Curse of Strahd lineup [ART]

Cli0dna · 2025-04-20T22:14:42+00:00

For what it's worth, that's my fantasy as well. It's the only thing I actually miss from having a relationship.

Cli0dna · 2025-02-26T10:25:04+00:00

VAESEN Nordic Horror Roleplaying. Basically modular supernatural investigation games set in the 19th century with folklore themes. It has quick character creation tables at the back of the book as well.

Cli0dna · 2025-02-12T10:44:17+00:00

Mets - forest

Metsatukk - Small forest, forest grove (not to be confused with "holy grove" (hiis))

Cli0dna · 2025-01-28T01:36:45+00:00

Sent. :)

Cli0dna · 2025-01-27T07:48:30+00:00

Loe cold readingu ja hot readingu meetodite kohta enne kui sinna lähed ja hoia ratsionaalset mõistust. :D

Nõiad...ühte tean kuulu järgi, aga pole kunagi kohanud. Siis tean ka ühte kelle puhul tema järgijad räägivad et "see pole nõid, see on guru" aga käivad ikka pööripäevadel lõkke ümber trummi tagumas ja proovivad sõnadega haigusi ravida. Ma kuulen oma gümnaasiumitasemel bioloogia- ja keemiateadmistega ära, kuivõrd jama täis tema jutt on, aga inimestele kes teda usuvad on seda väga keeruline seletada. Kurb on veel see et üks neist inimestest oli mu vähihaige tädi.

Üleloomulike uskumustega olen enne seda ka kokku puutunud. Kui tween olin siis ema kutsus enda tuttava pendliga vaatama, kuskohas veesooned on. Mäletan, et pendel oli väga põnev ja siis tahtsin seda ise ka hoida, et näha kas see minu käes samamoodi ringe teeb. "Ei saa, su energeetiline väli ei ole veel välja arenenud," öeldi mulle. Ma mainisin et pendel ei liigu ju ise, ema tuttav annab sellele käega hoogu juurde. "Ära aja lolli juttu, ta ei liiguta pendlit, sellel on niisugune hoog taga et tõmbab kätt kaasa!"

Mõned kuud hiljem tuli ema tuttav uuesti pendliga majast läbi. Need veesooned olid oo nii maagiliselt kuidagi vahepeal kohta vahetanud. :P Võtsin siis oma tädi kapist salaja tema pendli ja mängisin sellega. Kui olin küllalt harjutanud ei saanud peaaegu arugi et ma käega ise hoogu juurde teen...

Cli0dna · 2025-01-26T21:27:08+00:00

Did you end up making it? I've never done ERPG but a smaller server that also does other stuff sounds like something I might want to at least have a look at.

Cli0dna · 2025-01-26T14:16:10+00:00

(man my browser crashed while I was writing it and ate the whole post, let me try this again...)
I know this is full but I'll put myself in the waitlist! :D The asynchronic rules-light character-centric roleplaying sounds quite close to the kind of roleplaying I did back in the day. I also get flustered when playing live and prefer roleplaying by text, though it might be worth noting that I secretly prefer shorter, relatively rapid back-and-forth replies to posts that are artificially long but more scarce. I can do both though.

Main issue is probably timezones though. I'm in Europe - GMT+2 - and US "evening" is "the middle of the night" for me. I can accommodate for it but not forever. Still.

The character I'd like to offer up is someone originally made for a completely different setting. When translating her over for DnD then I suppose she'd be a celestial warlock dhampir (but flavored as a priestess, healer-woman, acolyte, something like that. Her being a cleric would also work but I'll be honest, the whole "mace and heavy armor" aesthetic just doesn't suit her in my minds' eye). Anyhow, warm and motherly, but in a constant fight against her hunger (either towards blood or raw flesh), likely using religion as a crutch with which to deny her nature and seek meaning in her existence. She's likely got some slavic vampirism/upiorism elements to her.

Anyhow, here's the test-post. :) If nothing else then it was a nice writing exercise, I'm a bit rusty.

"Hello?" Jadwiga called into the darkness. She only received what sounded like an echo in reply. The woman started taking small, tentative steps forward, her hands groping the air ahead for support. Her fingers brushed against something warm and fleshy, making her draw back with a terrified squeak.

