random thought but the first Dishonored in particular has such an incredible soundcape the hum the drone the barks the alert cues the sparse music it all just sucks you right back in

200 Word RPGs 2024

Each November, some people try to write a novel. Others would prefer to do as little writing as possible. For those who wish to challenge their ability to not write, we offer this alternative: producing a complete, playable roleplaying game in two hundred words or fewer.

This is the submission thread for the 2024 event, running from November 1st, 2024 through November 30th, 2024. Submission guidelines can be found in this blog's pinned post, here.

I've long been a proponent of big stupid dice tables, but I think this might actually be the first short-form RPG I've ever seen where the entire game is one big table.

The Inviting Hot Springs

"Too bad the evil mannequins robbed us of the big gay scene" - Mangadex commenter, on Otherside Picnic

I am going to start off with a wild claim here. File 14 (The Inviting Hot Springs) feature a drunken romantic moment between Sorawo and Toriko in the onsen which is interrupted by the Otherside at the worst possible moment. They get chased by mannequins. Here's the wild claim: that mannequin chase *is* the big gay scene. It says more about Sorawo and the specialness of her relationship with Toriko than anything they said while giddily flirting in the onsen. This might simply be the stirrings of yuri lit brain, but let me explain (and hopefully acquit) myself here.

We... need worldbuilding by Seth Dickinson

The GM must provide completely different voices for every npc. To do this, they must find a new person to voice every single NPC.

Oh, you want to talk to the shopkeeper? Call your local grocery store and ask the customer service agent.

The players are asking questions of a random farmer? Call your aunt who lives out in the country.

Talking to a courtier? Call your city councilor.

Never explain anything to the people you call.

Now that's a probably bad rpg idea

when I was a kid I thought the weather guy on TV controlled the weather and he was just telling us what he was gonna do for the next few days. when he said "30% chance of rain Thursday" I thought he was just guessing how likely it was he'd wake up in a rain mood that morning

I feel like I need to explain. there was a whole internal logic here. there was fucking worldbuilding. I knew there were different weather people on the news in different places and I thought each one was the weather decider for their local area. I knew the word "meteorologist" and thought it was a scientist who had expertise in weather control technology. I never questioned why there was bad weather sometimes because "bad weather" was subjective, after all, I liked cloudy days and snow. and the plants need rain, right? so I figured the weather guy probably had regular meetings with local farmers and gardeners to make sure the amount of precipitation and sunlight we were getting was working out for the crops. I never spoke about this to anyone, because I thought everyone knew. at some point my parents had said "this guy on TV tells us what kind of weather we're going to have" and I misunderstood exactly one fundamental point and built out an enormous set of logical conclusions from there. this lasted from like age 3 to age 6 btw

each house gets one rendering style the economy is dire

edit: updated to add names

Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would delete hinge and start hanging out on the docks.

Whether Lou is playing a man in his 50s from NY or a 21 year old he will make community feel so warm, welcoming and wholesome. Really makes you want to live in a world where a Lou Wilson character looks at you and claims you as part of his community.

It's really crazy because even playing a very lonely rich kid he's still throwing the motif of community around. From Fabian secretly buying gifts to his friends in freshman year to making his house into a comfortable student hang out spot in junior year only to not feel alone anymore, Lou's characters are always tied to community to a degree, what changes are the motivations behind those ties

Gunnie isn't as much of a community builder as the others, but his biggest motivator is being part of a crew. The ball starts rolling up as soon as the Wurst hangs out as friends (watching a movie about Family), adopting Skip as his 3rd dad, and it's finding his place and his crew that makes him comfortable returning to his dads because unlike in academics, on the Wurst he feels he's part of a community.

Can't wait for this week's episode

Bonus Guest Star:

It is more or less true to canon if the show goes with Taimandred? 🤔

Don't know about canon, but I think going with Taimandred is the smartest move the show could pull, because 1) it makes having Demandred in the show worth introducing him (since, per the books, he'll just be cryptic and do nothing until the back half of season 8);

and 2) they can borrow plenty of foreshadowing from the books, and yet still surprise book fans with the twist because they won't expect it.

da2 isn't the best dragon age game *because* it's openly a tragedy, but being a tragedy forces a level of narrative coherence that the other games in the series don't have, and *that's* what makes it a better game.

okay, so. dragon age 2 runs on nested foreshadowing and a limited set of themes that almost every character and plot beat fall into: love is not enough, wealth is not enough, power is not enough, good intent is not enough. the problems you run into are structural, rather than individual, and your ability to resolve them as one person is strictly limited. the arishok is a central figure for this, because he prefigures every other tragedy and makes the game's thesis statement as clear as possible. he doesn't want to be in kirkwall, but he is compelled to remain until he gets back what was stolen. he doesn't want to lead a coup attempt, but he is compelled by qunari codes of justice to act. he does not want to die and fail his duty, but but he is compelled to by the other two impossible demands. every tragedy in kirkwall is the result of too many people with wildly different definitions of justice crammed into one place specifically designed to maximize human misery and suffering, and so you get a wonderfully nested narrative onion where each quest reinforces that idea, where there are no good options, just positions you can take — even the affinity system plays into that, where constantly gassing up your friends or constantly pushing them to change are equally correct ways to go, but ones that won't ultimately make a huge difference in their lives or characters, because no matter how much they like you, they're not under your control.

this coherence is even justified by the framing device. of *course* the moral of the game is "insisting on a dogmatic, narrow idea of justice destroys individuals and societies," it's a yarn being spun by varric the con artist to a chantry cop!

neither origins or inquisition play with that sort of narrative complexity. origins is a jaundiced hero's quest, certainly, but it's still basically a hero's quest; inquisition has a number of characters who question what you're doing and why, but the multitude of voices pulls the game in too many potential directions. DA2 was so constrained in its production that it pulled on decidedly ancient theatrical traditions, and it worked so, so well

Robot feeling left out by the fact that they don't get anything physically out of fucking their human partner deciding to tackle the problem with good old fashioned engineering. Pretending it's this big imposition, all performatively grumbling about how "interfacing with outdated hardware" is a pain in the ass. (Their partner: "I certainly hope so!") Writing custom device drivers for their new human interface peripheral, then posting carefully phrased Stack Overflow threads when they can't figure out why it keeps trying to connect to the wireless printer. Doing the final hookups and accidentally soldering it to their hand.

Makes a reddit post asking "how to unsolder a hand from a cylinder."

seen so many posts that are like “I was so confused when I saw all this posting about some non-existent movie “Goncharov” like it was real” I wasn’t. this happens 5 times a week. my dash is routinely filled to the brim with passionate analysis of absurd-sounding movies and tv shows I have never heard of. I never for a second doubted the existence of a russian mafia movie set in italy with massive numbers of bizarrely named characters and no cohesive understanding of the movie’s themes or plot until I saw a post saying to tag it as unreality. this is tumblr. this happens daily. not one thought crossed my mind except “ha, looks like a few of my mutuals have a new hyperfixation.” this is what tumblr has done to me. you could tell me there’s a new tv show about dolphins with french accents living as royalty in victorian england while secretly starting a cult to renew the worship of the greek gods and the shipping discourse is intense and I would simply think “sounds legit” and keep scrolling

This idiot hasn’t seen The Dolphin Court

I mean, the French prince's title was "le Dauphin." I get where you're going with this but there very much was a Dolphin Court.