Ishmael, The Transition will be Live

@comrade-ishmael

Year of the Smile :) They/Them

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Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· 28d

"These aren't decorations - they're declarations." Fuck me.

Your walls are bare. Your walls are vulnerable. We can fix that! Get a set of eight full-color Deathbringer posters, each a massive 47x21 inches of glorious doom printed on glossy poster stock. These aren't decorations — they're declarations. Hang them in your game room and let every player who enters know exactly what kind of table they've sat down at: the kind where the art is beautiful, the stakes are fatal, and the walls have been watching characters die for some time now.

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· 28d

Like, this writing is barely a step above that one weirdo who is *still* making AI slop bios for people.

Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel is George’s central tabletop legacy.

The book was published by Wizards of the Coast in 2022 for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. George created the project and served as co-lead designer and co-lead writer with F. Wesley Schneider.

The anthology presents thirteen adventures and a hub setting built around the Radiant Citadel, a floating city in the Ethereal Plane.

The Citadel is not a tavern with a quest board.

It is a place of arrival.

It is built as a sanctuary, a crossroads, and a place where people carry memory with them.

That framing changes the emotional center of a D&D hardcover.

Many D&D adventures begin with conquest, extraction, ruin, and the assumption that the world is yours to take from.

Radiant Citadel does not eliminate conflict.

It asks a different first question.

Can adventure begin with community instead of conquest?

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· 28d

And you know what? I'm a big enough hater to ask: did you people use ChatGPT to write your Backerkit page? It's so annoyingly written that I, somebody whose job was microwork quality analysis for LLM slop for two years, keep having flashbacks.

These dice weren't made. They survived. Each set looks like it was pulled from a basement game in 1983 and never stopped rolling — scuffed, faded, worn smooth by decades of desperate saving throws and doomed characters. These aren't pristine collector's pieces. They're veterans. Every scratch is a TPK. Every worn edge is a character who didn't make it. Each set of battle-worn dice is guaranteed to deliver a natural 20 right when you need it most. (Natural 20 not actually guaranteed. Void where prohibited by the dice gods.)

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· 28d

Okay, maybe I'm getting a little cute with it, but it's really annoying to frame your game entirely in opposition to 5E specifically when you're just a glorified Shadowdark hack. Aren't most games in this space "not another safe fantasy game?"

Forged in blood by Professor DM and Roll For Combat, with contributions from Brandon Gillam, this is not another safe fantasy game. This is steel. Fire. Consequence.

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· 28d

I am not the target demo for this game.

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· 28d

Not just x, but y

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· 28d

lmao

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· 28d

No war in Iraq

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· 28d

Playing W. and I really like how it's written to remind you, no matter how much you lean into the "compassionate conservatism", that Bush was still an asshole.

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· Jul 13

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· Jul 10

[nodding sagely]

CAIN spread

Text: CAIN
kill the scum with hammers, what a great idea
what a nice day for a hunt
let's all get outside and do our best

I AM WORTHY OF THE ARK
AND I HOPE TO GOD YOU CAN'T SWIM

Image is three very distinctive blorbos drawn by Tom Bloom

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· Jul 9

Doing this in front of a group of friends to change the trajectory of their lives forever.

One In All
Level 5
The Rectifier may cast this spell as an Instant action
when they are reduced to zero hit points. They explode
in a mass of mobile biological fragments that often ap-
pear vaguely insect-like. This swarm scatters into an
expanding cloud of scuttling and flying life, fleeing with
human forethought and intellect. If an area-effect at-
tack that inflicts at least 10 points of damage is used
against the swarm, it will be destroyed, but this usually
must be done within two rounds of the spell’s casting
or a fragment is likely to escape. If even one mobile
fragment escapes destruction and is able to find a hu-
man-sized place to hide for 1d6 days, it can regenerate
the Rectifier’s entire body and mind. The Rectifier so
restored revives with maximized System Strain and
cannot use this spell for one month thereafter. The
fragments cannot attack or manipulate objects, but
they move with an intelligence directed by the Rec-
tifier’s mind, which can choose which fragment to be
re-embodied from. Any fragments that don’t result in
a reborn Rectifier die and dissolve afterwards.

