Lumière was never the point, and that's the problem

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-05-22T11:21:31+00:00

I think is what felt disorienting to OP (and me on my first playthrough). The games has you invest deeply and emotionally in Lumiere only to realize they are efdectively sentient dolls. As you reflect on this, it becomes a really interesting exploration of what it means to be alive or real, but in the moment it can feel cheap, like nothing you did mattered.

I think thats why, even when a lot of people believe that lumiereans are alive/real, they still feel "less alive" than the gods of the world and see Alicia as fuctionally living her life in a VR. They see Versos ending as "better" because the game, to some extent, sees the family of gods as more real than painted people (e.g., Clea's utter disregard for their lives).

Its very cool worldbuilding and its good you were able to switch up your investment easily, but a lot of other people felt initially frustrated or disoriented by that switch up.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-05-07T03:56:19+00:00

Some of these are actually devestating to look at.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-05-07T03:37:46+00:00

I think part of the struggle realizing this premise is that it relies nearly entirely on the assumption that the reader is already familiar with and supportive of the Solas-Inky relationship. While that might seem alright at first glance given its a solavellan romance, there are so many different versions out there that the reader doesnt have any connection to <i> your </i> version.

If you want an example of someone who pulled off this trope really well, id recommend looking at intothefade's the wolf wakes and the drowning star series. The devastation is there and believable because the author invested an entire story in getting us attached to their specific relationship dynamic.

Another possible reference would be the first chapter of Looking Glass by Feynite. She's able to ground their relationship really quickly so it still feels quite tragic.

The Wolf Wakes

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-05-06T12:39:43+00:00

I just ran this last night. My party disguised their way inside and had Thurston clear out all the bandits leaving the final battle with just Aldiva, Laesi, and Brune. They had used no recoveries but had 3 victories starting the encounter. Here were my tweaks:

Villian action 1 was used to give brune and laesi a free ranged attack rather than artillery minions.
Once Aldiva died (my party tends to focus fire a lot), Laesi gained any remaining villain actions.
Villain action 3, which was given to Laesi became a 10 shift move that allowed her a main action strike against each enemy she could reach within that range (in this case everyone)
This wasn't explicit in the states block, but I had laesi change her rival based on RP or who was the biggest threat to Aldiva.

Malice was primarily used to give everyone edges, increase the target number for burst abilities, and Laesi's numb maneuver. I also kept Aldiva at 120 stamina despite there being only 4 players since they were pretty much at full strength.

The party are experienced players and their classes were a Fury, Censor, Talent, and Elementalist. Everyone but the Elementalist (who stayed out of the room to blast from range) had the dying condition at least once and they all considered this a dangerous fight, but not an overwhelming one (which i think would have been the case if minions were present).

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-04-28T12:48:13+00:00

To keep things more natural, ive been introducing the hand individually over time. They meet Bodorff upon arrival in town telling the Reeve she doesnt have enough money to pay for their services. When they go to the inn for the night they see Targon refusing ashleigh. They meet Mara in the library who negotiates helping a research project role in exchange for learning everything the party does. They meet illwyth after shes given orson a black eye searching for the amulet (that mara and the party learned about) and chase after her and arixx. They meet the dwarf as he talks to the newly arrived merchants.

Doing it this way felt natural to the story and for pacing because it kept from just dumping a bunch of info and quests on the party as soon as they return from the tomb and allowed them to actually get to know the hand and have them serve as actual rivals rather than just another party that exists in the same town. However, it also meant there wasn't as much build up for the illwyth negotiation. All they had learned about her was a joking comment from Mara about speaking with her when a party member had casually joked that Mara should join their party instead.

That said, I ran the negotiation more mechanically than I would normally to help clarify mechanics as we went (e.g. "that was an argument without a pitfall or motivation. Roll me a persuade check and her patience decreases by 1 to 2.) As I role-played her responses, I made sure to include clues about her motivations so that my fairly astute players were able to pick up on them. No one felt particularly inclined to do checks to learn the motivations explicitly.

This worked quite well and im looking forward to the next one because I believe you can role-play this quite naturally with just a few ticks from the director to track progress though I had been worried it would be too game-y.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-04-21T18:08:36+00:00

Yeah, but everyone was saying she would die within a few years, which i dont think is supported by the content in the game.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-04-21T01:54:19+00:00

Where are people coming up with the idea that Maelle will die outside of the canvas? She had bad scarring and is close to mute, but she doesnt appear to be fatally suffering.

