I have started this blog mainly because my amazing Girlfriend @postie6 suggested to use it as a space to be able to post my D&D and Warhammer homebrew lore posts and OCs as well as my miniature painting, book reviews and odd bits here and there.
I have been DMing D&D sessions for over 6 years now and have been collecting Warhammer for over 15 Years!
I'm pretty offline so I'm new to whole posting stuff but if I you need me to tag anything please let me know and I'll get that done.
As is the nature with the Warhammer setting and life I will probably be discussing things that are unsuitable for minors so I would prefer if you don't follow me if you are under 18 years old.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Meet the Kabal of the Ivory Talon: Haemonculus Xandaron and the Mockeries of Perfection.
Haemonculus Xandaron takes his tutelage under the Master Haemonculus of the Ivory Talon, Akhaunet (who I haven't posted yet but will when I've finished her lore). Akhaunet sees Xandaron as a conniving and disrespectful apprentice and would punish him repeatedly with total body degloving at any perceived slight or disobedience. This inflicted trauma has reflected on Xandarons own craft, stripping the skin from the imperfect and rejected clones Akhaunet discards to him. His skinless hordes march at his beck and call to fulfill menial combat operations at his begrudging masters whims.
Thank you to the wonderful @postie6 for getting me this Combat Patrol for my birthday!
Meet the Kabal of the Ivory Talon: Archon Azeshi Ashruebris' Personal Ravager. For this one I really wanted to emulate the look of a Wraithbone Ravager that had just been through the works, like it hadn't been cleaned of the dried blood and filth it had accumulated since it was made. With Azeshi's whole avian aesthetic and her love for her skyborn Scourge warriors, I wanted her Ravager to feel like a pack of raptors had nested aboard it and thrashed it with their preys innards. She nasty...
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Meet the Kabal of the Ivory Talon: The Flensed Hand's Raider. The free-handing on this one was certainly better than what I was able to do on the Mirrored Masks Raider and I found it quite fun inverting the colour of the thorns on the sail but I still defiantly need more practice with it.
Meet the Kabal of the Ivory Talon: The Mirrored Mask's Raider. I tried to free-hand the Ivory Talons icon on the banner and the side of the raider (heavily inspired by the Red Talon chapter symbol) but my free-handing skills are nooooot good...
Meet the Kabal of the Ivory Talon: The Mirrored Mask's Venom. I wanted to switch up the hangers-on to be Kabalites instead of Wyches to fit with the lore that this was the personal venom of my Mirrored Mask Kabalites so I gave them all helmets but now I think they kinda look a little goofy. I also gave the pilot the only head option I have available that has a full fringe that obscures their vision lol
have a gm who insists that story comes first. this had led to 1 dozen sessions without combat, followed by an announcement that we would be performing a 30 round combat against "infinite" level 1 guards. we were level 6 at the time. there was no way to stop "the story." i quit the campaign, immersion broken forever
The only thing worse than a player who thinks the story comes before the rules is a GM who thinks the story comes before the rules. This is not only obviously really severe railroading, but that scenario is also treating the game like a video game more than a TTRPG.
I actually think there is a lot that TTRPGs can learn from video games (like “your game should ship with playable levels”) but a scenario like that doesn’t really play to the strengths of TTRPGs as a medium.
“Survive for a set amount of time against infinite enemies” is really fun for an action video game, but will usually very quickly get repetitive in turn-based combat, especially if that combat is relatively slow to play out like in most TTRPGs.
While I don’t think a concept like this can never work (like for instance it could be a puzzle of some kind - infinite goons until the party figures out how to close the portal or whatever), I think that turn-based tactical combat in TTRPGs should almost always aim towards relatively low numbers of rounds, with majorly impactful tactical decisions to make each round. In one of the best dungeon crawls I have ever played through (it was in AD&D2e using an AD&D1e module, which in my opinion is the best way to play D&D), the most tense and nail-biting instance of combat in the entire thing lasted about 2.5 rounds. Every other instance of combat lasted 1 round, because the party either snuck up on the enemies, tactically surrounded their enemies and forced a surrender, or at one point just paid the dark lord’s mercenaries to jump sides after a tense stand-off.
