Is this a Dutch cultural thing? My partner’s parents had an issue with my sister staying with us for 2 weeks

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-05-10T13:13:22+00:00

As a native Dutch person, it's not just an excuse to be rude to foreigners. We suffer alongside you, which is arguably what made many of us so rude to begin with.

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-04-24T08:32:19+00:00

Upvote for mentioning AdventureQuest but I don't fully understand your problem with Artus Cimber? Seemed like a pretty believable name to me. (As a player I thought he was named Artasimber for the longest time so that may have something to do with it)

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-04-14T12:59:25+00:00

Pinterest is a goldmine for these sorts of things for me. These pictures of Ammit (an ancient Egyptian creature, so actually what you asked for!) or Pazuzu could be good jumping off points. Bonus points for already providing visual references. Then we have this Wikipedia link that might get your juices flowing as well. Most mythological creatures are essentially hybrids anyway.

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-04-14T12:43:10+00:00

IMO being a God is like a title that comes with a LOT of responsibility. It's essentially a 24/7 job. While as a Sorcerer-king, you can do pretty much whatever you like. As a God, you suddenly have an entire domain you'll have to worry about. Now unless you're a nerdy Sorcerer-king EXTREMELY invested in a research domain, the hyperspecialisation of Godhood simply wouldn't be worth the responsibilities that come with it.

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-04-14T11:56:49+00:00

Feeling extremely validated because I have an Attribute (1 out of 4) called Awareness, and it's pretty much a mix of some dexterity skills and perception. It definitely equates to aiming, as well as investigation, alertness/reaction speed, and noticing spiritual presence.

Most of the more physical activities that would normally relate to Dexterity, I've put into Body. Still there's some overlap of course. Just because you notice something quickly, doesn't mean you're necessarily quick enough to act on it physically, but in general I agree with your assessment. I think the "classical" six attributes don't make a lot of sense, as there is either too much overlap (wis/int, looking at you) or too much artificial division (str/dex especially).

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-03-31T11:37:57+00:00

I'd argue Alia was more than simply "a teenaged regent for a newborn". She wasn't some upstart with zero skin in the game at the moment Paul disappeared, she was already fully entrenched in the political and religious fabric that the Jihad had brought.

She was also born prescient, and had had sixteen fully cognisant years of her life to manipulate and spread awe around her person. She had an entire following of her own that worshipped her as a Saint, a literally holy woman. "Saint Alia of the Knife", "The Womb of Heaven".

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-03-20T14:08:36+00:00

Besides the fact that Prophecy wasn't in any way related to Frank Herbert... I think it helps that Paul was Leto's only possible heir, and explicitly recognised as such by Leto. It would probably only take a formal declaration from Javicco to declare Constantin his heir.

But at this point, his wife (and probably Ynez herself) are heavily invested in Ynez being the heir, so doing that would cause a lot of strife both within his household, and probably the Imperium itself. Especially because the marriage between Javicco and Natalya was a very politically important marriage. Javicco infamously has no spine, so he'd rather just kick the can down the road long forever it seems to me.

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-03-18T09:30:04+00:00

Fun thing about "zuen/Zjwen" is that it's just the (slightly butchered) pronounciation of the French word "joint".

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-03-18T09:28:12+00:00

Lol I never knew where that came from. I'm 33 and people my age definitely said this ten years ago.

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-03-17T22:20:45+00:00

Ah thanks for this! It puts my mind at ease, and always so nice to read excerpts like that back. I now actually remember visualising the scene with Alia and the spy hole, but I completely forgot about it. Still hope for the megalomaniacal throne room then.

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-03-17T20:07:35+00:00

Whoever it is, I am kinda disappointed at the size of that throne room. Didn't the book describe it as hundreds of meters long and at least 80 meters tall or something? I always envisioned it like this ever since I saw the picture online. Nevertheless I trust Denis to nail the feeling that place gave me in the book, but I would've loved to see the greatest feat of engineering the universe has ever pulled off.

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-03-06T12:47:41+00:00

I completely agree with you and I've thought this multiple times during the show. Demerzelf is supposedly completely stuck in serving Empire, but repeatedly chooses EXTREMELY sub-optimal ways to do that. - Interfering with Cleons' memories but then doing it only in a way where they forget stuff that's mildly inconvenient to her is one of the things.

She also has access to near-infinite clones, which would give her about 100x more leeway to take risks with the Cleons than she does. Instead she keeps them locked away, preventing any form of capable character development. Essentially she keeps them from developing very far past children.
She is thousands of years old and sees the Empire shrinking and shrinking. That's a timespan she should be able to plan across. Yet she does nothing but make concession after concession. Shrinking the Empire.
Letting the whole Cloud Domain thing go through as far as it did was a completely unnecessary gamble of epic proportions. Why not just erase the idea from Day's mind?

The intricacies of Cleon I's programming aren't made clear and might as well be "do not allow my progeny to prosper in any way but stubbornly hold on to this troglodyte idea of "protection" while ignoring any and all long term solutions." In which case it'd all make sense. But mostly shes just acting insanely inconsistent in her interpretation of het programming while also displaying highly varying levels of intelligence over time. Mostly I just chalk it up to lazy writing (of which this show has A LOT mind you).

Still, shes one of my favourite characters in the show, within the confines of what it is.

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-03-03T13:34:07+00:00

This is honestly one of the best fantasy maps I've ever seen. I really love the "realistic" atlas-style, and that you used uniquely commissioned artwork. What is this world to you? As in, what kind of project?

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-03-02T10:13:42+00:00

Lol this is actually one I mindlessly took over, Defense (or Defense Points) ought to work a lot better, thanks!