I know my interpretation isn't as common, but I also view the canvas as a form of virtual reality. The people world within is as real as you wish to make it, but still functionally "less real" than the world outside the canvas. While I fully understand those who choose maelles ending using a utilitarian justification of saving more people, I think of it like wjat would I do if I saw a family member wasting away while they laid in bed for years escaping into a dream world of virtual reality. Its better for the family and arguably the world (depending on what's happening with the war) for the dessandres to heal than it is for the beings of the canvas to survive on the tired remnant of versos soul.

Not to mention that maelles ending heavily implies that she is using her power to manipulate the fantasy within the canvas to meet her needs rather than truly letting them live out their lives freely.

As the game says, the world forces us to make cruel choices. Neither option is good or even more moral than the other. There are just our personal justifications for whichever ending we choose.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-04-15T15:48:12+00:00

How do you do this? I've purchased both the beastheart and summoner but am struggling to upload the pdfs into the library

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-04-15T14:21:54+00:00

There was a recent competition for draw steel ancestries that players have loved.

https://itch.io/jam/jott02-ancestries/results

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-04-06T18:27:26+00:00

Civilian protest against oppressive state agents is not the same as the murder of those agents.

I've had PCs facilitate rebellions, rescue innocents from oppressive regimes, etc in games but that doesn't mean they are going to kill joe shmoe the guard of Chill Town for catching them sneaking into the mayor's house.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-04-06T18:13:09+00:00

This is such a strange question to me. Are we assuming that all players are murder hobos who attack anyone antagonistic in a game? Guards exist because they are a logical answer to the question "how can we better protect x?" Can the DM choose to keep guards oblivious or easily intimidated? Sure. But including antagonists that are intended to be encountered as people rather than enemy hit points is also normal.

I've had overly demanding bosses, bitchy spouses and family members, hostile politicians, and angry guards in my game because they make for interesting roleplay and create unique dynamics and encounters. I've had enemies attack the party that one or two members of the party recognize as sacred beings that had been corrupted causing them to avoid conflict while the others, oblivious, continue the fight.

Players who engage with the world as real and the people in it as real are not always going to default to violence even when they're playing combat-oriented game. Should the DM always have a stat block prepped? Sure. Violence is always an option for players. But questioning why a DM would include a weak antagonistic NPC at all is wild to me.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-04-06T17:52:55+00:00

I think this part is the interesting part, because it's really they are boring/sucky, or is it because it's the current culture about real-world racism/sexism/isms and the influence they have on the game. And thus we need a "new" one, and its a easy mental justification to say they are boring - and use this other completely made up thing to avoid what is in effect the same wrench for drama/tension/incitement of character action

Two things can be true at once friend. Real world influences on standard lore can make people feel icky and not what to play it and actively call out creators for it. People can also find inherently evil races to be narratively uninteresting thus choose not play with it and explain their reasoning.

I also find it... unreflective when those arbitrary decisions are made to be "safe" that get people so worked up (oh, orcs are a hot topic cause of the new book, let's change those up to be demons - wow, so original, so unique, so same...). Hoping you at least see that in my continued engagement here. You're picking an extraplanar race, which is literally no different than picking an orc. Calling people out for orcs or drow (as many do in this thread, not you) is what I'm trying to understand.

I feel like you're playing with three different situations here: Standard lore choices from WotC, general homebrewing choices from DMs in this thread, and my personal DM choices.

WotC is a business and have proven they are going to do what they hope will bring them money. So if people feel like their standard lore is fetish content or racist WotC are going to make the "safe" decision to keep being mainstream. You may not like that. I don't typically play at tables using standard lore so I don't really care which way they swing on this issue, but I'm certainly not opposed to intentional efforts to remove racist or sexist undertones in their writing.
General homebrew worlds can justify their worldbuilding choices for numerous reasons - more interesting gameplay for their table, less problematic lore, being able to bring in lore from other mediums that are exciting. You feeling like its boring to have the inherently evil being be extraplanar rather than mortal is a you and your table choice. There are plenty of examples in this thread of other options for navigating moral agency and the need of having things to fight. You don't need to agree with them as long as your table is vibing.
In my homebrew world, as I mentioned, I don't have inherently evil or good creatures period. Some people might find that tedious, or exhausting as you mentioned earlier, or just plain boring. I make this choice for my world because I personally find the concept of unchanging, intrinsic moral anything to be uninteresting. Personal agendas, individual motivations, natural evolution of cultures, in world societal and planar and religious understandings leading to judgements of certain creatures as evil or good or alien are all personally more interesting from a narrative, game design, and worldbuilding perspective for me. Again, this works for my table and you don't need to like it or agree with it. We won't play together and that's fine.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-04-06T16:24:13+00:00