Absolutely none of this was planned as part of “the story.” The only planned part of the story was “the party (mercenaries currently in the employ of the Castellan Sir Raul) are being sent to [this village] to figure out why they suddenly stopped paying taxes.” Of course the answer to that question was also already known to the GM. It’s because the dark lord’s mercenaries had been sacking the wagons carrying the taxes, and the dark lord’s lieutenant had set up a secret forward operating base in an abandoned castle in preparation for a larger invasion. How the party finds this out, however, and if they even survive doing so, is up to their own actions.
The GM didn’t adjust anything on the fly to make sure the party won, no fake dice rolls, etc.. Just playing the game straight; and it resulted in a “story” that we still talk about all the time.
A lot happened that we didn’t want to happen, too, but in the moment that’s the adversity and challenge that makes the game engaging to play, and in retrospect it makes the resulting story much better. One of the characters got taken out pretty early on in a fight with the dark lord’s spies (the ACTUAL scariest fight in the adventure, but it happened nowhere near the dungeon), and another character got badly injured by a trap (technically a monster but basically a trap since it drops from the ceiling and only attacks one person) really early into exploring the abandoned castle (the dungeon). Both characters ultimately survived. The first character was dropped to 0 HP with a dagger buried hilt deep in her gut and “died” mechanically but was able to be taken to a surgeon which in this campaign is just reskinned resurrection mechanics but with a much higher chance to fail. She spent the rest of the adventure on a cot being tended to around the clock and made a near miraculous recovery, though with -1 total Constitution. The second character was very very narrowly saved from going below 1HP by quick thinking and action on the part of everyone else in the room. If they had been just 1 round later she would’ve died.
Anyway if you are going to play D&D any edition please just play normal dungeon crawls without a plot (beyond just some kind of framing device to give the PCs a good reason to go into the dungeon), it’s what the game is built to do and itll even produce a good story a lot of the time. If you don’t like dungeon crawls please play something besides Dungeons & Dragons - and im not saying that to “gatekeep” people out of D&D I am saying that because if you don’t like dungeons then there are so many other games out there that you would probably enjoy so much more than D&D.
There’s a term that has gotten thrown around since long before I even entered the space of TTRPGs, “rules lawyer,” and in the time I’ve been in TTRPGs I’ve seen it take a massive shift in how people use it and what they intend it to mean. I think that’s been a very bad shift, not because language or definitions can never be allowed to shift, but because the shift itself is downstream of a much larger issue of TTRPGs not being treated as art, Hasbro’s dishonest marketing, and game design not being treated as real.
I'm gonna go over the new definition i keep seeing, then explain the original definition, compare them, and explain why the new definition is bad.
How I Keep Seeing “Rules Lawyer” Used Now
“Rules lawyer” was always a pejorative term with very negative connotations, but super often in the past few years I’m seeing the term “rules lawyer” used pejoratively towards people for no other reason than they know the rules of a given TTRPG, want to play by those rules, and want to use the rules to their/their PC’s advantage. Here’s a few examples of where I have seen someone be called a “rules lawyer.”
Example 1
Like, saying in any context that you should try and understand and play by the rules of a game before you start modifying, overriding/ignoring, etc. the rules so that you actually understand what you’re modifying.
Example 2
Saying that people should find games whose rules natively support a certain type of campaign they want to play, and play by those rules, instead of changing all of D&D5e’s rules to sort of look like that concept.
Example 3
Saying that it’s good to read and be familiar with a TTRPG’s rulebook at all.
Example 4
A player reads the rules of [TTRPG with a heavy focus on combat] and figures out that by combining certain equipment and abilities, their PC can be very good at a certain aspect of combat. I.e. battle axes get bonus damage when used by characters with high Strength, so if they pick character options that maximize Strength, and pick a battle axe, their character can be very powerful with that battle axe.