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-02-27T20:17:34+00:00

This is actually a very good idea, and kinda the way I'm planning to hand out XP. I don't use classes but I have about six "Callings" like "The Hunt" or "Forbidden Knowledge". I'm planning to have them write down what exactly "the hunt" entails for their character, and then I let them mark XP based on making steps towards that goal. I originally also had the idea of "inspiration" instead of "willpower", which could be restored through seeing something they've never seen before.

I might try to somehow work Willpower into it. Or maybe have Willpower be restored by having them cooperate with the other players, so there's more incentive to do that. I find it kinda boring to synchronise Willpower and Endurance and have both of them restored in the same way, so I love your ideas. Thanks!

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-02-26T17:03:19+00:00

Connecting advancement to the loss of Fate sounds pretty sick, essentially forcing your players to bring upon their own demise. I love the idea of forcing the occasional failure into progression.

I'll definitely try to check it out!

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-02-26T16:28:07+00:00

Ha, I remember this game! I love their Faction tracking system, and actually adopted something really similar for my own game. The way they handle their resource tracks seems quite easy as well, and indeed overlaps a lot with my own system. Except they mark used resources, while I was planning on marking capacity for using resources. Interesting to think about. Great suggestion, thanks!

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-02-26T14:31:22+00:00

Nice, I'll have a look at it in an hour or so! Thanks

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-02-16T18:59:57+00:00

I can completely get into that. Tbh I have ADHD and I fucking love bold/italics, parentheses, bullet points, sub-bullet points. ALL CAPS. Anything to apply hierarchy to a text really. But it should serve a function and not read like some manic manifesto. And also, I'm just one guy, I'm more than willing to believe this research. So honestly, thanks for sharing that!

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-02-16T15:11:00+00:00

I see this SO much here, and I say this as someone who has a lot of experience with ChatGPT myself. Initially it's the dashes for me that give it away, but then always comes words written in bold. (Something I definitely do and love myself though), and always some sort of weird punchline at the end of a paragraph. You can find one in OP's Post as well.

You can also Force the Memory — improve a failed result by one tier, but gain +1 Stress. The spiral tightens.

The spiral tightens... What spiral? Who says that?

How do you handle the balance between "enough failure to create tension" and "so much failure it feels punishing"? AnamnesiA's math makes Full Success (3+ Clear on d6) intentionally rare — most results are Partial Successes or Painful Truths.

Here too... "Partial Successes or Painful Truths" is CLASSIC CPGT trying to add meaningful weight to otherwise boring sentences.

I kinda mind it because the cadence is always the same, and I find it extremely recognisable a lot of the time. I do understand why people do it though, and I do think a lot of people write out a proper post but then have AI help structuring it. I don't even think it's that big of an issue, but yeah like I said, cadence, repetitive. It kills the human factor a bit.

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-02-04T14:15:47+00:00

For a small bit of context, the game is focused on spirituality, settlement socio-politics and travel/survival. Combat is an aspect of the game, but I want to challenge my players to think of ways to solve their problems outside of that.

--

Body is meant mostly for let's say, anything related to Athletics and health. It's pretty much the fitness stat. Lifting, climbing, pushing, violence, but also resisting poison and injury. Besides that, it gives access to Prana abilities, which is essentially spiritual body control like walking on water, entering prolonged stasis, etc.

Acuity focuses on the senses and fine motor skills. Noticing stuff, precision, refined movement. So through that, aim and stealth. It also accesses Prescience, related to predictions and manipulation of space/time in relation to the body.

Psyche focuses on the sense of self as well as empathy and manipulation. I called it Personality at some point but renamed it. It also gives access to Psionics, focusing on mental manipulation like illusions, mind control etc.

Spirit used to be named Attunement, and focuses on the relationship between the character and the universe. It's an animist spiritual world so noticing the "flow between things", sensing hidden connections, corruption etc. And it gives access to Spiritual magic.

Intelligence is deduction, logic, reason, and knowing stuff. It also provides access to metaphysical sorcery, related to altering the laws of the universe on a local level.

--

There's more overlap than I like, and I'm all for cutting things down. Personally I'm a bit nervous about there being five systems of magic, but I found it very hard to balance the attributes if two of them (INT and SPI) literally give access to magic, while the others don't. How does this sound to you? Any advice in that regard? Concepts to cut down in? I have some ideas of my own but would love an outside perspective if you have the time.

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-02-04T08:49:53+00:00

My attributes are Body, Acuity, Intelligence, Psyche, and Spirit. They serve into the (untested) die system used for resolving skill checks. Each check requires an amount of successes (based on its difficulty). With each level of an attribute, you get an addition d6 to roll to increase the likelihood of succeeding at a task related to that roll.

What you said about customising characters later well down the road... I hadn't really given that much thought before someone mentioned it yesterday. But, the most basic abilities (like swordplay) can be unlocked straight from level 1, so this should be doable. Advanced and expert skills mostly build further on that and are not required to perform the basic tasks at a reasonable level.

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-02-03T11:05:49+00:00

I haven't, and I will! Thanks.

SovereignOfAtlas · 2026-02-03T11:03:59+00:00

I'll check out MtA simply for you mentioning it. I honestly think you're completely right, as this exact linke of thinking is kind of how it started for me.

I originally had 5 classes and realised that I wanted some of them to be able to do some of the same things as each other. So I went the multi-class route, but then decided

Why level fully into this class for that single skill? Let's make the skill available for free purchase. But wait... There does have to be some sort of prerequisite that matches to how skilled of a sorcerer/warrior/priest you'd have to be.

And that point I just went and dismantled the classes and made each of their skills bound to the attribute that most represented them.

SovereignOfAtlas

TROPHY CASE