who needs therapy when you have d&d

Two years ago, we streamed the final episode of The Second Stranger. It was closure on 3+ years of work, artistry, growth, and storytelling. A small thread. 🧵

The Second Stranger was Connie’s first crack at an AP and already incredibly ambitious. We didn’t know anything about streaming (our overlays and mics were GOD AWFUL) but we walked into the ecosystem with Arc 1, Episode 1 and a dream.

We knew there needed to be a story like ours, and we were ready.

From there, we embarked on a 3 year long Journey™️. We built a fan community, we made connections with other creators, we got our first sponsorships, and we hosted 60+ trans performers of color in our non-colonial, anti-orientalist world.

We also got a lot of transphobic and racist hate comments and harassment… but we kept going.

Our story grew — in size and quality. We ended The Second Stranger with eight players, to mirror the eight deities of Andake.

We found hope. We found the power of queer, trans love. We cried about soup. We brought the stars home. We mourned our losses and celebrated the future that we created.

That’s what the end of The Second Stranger means to us — hope. Hope in love, in grief, in a poem, and in the beautiful and inevitable End Of All Things™️.

If you’re trans, especially a trans person of color, your stories are needed. Your voice is needed in this space and every other.

We belong.

To the incredible players of The Second Stranger — Austin Taylor, Sea Thomas, quinn b. rodriguez, Max Guo, Dare Hickman, Valiant Dorian, Erica Fladeland, and Hannah Shahid — thank you for sharing your hearts with Andake.

We hope you’ll join us for a rerun of 8, Episode 8 — the FINALE of The Second Stranger — TONIGHT (3/1) at 8pm ET on Twitch. There’s no better way to celebrate than to spend ~3 hours sobbing in chat together.

I knew from the beginning that I wanted The Second Stranger to be DIFFERENT, unflinching—a manifesto of trans and anti-Orientalist worldbuilding. What I didn’t anticipate was finding lifelong friends and community.

I’ve since sunset dndaddyissues for a variety of reasons, primarily because I’m not so invested in making DnD-specific content anymore (& being a full time Actual Play artist takes up almost all of my time!).

However, reflecting on the finale of is making me want to revive this blog as a broader TTRPG meme presence, yes, but also as a place to put my thoughts about noncolonial worldbulding, liberational storytelling, and anti-orientalist TTRPG design.

Stay tuned for more, I suppose! & Please do follow Transplanar in the meantime—it’s where I spend more of my time, and is the best way to help a group of all-trans, majority-POC artists get fed.

Campaign II: THE CHAOS PROTOCOL premieres on Saturday, June 24th at 8pm ET.

The Chaos Protocol is an all transgender, POC-led dark fantasy actual play series set in a non-colonial, anti-orientalist multiverse. Our series will follow three Transplanar Reification and Nourishment Syndicate (TRANS) agents on their missions through a newly rewritten reality. Each Arc will be set in a different realm and utilize a completely different TTRPG game system.

We are exactly ONE MONTH away from our premiere. Cast announcements, system reveals, character art, and trailers coming in June.

Welcome home, Transplanerds.

Since the "outlaws & obelisks" tag is pretty barren, i thought I'd do an informational post for anyone who gets curious.

The setting is Utaram, a vast desert landscape that takes inspiration from both the US Southwest and Northern Africa, some decades after a magical apocalypse destroyed the powerful civilizations that had once sprawled across the desert, leaving sparsely-populated towns where people have to band together for survival. Reminders of that cataclysm are all around in the beings, both humanoid and beasts, who have been fused with other forms of life, like Onuris Budge, whose right arm is sometimes an elephant trunk and sometimes other things, and his animal companion (with a higher intelligence stat than him) Nebet, a leopard-flamingo. Wanderers like Chang Hushi, from the ancient Dulungai-Barun civilization far to the west, and Tovo Reeves, a bounty hunter with a mechanical exoskeleton, are not uncommon. With uncontrolled magic still heavy in the atmosphere, unreliable passages of time, and violent gangs seeking to gain influence in a chaotic landscape, threats abound. Budge, Hushi, and Tovo are thrown together in an unlikely quest for answers and a missing hat; as encounter breeds encounter, their goals, and the threats to Utaram, only seem to multiply like the time-displaced chickens in Hushi's bag.

It's quite brilliant, and unlike anything else currently being played that I know of. It's a POC-led, casually queer campaign with real stakes, wildly imaginative worldbuilding, and a series of fascinating unfolding mysteries as to the history of Utaram and the histories of the PCs themselves.

The DM is Jeremy Cobb (he/him), who has homebrewed the setting and cosmology from scratch, with a lot of research into ancient and medieval cultures of North Africa. Jeremy is one of the three hosts of Three Black Halflings, the podcast feed where Outlaws & Obelisks can be found. He also DMed their earlier campaign The Cub & the Caterpillar, using the Afrocentric Wagadu setting.

Hushi (they/them) is played by Connie Chang (they/he/she) of TransplanarRPG.

Budge (he/him) is played by Jonny Charles (he/him) of the_lonely_orchestra, who also provides the show's soundtrack.

Tovo (he/him) is played by Jasper William Cartwright (he/him), another of the hosts of Three Black Halflings.

Below the cut, there's some more spoilery information, including content warnings that people should know going in.

blessed be the empty, for they have no soul to shroud