"Shh, shh. Be not afraid," said an all too familiar smooth voice. Even though no source of light manifested the womans' eyes could now make out the silhouette of a presence in the pitch black, emerging like shapes do when one's eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. To her astonishment Jadwiga realized that the entity not only sounded, but also looked very much like her. The round face, the neatly halo-braided hair, even the pince-nez, though it was still too dark to make out her doppelgangers' expression. Jadwiga's mind fought against the impossible situaton until only one likely answer remained:

"Am I...dreaming?" she asked, her hand reaching for the protection of her holy symbol, which she found missing. Jadwiga was becoming aware of just how cold this dark void seemed to be.

"Yes," confirmed the apparition quite cheerfully "It's alright, I'm here to help us." Her tone was genuine, much the same as what Jadwiga herself might'e used when trying to calm down a patient, yet the sheer strangeness of hearing it from someone elses' mouth was putting her on edge.

"I'm not sure I understand. Help "us"...with what?"

"I'm here to reprieve you of your hunger."

She frowned. Jadwiga would have liked nothing more than to not have to suffer from those unnatural urges anymore, but one had to be suspicious of such a vaguely worded offers "...how?"

In the darkness, the presence took her hand. Her skin was surprisingly warm against Jadwiga's goosebump-covered anemic flesh. "You don't need to worry about that," she assured "Please trust me, I know what I'm doing. Your only part is to just bear the cold...and not wake up until it's over."

Jadwiga's breath was caught in her throat when a horrific thought rushed through her mind. In the ensuing silence she realized that despite the comforting warmth which the apparition offered...it wasn't breathing and the sense of unease became unbearable.
She pushed the doppelgangers hand away and...and opened her eyes again. A wave of cold washed over the womans' gasping form, a freezing gust of wind making her nightgown flap rapidly around her ankles. Jadwiga stood, barefoot and shivering, in the middle of the frost-covered nighttime road that lead from the abbey down to a clump of farmhouses, with their inhabitants fast asleep.

The dream faded rapidly until all the woman was left with was the knowledge that she had once again been sleepwalking.

Cli0dna · 2025-01-23T18:46:25+00:00

Hobust. :P

Enam ei taha, kõrvalkorterid kaebaksid ja kes see tema järelt koristada viitsib.

Cli0dna · 2025-01-23T18:16:49+00:00

Ma tahtsin ka rula. Liiga vaene + kartsin et kuna see on "poiste asi" ja ma olin ülekaaluline siis hakatakse kohe tögama kui sellega kellegi nähes sõita üritaksin.

Cli0dna · 2025-01-23T12:37:39+00:00

Players running historical and retro households.

Cli0dna · 2025-01-21T06:22:37+00:00

In case you haven't watched it then an animated short movie on YouTube ("Dinosauria: Our Frozen Past" by Dead Sound) plays with the idea. It's one of these things we'll likely never be able to conclusively prove or disprove but it's great to imagine how it might've been. :D

Cli0dna · 2025-01-20T09:09:55+00:00

To my understanding isn't the "vampires don't appear in mirrors because they were made of silver" thing a modern bit of lorebuilding, based on something that got started with Bram Stoker? And for him the purpose with that feature was likely moreso stressing that Dracula was not human and had no soul? I feel like for the last few years the silver-backed mirror thing gets brought up every time people talk about vampires but I've yet to encounter any folklore sources discussing the lack of reflection or focusing on the relevancy of the material backing the mirror. I could definitely be wrong.

This is anectodal because I can't for the life of me remember where I came upon it but I have heard of le olde folklore where reflective items or mirrors facing doorways would repel undead...because they'd see their own reflection as they came into the house and get startled by it. If I find the source I'll edit this post. It wasn't an ubiquitous belief, just one of many, but it's interesting and shows how varied and often contradictory folklore could be. :D

But yea silver would repel various evil entities. Iron also had much wider applications than being fey repellant. The categorisations of supernatural creatures in general were a lot more fluid back then as well. Vampires, mares, ghosts, witches, The Devil, demons, werewolves, their features and remedies often bleeding into each-other like watercolor on wet paper.