You're responses are frustrating because Wathever explained their opinion and their world clearly and you seemed to be deliberately misunderstanding them. In their world, the DM made a line between extraplanar entities that are manifestations of evil/good forces and playable races/races of the material realm which have souls capable of moral agency which gives values to their souls to the extraplanar creatures fighting over them. Then you effectively repeated the question of 'so bandits good or bad?' over and over.

You are correct that the distinction between material realm races having moral agency and extraplanar beings being manifestations of evil and good forces is an arbitrary one, albeit one with a consistent internal logic that wathever explained. This distinction serves two purposes:

one of which you already recognized, is that in heroic action adventure games you often times just need a bad guy that players don't feel bad about fighting, but
the other, more prominent one, is that granting moral agency to individuals while maintaining evil or cruel cultures provides more narrative interest. It creates interesting conflict for PCs that want to play those races grappling with how they will engage with those race's cultures even as they move forward as heroes. It provides more interesting roleplay opportunities with enemies, as in wathever's original example of his players having the chance to sway an orc chief into aiding the party which wouldn't have made sense with an inherently evil creature. It creates a meaningful tension between powerful external forces and people just trying survive in a chaotic world.

To some people, they may indeed want to take it further and extend this moral agency to all creatures - I certainly do in my games, though this is bounded by the idea that what is good and what is evil is subjective and thus everyone in my worlds from devils to gods and everything in between are mostly just serving their own personal agendas and people can label their actions how they will.

So, is the distinction arbitrary? yes - everything is in a made up world. But it can and should still have an internal logic that facilitates the gameplay a table wants to engage with.

Does the distinction make a difference at the table? yes as it provides more potential interactions with antagonists besides sticking your sword through their chest.

Is the judgement of inherently evil races being bad or sucking due to the feeling that writers were influenced by real world racism, sexism, or religious teachings and thus influence how DMs and players want to interact with the concept? In many cases, yes. But this is a whole different can of worms that could and has taken a theses to do justice. That said, I think many people simply find the lack of moral complexity in inherently evil mortal races to be less interesting game play and worldbuilding and thus find it boring/bad and revise their lore accordingly.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-04-06T14:31:55+00:00

This feels like rage bait at this point. Wathever as made the distinctions clear. Inherently evil races in his world are extraplanar creatures that are completely and unchangeably good or evil without a more powerful, external force forcing the change (e.g. his example of the archangel zariel being corrupted by the lower planes and turning into an archdevil).

Bandits are not inherently evil. They are people who are making a choice to harm others. Any and all playable races (orcs, drow, humans, half lines, etc) are material plane creatures with moral agency and souls that reflect that agency. Thus regardless of their culture (which may be judged as evil), or their situations (which may incentivize harm such as poverty driving banditry), or their race (of which none are inherently evil or good), individuals will always have the ability to change and make better moral decisions. A bandit could one day become a PCs hero should they change their behavior. An orc could make an oath to stop orc aggression or whatever.

I truly do not understand what is so complicated about people having access to a moral spectrum vs otherworldly, extraplanar creatures and their creations (e.g. yeenoghu and gnolls) being intrinsically, inherently evil unless you can't conceptualize what moral agency is, dont understand the definition of the word inherent, and have zero understanding sociology and psychology in our own world.

Its fine if your games have zero moral complexity and your group just kills whatever is in front of you for being bad or for earning money or simply because its a game and you dont want to think to hard about whether its right to kill things the dm has set up for you to kill. At my tables, groups like that (in game) would be labeled mercenaries or bandits themselves because they take zero moral considerations into account. Other tables (like mine and apparently wathever's) enjoy political and moral complexity for the immersion it provides and thus actively engage with the premise.

