dismallyOriented

Songs for the Dusk: Downtime 2 Recap

2025-11-08T14:59:15Z

Landed myself a 3 day weekend after having to call in sick, so spending the time trying to get caught up on these. We'll see how far I can get, yippee

NPCs reference list
Annalise Challenger (she/her) - stern, lean, proud - Dragonkid’s mom, still quietly mourning the loss of her child; trusts Dragonkid implicitly, even after all these years; likes Quentim and is willing to help out
Arcturus (they/them) - secretive, dangerous, impulsive - the child who fused with a dragon 20 years ago, now returned for a reason they won’t say; has a softly glowing aura in the shape of a dragon’s features
Imogen Constant (she/her) - distracted, forgetful, outgoing - 13yo forgetful messenger girl, Library apprentice; probably plural, doesn’t know what that is; one of like 4 kids and the only one in her age group
Senary (she/they) - adventurous, pushy, overconfident - Imogen’s headmate/imaginary friend; definitely not a 13 y/o Trinity Escapade factive from when Imogen was reading about her when she was younger. Loves Marl because it let her shoot a gun (Imogen is jealous)
Hema Preston^[1] (he/him) - cop, traditionalist, devoted - Leader of the Lithobreakers, somewhat arrogant and prone to quoting laws; native to Dragon’s Rest
Vanessa Deirdret (she/them) - ruthless, strict, imperious - Yara’s ‘rival’, a fellow member of Nowhere, known to be somewhat ruthless and uncaring when it comes to cataloguing and acquiring information and tech. She won’t directly hurt people, but she won’t spare a moment’s thought for their wellbeing either

( Love Letters )

( Downtime 2 )

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Songs for the Dusk: Mission 2 Recap

2025-11-07T03:06:59Z

We continue on to Mission 2, a really straightforward and fun romp of a mission and an immediate favorite. dO, you may say, isn't 2 missions into a campaign a bit early to pick a favorite? And you'd be correct, because mission 3 is also already a fucking banger. But you have to understand. This was pulpy science fantasy adventure bullshit par excellence.

NPCs List:
- The Stranger (they/them) - secretive, dangerous, impulsive - Mysterious vagabond who arrived at The Crashpad for undisclosed reasons. Seems to possess dangerous levels of magical power, not unlike the dragon we rescued from Mission 1
- Cetacea Hardin (she/her) - wary, stubborn, outgoing - New Haven's militia commander and chief of security. Mid-50s, knows everyone in town and a friendly face. Does not do internal police work, mostly she keeps tabs on Dragon's Rest, the pump station, and other external threats. A bit of a homebody, somewhat suspicious of Radiant technology (including DIONE), and collector of rumors.
- The Scrappers Union - local scrap and machinist worker organization. On slightly bad terms with the Crashers, as we ended up taking a town resource they wanted, and DIONE likes us better.
- Lily Constant (she/it) - sturdy, motherly, steady - Isaiah Constant's spouse; community scout, very scarred; MILF

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( Mission 2 Summary )

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Songs for the Dusk: Downtime 1 Recap

2025-07-10T14:47:51Z

Realized only just now I typo'd the title of my last recap post. Boo. At the time of writing this draft, I was trying to make sure I got this one out before we finished Mission 2. I did not finish this before we finished Mission 2 lmao. [Wife's note: HE SO PROFOUNDLY DID NOT DO THAT] Anyway, delays aside, it's time for Downtime!

For those of you who don't play Forged in the Dark games (FitD), games that use that system have a codified Downtime phase that occurs between missions. It's time for PCs to rest and recover from whatever stress & harm they've racked up, work on long term projects for themselves, and deal with any other complications and random events that the GM rolls up. It's also a fantastic time for character interactions between party members and NPCs. Each player has two actions to spend working on those aforementioned things.

All FitD games (as far as I'm aware) have a Complication that occurs during downtime. The GM rolls for a random occurrence off a table, based on certain in-game conditions like "how much trouble have you caused with your missions." Crews that have accrued more heat and bad attention will have more troublesome random events, some of which will involve factions that they've pissed off coming to. Resolve their problems, let's say. For example, we've taken -1 rep with Children of the Fault, the group that Isaiah belongs to, because even if you have really good reasons to scrub a mission it's still not a good look to take on a job and then say "Actually, never mind." Despite that we're still within the most basic heat level, so we would've been fine - had our GM not rolled the "reroll on a higher danger table" option and landed on "Quintessent Life - troublesome spirits and magical creatures".^[1] Which, to be fair. We did bring home a wholeass dragon wisp, so.