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· Jul 8

One of the villains of General Hospital looks like Andrew Cuomo.

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· Jul 8

Crusader Kings III's Adventurer Mode is so much fun for me. I love wandering around with my little party. I think it is very very very very very very very funny that Paradox did not realize this feature would be overwhelmingly insanely popular with its player base.

When we first designed Landless Adventurers, we envisioned them as a transition state, something you'd hop into for a bit and then hop back out of. A deposed ruler licking their wounds, a dynasty member off making their name before claiming a title, a brief interlude between two different, landed lives. We included them as a tertiary feature in Roads to Power with exactly that in mind.

Well, we underestimated how powerful the player fantasy of working your way up from nothing ultimately was. The Adventurer playstyle has resonated with players far beyond what we expected, and we've been very pleasantly surprised by it: a custom 867-start Landless Adventurer is now the single most popular campaign starting point, by a significant margin.

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· Jul 8

Me with neutrino detectors

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· Jul 7

lol c'mon man

YouTube video titled "Ready Or Not is not Copaganda | An Officer's Perspective". The thumbnail is an officer in-game. The text in the thumbnail says "And It's Not a Fantasy Either".

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· Jul 7

Everybody is getting Ken's ass for the smoothgroin stuff, but here Ken is whining about Susan being objectively correct about Platner's service record. This was not Vietnam; he did not have to enlist. The guy loved killing people so much he became a MERCENARY.

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· Jul 7

WAITWAITWAITWAIT-

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· Jul 7

Wait wait wait wait-

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· Jul 6

Developing a rhyme and reason to the fittings I'm creating for this thing. I know nuclear saltwater rockets are pretty much impossible, but I love them anyway.

Nuclear Saltwater Rocket: A high-performance rocket fueled by water containing dissolved salts of enriched uranium in a barely sub-critical state. Released into the reaction chamber, it creates a continuous nuclear reaction directly behind the water. You will be shot and killed using this anywhere that isn’t a barren rock or deep space. Each mass bunker can hold two fuel points of uranium-saltwater costing 100KCr each. The ship grants +4 Combat Speed per fitting.

The ship drive and fuel are volatile. If the Engine Lock or Fuel Bleed ship crisis are rolled, also take the System Damage crisis. If a mass bunker containing uranium-saltwater or the NSR is destroyed, roll twice more on the Ship Crisis table.

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· Jul 6

Our Rockwell International constructed ODC-2 Defender is, for Babylon purposes, a Speed 2 Destroyer with an Orion Launch Shield. This increases the amount of fuel in each Mass Bunker of the ship by 50% from 2 points of Fuel to 3.

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· Jul 6

I don't actually want to add a ton of math to Engines of Babylon, just make interplanetary travel take a long ass time and maybe use QECM to justify having to deliver messages and mail by ship. Solution as usual: Pyramid #3/79: Space Atlas' Halfway to Anywhere

Cover of Pyramid #3/79: Space Atlas, released May of 2015. Halfway to Anywhere is an article by Timothy Ponce.

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· Jul 6

Every time I screw around with a TTRPG's spaceship building system, I try to find an "in" so I can start doing bizarre GURPS shit to it and, good news, I found my in for Stars Without Number's Engines of Babylon.

ORION LAUNCH SHIELD
The ship has been built with a massive launch plate at its
aft, allowing nuclear fission explosions to provide launch
capabilities and motive power underway. The launch pro-
cess is highly radioactive and unhealthy to the surrounding
launch zone, but very efficient in lifting a ship into orbit. An
Orion-capable ship can lift into orbit without spending fuel,
as the fission explosive costs are relatively negligible, and
the enhanced efficiency of the process allows each point of
Mass Bunker fitting to carry three points of fuel.

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· Jul 5

This single frame from Shackleton Disaster has done unspeakable things to my brain and imagination. www.youtube.com/watch?v=bct3...

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· Jul 3

Maybe SSPX can write down a formal protest and nail it to the Pope's door.

Sir Integra Hellsing smoking a big cigar

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· Jul 1

Nuclear bomb.

Shen's drawing of a feminine Shen with a choker asking the reader, "Bet this makes you feel some funny new feelings about me, huh??"

Ishmael, The Transition will be Live@comrade-ishmael· Jul 1