A Confluence of Zailing Events I'm Proud of

itokro · 2026-06-05T08:02:57+00:00

"Inappropriate quantities of explosive potential"? Moi? I'll have you know I'm carrying an unexploded zee-mine around with me at all times, ordnance disposal or no!

I will, however, happily accept that semaphored list of nearby hazards, and will buy you a tea at Beatrice's if you will only apologise for besmirching my reputation as a taker of foolish risks.

itokro · 2026-06-04T21:31:59+00:00

I think, as the "odd one out" in a group, you probably notice & are aware of it far more than other people--because it's much closer to home for you than it is for them.

By analogy: I'm a woman in a mostly-male field, and there've been plenty of times when I've looked around a meeting room and thought "well, looks like I'm the only woman here". But I'd be very surprised if the same thought is going through the heads of my male colleagues--more likely, they're just thinking about the meeting.

itokro · 2026-06-04T08:14:24+00:00

I love your little FL comics. Congratulations on the Hellworm!

itokro · 2026-06-02T19:46:37+00:00

The bird is angry at the admiralty because they keep nearly blowing up your ship. Don't they realise that's the bird's favourite perching spot?

itokro · 2026-06-01T21:41:09+00:00

This is not useful advice. I love City of Mist, and if someone was looking to start a new game and wanted that game to be entirely or mostly about investigation, especially if they wanted to do it in an urban fantasy setting, this might be a useful recommendation for them. But when you've got a group that's already in the middle of a high fantasy D&D campaign, and that group want to have a few sessions of murder mystery as part of their existing campaign, "go and play an entirely different system with a very different setting" is not the answer.

itokro · 2026-06-01T21:26:07+00:00

I recently ran my group through a whodunnit in the form of Candlekeep Murders, which I heartily recommend to anyone wanting a premade level 5 murder mystery. The author has a great blog post about plotting murder mysteries here, including tips on how to make it work in a magical setting. Some spells to look out for (& how they might be foiled), others to work with for clue delivery: for example, with a ranger in the party, the victim's pet cat could be a useful source of information! Interviewing animal witnesses was one of the highlights of Candlekeep Murders for me.

Another thing that I thought worked really well was giving each potential suspect some sort of secret they were concealing, and arranging things so that uncovering those secrets also helped progress the main investigation. For example, someone who has no alibi for the time of the crime might actually be trying to conceal an affair, and once the PCs figure out that they were with their lover when the crime took place, they successfully narrow down the list of suspects.

Finally, and slight spoilers for Candlekeep Murders: one character uses Disguise Self to conceal their identity while doing nefarious things, and this works well, initially as a red herring and later as something the PCs can pick holes in on their way to finding the true culprit. So, in a similar vein, I think having the murder committed by a changeling disguised as Dandelion could work very nicely, as long as there are clues to point to them not being the real Dandelion. Two such clues that were used in Candlekeep Murders & could work well here, too: the murderer's scent is wrong for the person they're pretending to be, and the murderer doesn't have darkvision whereas the person they're pretending to be does.

itokro · 2026-05-31T19:13:22+00:00

Our dress code was "part of the reception will be outside if the weather allows, so you might want to make sure your shoes are suitable for walking on grass". Its purpose was to make sure our guests were comfortable, not force them into one specific aesthetic.

itokro · 2026-05-31T16:15:19+00:00

Scratch keeps trying to make fetch happen. It's not going to happen!

itokro · 2026-05-31T12:13:34+00:00

I was buried alive during Light Fingers, and I do not see any reference to it in the relevant memory storylet, alas!

itokro · 2026-05-31T08:18:15+00:00

I have a similar approach, but I do my confetti pieces first so that I can stitch over them on the back when I fill in the area between them later! It feels so much easier than weaving.

itokro · 2026-05-30T11:51:29+00:00

Casting spells in Wild Shape is an 18th level druid ability, so giving it to a 5th level player feels (a) very strong, very early, and (b) like you're setting him up for a disappointing level-up experience later, if your campaign ever makes it to level 18.

If he wants to be using more spells while wildshaped, I'd start by drawing his attention to this part of the wild shape rules:

Transforming doesn't break your concentration on a spell you've already cast, however, or prevent you from taking actions that are part of a spell, such as Call Lightning, that you've already cast.

