i can't believe magic made a card depicting the assassination of shinzo abe. they're so insensitive
Has the public reception to The Great Desparking been mostly positive or negative?
Let’s find out here. What are your thoughts about the Great Desparking?
Hate it so much from a lore perspective. I like the idea of planeswalkers being given creature cards from time to time (I think y'all really could do that and just have it be a thing of "Their not planeswalking much in this story, they're more just acting as a person on the plane") but the desparking is, in my opinion, one of the worst decisions in magic's recent past.
'twas a terrible decision. Omenpaths make planeswalkers even more interesting, as while other planes are no longer privileged knowledge, planeswalkers are still the only ones who can pick and choose where they go. Not to mention planeswalkers are one of the things that makes Magic Magic. Getting rid of most of them in turn makes Magic less unique.
The more I've thought about it, the more I realized how much this feels like an arbitrary "consequence" that they slapped onto the Phyrexian Invasion as a reaction to people complaining that the War of the Spark didn't have "enough consequences."
It just makes no sense and comes out of nowhere that random planeswalkers are losing their spark. Why would the Phyrexian Invasion cause that to happen? They weren't tapping into the sparks of random planeswalkers to invade or anything. The majority of desparked planeswalkers weren't compleated or anything else that would explain it.
If all of the compleated but cured planeswalkers (Nissa, Nahiri, Vraska, Jace and Ajani) lost their sparks as a consequence of being compleated it would have made sense. But also having additional planeswalkers lose their sparks kind of removes some of the narrative weight of the compleated planeswalkers losing their sparks. It's no longer a logical consequence of what happened to them, but... something that happened because "reasons".
And it's a shame, because the Omenpaths feel like a logical and excellent consequence of the Invasion and I'm excited to see where the story goes because of them. It's just a shame that it happened at the same time as the mass desparking.
It smacks of Marvel story writing (derogatory), but net less 'walkers is a good thing in my book.
Bohf-bwam (Monster)
(Book of Hours, Flanders; kept in Baltimore, in the Walters Art Museum)
(This is a very old one, created years ago when I first saw this amazing piece of medieval art. I did some minor edits to their statblock, and completely redid their description- they were originally just "no one knows where they come from or what they're thinking, they just cause violence". Nowadays I try to ensure that every creature I make has some kind of story hook to it, rather than being a prepackaged Random Encounter. Enjoy!)
Bohf-bwam are chaotic, violent creatures that spawn in places with high magic potential and a particular veneration for weaponry and martial prowess- typically forming with a hand gripped tightly around a specific and well-adored weapon. Most often they form in the great halls of castles, wielding a displayed ancestral weapon, although more low-tech societies may accidentally create them in camps or villages. Indeed, the bohf-bwam pest problem is hypothesized to be a reason why so many "barbarian" cultures have an aversion to arcane magic, as their love of weaponry can easily produce large groups of these creatures when mixed with magic.
A bohf-bwam's violence is erratic, instinctual, and unplanned; these fits may come and go, and the subject of their violence is typically whatever or whoever is close to them. It is not unheard of for bohf-bwams to be tamed, somehow, by a particularly kind and affectionate person, and such creatures will focus their violent rage on defending the subject of their attention, becoming peaceful- even friendly- in other situations.
Particularly powerful magic weapons may spawn larger, more powerful bohf-bwam. Such creatures gain the Giant and Advanced simple template and lose the oversized weapon ability. Many gain additional spell-like abilities relevant to their weapon- a bohf-bwam wielding a +1 Flaming Sword may have the ability to cast Fireball 1/day, for example.
Some villains of MTG
Bolas: I refuse to be a lesser being. Godhood is my birthright and I shall claim it back no matter who or what I need to sacrifice to achieve it.
Phyrexia: We are perfection. It is a moral imperative for us spread our forces and make the whole of the multiverse compleat.
Eldrazi: We are the antithesis to existence. We travel the paths of unreality in search of worlds to consume, undo and make anew.
Ashiok: Yo, wouldn't it be kinda funny if this happened? Imma do it.
#equality
[ID: screenshot of a tweet by Martha Kelly, reading: "Sorry but if we let people choose their own gender then what's next? Something else that's none of my business and won't harm me in the slightest? I mean where does it end?". End ID.]
White striped dorcopsis (Dorcopsis hageni)
unsleeving my Oko, Thief of Crowns in order to be more lore-accurate
Play Diary
Nahual: So a Priest and an Angel walk into the bar...
In an effort to display how awesome indie ttrpgs are, I thought I'd start sharing some cool sessions I experienced first hand and how I think the design of the game and the play culture was part of that!
This year, Thomas and I are sharing a weekend time slot. Nowadays I'm running Bite Marks and he's running Nahual! We take turns running a game to avoid GM burnout.
Nahual is a fascinating game. Player characters are always three things: they are Mexican, they are poor, and they are angeleros. They hunt angels, terrible parasitic and violent creatures from the invading conquerors long ago. But the Angeleros don't do it out of duty, killing angels and harvesting them is a means to survive. Our group creates tequila from angel blood.
Today was our first real session after making our characters a few weeks ago. Some truly fun stuff happened this session, and the more I think about it, the more I feel it was a really good mix of game design, GM facilitation, and player ingenuity.
that one Azumanga Daioh strip made me laugh pretty hard, so I redrew it with my Goblin girls for fun!
Just a y2k meets western meets fantasy barbarian girlie✨
I got attached to her design really fast ;u;,,, her name is Bluebell