Apothecaria

My journal entries for Apothecaria, a solo journaling RPG. Text of all entries is here: docs.google.com/document/d/1Yk-EGhVTykvq4pQqytfiyNJjylBRF...

Flickr

(Week Three of summer in #Apothecaria , to be more accurate. Already went through 13 weeks of spring.)

Text for today! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yk-EGhVTykvq4pQqytfiyNJjylBRFOTyPT1GlCgU8iY/edit#bookmark=id.ip9ci6qreesf

#MastoArt #SoloRPG

Also, today marks my 1 year anniversary of playing Apothecaria, and a year of having an entry to post every single day.

(There have been several days when I forgot to actually POST the entry that I had ready to go and ended up posting it the next day along with a second entry, granted. 😅 There's a Discord where I also post and they've gotten an entry every day. The Flickr archive gets even more erratic updates than .art, fwiw)

@rowyn that is some impressive persistence!
@ljwrites yeah, never thought I'd be making daily illustrated entries for an entire year for a *game*. 😂
@rowyn does the creator know? I know I'd be all kinds of flattered.
@ljwrites They have a discord and I post on the discord about my journal every 100 entries or so.
@rowyn amazing xD Do they comment on it?
@ljwrites Nah, they never comment on the journal sharing channels. Not sure if they look at the channels or not.
@rowyn Do you think yours is the longest-running, or do you see even longer ones? xD
@ljwrites I don't know, actually? Most people who share journals share new ones rather than folks updating about their progress on an existing one, and I don't follow the discord closely any more. (There was a bunch of AI art for a while and I just muted the server.) Pretty sure there are people who've been playing for longer and ones who've written more, tho. Apothecaria is one of the better-known/more popular solo RPGs.
@rowyn It's awesome that people keep up playing for so long, this is like those multi-year campaigns of legend but solo :D
@ljwrites I used to run multi-year campaigns, way back in the day, but those were not as consistent as my Apothecaria game. :D
@rowyn Yeah understandably! I think the longest campaign I ran was for a year and a half.

@ljwrites I only vaguely know how long my multi-year campaigns went. There was a shared-GM superhero setting that I played in college and for a year or so after graduation, that was probably involved with for 4 years (but that started before me and continued after me with other GMs).

Another shared-GM setting was Sinai, which, omigosh, is so well-documented that I can see how long I was involved with it--2 years. http://sinai.webconnections.net/library.php?gmthread=Rowan . Also ran long before/after me--at least 13 years.

Log Library: Logs GMed by "Rowan"

@ljwrites And then Mirari, which ran for about 2 years with me and a co-GM, @Tuftears, and an assistant GM, Greywolf.

And a few games after that -- the Just Trust Me game, A Game of October, and a World Tree game, that each lasted like 1 to 3 years, I think.

@rowyn @ljwrites *purrs* Good times. ^.^
@Tuftears @rowyn holy crap, those were some long games! There must be so many memories.
@ljwrites @Tuftears So many! From Sinai onwards, almost all my roleplaying has been online and in text, so I have complete copies of many of the games. They're So Long. o_o
@rowyn Oh wow, text games! You don't see those as much anymore. I remember them being more common in the 00's because of bandwidth and hardware constraints. Kinda wish there were more of them, they have a very different energy than either spoken games or asynchronous written games like Play by Post. @Tuftears
@ljwrites I love written games much more than live. They feel way more immersive to me, because I'm not distracted by how the participants look/sound/perform, or by the GM trying to play multiple roles at the same time. Play-by-post is actually my favorite mode, though. Synchronous play gives me performance anxiety these days. :/
@rowyn Yeah valid, there's a lot of time pressure in synchronous play whether spoken or written. Plus, setting up the time to play all at one time is hell. I played some good PbP games (on wiki) and always kind of want to dive back into one. I can't seem to keep up on PbP of games meant to be played synchronously, but have a better record for PbP on asynchronously-designed games and rather miss the experience. I guess joint journaling games would fill that niche nowadays.
@rowyn @ljwrites That's always a bit of an issue with synchronous, but I confess I do miss the days of being able to get friends together weekly for those campaigns. These days playing Baldur's Gate 3 or something like that with friends online fills that need a bit.

#Apothecaria

image screened because Umbral is showing off again (nude male torso, no genitals shown)

Text: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yk-EGhVTykvq4pQqytfiyNJjylBRFOTyPT1GlCgU8iY/edit#bookmark=id.5omuz1hv0mef

#MastoArt #SoloRPG

@rowyn Oh I *love* that pattern on the front, not to mention the way the silver lines stand out and act as accents throughout.

@ljwrites *purrs* Thank you!

Umbral: *beams in delight*

@rowyn umbral has upgraded their bathing setup i see
@Satsuma Umbral: "I did! I had to put a mirror in so that Cassie could speak with me here if she tried to contact me."
@rowyn very clever! I’m sure it will be put to good use
@Satsuma Umbral: "This plan bore fruit in less than a week. I am already delighted!"
@rowyn Aww I love the way you draw birds!

@ljwrites *purrs*

idk why the birds keep coming out the best of my illustrations 😂

@rowyn Something to do with being able to stick to the reference, maybe? 
@ljwrites I stick to references for a LOT of illustrations in Apothecaria, though. Maybe it's easier to find good birb refs. 😂
@rowyn true, there are soooo many good bird pics.
@rowyn Delightfully creepy bones!
@ljwrites aww ty ❤️ I think the first dragon-skeleton illustration was even creepier for being a closeup: https://www.flickr.com/photos/45587160@N08/53123246152/in/album-72177720307338567/
145 Apothecaria week 8

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@rowyn Whoa you’re right! And that blaze in its eye sockets… top notch! 
@ljwrites Thank you! I technically still put the blaze in the latest version, but it doesn't have nearly the same impact. 😊

@rowyn that last line is so sweet <3

The cloud isles seem super neat! And their inhabitants as well

@Satsuma Cassie: "Yes! It's nice to finally get up here, after being in the area for so long."