Song for the Dusk: Mission 1 Recap

May. 17th, 2025 01:51 am
dismallyoriented: (Default)
[personal profile] dismallyoriented
Hello! It's been a hot minute since the last one of these. In hindsight, session-by-session updates was never going to be sustainable. However, as dedicated table notekeeper, I do have a nice big document I can hammer into a full-mission update. We'll do this in sections: player character intros, an NPCs reference section, and then the sessions themselves.

First, player characters. We're running the "Magpies" crew type, a party based around engineering, salvage, and demolitions work. Songs for the Dusk features crew playbooks, so that any given party has a "class" of its own, with a missions specialty. Ours was demolitions, hence the party name of "Crashers" and our home base, which we dubbed "the Crashpad"

On the roster, we have:
- Marl, the Aegis (it/she) - the team bodyguard, an ex-military wilderness guide who ran escort and protection missions for people in remote locations. It is a quadrupedal crab-like robot with shield-shaped legs and armor plating that it can swap in and out for different missions
- Yara of Nowhere, the Scholar (she/her) - An owl-esque person with feathers and big eyes (enhanced by her glasses). Scholars are the general nerd and research class. Her player came up with the organization "Nowhere", a semi-secretive order which preserved the infrastructure of the internet and archived digital knowledge through the apocalypse and into the current times. All formally inducted members of Nowhere have access to a set of accounts and digital permissions that allow them to hack into systems from the Radiant Era
- Quentim Parable, the Charter (he/him) - my guy, bog standard human, a former traveling caravan merchant who stayed in town to help during a time of struggle and has failed to notice that he no longer intends to leave. The most concise way to describe Charters is the "logistics & support" class. All of the abilities are themed around Blades in the Dark-style flashbacks, planning ahead, and giving mechanical advantages to the rest of the crew. It's very "all according to keikaku" and I love it so much
- Gail, the Scrapper (it/she) - the team techie, a bat-like person with a prosthetic left leg, and a dragon therian. She came to New Haven in the hopes of learning how to become a dragon. Gail is the hardware person to Yara's software expertise, and she has a toolkit full of Fun Gadgets and a lil dragon buddy-bot named Byte
- Morena "Momo", the Witch (she/they) - a New Haven native, a human with green-tinted skin and gold-speckled eyes from a childhood case of dragonpox. She works at the town library, and was granted some small mobile DIONE nodes that can function as her familiars. They take the shape of animal-themed jewelry that can spring into action when needed

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NPC reference )

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Mission 1 Summary )

2025 Fests (pt. 1)

May. 16th, 2025 09:11 pm
kkulecru: (Default)
[personal profile] kkulecru
Q1-Q2 2025 Fest Roundup


Wow... half of the year has basically already passed and I've done fics for like. 6 fests already. Because I'm really normal and sane and use my time wisely to plan out very long and intricate fics (I am still a tiny fic writer what can I say). come take a look )

88x31

May. 15th, 2025 11:02 pm

an unexpected career development

May. 15th, 2025 08:15 pm
ursula: bear eating salmon (Default)
[personal profile] ursula
I have acquired a literary agent! I'm going to be working with Lauren Bajek, of Liza Dawson Associates, who represents both science writing and science fiction.

I'm tremendously excited and a little bit boggled--I'd been keeping an eye on this agency because I'm acquainted with Hannah Bowman's husband in my mathematician guise, and Lauren's literary taste sounded a lot like mine, but I didn't expect anything to happen this fast.

(no subject)

May. 12th, 2025 09:05 pm
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[personal profile] strikeslip
Three books on my reading list:
  • Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi, which very much seems to be Renaissance Italy but Also Dragons Exist (to the point where I keep mapping cities to other cities in my head, like "Is that Milan? I think that's Milan." The map at the start of the book is not subtle.
  • Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer, which will give me many wild stories I expect to also recognize in Navola's Not-Medici main characters. I have been a giant Ada Palmer fan since Too Like the Lightning and I know her nonfiction is also worth reading, even if I never did make it through the word doc version of this.
  • The Prince by Machiavelli, which I have meant to read since playing Ada Palmer's Temptemus Papam (aka the Pope Larp), a direct line back to the Renaissance as Machiavelli had to suffer through it. Even though I only played the three day worldcon version of the Papal Election of 1492 (as opposed to the university class six week version), it has stuck with me and changed my entire view of Italy. And the book could change that again.
The question is, what order do I read these in? No matter what order I pick, each book will influence how I read the others... I'm quite excited about the idea of Bacigalupi writing fantasy after so much near-future scifi, so probably that one, but damnit, I really do need to read The Prince.

