jobs. I struggle with interpersonal work because I’m socially inept, and I struggle with manual labor because I’m physically disabled, so A.N.I.M. is kinda my last shot.
As for using my college education, I actually use it all the time in my line of work, in Eureka, not just Death Bed. I happen to also have a Bsc in psychology and MA in psychiatry. Most branches of psychology are 80-90% pseudoscientific woo-woo, but my focus was on behavioral psychology, which is only maybe about 50% pseudoscientific woo-woo.
Having a basic understanding of behavioral psychology is a great asset to game design, because it focuses on how the environment encourages and discourages individual “behaviors.” (No, this isn’t “mind control, it’s just knowing that people are less likely to want to do something if the process or result sucks.)
Studying psychiatry helped me learn that the field is about 80% pseudoscience and at least 70% concentrated evil. Psychiatric research is almost always more concerned with eliminating mentally ill people, rather than eliminating the suffering mentally ill people endure. I also learned that “mental illness” is a very nebulous category and “mental illnesses” don’t even really exist half the time.
In theory, any given “mental illness” is supposed to be a shorthand term for a particular pattern of symptoms appearing together, so that treatments that worked on previous people with that specific collection of symptoms can be tried on the person receiving the diagnosis. But in practice, this isn’t how a lot of researchers or medical professionals really treat it. They treat it like a physical virus or bacterial infection that can be eliminated from the body entirely to produce a perfectly healthy normal person, not acknowledging that these symptoms are behaviors, personality traits, and perceptions. In other words, they often *are* the person, or at the very least it’s hard to separate “the person” from these undesirable behaviors, traits, and perceptions. (And another thing, what traits are “undesirable” is a delineation that is very rarely in the best interest of the patient.)
A lot of these themes appear in Eureka, particularly with the Vampire Trait. For instance, how quite a lot of the Vampire Trait’s features which embody classic “everybody knows vampires act like this” things are heavily implied to be learned behaviors in response to how other people treat them for being a vampire. Also, the implication that the vampire you see is an illusion, an effect created by something you can’t see. Because you can’t see the true source, the only thing that can be studied and reacted to is the effects. Treating the effects as the source themselves, or pretending you can see the source when you can’t, is bound to lead to erroneous conclusions. This is how I feel about much of psychology.
Also, my medieval studies MA is super helpful for, like, knowing what people actually used to think about vampires and werewolves and how they interact with historical Christianity and stuff.
The character of Comtesse Yvette Preux is, like, the culmination of all of this. She represents the themes of the major flaws in much of the research under the umbrella of psychology, how mental illness develops, historical Christianity and its interaction with the othered, and an educational representation of medieval culture in general. I couldnt have written the Vampire Trait or much of Eureka in general, at least not as well as I did, without this education.
For the past 3 & 1/2 years, I've been providing weekly ttrpg recommendations for folks, and I've been happy to do so! However, I've found myself in a new stage of life recently that has dramatically reduced my free time. Ultimately, this is a good thing, but it also means that right now, I need to re-focus what little free time I have towards personal projects and time spent with friends.
I really enjoy providing recommendations for folks, and I hope to do so in the future - in fact, if everything goes as I expect, I should be flipping through my archives again in September later this year. But until then, There's A TTRPG For That will be put on a reduced posting schedule.
What this means:
I'm not accepting any recommendation requests or review requests for the duration of my hiatus.
I will be re-posting old recommendation posts for the duration of my hiatus.
I have a Library Masterpost for the curious
There are one or two things that I may still release in the next 5 months or so, either because I agreed to them before going on hiatus or because I had the time & motivation to write about something.
Thank you so much everyone for the love and appreciation that has been sent my way over the past 3 years. I hope to see y'all again in September!
- Mint
I frequently forget that sauerkraut is typically seen as a German food since I grew up eating it on Pulaski Days and with the Polish side of my family. Am I going to hell.
yeah i had a conversation with god recently and it turns out xe doesnt really care about gay people or sex out of wedlock so right now the only thing that'll send you to eternal damnation is misidentifying regional varieties of fermented vegetables. sorry i dont make the rules.
by disagreeing with me on this topic, you're aligning yourself with everyone else who disagrees with me, which includes the Chaos Death Cult, and they chaos kill people so....
Pride flag for trans people who realized they were trans after evading the police by holing up in a factory where they make dangerous experimental chemicals and ended up fighting a masked vigilante causing themselves to end up falling into an open vat of gender fluid
Putting the term "male gaze" on top of the fridge until everyone remembers that it refers to a cinematographic trend and not the act of looking at things while being a man
In this post: module sections UP, TS, Level 1, and Level 2.
A fair amount of homework for these sections is loaded into just a handful of complicated rooms on Level 2. That said, we've got some maps and details to sort out in every one of these sections.