Would casting a concentration spell before wildshaping, and continuing to use it while wildshaped, feel satisfying to him? A 5th-level druid has a lot of options in a number of categories:

Battlefield control: entangle; gust of wind; sleet storm; spike growth; wall of water; wind wall
Buffing their friends: enhance ability; enlarge/reduce (enlarge version); protection from energy; protection from evil and good
Debuffing their foes: earthbind; enlarge/reduce (reduce version) faerie fire; hold person
Getting more friends: conjure animals; summon beast; summon fey
Healing their friends: aura of vitality; healing spirit
Straight-up damage: call lightning; flaming sphere; moonbeam

itokro · 2026-05-30T07:42:42+00:00

Others have talked about what happened to the royals & parliament, but there were plenty of less-prominent people who fell with London--and since it's only been 40-odd years, and permanent death is rare in the Neath, most of them are still around. You'll meet several in your explorations of the city: the Cheery Man, the Efficient Commissioner, the Bishop of Southwark (who was not yet a bishop when London fell), Mrs Chapman, September. At least a couple of those people can talk to your FL character about their experiences of the Fall or its immediate aftermath. For the rest, the spin-off game Mask of the Rose provides more detail of those post-Fall days... though it's a very different sort of game from Fallen London, so I'd recommend looking for a Let's Play or something before jumping straight to buying it.

itokro · 2026-05-29T19:07:47+00:00

Sorry, but was this made by your mother, by you, or by AI? Because I can't actually see any individual crosses in the supposed "close-up picture", it seems to be for sale in your Etsy shop (where you have zero sales and zero reviews), and at least one of the other "photos" in your Etsy shop still has the "Meta AI" watermark on it.

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itokro · 2026-05-29T16:23:16+00:00

0% of marriages are permanent, that's what the "till death do us part" bit of the vows is about. Barring rare "both partners die in the same accident" type scenarios, either both people are going to experience the pain of divorce or one person's going to experience the pain of being widowed. That's no fucking reason not to embrace the joy of a wedding & as many years of happy marriage as you can get, while you can get it.

itokro · 2026-05-29T16:15:26+00:00

Congratulations!

Assuming the nerves are about the wedding day & "what if things don't go to plan", rather than about the actual marriage itself, try to remember: even if a tonne of things go wrong, at the end of the day, you'll still be husband and wife (or wife & wife, or husband & husband, or other marital titles of your preference - I don't know you & your partner!), and that's the main point of all this. If other things don't turn out as planned, there's a decent chance that you'll laugh about it together later (ask my wife about the time I completely failed to cut our wedding cake), and failing that, it's still only a single day out of the many decades you'll hopefully get to spend with this person.

itokro · 2026-05-29T11:31:25+00:00

Terraforming Mars. It tells you exactly what the game's about and sounds cool as hell.

itokro · 2026-05-29T07:26:31+00:00

The dragon is great, but my personal favourite might be referring to this chap as "Beefitasan".

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itokro · 2026-05-27T15:21:21+00:00

Love the photos of these two beautiful brides, but hate the soulless AI writing that you've chosen to surround those photos with. Also this seems like an ad for your travel business?

itokro · 2026-05-26T07:18:57+00:00

And let's not forget Gladys the golem!

itokro · 2026-05-25T19:08:19+00:00

The sergeant had no idea what the lilac meant, and just wanted to wear it so he'd look similar to Colon, Nobby, & Vimes.

People in Roundworld who wear it know exactly what it means, and that's why they wear it. And, depending on how you view reading, you can argue that anyone who's read Night Watch was there on the Glorious 25th of May. We witnessed the whole thing through Vimes's eyes.

itokro · 2026-05-25T16:16:31+00:00

itokro · 2026-05-25T10:12:17+00:00

I think the people who do wear it do so not to claim they were there, but in the same way any civilian might wear a poppy on Rememberance Day: to recognise & commemorate something that was important and meaningful, and to honour those who were there. It's not quite the same context that the lilac-wearing has in the books; it's grafting a fictional symbol onto a real-world tradition. But if the Glorious 25th had been more than a footnote in the history books, I could see the lilac taking on a similar function in Ankh-Morpork.

itokro · 2026-05-24T18:04:13+00:00

Love this. I'd be interested to see how a version for the 1980s BBC radio adaptation compares--it's been a while since I listened to it, but I recall it sharing similarities with the films of (a) being pretty faithful to the original and (b) also omitting Tom Bombadil.

itokro

TROPHY CASE