#impossibletruths

just sending 👀 back and forth as god intended | send me a 👀 for a W.I.P from this year

started the year attempting to draw dagonet and constantine from The Bright Sword but it looked like shit and i was Severely art-blocked so i gave up. still love them tho

languishing in the drafts is the first thing I ever wrote for the spoons fic in my notes app at 2 in the morning as is tradition. bunch of it doesn't fit with the fic anymore, but I like this bit

ask game!

hi!!

28 - for once in my life - stevie wonder

34 - what a time to be alive - fall out boy

nat 20: What's the most memorable RP scene you've been a part of?

I know this is technically a question for me as a player but as a DM, there was an exchange with one of my players (in blue) as this little kid NPC (in red) after they'd saved him from a pretty horrible massacre that just went:

"Have you seen people die?"

"Yeah."

"Did you like them too?"

"Yeah. But there's nothing I could do for them. And they're happier where they are now."

"I wish you could be happy too."

"Yeah."

Which just got me real in my feelings about Mr. Mumford and made me real proud of his player :)

crit fail: Have you ever had a character death? What happened?

I personally have not! I think that's in part because the longest campaigns I've been in as a player were only over about 7 or eight months, so I haven't had a ton of opportunity to be thrust into mortal peril. Although I guess you never know lol, especially at lower levels.

prep: How much prep work do you do? How far out do you prep?

I would say it varies session to session, which is probably normal. I've played around with completely homebrewing some shorter sessions, but there honestly isn't a place for that in my work life balance, so I've turned to running published material (namely Curse of Strahd). That takes a lot of the burden of prep off, since I more rarely am designing things from scratch-- although I do my fair share of modification, and there still is plenty of stuff that I have to figure out myself! For most games I will make sure I have the sections that I will need from the book marked out and available, and especially if looks like it's gonna be a sort of open-ended RP game, I'll write out certain guidelines for myself into my campaign notebook so it's easier for me to keep track of things (I also do this for combat, in that I'll usually write a few lines about major figures' goals, if they're relevant, and maybe their first move or two). I try not to prep much beyond what I think will fit in a session (because I frankly don't have time), but sometimes I overestimate, and will end up with notes that last me three sessions. But beyond sort of vague notions of bigger picture building blocks that are moving in the background, I try to only prep stuff I think will be immediately pertinent. And I do trust my improv skills enough where a lot of that will be vague sketching! For example, in CoS there's a festival that's upcoming in one of the major cities, but the book has truly no information about what the festival itself entails beyond sort of a morbid procession, so I went into that game with an opening scene, a vague thought about ring toss, and a vague thought about local card sharks, and just kind of played it by ear from there. And it was one of our most fun games! I do prep a LOT for combat though-- we play on roll20 so I'm cobbling together maps (which usually will take an hour or so depending) and will often times write out entire stat blocks so I don't have to be looking for them. I do use the dnd beyond encounter tracker some of the time, but in big, complicated encounters, I find that can actually make my life extra confusing, so I do a lot of handwriting shit out on paper.

tpk: Have you ever had a game go completely off the rails? TPK? How did you adjust?