TREASURE MAPS IN THIS PART: 2
TREASURE MAPS TO DATE: 5
GAME DESIGN
2-23, Page 129: The laboratory here contains a magic item that takes unspecified materials of unspecified availability and cost, then outputs unspecified potions. In other words, this room demands that the DM create a crafting system from scratch. One of the most notoriously fiddly and difficult to balance kinds of sub-system in dungeon games.
2-70, Page 149: The library here contains far too many books to list in detail. If your system of choice does not have procedures for referencing a library, you may need to make one.
MISSING CARTOGRAPHY
UP-4, Page 108: The random encounter table for this well-trafficked room includes finding an abandoned treasure map. The treasure map may or may not be real and may or may not be complete, but you should probably have one to hand just in case.
TS-15, Page 114: The floor of the Well of Wraiths has an unspecified treasure map.
1-17, Page 121: The dead adventurer here has a map of several areas near the Glory of Thoth on Level 3 "with obscure annotations". Prepare the map and figure out what those annotations are and mean.
2-56, Page 139: A long-dead priest of Thoth carries a map of Level 5 - presumably excluding the Midnight Road. Prepare this map.
2-72, Page 151: The secret library holds 2-5 maps of other areas of the Halls. Select and map several sections that would have been known to the ancient Archonteans.
Pre-Rolling Opportunities
UP-3, Page 108: The walls of this room have random graffiti. Pre-roll a few responses to give the players the general tenor of the graffiti in the area. Create a handout with all of the graffiti if they decide to take a turn cataloguing it.
UP-4, Page 108: This room has its own specific encounter rate and encounter table. Pre-roll several visits worth of encounters - your players will likely traverse this area several times until they find some of the other surface entrances. (Also important because there's a treasure map on the encounter table).
UP-6, Page 109: This area spawns random undead. The table claims to be for the kind and location of the undead, but no locations are listed. (Possibly you're supposed to cross-reference with the locations of corpses in UP-6 through 11?). Pre-roll the first couple instances of undead and decide where they spawn.
UP-10, Page 111: The pit of bones has a multi-step procedure for digging up lost treasure. You could pre-roll each hour of searching until the entire hoard has been exhausted, and put descriptions to the coins and gems so recovered.
Level 2, Page 123: Several major NPCs on this level such as Gerilad the Grey and the four-armed baboons have random initial positioning. Pre-roll their locations during prep.
2-23. Page 129: On top of asking you to make a crafting system, this room also recommends rolling "up to 100" entries from whatever dungeon dressing tables you have available to properly clutter up the room. I don't recommend literally rolling one hundred objects because that would be a massive pain to track and to convey to your players, but maybe roll up a few things that stand out from the clutter or seem suitably wondrous.
MISSING DETAILS
UP-1, Page 107: A curse of the DM's choosing strikes anyone who survives stealing the massive gemstone eyes of the statue of Thoth. Decide upon the nature of the curse.
UP-11, Page 111: The final teleport location for the Selket statue is up to the DM. Select a location within the Halls. (Or a shortlist, if you want it to change from instance to instance!)
TS-17, Page 115: The busts of the priests here have listed values, but need weights. Their value increases if their names can be learned, so you'll need to establish what those names are and how they can be learned as well.
2-14, Page 127: The text calls out that the elaborate teakwood stalls are "heavy and bulky", but doesn't list an actual weight.
2-31, Page 132: The text calls out that the laboratory equipment and surviving research materials "present difficulties in transportation", but also doesn't list a weight. Or other hazards, if perhaps they are intended to be delicate and/or volatile!
2-72, Page 72: The Secret Library of Thoth contains several unspecified tomes and recommends adding a few of the DM's choice to the pile. Select some interesting tidbits from the Arden Vul Books list and/or write up a couple lorebooks of your own. Assign weights and values to the remaining generic tomes.
EXPANSION OPPORTUNITIES
2-19, Page 128: This room contains a Thothian Teleportation Circle, and is one of the earlier locations where the PCs can find a complete set of tiles all in one place. Brute-forcing the circles to find possible addresses is risky, but possible. This room provides a fine jumping-off point if you intend to add your own sub-levels or otherwise expand the teleportation network.
hey remember how one of my theories about the harassment against patricia was that regurgitating the false claims & misrepresentations allows you to justify having mistreated her in the past? & it lets you characterize her as someone it's ok to mistreat?
like. person A says "you underpaid me", "you treated me badly", etc. person B replies "ok well youre a Groomer so who cares." like it's not subtle, the transmisogynist allegation is itself a response, a defence, & a cudgel. it lets you retreat & reframe the discussion into some juvenile Morality Scaling bullshit. "ohh youre saying ive wronged you? umm well have you considered that youre a worse person than me so it doesnt count?" the transmisogyny at play lets you get away with mistreating her, it lets you escape consequence or accountability for mistreating her. you get to leverage the vitriol people have already heaped onto her to get observers onto your side. willful & eager invocation of privilege allows you to rewrite the conversation from "litigating your behaviour" to "litigating her character"
turnnoffyourmind
areudirty
gummygunk
janainaart
theartofmadeline
