i love the idea that matt is better at diplomacy and negotiating than the actual royalty bc pinkkat always kind of figured (correctly in a lot of ways!) that by virtue of his blood, if he ever DID defeat the empress ppl would have to listen to him no matter what so he could just stomp his feet and get his way being matt is suffering X’)
Yeah Matt can get a lot done by raw power and fear but he didn't need very long to figure out that while that kinda worked, it worked in a way that made things retroactively harder for him. Because if people are afraid of him, it means he won't get told about certain things until the problem is too large to ignore and needs a Major Effort to fix. Whereas if people trust that if he gets upset and terrifying he does it for a reason, and not willy-nilly, (and also that he usually doesn't get that sort of angry about single acts of stupid..) they do tell him about the problem when it's still the equivalent of a fender bender instead of a 50 car pileup with a burning petrol truck at the center.
that card covers like all my taste changes between tweenhood and now. Local bingocard calls out all bunnies; past present and future
you know what, I might as well type down the 'chronicle' of our DnD adventures in here just to keep an overview over all the bullshit our party's gotten up to because oh boy our DM is boh the giving kind and the one to strongly support Rule Of Cool/Awesome/Funny when it comes to allowing things. So there's been shenanigans like you wouldn't believe. We've done so much shit. Also we have powerful allies now and I'm vaguely terrified what he plans to throw at us for us to need all of that back but it's still hella fun and I LOVE it.
so, our starting part (all lvl5 because DM didn't want to slug through the 'woops i accidentially one shot your squishy wizard' stage) Petric, asssassin rogue, parasite-riding-a-dead-woodelf, played by yours truly Sella, divination wizard, gnome Yuka, animal totem (crab) barbarian, human Rahona, moon circle druid, Deinosaur Sella is our only good aligned character, everyone else is some flavour of 'neutral' (well, Petric is 'peer pressure' because he's Not Good At Being A Person yet) And as you can tell, our DM is looking favourably onto homebrews if you can find one that's decently balanced.
Our setting: our main base of operations is Dal Ratia, a big city that only a few decades ago stopped being at war with Norl, a nation to the north. A lot of the ar was fought using Warforged, basically magical robots. After the war a lot but not all Warforged were decommissioned. Dal Ratia as a city-state if a bit weird. Technically their king is some sort of magical horse. In replacement of a standard, their military units have pigs bred with a pattern into their hide. Now session zero is basically our party meeting up during a parade/city wide party in DR and deciding that since we're all adventurers looking for work, might as well join forces. However with the city basically given to drunken revelry there's not much for us to do right away and instead we head towards the harbor/air harbor and find an inn to stay there. We bond a little over doing a pub quiz together and winning, so now we have a few days of free stay at the inn while we look for work. The whole session was basically just everyone getting a better feel for their character and the starts of the group dynamic, plus of course getting the group together to begin with
I'm trying to find a good way to recap this because we've been playing for like 2 years, but there's been repeated breaks due to personal stuff and since most of us are working and sitting in different time zones, working out a schedule can be tricky. So like, ingame time it's probably just been a few weeks/months?
despite it only having been a few weeks/months in game e've gotten so much shit done already, it's kinda incredible and honestly I do wonder how often we derailed our poor DM I know we skipped a whole lot of bullshit by rolling well or thinking up solutions that would let us avoid big fights (we're doing milestones instead of xp, so there's no reason to fight our way through things. Also Sella is CG and would probably leave the group if we went full Murder Hobos and we don't want that)
OH ALSO WE'VE DONE A BUNCH OF ONE SHOTS those are easier to summarize. The one-shots usually happen if one player is out for the week but the rest of us are chomping at the bit to get going, so our DM has a punch of really short things prepped hat we can whip up one-off characters quickly. So far each of those things has been set in the same setting but different places, or in the past, so we the players are still given interesting/valuable background information about things and there are sometimes knock-on effects (like in one one-shot an item was left behind that if we'd taken it would have had a big chance of showing up in the main campain) but i just really love the one-shots because it means I get to try different character classes and it still gives us stuff to do without leaving anyone out of the fight
also: 8tracks being back is a fucking blessing i am enjoying myself and this stream of Mad Max mixes so much
now that 8tracks is back, i am going through my old likes and there's an Kismesis themed playlist on there because past!Owlet is the real MVP and I resisted about .5 seconds before hitting play on that and having the good trashcouple feelings.
Also this continues to be a prime blackrom song and just the entire speed/sound is SO very Matt Because he does lean on the goth thing not just in the aesthetic but also the music. He does have the harder/faster metal stuff but the ones that just slot right into his mood are the ones that he can dance to and be all sinuous and teasing. He really likes to lean on being a bit of a fever dream to people if he goes out clubbing and picks someone up for the night and he's absolutely gone the next morning before the other party wakes up but at least he has the decency to wash up any coffee mug he used
ohh and also: the endo nurses stopped by at the lab today, brandishing a large ass box of Merci chocolates. apparently as 'a thank you for always getting the coagulation parameters done with a quickness' and it's just hella nice to know that the work's being appreciated.
Additional Matt music because that's it that's the thread now, you all gotta suffer my OCs and their character playlist devleopment I'm not even sorry