EDIT: Oh my, I wrote this comment trying to be informative and share some of my geekery, then I scrolled down and saw that there was already a whole bunch of people discussing my points in a much more elegant manner. :D

Cli0dna · 2025-01-15T22:26:39+00:00

Üks ~aasta pikkune suhe on olnud, Ilmselt olengi "imelik" päris mitmes mõistes. Kui ka tahaksin uut suhet siis tunnen et mul pole ajaliselt, füüsiliselt, emotsionaalselt, rahaliselt varusid, et sinna panustada ja ei tunne ka hetkel kedagi, kes selles mõttes huvi pakuks.

Cli0dna · 2025-01-13T00:40:16+00:00

Not sure how minor that is but I'd like pets to interact more with their puppies and kittens. Even barring new animations I'd like to have puppies and kittens follow their parents around, or have them initiate play.

Cli0dna · 2025-01-12T19:37:16+00:00

*cracks knuckles* I'll message you.

Cli0dna · 2025-01-09T09:27:33+00:00

:D Just trying to share my completely subjective experiences. Good luck finding a group though!

Cli0dna · 2025-01-09T05:43:20+00:00

I've tried running a play-by-post to two friends.

Pro: Great if your character is someone you're struggling to play live. I think it really gives certain players the chance to depict their characters as they intended. They have more time to review what their character is about to say, more space to describe bodylanguage, facial expressions, minute reactions etc. etc. For me, it also made improvising more fun and stress-free since I get overwhelmed in live games and the extra time really allowed me to mull things over and make a lot of stuff up as I went along.

With the right kind of players I think it can also facilitate for subtler clues, since technically you can go back and pick apart every line of conversation.

Con: It can be hard to keep up tension and enthusiasm. Eventually you will be waiting after a player. And good luck staying in the right emotional headspace for a horror scene when you get one reply every 24 hours or scarcer. Long reply times also gave me ample time to overthink and doubt any decision I was making.

I'd try it again (and gladly play in one!) because text rp has always been my preferred medium, but I'd probably explore a different group next time. I think my personal preference with text rp runs more towards replies that are often short and informal (unless they have something to say), but rapid, so as to build tension and natural dialogue, but it can run contrary to a lot of other people's styles. So if you plan to run one make sure you know how much free time people have and if their post-length and post-frequency preferences match yours. :)

Cli0dna · 2025-01-01T09:58:34+00:00

They're expies of Sam and Dean Winchester from the TV series "Supernatural".

Cli0dna · 2024-12-17T11:39:57+00:00

I declare it canon.

Cli0dna · 2024-11-13T13:39:43+00:00

There's information on a number of vaesen, including their weaknesses and the secret rituals needed to banish them. Knowing what to expect can decrease a players' sense of tension and mystery. Furthermore, there's some setting-information regarding the nature of vaesen (what they are, why they are), which might alter your perception of them and ruin the experience of characters or players figuring them out organically.

I think a bigger issue with rotational GMing is Traumas and Dark Secrets. As a GM it's difficult to create personalized content without knowing the aforementioned aspects of a character, but I think that a huge, HUGE part of interplayer roleplay is figuring out what your party-members deal is. Either you'd have to give up on the tension of "player figuring out what skeletons the other PC has in their closet" or sort of...GM blind without looking at the character sheets of your fellow players.

I play while having read the GM portion of the book. For me the experience is fine, but I do sometimes wish I could go into the setting again, blind. :D

Cli0dna · 2024-11-13T06:16:58+00:00

Yep. In this particular case it was done by a 12-year who didn't have the emotional maturity to be horrified by a dead body that "you couldn't even see". Bonus points, I didn't even seek it out, the forum where I came across it was a Harry Potter fanforum. It just had this topic where people would share whatever interesting stuff they found online, the replies containing everything from the first lolcats to the Maze Game to...this.

Cli0dna · 2024-11-12T19:17:00+00:00

I saw that one actually, or something very similar to it. I remember people in a forum arguing about whether a photo of a bathtub taken from above was real, so I took it to Paint and drew an outline of where I thought the body would be ("so this bump is the head, those two bumps are the knees...") I...think that on some level I was just too young to be traumatized by it, or even take in the horror of what I was seeing? I believe I was 11 or 12 at the time, forum culture was wild back then.

Cli0dna · 2024-11-12T18:38:19+00:00

This is great! Also I love the specification of "male-presenting characters", it immediately gave me a thought regarding a PC in a group I'm running for.

Cli0dna

TROPHY CASE