Matovilka

[Matovilka]

[iguanodont]

Commissioned illustration for @pokemew2draws of a blind cave dragon! This was an original creature design for their dnd game.

[Matovilka]

[strawberry-crocodile]

So I’m getting upset about Pokemon switching to 3d models again, and I just remembered the absolute worst thing to come out of it.

Since about Black and White, Gamefreak started to experiment with quirky battle styles (you could argue that double battles was the start but I grew up with them and they stayed so hey). For XY, the games that started the shift to models in battle, they had the fun idea to do sky battles! In theory, adding a third dimension to your battling system is a radical shift that could redefine the experience. In practice, Pokemon is a turn-based strategy game with no movement mechanics, so it’s just a normal Pokemon battle except you can only use flying type pokemon. In the end, it was used for like three out-of-the-way NPC battles that you have the direct choice to opt out of and I don’t think it’s playable in multiplayer.

So we have this completely tepid battle variation that could be as harmless as triple battles before it, but there’s one problem. See, they decided that the battle models of all flying type pokemon need to be in the process of flying. AAAAAUGH

Already most of the shifts from old to new are incredibly stiff head on poses, but this means that every flying pokemon from generations 1-6 are doing the exact same pose. And it’s not even a good pose, it’s a completely neutral, wings out pointing forward pose.

They went from this

to this

Let me give you some more examples under the cut

Keep reading

[Matovilka]

[vcreatures]

I used the prompt eldritch for this one but I think this drake veers slightly more whimsical, "high fantasy" vs eldritch. I’ll probably circle back and revisit this design at some point but figured I’d post this one anyway 

[Matovilka]

[strawberry-crocodile]

Slaad and Gender

Frequently, someone meeting a slaad for the first time will assume masculine gender; in our culture, most monsters are associated with masculinity and referred to as "he" as a baseline.

Further inquiry into slaad gender, however, meets with more complication than a simple male/female divide. Slaad reproduction is entirely parasitic, and does not require genetic exchange. Despite this, slaad "society" (I use the term here loosely) does show two morphs, blue and red, that dominate and are defined by separate roles in the reproduction of the species.

Some philosophers (foolishly, in my opinion) have attempted to map these morphs onto our own gender binary. By this definition, the red slaad, carrying the larger reproductive cells in their eggs, is defined as the "female", and the blue, carrying the smaller cells in their disease, is "male". Their reproduction is of course so different from the male-female paradigm as to make these definitions actively misleading, if not objectively erroneous.

That said, it does help to view the different colors of slaad as something akin to gender (as they are indeed social roles that are conflated with morphological trends and a role in reproduction), one must simply understand that it is a system of gender completely separate from our own, informed by the slaad's own reproductive system. In fact, the slaadi language does use different pronouns for each color of slaad, although it also has distinct pronouns for categories like "food", "humanoids viable for creating more slaads", and "beings of pure law".

As for how slaad identify within humanoid society, and what pronouns to use for them; few red, blue, or brown slaad have any interest in socially interacting with gendered beings, or at least, not enough to bother understanding our system of gender.

Green slaad, on the other hand, are "born" with a single humanoid form, one they typically continue to use as an identity; as such, most of them form some relationship to the gender of their previous body (informed either by the body's previous associates, or by typical morphological standards). In my experience, most green slaad do not truly "identify" with said humanoid gender; rather, they simply have much more interest in interacting with humanoid society, and thus find it useful to understand and "wear", in a sense, our gender system. I have met multiple exceptions, however, one of which identified in a way her humanoid morphology would not suggest.

Gray slaad, and the many forms derived from them, are themselves derived from green slaad. It may be tempting to continue the gender assigned by their green slaadi form, but few "advanced" slaadi bother to have any kind of consistency with their gender presentation when interacting with humanoids.

All this is to say, one can generally refer to slaads by whatever pronouns one uses as default, although it may be helpful to ease into the pronoun issue when attempting any diplomacy.

-Maria Ordova, Social Guide to the Outer Planes Volume XVII: Slaads

Keep reading

[Matovilka]

[astromechapunk]

Pulp Game Covers by Astor Alexander

[Matovilka]

[lovinglystar]

[Matovilka]

[gabbomanestamuyloco]

Thanks Sabrina

[reallyndacarter]

It sure does.

[Matovilka]

[spiritofthemeadow]

ig - afternoondreams

[Matovilka]

[hey-sherry]

Baldur's Gate 3 has a voice actor dedicated to making sex sounds and he has a message for players: 'you little horny perverts ... you think

Alex Jordan has a very specific role in Baldur's Gate 3.

pcgamer

"And so I went into the studio," Jordan continued. "And it was very awkward, as I made sounds like 'mmm' and 'ahh'. And then I kissed my hand a whole lot."   

But he got the job done, and now he just hopes that everyone playing the game appreciates all the effort he put into helping make it happen—and keeps his very specific but vital role in the game in mind as they play.

"You think about that," he said. "You mull that over as you run around, you little horny perverts, with your little perverted roleplays, you randy bastards. You think of me."

[Matovilka]

[androdragynous]

game companies should be fucking EMBARRASSED about being inaccessible. it should be mortifying to ship a game with shit captions or no UI scaling options or no option to disable flashing / strobing effects. games lauding their character customization should be laughingstocks for not including hearing aids or congenital disorders or prosthetic limbs. EA should be publicly fucking humiliated for the sims series being 23 goddamn years old and include cats and dogs and horses and werewolves and zombies and mermaids and star wars and not FUCKING WHEELCHAIRS.

[androdragynous]

visual novel games should be screen reader compatible and controls should be fully re-mappable by fucking default also.