Example 5
A GM says “If you want your PC to kick the gun out of [NPC]’s hand, they have to succeed on a Disarm Action because that’s what the rulebook says is the mechanic for when one character tries to knock a weapon out of another character’s hand. They can’t do it automatically just because it would be cool.”
Example 6
A character attacks another character in a game where this requires a roll, and the roll at first appears to be a success at the bare minimum number required to roll, and everyone starts going with that as the outcome. Then, the “rules lawyer” speaks up and says “Wait, since [character] was behind cover, according to the rulebook there should be a -1 penalty to the attack, so that would actually be a failure.”
What “Rules Lawyer” Means Originally
“Rules lawyering” or “being a rules lawyer” by the original meaning actually doesn’t even always have as much to do with knowing the rules as it does relying on other people not knowing the rules, to get away with cheating. “Rules lawyering” by the original definition describes a specific form of cheating.
It involves making spurious arguments you know are wrong or otherwise against the intent/spirit of the rulebook to gain an unfair advantage, and applying those spurious interpretations of the rules selectively rather than consistently. I.e. conveniently ignoring the rules interpretation you made just minutes ago now that it no-longer favors your character to interpret it that way.
I’m going to take the examples above and rewrite them to actually be examples of “rules lawyering” by the original definition. I'm going to skip examples 1 and 2 because there is no way to possibly twist them into fitting this definition.
Example 3
Saying “If you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying hard enough.”
Example 4
A player reads the rules of a TTRPG with a heavy focus on combat and figures out that the rulebook says “A character can attack once per turn with each weapon held in their hand.” but it never specifies exactly how many weapons a character can fit in one hand. The player gives their character 20 swords and argues that because the rulebook doesn’t place a limit on the number of swords per hand, his character can make 20 attacks per turn by carrying 20 swords. (Extreme example for demonstration purposes, an actual rules lawyer would probably more realistically only try this with like 3 swords.)
Example 5
A GM enforces the rules arbitrarily and inconsistently, either relying on the culture of GM fiat and “rule 0” to get away with it or just getting by on nobody else at the table being familiar enough with the rules to argue, leading to the rules not actually mattering, since they only get brought up in defense or support of something the GM has already decided is going to happen no matter what. (Usually this will also be combined with the GM lying about their dice rolls or lying about the stats of NPCs/changing them arbitrarily in their head but that’s not really “rules lawyering” that’s just more conventional cheating.)
Example 6
When the rules lawyer’s PC is attacked, he says “The rulebook says ‘Cover’ is ‘any object a character could hide behind from an attack’ and [PC] was hiding behind the curtains when the bad guys saw him and started shooting, so the curtains should count as Cover and they should get -1 penalties to their attacks. Also, the rulebook says ‘Characters who are moving when they attack get a -1 penalty to the attack,’ and the bad guys had to move to draw their guns and pull the triggers, so they’re moving and should get another -1 penalty.’ Notably, earlier in the session when a character was getting shot at while hiding behind a small chair, the rules lawyer stayed silent and didn’t bring up the Cover section of the rulebook at all. Next turn after the bad guys miss their shots the rules lawyer has his character shoot back. (Even though his character would have also needed to “move” to draw a gun and shoot and so accounting to him would have a -1 penalty, he stays quiet and hopes nobody is paying enough attention to realize this.) When the GM says “Goon #2 is hiding behind the bed so he is in Cover and the attack has a -1 penalty,” the rules lawyer says “Oh come on, bullets can go straight through a feather mattress, there’s no way that counts as Cover.”
What is This Shift Downstream of and Why Should You Stop Using the First Definition?
Besides the regular Dunning-Kruger Effect of people having a couple of D&D5e rules explained to them and then thinking they know everything there is to know about TTRPGs as an artform, this is, like most things in the hobby right now, ultimately traceable to Hasbro’s dishonest marketing of D&D5e and its resulting toxic play culture.
