Hello! I’m working on some art (or more accurately, a 3D render lol) featuring Jaskier’s lute, and was therefore required to trace the ornate gold design on the front of it. I thought I’d post my work here on tumblr so any artists or cosplayers who need a good look at the design can use it!
Feel free to use the file unmodified or to modify it however you want. No need to credit me, though it would be nice!
do y’all remember that short story where a scientist like, raises his daughter with no contact from the outside world and teaches her english wrong, like he teaches her that ‘yes’ and ‘no’ have the opposite meaning than they actually do and that ‘up’ means ‘down’ and vice versa, and then this guy meets her and starts to teach her what the words actually mean and she kinda sorta starts to get it and like, realize that it’s fucked up
and then one day she’s not home and the house is on fire and her dad’s inside and the firefighters are like ‘is there anyone inside’ and she says ‘no’ and we don’t know whether she understands what she’s saying or not
wild
no I do not but please tell me more
What IS it with short stories that are just seven crunchy layers of fucked up?
There’s another one from the same author about a salesman who goes from town to town selling his miracle glue. He gives demonstations showing that if you rejoin two pieces of cut rope with it, the rope can hold up a car! (And of course, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link).
But it turns out he’s a conman, and while the glue does work, it dissolves after a few hours of use, which is why the salesman keeps moving from town to town. And we see a few scenes of people caught up in the scam, like a guy who’s canoe sinks because he plugged a hole using the glue, or an old lady crying because her fine china - which she thought she could finally repair for good - breaks apart again.
And then the salesman meets another inventor, who presents his portable flying machine. It’s a little box you attach to your wrist like a watch, and it really lets you fly! The inventor says he actually made two, and lets the salesman borrow one, and they go flying together. It’s quite fun, to the point of losing track of time, and the two seem to get along, conversing all the while.
The salesman loves the flying and the conversation, they’re miles up and it’s thrilling. But the inventor admits the two flying machines are miles apart in terms of quality, and he decided to give the better one to the salesman for their little flight.
After all, it’s made using the salesman’s miracle glue.
Internet says:
Paul Jennings AM is an English-born Australian children’s book writer. His books mainly feature short stories that lead the reader through an unusual series of events that end with a twist. Many of his stories were adapted for the cult classic children’s television series Round the Twist.
I took a small break from this project to shake the dust off of Sinister Hovering OrbandTo Serve (the former has been published, and the latter is now in final draft and just needs illustrations and typographic editing), but now it’s time to get back to rotating birds.
Changes in this version:
The “Playing the Game” section as been supplemented with an extended discussion of how to interpret trait symbols as a player.
“Running the Game” now opens with a discussion of the GM’s role in Rotate Bird and how it differs from the GM role in more conventional tabletop RPGs.
“Assessing Fallout” now includes examples of how the various fallout symbols might be interpreted.
“Special Challenges” now opens with a discussion of the types of circumstances that special challenge mechanics are meant to address; this update also introduces perilous tests as a complement to epictests.
“Rewards and Advancement” now actually discusses advancement!
“Variant Rules” has been promoted to its own chapter (as opposed to being a subsection of “Running the Game”), and now includes optional rules for performing multi-character combos with paired DOING traits.
“Appendix 3: Supplementary Tables” has been added; all it contains for now is a lookup table of random DOING trait themes.
At this point, the game is essentially feature-complete, albeit not content-complete; I’d like to see if I can work something out for random scene prompts to complement the random scenario generator, there’s a lot of stuff that could stand for worked examples, and obviously it needs more random tables.
As always, comments and feedback are welcome!
Ok, i promised this post to myself, and i promised this post to my players. Playtest feedback for Rotate Bird in the setting of Sunless Skies.
Iknow there’s a system for SSkies, Skyfarer, i just don’t like it for… a number of reasons (mostly its treatment of captain and my lack of understanding of how to do non-lethal combat), and don’t have enough energy to do a PbtA hack, so, Rotate Bird.
Three of four players knew and played City of Mist, so we mostly treated Being traits as CoM tags and edges as story tags; two of the players also had they character concepts ready before session zero.
These are our character sheets after first session; traits in blue had been chosen rather than rolled, traits in green had been changed as a first minor advance, and the last row isn’t a character, it’s the party’s train.
top to bottom:
The Extravagant Widower, train’s mascot and signaller, played by Earl; had his character concept ready before session zero, got to choose three of his Being traits. His Doing traits are, in order, My treat,When is mid-day tea?andThe temperature is higher than optimal by 0.02 degree Celsius.
The Mandatory Harrower, train’s quartermaster, played by Malavon; rolled all his traits, changed part of his Doing trait as first session advancement. Doing traits, in order: Exactly to the deep end and back,Careful, still waters!andPreserves for the winter.
The Harrower is the only non-human player character, he’s a devil.
The Fragmenting Widow, train’s chief engineer and captain, played by Svyat; had her character concept ready before session zero so got to choose three of her Being traits, and changed part of her Doing trait as first session advancement. Doing traits: Black Widow,Technically a pilotandTeeth collection.
The Non-Suspicious Secretary, train’s first officer, played by Kir; changed one of his Being traits as first session advancement. Doing traits: Cake is not a lie, it is being recycled,Spring cleaning,Phobia refraction.
The Delivering One, the train; Being traits rolled by the players (each rolled one), Doing trait rolled by me and named by us all. Doing trait: FULL STEAM!
The train was added as a something like a team card from CoM — its traits can be used once per session, by any player, in the context that makes sense. We haven’t yet used them, so i’m yet to see how that goes, but i can already say that it willbite me in the ass as soon as the party decides to fight another train. Welp, knew that something like this will happen.
Doing traits in our game migrated to something like social status and/or learned abilities, rather than superpowers; Widower has enough money to buy his (and party’s) way out of almost anything, Harrower is good at practical planning, Widow beats people up, and Secretary… well, Secretary currently tries to understand who is he, exactly.
The two things that i plan to do, but haven’t yet done, is disaster track for tracking damage to the train (enough failures = train is broken in some way and this isa problem) and progress track for main quest.
After the first session it mostly feels like a muppet movie, with the Secretary being the lone human; it sure is fun.
I also used random scenario tool (but without party’s input); our story is about tentative balanse of powers in the Reach, a mcgaffin that can break that balance, and people who try to run and hide. We’ll see how that goes.
He’s got specific lacing advice for skates and tall boots and there are decorative patterns and I recently relaced my skate shoes for both a wide forefoot and less friction on the laces so it’s easier to tighten and loosen them but he also has lace-locking patterns so that shoes stay exactly as tight as you laced them the first time and it is just a VERY GOOD website.
Like. I’ve been buying shoes the wrong size because it’s often hard to find wide shoes but the lacing pattern for a wide forefoot means that my big hobbit feet actually fit into the previously too-tight running shoes and sneakers I had.
