Apparently deleting a bunch of "drafts" in the backend also ended up deleting their associated posts. I don't know that I care enough about most of the posts (save for Kothrilmol (I), which I'll try to slot back into its original historical position) to try to figure out which ones are missing, especially since it looks like those files got immediately obliterated rather than being put in any sort of "trash" area, but if it turns out later that one of my links has died, give me a shout and I'll try to fix it.
Final Post Dump
And with that, my final post dump is complete. My plans for an expanded discussion of player solipsism have been diverted some by Gwyn (partially at my request) writing up her own description of player solipsism, which I'm looking forward to responding to whenever I have spoons again. As for the call for critique, well, I'll worry about that when I feel like I'm writing with any amount of consistency and intent again. I miss the prompt ecosystem of Cohost... Oh well. In no particular order, the things I wanna write up for this site next are:
- Angel breaking smut
- A "state of work" post for all 4 of my "active" TTRPG projects
- A call for playtesters for Sealed Pacts and Terra Philia (links in the interim for those especially interested)
- An updated Index & Expectations page for my important (if not necessarily high-frequency) tags
If you wanna chat, obviously there are the forums here, or you can email me. Looking forward to making more current use of this website now that I'm out from under the weight of my Cohost backlog!
Okay, it's time for my end-of-life "On Cohost" chost
This was originally posted on Cohost September 23rd, 2024, 8 days before Cohost was put into deep freeze.
I've had thoughts mulling for a while, but I made a joke earlier tonight that slotted enough into place that I think I can say them effectively. In short:
To live resiliently, to fight back against capitalism and outlive the climate apocalypse, we have to consciously and deliberately lower our standards.
It may be easier for some folks to phrase it as "we have to rearrange our priorities," but for myself at least it's more productive to phrase it as lowering standards. Just thinking about social media-like desires, we have to lower our standards from "anyone can find us" to "some people can find us." We have to lower our standards from "we will have a persistent community" to "we will have a community." We have to lower our standards from "we can easily find & share our interests" to "we can find & share our interests with effort." We have to lower our standards.
Psychodrama Campaigns
This was originally posted on Cohost September 8th, 2024.
So, y'know the whole "Majora's Mask is actually secretly about the five stages of grief" thing that gets bandied about, reeking of mid-2000s Dark And Edgy Storytelling?
What if you wanted to do that for an actual TTRPG campaign?
My solution sketch is under the cut, but I'd love to see folks rebug w/ their own ideas.
Human Needing Rescue
This was originally posted on Cohost August 13th, 2024 in response to the @ImpressionsOfDetail prompt "In the dragon's cave, you are appalled to discover a vast thing of cloth, cartwheel-sized buttons for eyes, flailed around by the gigantic hand inside it; arm stretching away into huge, unknown tunnels."
"What, you never see a human before?" The voice was... oddly high and thin for something so large. It gesticulated wildly to punctuate its words, knocking over a pile of loose coins with an errant mattress-like limb.
"Er, no, no, I mean..." Grinwald looked herself up and down, then to her party. To claim the gargantuan hand puppet was of her species was a... bold assertion, to say the least. "I was... merely surprised to see another human in a dragon's lair. We had quite the time dealing with the beast."
"Of course, why do you think I posted the commission with the adventurer's guild?"
The others stirred at the revelation, though Grinwald remained warily still. "If it pleases you, we'd be happy to escort you back to town," she offered.
"By all means, lead the way!" The "human" settled into a pose vaguely staring over the heads of the party, though it bobbed slowly as though it were breathing. Grinwald turned, gesturing to Lorrigan.
"Scout the way for our guest, would you?" she directed to the sneaky dwarf. They nodded, then disappeared into the labyrinth of tunnels towards the exit. She could only hope that she wasn't sending them to an early grave at the hands of an eldritch monster; that their waymagics would see them safely to the entrance while her charge was none the wiser. To the others, she simply gestured for them to begin a slow ascent from the cave depths.
She only afforded a glance back to see that, with the susurrus of skin on stone, the arm slithered out, and out, and out...
Workplace Challenges
This was originally posted on Cohost July 5th, 2024.
Blame @caffeinatedOtter
Mary fidgeted with her skirt, alternating between creating obfuscating folds and smoothing them away. Logically she knew that nobody was looking—and if they were, they shouldn't be—but that didn't stop her brain from buzzing around the problem. Does this look natural? Am I hiding it with how I'm sitting? I can't help but see it, but maybe other people don't realize...? Having so many thoughts running in the background made it hard to focus on her work, an already-difficult proposition given the current lull in workloads.
It also didn't help that, at present, she was in a meeting with her boss.
Eldritch Cringe
This was originally posted on Cohost July 1st, 2024 in response to the @Making-up-Monsters prompt, "You call this torture? You poor deluded creature, this monster has lived in hells of its own making that were much worse than this.
"I forgot to put the milk away before my hundred-year rest and woke up to my home being quarantined as an eldritch biohazard zone! This is nothing compared to the cringe of that memory!"
Floating
This was originally posted on Cohost June 30th, 2024 in response to a two-post chain between @ImpressionsOfDetail and @MiserablePileOfWords, recreated below.
It bubbled out of the earth like something buoyant bobbing to the water's surface.
As it turns out
Witches don't only float on water
Shamelessly stealing characters from @caffeinatedOtter's "Stone Eyes" series
Martingale pinches the bridge of her nose. "Let me see if I have this right. First, they tried drowning you, yes?"
Dandelion nods. "And witches float, ergo I was fine."
"Right. So they put you in concrete shoes before they tossed you in again."
"And the cement hardening turned it into something solid, so I floated out of that too."
"... Right. So put the two together, try to drown you while they were pouring the foundation of their latest building."
"And the issue was never the amount of concrete, so I float and get out just fine."
The mob boss sighs, considering the damp and gray-splotched witch she retains at increasing personal risk. "And why did you not just kill them sooner?"
Dandelion's grin shows too many teeth, not enough pinch to the eyes. "What else was I supposed to do with a free weekend?"
Toribash and Grappling
This was originally posted on Cohost June 26th, 2024.
This is kind of a tangent from my post about grappling in IRL vs TTRPG fighting but talking about how grappling works in fighting games reminded me of the one game where I think I've seen grappling most accurately represented: Toribash
Thinking About: Grappling
This was originally posted on Cohost June 18th, 2024; I've adapted the post to this website.
Y'know, I find it kinda funny that grappling sees so little TTRPG use when like, that's actually the natural state of most fights. Lotta old swordfighting manuals had sections about how to do more than slash/stab/block, experiments with grappling in the SCA have resulted in "make one pass with the sword, then toss it aside to grapple because it's not helping you in close range," MMA fights inevitably go to the ground. This holds even outside human v human combat – think about cats fighting or snakes hunting. If your goal is to inflict violence, you're gonna be grappling, y'know?
Honestly this should probably be like, the default mixed-success consequence for a PbtA-style fight move: you over-commit and get stuck grappling with your target, rather than being free to go solve other problems.