This post
💬 39 🔁 777 ❤️ 880 · I don’t know what’s more detrimental to the health of TTRPGs as a medium, D&D5e players who think that TTRPGs are “col
sorta gets into it with a lot more detail, but the short version is D&D5e wasn’t really created with a lot of thought put into how it would actually play by its rules, but that doesn’t matter to the shareholders as long as it makes money. To make more money, Hasbro/WotC has to maximize the number of people playing D&D5e. To do this, they market D&D5e as “the game that can be whatever you want it to be” and encourage a culture of play where if you don’t like the rules you can just change or ignore them (instead of playing a different game that already has rules that you would like following).[1]
[1. Sidebar] I promise that learning a different game’s rules is not as hard, time consuming, or expensive as you might think. D&D5e’s rules are at the upper end of all of these metrics. Even rulebooks which have twice as many pages are often easier to learn than D&D5e’s rules.
By treating any of the first set of examples as a faux-pas and subject of derision or mockery you are playing straight into the hands of a monopoly that has a deadly stranglehold on the TTRPG industry. Ironically by treating the rules text of D&D and by extension other TTRPGs as essentially meaningless, you’re actually more of a corporate bootlicker than you would be otherwise.
How Does this Affect People Who Enjoy Playing by the Rules? Can’t They Just Mind Their Own Business?
I am extremely aware of the fact that many people who play D&D(or some other popular TTRPGs but mostly D&D) don’t really care about the game part of D&D, but rather treat it as a sort of “social lubricant,” an excuse to hang out with friends more so than a specific activity. They would be just as happy (perhaps even more happy) if D&D was swapped out for any activity on earth, like bowling, sitting around a campfire talking about anything, watching a movie, etc.. To these people, being told to pay attention and understand the game they’re playing is an offense. After all, “it’s just a stupid game, who cares, aren’t we here to have fun?”
Yes, we are here to have fun, but have you considered that the fun of the people asking you to pay attention is being disrupted just as much? Would you have the same reaction to somebody leaning over and telling you not to talk or use your phone in a movie theater? Come on. Or even in a home viewing experience, your friend asks you to come over and watch this movie he really likes, and you’re just blowing it off as some stupid movie, not caring if you talk over all the cool scenes he wanted you to see. In simplest terms, that’s rude.
The shift of the pejorative “rules lawyer” from “cheater who makes spurious arguments about the rules to gain an unfair advantage” to “player who wants to play the game by a written-out and consistent set of rules” is making the guy who actually wants to do the activity everyone nominally said they would do into the bad guy. Imagine if it was the activity or piece of art that you were passionate about.
Convincing people that it’s not “just some stupid movie” becomes much harder for that person when it was already hard as hell because of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Many people don’t realize that it can be anything more than “some stupid movie” because they never paid attention to a movie before. They are skeptical that paying attention might result in them having more enjoyment than just talking, and now getting them to pay attention is that much harder because the act of going “shh, don’t talk over the movie.” is the subject of mockery.
I am also extremely aware of the large percentage of TTRPG players who are passionate about D&D and other TTRPGs, but are passionate about the version that Hasbro marketing presents(this is completely synonymous with the “folkloric version of the game” that exists in oral tradition and “not letting the rules get in the way of the story”), not the version that actually exists in the rulebooks. This post has already gone on long enough and beyond this point I would just be repeating things I have already written other essays about so I’m going to just link a few posts. The TL;DR of these posts is that buying into this marketing of the rules not mattering supports Hasbro and disadvantages anyone else who wants to make it in the industry or even just cares about exploring and evolving the medium as it exists. As Hasbro’s marketing goes, if the rules don’t matter because you don’t let them get in the way of “the story,” then there really is no reason to move away from D&D5e.
