My 80s instrumental synth pop #CrateDigging has been very fruitful. I now have several hours of real no foolin 80s instrumental synth pop and instrumental covers of massive hits as well as 80s-inspired retrowave, dark synthwave, and ambient. Threw in a few banger soundtrack cuts as well. I even managed to home in on a few Swedish artists! Although the venn diagram of "svenska," "80s synth pop," "instrumental," and "available on youtube or bandcamp" is pretty narrow.

Now I must organize them into context-specific playlists for the upcoming #TalesFromTheLoop mystery I'm running for my wife's birthday. I will probably just limit myself to three -- adventure, quiet moments, and trouble. Doing location or NPC music like I do for major campaigns like #DeadSands will be wasted effort unless we end up running an entire campaign in this game some day.

🧵#ttrpg music

I run a #dnd game online called #deadsands. It's mildly Western-flavoured, with the bulk of the action taking place in a vast post-apocalyptic desert and the frontier town of Tano's Edge.

I have scored the campaign sort of like a film -- every major location has a main theme and a playlist. I have hotkeys to switch the music as they change locations, so when they enter, say, the saloon, I queue up a bunch of ragtime and honky tonk piano.

Major encounters also have their own music. There's a mysterious figure they keep meeting in the desert, Ol' Tom. His playlist is atmospheric, downtempo banjo music. And then there's battle music, boss battle music, long rest music, tense music, dungeon exploration music, and so on.

I did this to please me, but my hope was that my players would begin to associate music triggers with events in the game. I'm not sure this ever happened, and I'm not sure if my players care about any of this. 😁

re: #introduction

You see before you a middle-aged white male standing over six feet. He has a scraggly chin beard trimmed on the jaw line, wavy brown hair pulled back into a pony tail, and hazel eyes behind frankly ridiculous black, wide-rimmed eyeglasses. He's dressed like a twelve year-old in baggy jeans, hoodie, Beths t-shirt, and a KEXP beanie. A laptop bag is on his shoulder and overpriced headphones are around his neck. He's trying to look nonchalant as you approach but you can't shake the feeling he'd rather be listening to #music than engaging face to face.

"I help admin linernotes.club, the premiere fediverse destination for music lovers who nod knowingly at each other from across the room when that song comes on but probably won't ever introduce themselves," he says, unprompted. That was weird. Then: "Oh, that was weird. Sorry. Uh, say, have you heard the new Sloan record? I've got it right here..."

So hey, I'm evilchili. I am cis/het and use he/him pronouns. I mostly toot about music, because it brings me joy, and I believe joy is an act of resistance. When I go looking for new music I post about it on #CrateDigging. When I listen to it, I post #TastingNotes. Sometimes I do long threads about an artist's discography, like #TMBGTime. I'm not here for politics, shitposting, or irony. If you toot or boost that stuff that's cool but I won't be following. Nazi punks fuck off. AI, crypto, techbro punks too. Usually all the same punk.

I run a #dnd homebrew game called #deadsands. I do post occasionally about that. I make #resin #dice and toot about it on @dicefail. I've been working in tech for over 30 years and getting ready to start my second act. I'm married, have twin boys, and an old, blind, stupid, sweet Greyhound named Rufus (after mssr. Wainwright). Ask me anything!

Tonight we started a new arc in the #deadsands #dnd campaign -- a murder mystery! A PC's sister is accused of murdering her lover. The head of her faction hired the party to prove her innocence. The lover's rival faction wants her executed. The party has a wandering sheriff who is only concerned with the truth, even if the truth leads to all out war between the factions *and* condemns the sister to die. And the session ended with the sister confessing!

It is a ton of fun, and I've given it a bit of mechanical structure (because systems should always reflect theme):

https://deadsands.froghat.club/mechanics/murder-mystery/

Looking forward to another session of playing unreliable witnesses and lying suspects and power brokers who are trying to buy, or buy off, justice. :D

Always fun when the downtime session happens entirely in the local brothel and you have to improv a mysterious and intriguing sex worker to capture the party's attention. Fortunately my npc generator was ready and I presented them with three options. They chose Zgan, a lithe elven woman with prodigious ear piercings with a strawberry-blonde bob and pale skin in a bodysuit of red and silver tattoos. She was intelligent, charming, insightful, and quietly sensual. It's fun flirting with the player characters, and I liked this random NPC with a hinted-at tragic backstory a lot. I think the camel-centaur barbarian woman PC might be smitten! ❤️

They didn't pick the nb half-orc with the auburn curls and bubbly, excitable personality or the dwarven male companion. Something about how I described him as having frosted tips on both his hair and his beard might have thrown them off. :D

I love my players. Even the goofy filler episodes are full of great moments.

#dnd #deadsands #dwarfbro

Timeoff Report, Day 1: Slept 10.5 hrs. Took some decongestants, entered the Institute in Fallout 4 (again), ate a comfort food garbage lunch I'm already regretting. Listened to Smeared. Finished holiday shopping. Now sitting in the car in the middle school lot waiting for the boys to finish basketball practice while listening to the #KEXP listener-voted #AOTY countdown. Already added Magdelena Bay to the wishlist to investigate later.

We're doing a downtime episode of #dnd tonight so when I'm back home I'm going to spend an hour moving my NPC notes from the DM book I used at the start of #deadsands to my current book. Good day but kind of meloncholy. Will be glad to see the kids. I bought them giant gummy fried eggs because they will think it's dumb.

The Embers of Empire: a dice set commemorating the Sundering that ended the Second Age in fire, destroying the Empire of the Yanrin Didan and transforming the whole of the Dewa Q'Asos into desert.

#dice #resin #crafting #ttrpg #deadsands

My party isn't especially combat-focused, but for our second multi-year campaign, #deadsands, I described how the setting I was building would have areas that were more challenging than the first. But I'm always a little trepidatious when I design a challenging encounter and then everyone rolls like crap all night. It drags out the scenario and I worry it isn't fun.

I've had a reoccurring bad guy repeatedly show up and try to steal a wondrous item. They have fended him off twice but he has the ability to charm one of the PCs with no save -- which they do not know the reason for atm -- and every time be shows up he has bigger minions to boss around. The encounter isn't deadly -- he's not interested in killing the PCs, he just wants his book back. This time he succeeded in getting ahold of it and is now one round away from escape. He's at the bottom of initiative, so they have a full round to try and stop him. I hope they do! If they don't, they'll have to figure out how to go after him if they want it back. And I hope the stakes are fun?

I've asked the players, because that's what you do. I can make adjustments if necessary. But I still worry!

#dnd

I've been lazy about getting the locations section of my #deadsands #dnd campaign website updated because I wanted to do it with a complete map, but mostly that map consisted of negative space in my head that got filled in as the party went adventuring.

We're far enough along now, though, that I was able to draw the full region. Here's the occluded version that only shows areas my players have been. Hand drawn/inked, digital colour and overlays.

#FantasyMaps #cartography

As part of the #deadsands campaigin's theme of making mundane skill checks useful and interesting, I posted the homebrew rules for tinkering. This directly applies to the Artificer in the party, but it only really needs proficiency with artificer's tools.

#dnd #ttrpg #homebrew

https://deadsands.froghat.club/mechanics/tinkering/