Put other adventuring parties in your game for your players to interact with. Either as friends, allies, or even enemies.
Oh yeah totally! I’m a big fan of making players aware of the fact that the world moves without them and telling them their rivals did the quest they’ve been meaning to do for the past four months is a pretty great way to accomplish that.
Important Party Types and Their Uses
The Rival (derogatory): party that is, whether seemingly or legitimately, significantly more accomplished than the players. Best used to stir up petty drama and/or inspire subtle action.
The Rival (affectionate): the party that happens to show up to claim the same or parallel jobs, is as skilled as the players, and is fair about competition. Best used as a non-lethal testing method, or as a resource to be tapped in large, multitask quests.
The Kennys: just as skilled as the players, only job is to show the players they are in deep shit, usually by rushing in and dying or worse.
The New Kids: significantly weaker than the players, but eager to prove themselves. Use to either inspire mentoring or to trick the players into calling themselves dumb by calling out repeats of the same dumb shit they pulled.
The Experts: hired agents by the government, use to show how you interpret law, procedure, and the relative power of elite officials in your setting. These parties should be both generic and static; if an elite dragon hunting team is level 5, they stay level 5 forever.
The Sweepers: as or more skilled than the players, they exist to take on time sensitive quests in exactly the ways they don’t want. They are the bad ending group, and exist to add, not relieve, time sensitive pressure.
The Kevins: a party that exists only to be found injured and going away from the quest location. Use to drop clues about encounters and to instill fear.
The Five Daves: a joke party that the players will of course get attached to and of course seek out for jolly cooperation and thus you find yourself having to voice these clowns in increasingly unlikely and unclownlike situations until they become as or more fleshed out than the players characters.
The Turks: A partly of roughly equal strength and the same goal as you. Unfortunately, their employer despises you so you end up in conflict a lot
Here at pokemon-with-hats dot tumblr dot com i want to celebrate april fools day by exploring other pokemon-with varieties. So today, as a special treat, i present:
What if the blog were named pokemon-with-shoes dot tumblr dot com?
The poll will continue as normal today, and I plan on opening my ask box for requests for April sometime this afternoon!
ovbiously this person has done so much research and cares about their tortoise so much but…. the mf idea of having a live tortoise in a TUPPERWARE?! IN MY FRIDGE?? WITH ME FOOD? ahahahaha
the concept of opening someone else’s fridge only to find a WHOLE ASS TORTOISE in there… idk if I’d ever recover
@esperantoauthor when the food doesn’t come to Tesla, Tesla comes to the food
Reminds me of when I accidentally stumbled across this photo for the first time…
mutuals put me in your fridge
Back in 2015, I went over to a classmate’s house for group project work late in the fall, and in the middle of working on the presentation, offered to grab sodas for people but they were out of pepsi and Andrew whose house we were at said “Oh, there’s more in the basement fridge.”
So I go down to the basement, which is well-lit and finished and indeed there are more pepsi but also in the fridge is a massive tortise. This animal was the dimensions of a desktop computer and probably outweighed a labrador. It’s not moving, and is set in the middle of a plastic tray so it’s apparently supposed to be there. I go back upstairs.
“Hey Andrew.” I say, nonchalantly. “So is the tortise in the fridge down there for soup or what?”
“The what?” says the other member of the group project. I don’t remember her name, just that she always wore her hair in pigtails with butterfly clips that were based on real butterflies and she had at least a dozen species.
“Oh! No, that’s Andrew Too.” he says. “His species hibernates so he stays in the fridge for the holidays.”
“You named your tortise after you?” I ask.
“No, uh- Well, my grandfather got him in Egypt or somewhere while he was on leave during the war and He was named Andrew, so he thought it would be funny to name him ‘Andrew Too’. …Then Mom named me after him so Gandpa left me Andrew Too in his will. He’s pretty cool when he’s awake. Lets us dress him up for summer holidays, doesn’t bark.”
“Oh!” Said Butterflies. “My dad served in the Gulf War too! What unit was he in?”
“Oh no, Grandpa was with the Royal Air Force in World War Two. Andrew Too is going to be 70 this year! We’re going to make him a carrot cake!”
This began as a guide to describing Afro / curly hair but of course, I got carried away. From look and texture of hair, colors and various styles, this guide serves as a thesaurus of sorts for hair, as well as pointers for use in your writing.
Please check under the read more for an accessible version of these lists
Culturally Significant Hair Coverings:
Know the meaning behind head wear and why it’s worn, when and by whom, such as a Native Nation’s headdress, before bestowing a character with it.
Appropriative Hairstyles: Keep in mind that Afro styles should be kept to those in the African Diaspora, such as dreadlocks, cornrows + certain and many braided styles.
Also, “locs” is a more favored term over “dreadlocks” for many people.
Tread carefully describing Afro hair as “wild” “unkempt” “untamed” or any words implying it’s unclean or requires controlling.
“Nappy” and “wooly” are generally words to stay away from, the first having heavy negative connotations for many and the latter, though used in the Holy Bible, is generally not acceptable anymore and comes off as dehumanizing due to Animal connotations.
There are mixed feelings on calling Black hair “kinky.” I’m personally not opposed to the word initself and usage depends on the person’s race (I’m more comfortable with a Black person using it vs. a Non-Black person) as well as their tone and context (if it’s used in a neutral or positive tone vs. negatively/with disdain). Get feedback on your usage, or simply forgo it.
Combination Words: Try combining words to illustrate look of hair. A character with springy coils that dance across her shoulders with every movement, the man with thick silvery hair slicked back into a ponytail…
Mind Perspective: Depending on POV, a character might not know exactly what cornrows or a coiffure style is, at least in name, and it might make more sense if they described the hairdo instead. More defining terms might come from a more knowing source or the wearer themselves. One book I read described a girl’s afro puff as “thick hair pulled up into a cute, curly, poufy thing on top of her head and tied with a yellow ribbon.”
POC & Hair Colors: People of Color’s hair comes in all shades and textures. There are Black people with naturally blond and loosely-textured to straight hair, East Asian people with red hair, and so on. Keep that in mind when coding characters if you tend to rely on hair color alone to denote a character is white vs. a Person of Color.
Related Tropes: There are tropes and discussion related to People of Color, colored hair, and light-colored hair and features.