💬 85 🔁 5158 ❤️ 7202 · I've had a couple of people ask for a digestible version of the whole "the real problem with Dungeons & Dragons is f
💬 39 🔁 777 ❤️ 880 · I don’t know what’s more detrimental to the health of TTRPGs as a medium, D&D5e players who think that TTRPGs are “col
💬 39 🔁 777 ❤️ 880 · First of all thanks for the good faith response.
The thing is you’re pretty much right, but I think it would be more
If you object to anything being said in the last paragraph, read these posts before arguing.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
My primary emotional interest in RPGs is character and story.
I absolutely have no interest in RPGs that function as "guided improv-theater". If that's what we're doing, I don't want to play.
I think people think that's a contradiction. It is not. But it does require a couple things.
1) Reframing the relationship of characters to story that mostly involves dumping things that have mostly been fed to us by marketing, consumer culture and the increasing commercialization of fiction.
2) Being vulnerable and open to the idea that whatever happens to the characters and the story that unfolds from play might not be something you wanted or even enjoy. (Hopefully not but it might happen). The game does not exist to service your desires and no one is responsible for entertaining you.
One thing that makes me kinda sad is seeing people who feel like TTRPGs just aren't for them because they bounced off of some element that is clearly just a symptom of them trying out D&D5e. Like people who have had a hard time with learning the rules would probably do well with any system where the rule formatting and play culture around learning them aren't a mess. One friend of mine didn't like waiting a long time for turns to come up in combat, not even knowing that many games don't even use a turn-based structure.
A lot of D&D5e defenders on here like to claim that asking someone to learn a new system is "gatekeeping" somehow, but I'd argue that acting like one game is emblematic of the entire medium to the exclusion of people who don't click with that one game is way more meaningfully a form of gatekeeping, even if it's fully unintentional.
I strongly believe that not all RPGs are gonna appeal to everyone, but there is an RPG out there for everyone, and I just hope that people who haven't clicked with the most common option to be introduced to can find something that works for them.
I’m not going to reblog the source because I don’t want to bring negative attention to someone but I just read that “the most important skill of a GM is pretending what happens is what you were planning all along.”
Absolutely not. This pressure to “be in control”, “‘maintain the illusion” and “be a magician” style advice is precisely why people are terrified to GM.
You have one job as a GM at the table. ONE. Play your NPCs and other situation elements with the same earnestness as the players play their PCs. That’s it.
The “plot” is what happens when your toys and their toys meet and uncertainties between them are resolved via the game at hand.
You are not responsible for anyone’s fun.
You are not responsible for anyone’s entertainment.
You are not there to stroke the players egos or service their fantasies or “story beats” or whatever self-insert wish fulfillment BS they have projected onto their characters.
Stop making GMing harder than it needs to be. Just play the damn game.
Orks are so great because they’re like TF2 pyrovision but as a Warhammer faction. Everything they do, from their own perspective is hilarious and silly. Just the boyz having a good time. All their wacky tech and funny accents though would only be funny to other orks.
From the outside, if you’re a human in 40k, they are the most ancient enemy of mankind and have massacred untold millions across every corner of the imperium. When the emperor first set out to conquer the galaxy, his number 1 priority was often to eradicate orks lest they become too powerful.
In the war of the Beast, the orks largely united as a race for a brief period and immediately laid waste to wide swaths of the imperium and got closer than anything since Horus to actually invading Terra itself.
This contrast between how they are portrayed is really interesting to me because it lets stories about or just containing orks have a huge variety of tones. Sometimes when painting I imagine my orks as silly goobers looking for a good scrap and sometimes they’re a living nightmare who bring devastation upon every world they touch.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Meet the Kabal of the Ivory Talon: Ogres of Commorragh. I haven't thought of any lore for these little guys unfortunately! If you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them :D
ESPRIT DE CORPS [ Medium: Success ] – If an assault were launched on this building right now -- if the windows came crashing down and the whole world descended upon you -- this woman would hurl herself in death's way to save you. You are sure of this -- but why?
