thy dungeon gal (non US citizen mode)

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.

[thydungeongal]

New post, gonna use this to document my journey as a trans woman

[thydungeongal]

Going to the store

[persbaderse]

[thydungeongal]

I have posted before about how sometimes well-meaning attempts at running D&D without some of the more unfortunate dynamics can often backfire but in a way where most people don't even register it backfiring. Because when you take the step of "oh D&D's various 'evil humanoids' don't just exist in a vacuum and given the renfaire colonialism on display it's kind of impossible not to read them as somewhat racialized" many people will then go "okay but we still need some people who player characters should be allowed to kill guilt-free, so let's replace 'orcs' with 'bandits' because killing bad criminal people is perfectly ideologically neutral." At that point it's like "okay so your characters are no longer the racist kill squad, now they're just the Tough on Crime Vigilantes."

But I feel I should make clear that D&D the game itself is not exactly at fault here: like, okay, it is sort of at fault in the sense that it is a game of fantasy killing people with swords and magic. And it is easier for people to accept the killing with people with swords and magic part when they can imagine that their characters are at least to a degree justified. That is sort of just built into the game (and the game has built into its lore varying levels of making the fantasy of killing certain types of guy justifiable).

But D&D is not at fault for making people go "okay so it's bad when you kill orcs simply because they're orcs. It's better when you kill people who are bandits, who are a class of evil criminals where killing them is actually wholesome and sensible." Like, yeah, most people probably don't think about it that deeply, but the reason people don't think about it that deeply is ultimately ideological.

And the ideology is basically "it is bad to be racist but it's good to be a tough on crime vigilante."

[krongbly]

I don't disagree with this post but I do think there's an important element being left out here which is that 9 times out of 10 players are engaging in combat primarily as a form of self defense. Most of the time it's less of "we can kill these people because they're criminals and that makes it ideologically neutral" and more "these NPCs are trying to kill us and the most effective way to stop them right now is to reduce their hit points to 0 which, if they fail their death saves, means they will die."

I think "vigilantes tough on crime" is actually kind of a bad descriptor for how most parties operate. This definitely varies wildly from table to table but I think for the *average* table there's honestly a solid chance that either your players are friends with at least one criminal NPC or even that they themselves are criminals. There's even an entire class who's fantasy is "criminal."

[thydungeongal]

I don't think the self defense point actually holds true in a meaningful sense.

In older editions of D&D, which were much clearer on the expected gameplay being "go into the dungeon and steal the stuff," there wasn't really this layer there. The rules for combat were generally quite harsh on player characters so combat was certainly something they didn't want to get into too casually, but ultimately the player characters were just going into the dang monsters' house and stealing their stuff. The monsters were arguably the ones acting in self-defense (but they're evil so who cares).

But in the WotC editions the self-defense justification is still fraught because modern D&D especially is an action game. It's a game where characters mostly have access to various methods of visiting violence upon their environs and where the gameplay itself rewards them for violence, because combat is the main source of experience as written in all WotC editions of the game and characters primarily grow in combat effectiveness.

The self-defense angle I feel is not supported by the game's rules itself, but is more of a narrative contrivance introduced by groups to make their characters feel more heroic.

My friend @tenleaguesbeneath once described it as, and I am paraphrasing, "characters hunting things for sport but the things attack them first so they can claim self-defense." Characters want to get into fights (because that's where the rewards are), characters primarily grow in terms of being able to get into cooler fights, but because getting into fights on purpose isn't heroic there's an angle of "those goblins started it" to make the characters feel more heroic.

I don't think this is a bad thing per se. It is one way to make the power fantasy of D&D feel less like the characters are violent thugs and more like heroes. But like it is basically a group of mercenaries going into a warzone, they can't really say "well we didn't really expect to have to kill anyone on our mission, but sadly, circumstances conspired against us." Fighting is what the game wants them to do and I don't think anyone is wrong for wanting to portray the player characters as engaging in self-defense, but it's only self-defense through a very crooked lens imo.

[lumpout]

Linking this to the modern "revenge porn" action movies like John Wick and Nobody.

The self defense/revenge motivation is a fig leaf for indulging in gleeful violence. While modern DnD fictionally positions the party as the righteous castle-doctrine empowered heroes; we should at the very least be critical of why it is doing that. It's functionally identical to the fantasy of "what would I do if a bunch of terrorists/bank robbers burst into the room?" Just because there's an in-universe reason as to why you get have to murder all those people in flashy and fun ways does not mean that it isn't what you (the player) sat down at the table to do.

