DaBubbleGoom

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he said “so they fixed it, right? how did they fix it in the game?” and i told him the truth: they didn’t. they couldn’t control it. they had to reset the servers and roll them back to the time before the ZG encounter.

a CNN article recently referenced another “viral” event in world of warcraft: leeroy jenkins facepulling as a metaphor for the expedited reopening of businesses. what it fails to mention however is how the video ends. everyone who charges in with leeroy dies. he wipes the raid.

Those with healing magic would go into infected areas to see if they could save the infected or at least keep them alive through the disease. Those that couldn’t do that tried to warn players before they entered infected areas. NPC could be infected and have “no symptoms”; they could be asymptomatic carriers and pass it to nearby players.

The best part though was by the time Blizzard had finally come out and said “if you are infected, try to quarantine yourself so you don’t spread it!!” the player base was ALREADY DOING SO. The players had recognized the problem and worked together in myriad ways to fix it.

They also had negative reactions as well, another reason this was such a good example of a real outbreak. They had a couple people report healers or alchemists who were claiming to sell cures/treatments to the disease that ultimately would do nothing. They had a group of players that would hide in the mountains near cities and just pass the disease back and forth between themselves and then raid cities to infect them all over again. They had higher level players start rebelling on the servers. Saying it was an overreaction and if you get it you’ll just die and you can come back and be fine, etc. Since they could get the disease and survive, ie it didn’t do enough damage to them since they were higher level, they felt it unnecessary to care about whether they got it or not. They complained about not getting to play like normal just because this plague could kill lower level players.

ALL of these reactions, good and bad, were real enough to what we assumed a real life epidemic would play out that people started to use it as a model. And now look, we have proof that it was accurate.

However, what we needed to learn from it was primarily that it wasn’t reversible. The bad reactions and lack of care from the few players that weren’t cooperating made it impossible in the end to contain. The only reason it was fixed at all is the game had to reverse time, literally just delete their entire game log a few weeks and time travel weeks into the past to before the plague even began.

Think about that.

The reason no one believed it was a valid model is that it was a video game and thus the consequences weren’t permanent. “No one would act like that in real life.” But look at how we are handling this outbreak. Is it not eerily similar?

Baby freaking monsters!

how dare they be this adorable!

Time for a trip to the magic pet store: Here is a preview of what will be

Clockwork Dragon’s Guide to Arcane Familiars

Familiars have always been an exciting prospect for me, but 5e’s handling of them is… well, lackluster at best. To that end, I took it upon myself to retool the familiar system and provide a suitable myriad of options for people seeking to keep and train a tiny magical companion.This supplement is still in progress, and likely needs quite a bit of play testing. The final release will have a total of 100 familiars, but quite honestly, I am burnt out on familiars, and want to work on another project for while, so for now please enjoy 13 new Feats, and the first 50 familiars in this extended preview.

 As a major notice on this bit of brew: the guide to familiars is still a work in progress, and I’m still in the process not only of adding new familiars, but also sourcing all of the artwork. I don’t do any of my own art, and I always try to credit that artwork back to the original creator. The final published release of this document will contain citations and sourcing for all artwork, but as ths is only meant to be a WIP preview so you all know what I have been working on, much of that is still missing, and will be updated as I work through it.

Preview images above are low resolution, and does not contain all 50 familiars. For the latest high-resolution PDF, as well as a whole host of other work I have done, check out this handy dropbox link. And be sure to tell me what you think!

Y'all rushing to that reblog button:

I said yes! 

No one:

Absolutely no one:

@timetopanik :

‘The 9th Vault contains the finest, most unique Tiefling treasures in the known world.  Any who are able to find the Vault and bargain with its keeper may enter and indulge in the company of its residents, but adventurer beware-  he who enters here may leave forever changed.’