Snowflake Challenge #4
Jan. 7th, 2024 11:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cinefarious
IceBreaker Challenge! Tell us about yourself.
I entered fandom when I was quite young during the heyday of HP. Reading fanfic rather instantly became my favorite thing to do in the world, and I spent most every night since reading and wishing I could write! I remember being astonished how some of the authors I was reading were better than the published books I was reading. I had stars in my eyes.
I started writing fanfiction myself once I was in high school, after meeting what would one day be my wife. She was very supportive of me, and I've been writing and trying to participate in the fandoms I love ever since!
In addition to fandom, these days I'm a huge D&D nerd. I dm a fully custom world game with a few of my friends, and I'm very passionate about it. I laugh when I realize I technically have hundreds of OCs now because of it, and I'm deeply in love with the way D&D has allowed me to explore worldbuilding and character writing outside of fandom.
Other than that, some fun and dumb stuff:
- I love fungi! I think mushrooms are beautiful and fascinating.
- I write mostly rpg video game fandoms, but my favorite type of games are medieval city builder simulators. Banished, Kingdoms Reborn, Farthest Frontier, etc.
- I have a three legged, fluffball of a cat that I love desperately.
- Very embarrassingly, I ran and helped run several Degrassi fandom communities when I was younger.
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Date: 2024-01-07 10:36 pm (UTC)1000% that fungi are beautiful and fascinating. <3 So many species, and yes, def a fan of them myself (to the point that I have home decor and a tattoo). :)
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Date: 2024-01-07 11:13 pm (UTC)I think that you learning how to play D&D through homebrew is so cool! I did a lot of watching other people play (like CR) before I got the confidence to do it myself. I will definitely look into Fate and Tiny Dungeon. I think it'd be nice to try something new once our campaign eventually comes to an end. <3 Thank you.
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Date: 2024-01-09 03:44 pm (UTC)And yeah! There's something about a homebrew that makes it so all things are fair game and things aren't so boxed in. It looks like I'm jumping into a new campaign in the coming weeks, so new characters, and it has been a hot minute so we'll see how that goes.
So many systems out there (and always some new ones coming out), and def worth seeing what can work especially if you're involved in regular game nights (or want to lure noobs in)!
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Date: 2024-01-10 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-08 08:00 am (UTC)And mushrooms are fascinating! Do you have any favorites?
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Date: 2024-01-08 01:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-08 01:50 pm (UTC)It's great how easy it's to learn by watching people playing games. Fate is fun, and I hope yoi'll like it too.
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Date: 2024-01-14 10:26 pm (UTC)I too am a huge D&D nerd! Would love to hear about your homebrew world~! How long have you been playing and what edition are you using? (I run 3 campagins myself right now, 2 of them homebrew).
PS. Fungi are beyond neat, I already love your cat, and I think it's super cool that you ran a Degrassi fandom community!
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Date: 2024-01-15 02:36 am (UTC)I had never really played before and definitely never dmed! While I knew of dnd and always wanted to play it, my first real introduction to it was Critical Role. It's what solidified my understanding of how it worked since I got to see it played in action, and it gave me the confidence to finally jump in. It was a little over two years ago that I started our 5E campaign. We were all newbies so at least we failed and learned together.
My homebrew world doesn't feel particularly unique, but I enjoyed creating the maps, cities, religious pantheon, etc. I'd absolutely love to hear about yours! I'm curious what special or creative things you did!
Bridget, my cat, is appreciative. <3
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Date: 2024-01-18 07:19 pm (UTC)It's so great how many people shows like Critical Role have inspired to pick up dice RPGs! And taught the rules of many of them - because those sure can be overwhelming when you start out rolling dice 😅 I've been playing off and on since I was about 12-ish years old, and I am just beyond thrilled with how many more people have embraced this delightful hobby nowadays! 💖💖💖
Things don't have to be "unique" to be good, I say! I love playing around with well-loved tropes and clichés 😊 So I'd be happy to hear about your take on the "DnD World" if you want to share (no pressure though) 💖 I'm not sure my homebrews are special or uniquely creative, but here's a very quick summary of what the campaigns are about:
1) "Dragonkeepers" - A campaign set in an alternate timeline of Critical Role's Exandria. World is very similar to canon, there are just a few character plot changes so people in the game not caught up on the show can play without fear of spoilers. Also, it started out as a Curse of Stradh campaign, so yeah, that dramatic vampire lord is part of Exandria in this timeline.
2) "Ariath" - For 10 years, a horrific magical storm has ravaged one of the continents of this world. No one knows where it came from or why it only haunts this particular part of the planet, but where it sweeps by, only 1/10 'sentient' creatures remain. The other 9/10 of the population just vanish. The campaign's plot circles around the mystery of these storms and why people aren't researching them.
3) "Jaggatt" - All the gods have died. Murdered. So the world ended. It was...unpleasant. But then the world started back up again, shaky and jumbled but time and space are back, so that's an improvement. The campaigns' plot is all about stabilizing the world and creating new gods - which is tricky since potential new gods are sending agents back in time to try and influence what new gods are made!
💖💖💖
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Date: 2024-01-19 12:03 am (UTC)Let's see! The campaign I'm running is set in a world where four 'evil' gods and all of the dragons were sealed away by powerful mages hundreds of years ago due to a war. The sealing ritual resulted in most mages dying in the process and magic almost disappearing. In the present of the game, magic is back to normal levels, but so much of the history of that time has been lost. Lots of strange things have begun happening (a plague, a magical light show, a massive ocean storm, etc), the characters have found several hidden away portals, and dragons have begun reemerging. I've had a blast fleshing out the world!