17hols commentary...?

May. 13th, 2025 10:23 pm
kkulecru: (Default)
[personal profile] kkulecru
very late 17hols roundup!! 

So...I did not expect to come out of my first 17hols experience winning most remixes for the round, but. I truly am nothing more than a slave to the writing worms when they're just dangled in front of me! This really is the exact catalyst that I can blame for my newfound flash/micro/bingo? fic-writing addiction which is plaguing me even now. Curse you thank you lovely mods for making it happen!!! I had spent a not-insignificant amount of time in the past reading old rounds' fills so it was so exciting to be able to take part:') 

Read more... )

RPG community survey

May. 11th, 2025 02:45 pm
stepnix: Player One (player)
[personal profile] stepnix

big ol' survey but it's from reddit and we know that won't be the full story. In the meantime, would like to hear anecdotal amendments to these (for example there's a surprising amount of Fabula Ultima/Exalted fandom overlap, and my Jennagame obsession came from friends in the Lancer server)

Beloved Adorei

May. 10th, 2025 11:05 pm
stepnix: an expression of confusion or dismay (cute knight)
[personal profile] stepnix

how does Exalted have "girl who is sword" and she's not immediately the most popular character in the game. I've played Xenoblade 2. I've played Lancer. I know there is a ready audience for this. and yet I have only found ONE (1) piece of fanart of her.

"maybe they realize this archetype is necessarily objectifying" i did not think that would stop Exalted fans

La Corda d'Oro

May. 9th, 2025 11:26 am
stepnix: Nanoko from Wish Upon the Pleiades (magical girl)
[personal profile] stepnix

Fascinating review of a.. dating sim rhythm game RPG? i'm still a little unclear.

One of the things that really fascinates me about dating sims is the way they let the player decide their measure of success: "victory" is ending up with the romantic interest of your choice. Cordo d'Oro has its own set of romance options, but also separate notional goal, victory in the recitals. But from what I'm reading here, the game doesn't condemn you for deciding that pursuing that goal isn't worth your time. I imagine that I'd try optimizing to get both the romance option and the victory at the recitals, but that probably says more about me than about the game.

The notional goal with the well-supported possibility of ignoring that goal reminds me of some TTRPG design motifs, but my thoughts on the resemblance aren't terribly well-formed

two cool things

May. 5th, 2025 04:51 pm
ursula: bear eating salmon (Default)
[personal profile] ursula
My latest newsletter contains a couple of things I'd like you to know about:


  • An old friend has a story in Clarkesworld about a knitting mathematician. (Similarities to your correspondent are probably intentional! :) )
  • The audio from my KGB books reading is live!

Flare Against the Void

May. 5th, 2025 12:48 pm
stepnix: Purple shepherd's crook (purple)
[personal profile] stepnix

hey there's a manifesto jam happening so I wrote a thing for it

If you remember my weird ramblings about digging into ancient TTRPG discourse a while back, some of the feelings there went into this.

Sunburn was worth it

May. 4th, 2025 08:39 pm
radiantfracture: Beadwork bunny head (Default)
[personal profile] radiantfracture
The camas is out! I don't think I've ever seen it such an incredibly saturated blue as this year. I got a sunburn and bright yellow pollen all over my jeans.






Asyouknowfriends, camas is an important plant of this territory: endangered now, it was once a core food crop -- the bulbs are edible. May it one day be eaten all across the territory again.

§rf§

(no subject)

May. 4th, 2025 09:01 am
stepnix: chibi Shin Godzilla (Default)
[personal profile] stepnix

perhaps my grand networking schemes and my "refuses to get a bsky" idiosyncrasy are in conflict or perhaps contradiction with each other. alas!

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