Because Songs for the Dusk is so community focused, it adds another feature to its downtime phase called "Threads". At the start of the downtime, you pick a broad theme or concept about your community that you can build your downtime scenes around. For this downtime, we chose, "How does gossip work in this town?" and began filling in the different avenues of how news spreads in our community, and how people talk to each other.

( A side note on Love Letters )

( Downtime 1 )

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the world is dark and we are alive

2024-10-30T03:07:51Z

A brief Halloween post for y'all, two days before the Big Day. There's this tragic horror tabletop game called 10 Candles, in which you play doomed characters in the middle of a dark apocalypse. By doomed I mean "all your characters will die at the end". It's an incredibly atmospheric game - you play in darkness, and the title comes from the ten candles that are lit as part of the game. Each candle represents one scene, and as your characters fail rolls, the candles go out one by one, until you have the final one remaining and your characters have their last stand against the monsters. It's a tremendous experience, nigh ritualistic. My wife just ran a streamed oneshot for our tabletop oneshots discord, and it fucked severely.

This was a poem I wrote after my first ever game (also with my now-wife, way back in 2017).

( the world is dark and we are alive )

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Spire: the most Session per Session I've ever had in a tabletop game

2024-09-22T21:39:46Z

[Originally posted on cohost, August 2024]

So back in like, 2021-2022 (exact end date no longer clear), I was in a Spire campaign run by an internet friend of mine. It's one of the few campaigns I've ever managed to play to completion, and I fucking loved the system and the game we made together.

I was recently reminded of one of the standout sessions we had, so here is a recounting of that session, recreated from some old discord logs at the time. Generalized plot spoilers for the pre-written campaign Kings of Silver to follow

( Read more... )

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The circus faction in your tabletop setting/source book is cooler than you think

2024-09-22T21:12:16Z

[Originally posted on cohost, 8/25/24]

Apologies for the slightly clickbait-y cadence of this title. It's the end of a workday and I'm trying to turn this thought I had yesterday into a real people post.

I recently watched this video from Tom Scott Plus, one of Tom Scott's many side channel projects. This channel generally involved collab videos with other youtubers, often involving him trying a new thing and learning a new skill. This one's the one where he learns how to walk a tightrope in about 2 days. It's a great video, one I highly recommend to anyone who's even a little interested, both because it's incredibly entertaining but also because the person instructing him, Chris Bullzini from the Bullzini Family Circus, steals the entire goddamn show.

I cannot overstate how great a job Chris does here as a teacher. He's a great speaker, real charismatic, but also a good chunk of his coaching is bound up in the mental game and personal philosophy as much as it is teaching the technical aspects of these skills. Some of it sounds like personal life coach shit, like "Don't say the f-word" in reference to falling. But some of it also sounds like the kind of mental toughness coaching that I more strongly associate with high level martial arts or professional athletes. Cultivating extreme mental clarity and focus, confidence in your bodily skill, and in general an intense body-and-mind awareness that is kind of necessary to like, risk life and limb doing impressive tricks at 50ft up off the ground.

In hindsight, it all makes a lot of sense. Athletes, martial artists, and circus performers all need to train a high level of physical skill and performance, and if you want to get good you will need to invest as much in the mental side as you do the physical. Both because you need a good mentality to be able to train your way to physical mastery without giving up (especially for something difficult or scary) but also because if you psyche yourself out, you might as well not have the skill at all, because your performance will fail if you lose your head.

The reason I make this post is like. Often it feels like the hallmark of circus-y factions in tabletop settings is focusing more on the whimsy, the itinerant entertainer aspect, the fun and unusual assemblage of skills. After watching that video I've been thinking about it more in lines of physical prowess and mental acuity too - all the things you need to train to be an acrobat are transferable skills to being a really cool fighter as well. And I think that's an interesting characterization point to dig into.

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