I hope you get to play in a game as well! I bet your characters are wonderful!
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Date: 2024-01-23 08:59 pm (UTC)OOoh, I love a world with "lost history"! Sounds like a super intriguing setting 💖🩵🖤 How much of that do the players and/or characters know about why these things might be happening? Have you invented your own gods or have you borrowed gods from any pre-made settings? I've gone both ways with my campaigns.
Thank you, yours are too! 🩵🩵🩵
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Date: 2024-01-24 01:24 am (UTC)I also love 'lost history'. It opens up for great secret hidey spaces, dungeons, and secrets. At this point in the game, I'd say they've discovered more than half of the big lore drops, so lots of fun 'aha!' moments and surprises and lots still waiting hopefully.
As far as the gods go, I pulled a few. I've got Talos, Aurill, and The Queen of Air and Darkness in play in the campaign, and then the remaining...13 I think? Are ones I created. I surprised myself just how much fun I had creating the unique religious figures and followings!
You said you've gone both ways, what's your favorite one you came up with? =3
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Date: 2024-01-27 08:14 pm (UTC)You can do so much with lost history, I can't help but add some in my campaigns if it fits with the world-building + plot combo 😁 The halfway point of a campaign is sooo great! So much for the players to brainstorm about, so much still to come! How long have you been playing in real-time?
Neat! It's so much fun to create a pantheon of gods, and mixing in gods from already established worlds can be great fuel and spice both 😊💖 Do you have a favorite god?
As I'm sure you've already figured out, I went with the Critical Role pantheon for the Exandria campaign, and I borrowed that pantheon for another homebrew campaign with some tweaks to certain gods' alignments. But for the Ariath campaign and Jaggatt campaign I've come up with a sort of shared pantheon - 'cause while the gods are all dead at the start of the Jaggatt campaign, I had too much fun inventing and naming them, so they're also the gods of the Ariath world (well, sort of - the gods aren't quite the gods, as my players have started to figure out~). I'm definitely going with home made pantheons from now on, because making them up is so much fun!
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Date: 2024-02-01 01:34 am (UTC)I love that you are using the same pantheon in two campaigns <3 Besides, I bet that's amazing in the Jaggatt campaign because then you'd have all that juicy lore about these dead gods! Dead gods are extremely compelling to me so as a player in that campaign I'd be snooping constantly.
I think my favorite god from Forgotten Realms is Selune (but BG3 also made me super fond of Loviatar). My favorite CR god is the Raven Queen. And the favorite from my own pantheon would probably be...Umere. He's the god of darkness, calm, rest, and healing and the temples tend to be shrouded in black fabric, and the followers tend to wear black veils.
I want to hear about your favorites too! Especially what your favorite god of your own creation is!
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Date: 2024-02-18 08:24 pm (UTC)It's absolutely very rewarding to use the gods in two parallel campaigns - especially when they're all dead in one of them 😆 Makes me much more motivated to flesh them out, and to draw contrasts between how they work in the campaign where they're still around and the one where they're all dead ('cause in the one where they're still around they weren't the original gods of that world, but they were the original gods of the world where they all died, so I've made everything wonderfully complicated for myself 😆)
The Raven Queen is hard to beat when it comes to the CR pantheon! I love her rise to godhood and I'm very curious to see if we'll ever find out more lore of exactly how or why that happened, other than the strong hints we got during Exandria Unlimited: Calamity.
Umere sounds like such a wonderful combo of different "areas" of godhood, that's super neat! Are all the gods in your pantheon equally popular among the population, or are some more "in style" with certain mortals?
Hmmm, I'm having a hard time picking favorites. In the Jaggatt campaign, I think my current fave is Osdell, the god of nature. See, the reason the gods all died was because Jaggatt's leaders and archmages decided the most popular god in their country (Osdell, yes) should be the only god. So, they basically made their own country into Mordor and Osdell into Sauron, and started thinking up a plan to kill all the other gods, without Osdell's knowledge. Osdell DID NOT WANT TO BE THE ONLY GOD! It was just some of his stupid worshippers acting all on their own! And it killed all the gods, because they're all connected, so they literally got their own god killed! And all Osdell wanted to do was vibe with nature! It's hilarious and tragic at the same time 😆💔💖
Also, since the "prime deities" of Jaggatt are all gone, one of the player's (a paladin/warlock changling) is campaigning hard for his "god" (aka his queen the Archfey Nelenn, queen of the Court of Seasons over in the Feywild) to be the new god of everything. Said queen has not been informed of this quest of his and will not be pleased with it when she finds out - which should be during tomorrow's session 😁
In the Ariath campaign I'm still feeling all the gods out. The players haven't really attached to a particular god yet, but we've got a thing building up between one of the players and one of the gods, so I'm looking forward to digging into that~
Are any of your players' characters interacting a lot with the gods in your campaign?
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Date: 2024-01-18 09:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-18 11:50 pm (UTC)Thoughts
Date: 2024-01-31 11:21 am (UTC)Agreed! Some are colorful. Some glow in the dark.
We recently found an Asian market whose mushroom section is a Wall of Awesome filled with cheap shrooms in many varieties.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-02-01 01:35 am (UTC)