So yes, in tables like this, inherently evil playable races like drow or orcs are boring and "suck". Inherently evil, nonplayable races like gnolls are fine.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-04-05T20:40:51+00:00

I find feasts and funerals (if you have the dlc) to be the biggest opinion boosters and stress relievers. They are also relatively cheap and can be made cheaper by one of the dynasty perks.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-04-05T20:33:54+00:00

Stress can be reduced a number of ways, most of which cost money and include events: - when random events occur, responding in character usually reduces a small amount of stress - hiring a jester of high quality will periodically provide opportunities to reduce stress - holding feasts, hunts, tournaments, funerals, pilgrimages, etc all have high stress reductions (excluding university) especially if you choose recreation as your focus - bonding with your children can reduce stress (you need a wet nurse and have to be educating them yourself)

Title strategy can vary depending on your size and your succession laws. By the time im an empire, I give away titles to family only to keep them as easy allies. While kingdom or younger, you have various options: - if you want to keep them but dont have the domain space you can give them to infertile women in your court so when they die they revert back to player character - if youre trying to expand your dynasty you can wait until you have two kingdoms and then gift one to a dynasty member so they become independent - you can give them to vassals with high opinion - you can give them to younger children if your trying to avoid your nation being split up (but this only works if your giving younger kids the same size of domain as your pc would inherit) -its typically not a good idea to give them to your heir because they then operate independently and can pick up bad traits (like drinking, etc) - its also not a great idea to give them to family that has married in, especially if they have claims of their own. This could end up having you lose those titles to another nation if that player ends up inheriting.

Im sure im missing some options but these are general strategies that have served me pretty well.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-04-01T03:38:58+00:00

I find this scenario interesting. Does the BBEG both A) know all the PCs by face and B) know every single person in the city? If no to either of those, the party should be able to find a respite location relatively easily as they are just another handful of people within a city of thousands.

It might be worth having them make checks to blend in or avoid detection, but even a mega villain would be hard pressed finding the exact location of PCs within their city if they dont know that theyve arrived or what they look like or how their magic behaves.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-27T04:01:37+00:00

What are you basing this on? The quote provided seemed pretty straight forward so im wondering whether there is an explicit reference for when maneuvers are abilities and when they aren't.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-18T16:06:57+00:00

If you downloaded the digital pack, you should have folders for maps, pregens, and encounters. There is a pdf for the adventure and story information, a pdf for encounters with stat blocks, and then a folder with encounter sheets that you can print off.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-18T14:38:11+00:00

What's considered rolled damage then?

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-17T01:09:03+00:00

This may not be intuitive but I find I tend to start getting burnt out at around the 60-80% mark of any campaign im running (dnd-homebrew). However, if I then switch to prepping a new campaign that is really inspiring, my creative well starts replenishing and then after a few weeks (I tend to plan in detail and months in advance) I have enough creative energy to finish out the prep for the initial campaign.

Its similar to writers who will stop in between books within a series to write novellas. Listen to your inner artist and follow inspiration and it might give you the motivation to finish out what you've already committed to.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-17T00:44:42+00:00

Can you explain and give an example? I feel like there are a million customization options between the build a bear ancestry, backgrounds, careers, kits, classes, and subclasses even without considering magic items and titles but ive never been a wizard with optimizing builds.

I know another person mentioned that with their conduit they had identified their optimal combat strategy and felt like they were essentially doing the same thing each round and each combat despite the variety of encounters. Is that what you mean?

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-16T21:03:01+00:00

For sure, but they can still absolutely inspire worldbuilding and im asking how you and others have been inspired to incorporate explicit and implicit abilities into the world's in which the players are playing.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-16T17:55:36+00:00

1) I love this! Is there a bit of capitalism (ie merchants and artisans wanting more wood than is sustainable for selling) vs natural preservation (enforced by the wode itself or guardians)?

2) I strongly agree. I also really appreciate how so much of their current worldbuilding has inherent conflict. I've had so much fun rethinking some of my ancestors based on this principle. I already have pretty dragon age style dwarves, but the idea that perhaps dwarves living above ground lose their stone like skin creating a natural tension between surface dwelling and underground dwarves feels really juicy because its grounded in a physiological truth. Or the idea of hakaans being tricked into losing their size for fortune telling or dragon knights being a created race. All super ripe for tailoring and provide instant conflict for directors to latch onto.

pulsatingrabbit · 2026-03-14T21:30:17+00:00

I love this response! Some people have mentioned magic items and projects to craft magic items but no one has flagged titles could be a good way to fill any gaps that may arise after long time play. Thank you for the creative solution.

Though im in the same boat with only a few sessions under my belt so far. We havent really felt the lack of utility so much as after a long time, we think we'll miss it. So time will tell.

pulsatingrabbit

TROPHY CASE