[androdragynous]

Can I Play That? does reviews of accessibility in games btw. even if you do not need accessibility features personally I think it's important to familiarize yourself with the range of options that are or aren't commonly available + reflect on who is being left out of gaming communities and development because of it

Can I Play That?

Can I Play That provides accessibility focused game reviews and news. For Disabled Gamers, By Disabled Gamers.

Can I Play That?

and also personally blowing a kiss to every modder who has put in the time and effort that devs chose not to in order to represent and include disabled people. I love you

[Matovilka]

[awed-frog]

Okay, you need to make sure you play this game at some point. Maybe not today or anything, because you’ll need about thirty minutes and a serious willingness to understand how it works, but - it’s so worth it. It’s basically an answer to our occasional frustration - why do assholes always come out on top? - and the beautiful thing about it is that not only does it explain how that happens, but also how we can change it.

“In the short run, the game defines the players. But in the long run, it’s us players who define the game.”

[youngnoblewoman]

This is fascinating if you’re into math or sociology or computer programming or all of the above.

[skeptictankj]

Everyone, everywhere, without exception, should play this thing through.

[dumgold]

Don’t check just this - check out all of Nicky Case’s work. They’re a brilliant creator and I heavily recommend checking out at least one of their projects.  Their website can be found here.

Parable of the Polygons - an interactive experiment that shows how tiny individual biases can collectively cause segregation on a massive scale.

To Build a Better Ballot - an interactive experiment that shows the alternatives to the voting systems we currently use and how they can be more representative and democratic, along with their faults.

Coming Out Simulator - a short interactive story/novel about coming out, based off of Case’s own experiences. Not one I’ve played myself but still one I can recommend.

Loopy - a very simple but useful tool to show how systems interact with each other and how things can self-propagate.

We Become What We Behold - “ a game about news cycles, vicious cycles, infinite cycles.“ A short five-minute game about news and media. Warnings for violence, blood, death and stress.

[imtoobiforyou]

OH MY GOD THIS IS FRICKING AMAIZNG WOW WOW WOW WOW YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS YES INTELLECT 

[Matovilka]

[vintagerpg]

I have often said that I think the world of Greyhawk that exists in the early D&D modules is more mysterious and vibrant than the branded campaign setting. Let’s see how the branded Greyhawk modules fare, yea?

This is WG4: The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun (1982), the first WG module (WG1 was going to be The Village of Hommlet, WG2 the Temple of Elemental Evil and WG3 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, so this is WG4, even though all those products wound up with different codes). This is a sorta sequel to S4: Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth and there is a whole mess of continuity issues between that adventure, Elemental Evil and other stuff. Whatever its place there, the adventure itself starts with the party tracking a group of norker raiders (love a good norker!).

That leads to a dungeon with two distinct atmospheres — the upper ruins of the temple inhabited by the norkers and a lower reaches containing the dungeon. Interestingly, there is no clear guarantee a party will actually find the lower dungeon (potentially making it literally forgotten) and, honestly, the ruined temple is probably more than enough for a party to deal with. That region is largely deserted — only a handful of monsters haunt it. Rather, there are a good number of traps and cleverly deceptive spaces to navigate. There is a real sense of revelation the further you go into the complex and the rooms become less terrestrial. Sadly, that doesn’t pay off — the puzzles just reveal a treasure, not a god awakened or any special knowledge. Bit of a missed opportunity there.

The art here, by Karen Nelson, is maybe the strangest I’ve seen in a D&D module? IIRC Lawrence Schick called it the ugliest 1E cover. Its odd, for sure. I quite like the grell on the back and most of the interiors, though.

[Matovilka]

[Matovilka]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Steve: 1

Secret Service: 0

[bobothetalkingclown]

For those who don’t know, Steve Jackson Games was raided by the Secret Service in 1990, and all copies of the then-upcoming GURPS Cyberpunk were confiscated. Though this was bad for the company financially (they were set back months on a major project, and had to do layoffs), it did lend a certain air of pizazz to their product.

They ended up suing the government, and won. This was the first high-profile case for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which successfully sued on behalf of the company, winning around $300,000 in the case.

The full story is here: http://www.sjgames.com/SS/

[nymvaline]

I knew the EFF had been around longer than I've been alive, and that they've done so much for the internet that I take for granted. I like learning about how it came into being and what they've actually done. And I love learning that it actually worked, at least some of the time, that the people didn't just get conveniently disappeared, that the EFF sued and actually won and I live in a world with a better internet because they did that.

The affidavit on which SJ Games were raided was unbelievably flimsy . . . Loyd Blankenship was suspect because he ran a technologically literate and politically irreverent BBS, because he wrote about hacking, and because he received and re-posted a copy of the /Phrack newsletter. The company was raided simply because Loyd worked there and used its (entirely different) BBS!

... and also I find it amusing that in their illegal raid they didn't bring their own lockpicks or whatever. They tried to use the office letter openers.

In their diligent search for evidence, the agents also cut off locks, forced open footlockers, tore up dozens of boxes in the warehouse, and bent two of the office letter openers attempting to pick the lock on a file cabinet.

[Matovilka]

[vcreatures]

A two for one post today.

Dragon posts for Smaugust.

The Maple Leaf Drake is a small to medium sized woodland dragon that populates temperate forests across the globe. Their unique body morphology allows them to hide, almost seamlessly, amongst vast maple forests. This physiological adaptation also extends to seasonal color changes throughout the year. They will live their lives hidden amongst the leaves, using their long proboscis bill to pierce through the bark of Maple Trees to extract the sweet sap, which makes up the majority of it’s diet. 

Incredibly skittish, the Fearful Precious Red Coral Drake lives it’s life hidden amongst Red Coral. It’s long proboscis-like mouth snatching up small unsuspecting pray.