[mollymux]

Seems to be bunny in the trough Thursday

[phidelta]

Shimigami eyes should add a feature where you can label someone pink for girls who dont realize they're girls yet. It would make the extension worse and almost certainly cause more drama

[phidelta]

We are crowd sourcing her gender

[storyweavingspider]

“Hey, did you know you’re rated Egg on shinigami eyes?”

[fadedlovemp3]

[kropotkindersurprise]

[dragongirlbunny]

[doctorcurdlejr]

I can be normal about things. Don't look at my blog.

[mangonetics]

Why do people keep tagging my posts with "good post op"? I'm not post op. I don't think that's even the polite way to describe it anymore. And if I was most of you wouldn't ever know how good it is.

[cerastes]

People don’t even say w00t anymore.

[cerastes]

This sux00rz…

[autistobrat]

scientists are experimenting on cross-breeding a crab and a cheetah; things could go sideways real fast

[vixensdungeon]

You mentioned that Magicians aren't allowed to wear the pointy hats that full Wizards are. Are there other badges of office that go with level titles that you've heard?

Oh for sure! The local monastery uses different colour sashes to denote rank, though I’m not certain how global that is. For clerics it depends on the particular religion, the High Priests of Aetherion (though no one here is of that rank), which seems to be a major lawful good one, wear something akin to the papal crown. The druids are a bit too mysterious for me to find out much, and I’m certain thieves and assassins don’t want their signs public either. But in general it seems at least name level carries a social significance, and that comes with various signifiers.

[vixensdungeon]

The tragedy of Dimension 20 is that half the episodes are really good because it’s just a bunch of funny people playing pretend with the occasional dice roll.

The other half are the combat episodes which are mostly just bad D&D.

[vixensdungeon]

The tragedy of Dimension 20 is that half the episodes are really good because it’s just a bunch of funny people playing pretend with the occasional dice roll.

The other half are the combat episodes which are mostly just bad D&D.

[gurps-dungeon-mommy]

Sometimes I ponder about this - how to make an actual play show about a game that has a lot of combat and make that combat interesting? I think it's in the same vein of "how do you make a boardgame session interesting?" and there are a couple solid answers that I have seen deployed(in regards to boardgames at least): a) Make it unique, make it something that the viewer can't experience on their own (a challenge, a unique inaccesable game, a silly premise etc) - Valefisk stuff is pretty good in that regard b) Make it so that hosts are very skilled entertainers, or *are* entertaining - No Rolls Barred for example

[vixensdungeon]

I continue to point at the original three podcast seasons of Acquisitions Inc. as the peak of D&D actual play in terms of being people actually playing the game. It's entertaining because they're funny people, but also because combat just is exciting! It doesn't matter that they have to look up rules sometimes or just have to do a bit of math every now and then, the game mechanics carry the stakes of the fight, and sometimes someone ends up in a big pool of acid and it feels like a real tragedy.

[anim-ttrpgs]

A.N.I.M. Income Quota July 13th 2026

The Income Quota has been updated for July 13th. For the like 50 new people, what this means is that A.N.I.M. (that's us, the indie TTRPG studio that makes Eureka and also runs/supports the discord server for all kinds of RPGs) needs to make a minimum amount of income each month in order for our team members to pay our bills (and thus keep making TTRPGs and running this server and overall supporting TTRPGs as real art etc.). The count of how much money we've made is updated every Monday and Friday and if it doesn't hit at least $2,100 before August 1st at least a couple of us will be in financial trouble.,

July Total Income Quota: $772.01/$2,100

Patreon Pledge Drive: $1,360 per month out of $2,000 per month.

I personally have been hit with almost $1,100 of unexpected and unavoidable expenses recently including a $375 car repair bill and really, really need this income quota to be hit this month and subsequent months.

[anim-ttrpgs]

Annie Foxworthy, Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy PC posted with permission of her creator, Cassiopeia. Art by Beabea.

"Annie Foxworth! Daughter of a lawyer and absent mother named Sylvia Foxworth, herself a former PC. She takes after her mom in a lot of ways, but most crucially in a desire to be a lawyer, hence why she's an investigator at all. She likes to gather the evidence herself, and also she's 16 and has been isolating due to COVID and needs an excuse to get out of the house and prove that she's Intelligent. She's very green.

Also her mom's a fairy, but that's fine."

[targetedknowledge]

[vixensdungeon]

Is there a keep on the borderlands nearby? Those fuckers are everywhere

There is! Fort Griffon is part of a line of keeps that safeguards the realm from the Dreadlands. When the wilderness encounter roll indicates a patrol, that’s them.