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Monstrous Existence

@thefiresontheheight / thefiresontheheight.tumblr.com

Trans. Lesbian. Butch. Dyke. Appalachian. Call me Sable.

By way of explanation:

The distress beacon flashes across your ship’s leaf-grown screens. Out of your way. Getting there will burn fuel you can ill afford to lose. And its corporate property. A colony ship, full of ten-thousand souls who sold themselves into indentured servitude as terraformers. Around you the vast gulfs of space, deep wild dark, yawn. No one else will hear until it is too late, and you will never see payment for this, you know. You have a decision to make, Freetraveler.

Outside us Nothing is a rules-light science fantasy ttrpg borrowing heavily from the mechanics of Belonging Outside Belonging and Powered by the Apocalypse, and the stylings of Cowboy Bebop, Space Sweepers, Firefly, and The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet currently being written by yours truly. You can find out more about it and talk with other people interested in playing or currently play testing it here: https://discord.gg/Q569jt8htP

Horniness (partially) aside do y'all ever wanna fight? I feel like so many of my problems could be solved by getting into a fistfight and just beating the shit out of someone and having the shit beat out of me in turn

There is something so beautiful about reaching out to the monstrous with intent to touch it gently. To risk the sharp teeth and the lethal claws, to defy fear and revulsion, and choose to be delicate with something that can be, and often is, incredibly brutal.

Why would I not be delicate with something that has itself been so brutalized, when I too know the pain of being despised for what I am, and the grief of knowing my death is to be desired? And why would I not feel safe with something that has the teeth and claws I lacked when I needed to defend myself most? If it kills me, so be it. The things that currently wish to destroy me give me zero chance. The monster gives me some.

Hey babe, are you a riptide? Because probably the best way of escaping you is by staying calm and moving laterally out of you but I’m panicking and probably going to exhaust myself before I can.

An INFINITE COOK is offering average pay to deliver A LOVE LETTER to A PIRATE STRONGHOLD -or-

A quick combo of two of the random tables in my RPG for making an NPC and a quick, preconstructed contract for the players to complete.

Outside us Nothing is an upcoming, rules-light, statless science fantasy ttrpg about survival and vulnerability in a strange and hostile universe, borrowing from the stylings of Cowboy Bebop, Space Sweepers, Firefly, and The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet currently being written by yours truly. You can find out more about it and talk with other people interested in playing or currently play testing it here: https://discord.gg/Q569jt8htP

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i am (in my dreams) working on making Tsolarja into a ttrpg. i have made multiple rpg systems over the years with their own flavours and mechanics, which is fun in itself.

they were all run by the gm with various fun and inventive ways to determine probability of success and failure, from typical dice to scrying to art interpretation.

Tsolarja is supposed to be a place without rulers and despots though, which seemed somehow counter to the concept of a single gm. i respect the story-telling process and that an auteur can be crucial to creating the landscape of a story for players to explore, so i don't know if the system needs to be completely 100% cooperative, but i would love the mechanics to be while maintaining randomness and chance.

so, friends, help me make a system that is operable and fun to use while still allowing for story, agency and role playing.

i thought maybe we start with Rusty's Rules of Order as a skeleton? for those who don't spend a lot of time in solidarity union meetings or similar decentralised activist orgs, Rusty's Rules is a relatively simply way to hold a functional meeting.

i thought perhaps the chair in this scenario would be the gm (dm). they have the plot in mind, know the world they're playing in, the npcs the beats etc.

the agenda is essentially the campaign, but typically all the attendees would have the agenda well in advance, so i'm not sure how to work with that.

i imagined most of the game would be typical role playing in character as normal. everyone would need to know essentially the strengths and weaknesses of all the characters and be able to reference them in a sort of cheat sheet. if a test was well within the skills and abilities of a player, then failure would be an extremely low probability.

how do we test for success in higher stakes? how do we decide what happens without just rolling dice which (in my opinion) is so boring. (maybe i'm alone in that)

would players propose outcomes to situations and vote and discuss those outcomes with the chair having some authority to shift or adjust? i am fascinated by the potential for democracy in a ttrpg but not entirely sure how to make it work.

you are all very smart and creative, help me please. unless it's just very silly, then tell me that too please.

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i am excited by this dialogue! thank you everyone who has chimed in thus far, reaching out to all you was definitely the correct decision.

@unburdenedspiral i like the idea of using numbers and you sparked an idea which i will discuss further down. spending points rubs me in a strange way, which may be my own failing for reasons.

@poliesther i do hope some day you get to enjoy a ttrpg in a good group. i have had such fun with them over the years. the concept you present is fascinating and would be so cool for a collaborative story-telling game. it wouldn't even necessarily require a single character, as people could introduce more characters and situations as they get inspired to do so. this could be such a fun concept and in itself is worth pursuing. the benefits are myriad: you can jump right into a setting and build it together cooperatively as you go. you can still "role play" as the various characters in the story as you present possible outcomes. there is massive potential here and you're very smart.

@everyones-beau goodness the realm of ttrpgs has expanded in wonderful ways since last i seriously delved in. thank you for pointing me in such directions! i was inspired by your ideas in concert with unburdenedspiral's above.

what if we didn't rely on peripherals at all (dice, cards, dominoes) and instead used our hands? i like that they're free and most people have at least one, and in the absence of five easily scrunched fingers, cards numbering 0-5 could easily be constructed.

we have access to six numbers if we use the simplest form of finger counting: (fist = 0, then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 respectively) so we could use our fingers as our "vote" in how what we think about a proposed outcome.

what do you think of this?: the chair takes us through the story, allowing for as much player agency and input as possible within reason or to the tastes of the players. some groups like more of a challenge than others.

when the time comes for probabilities to come into play, maybe the chair opens it up to suggestions, or proposes an outcome themselves, to be "voted on." players with a vote in the scenario (contextual) have a moment to think on it, perhaps brief discussion, then on the count of 3 players cast their vote by displaying their finger numbers.

a simple scale would make sense with 0 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree, with 2 being completely neutral or equal to an abstention. tallying the numbers is fast, and the sum is compared to a pre-determined chart of outcomes.

at or below a threshold is critical failure, at or below a threshold is inconclusive and someone else propose an outcome. at or above a threshold equals success or critical success.

we could employ special rules. for example, if the sum of votes is odd or even, we put a spin on the outcome. if the mode of the values equals 2, then there was neither majority support nor disapproval, so the outcome is considered void and needs to be renegotiated.

what do you think? please improve or change any of these proposals.

Seconding the efficacy of Belonging Outside Belong and subsequent games like Wanderhome’s systems. The game I’m currently play testing is largely inspired by it (with the addition of dice and some randomness) and by making weak moves that reward tokens truly weak you can really encourage relying on your friends and other members of the party.

It’s very take it or leave it but my game (essentially about being a small anarchist few of aliens on a spaceship wandering through a weird and hostile universe) also has rules for alternating duties typically given to the GM. In each star system a different player can take control of describing what is found there, and when a character tries to do something that is a hard and requires a dice role the entire table has to have consensus on how hard exactly that roll will be.

Obviously take it or leave it, but as far as making a non-hierarchical game it’s been going pretty well with the time playtesting!

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Before their drivers venture out into the glassy sands to trade, scavenge, and gather stories, the people of the Muscat commune walk a procession through the halls of their shelter and pray for safety and a speedy return. Then, as a community, they wind the venerated torsion springs that power their hardsuits.

babytrans is like your starter class and you can prestige into stuff like tmilf, transbian chaser, girlfag, femboy♀️[Editor's Note: DO NOT CONFUSE WITH FEMBOY♂️ OR FEMMEBOY], etc. the gourmet genders we don't let the cis know about. you can even multiclass but you have to make sure your class alignment restrictions are in agreement or you risk becoming a Fallen Paladin (Fallen Paladin is also a gender)