this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023

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Don't you just hate railroading? ugh. (comicpress.socksandpuppets.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by ahdok@ttrpg.network to c/rpgmemes@ttrpg.network

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This comic is part of an ongoing story that might make more sense with full context.

First comic in this story
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Please be advised that if you use the connect app, it doesn't always correctly parse links to lemmy posts. If they're not working for you, you can follow the whole plotline on my site. (These comics are in reverse chronological order, so start at the end and work backwards.)

It's not really a "house" - It's Kolat Towers. Kolat Towers is a pair of wizard towers surrounded by a small compound. There's a lot of spare rooms.

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[–] Syncrossus@ttrpg.network 41 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Reading your comics has accidentally become part of my daily routine, and one of my most favorite at that. Konsi is so cute, and her and Razira are especially cute and wholesome together. Thanks for brightening up my days like this.

[–] ahdok@ttrpg.network 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sadly, we are going to run out in (counts) fifteen comics - at which point I'll be posting these a lot less frequently, but I'll still be making them :)

Fortunately, in October... I'll be drawing a Konsi every day for Gobtober.

[–] Kyoyeou@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 year ago

Impatient for Gobtober then!

[–] figaro@lemdro.id 5 points 1 year ago

Saaaaame I love them so much. I favorited the author in my Lemmy app so I can jump right to it in the morning 😁

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.de 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Awww Konsi in the last... last two... in every panel is so cute and adorable!

[–] ahdok@ttrpg.network 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.de 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How many do you have of those face reactions?! Its impressive!

[–] ahdok@ttrpg.network 51 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Hmm.

[–] Dre_Shalom@lemmy.sdf.org 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why do you have one named KonsiDead.png??

ANSWER ME

[–] ahdok@ttrpg.network 21 points 1 year ago

So I can make my DM feel bad if he knocks her unconscious during a fight.

[–] VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm more curious about the existence of KonsiSlime.png, to be honest.

[–] ahdok@ttrpg.network 6 points 1 year ago

Kyrzin's ooze.

[–] BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Someone from the Unicode consortium should donate a block to you.

Kyrzin/Konzi emojis!

[–] ahdok@ttrpg.network 16 points 1 year ago

I started these just for fun a couple years ago. I wanted practice drawing different facial expressions, and I was starting playing this campaign, I had drawn the token marked "Konsiyoung" there for playing my character on vtt, and I decided to flesh it out by drawing six faces for Konsi with different expressions (tthose ones here are "angry, cry, dead, grin, stun, and tongue"

Obviously, some of my other players wanted tokens too, so I added those... and then I was running a campaign as well, so I drew some faces for that... and pretty quickly I had about 20 tokens (about half of them Konsi faces)

These tokens look really good in VTT. The thick black linework and pencil texture makes characters "pop" compared to the background, and gives them a distinctive look compared to normal monster tokens (which are usually crops of more detailed painterly art)

So, I decided every couple weeks I'd draw a few extra tokens to start bulking out the collection - with the eventual aim of providing a nice comprehensive "token pack" for people to use. Because I draw characters in all of my campaigns, it's pretty lopsided right now. Lots and lots of gnomes and goblins, very few dwarves or elves...

At the moment, it's a pretty decent collection, if you just want some quick tokens for various NPCs it's pretty good... but I'm going to keep adding to it.

[–] GreasyTengu@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago

Now im imagining a set of emotes for Mystery, but its all the same image.

[–] figaro@lemdro.id 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Any chance these could become a telegram sticker pack?

[–] ahdok@ttrpg.network 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't really know how to make that, and I don't use telegram, but if you want to make that you're very welcome to!

These images work really well as "stickers" on a platform like discord, but they're a little too complex for emotes. (At emote scale they look a bit confused and jumbled)

If you want the raw files I put them in a public dropbox here

You're welcome to use these, or any of my art, for any purpose you like. This includes remixing it, using it in your vtt games, using it as an avatar on websites etc. The one exception I have is selling my art for money - if people want commercial-use work from me, they should talk to me about it :)

You don't have to credit me, but if you want to it's appreciated.

[–] jballs@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Now I feel like we need to see more of Chicken Bot.

[–] ahdok@ttrpg.network 5 points 1 year ago

That's Sergeant Peckers... He's an Artificer-Artillerist's cannon.

[–] Johanno@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

Woooow

[–] WeLoveCastingSpellz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 1 year ago

These are my fave part of lemmy

[–] Blubber28@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They already lived together huh...

So they were roommates?

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.de 12 points 1 year ago

Oh god they were roommates!

[–] ahdok@ttrpg.network 10 points 1 year ago

Heh... well, the party uh... "acquired" Kolat towers, a pair of wizard towers with a large attached compound - and converted the place into a home base. Kolat towers has enough space to house about 50 people comfortably.

[–] jounniy@ttrpg.network 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What would Konsi do should they have a serious fight? Throw her out?

[–] ahdok@ttrpg.network 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

[–] RIPandTERROR@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Delete this you monster

Konsi no cry

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Serious question: How did you draw this, your vision blurred by the tears borne of the mere idea of sad Konsi?

[–] ahdok@ttrpg.network 18 points 1 year ago

I am too powerful to be stopped.

[–] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Funnily enough railroading doesn't really bug me if it's done in more broad strokes

Basically the players talk about their goals with the campaign in session zero and the railroad is basically the road trip getting the stuff the players want to do done

The broad strokes are things defined beforehand but the finer details are purely up to the players

So basically a wandering road trip rather than a railroad

[–] ahdok@ttrpg.network 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

"Railroading" is often used overbroadly to the point of meaninglessness. My title here is supposed to be poking fun at that a little.

As a negative term "railroading" is supposed to refer to when you actively prevent the players from exploring or doing something they want to do, and that should work, because it doesn't follow a set path you've planned out:

Example: you plan for a villain to taunt the characters, fight them briefly, and then escape. The players do better in the combat than you expected, and would have removed all his HP, so you bump the HP up, then on his turn have him cast dimension door to escape. When a character counterspells the dimension door, you give him counterspell to counter that counterspell. When a second counterspell happens, you have one of his mooks pull out a scroll of counterspell and use it... Because you need him to escape for your plot, so you force it.

That's negative railroading. It's much better to let them succeed, then alter your plans for future sessions accordingly. Maybe there's more to the evil scheme than just this one guy, maybe they won the day and stopped the threat and the next arc is something else (and maybe you can re-use that dungeon you already planned out)

It's perfectly okay, and in fact often a good idea, to plan out the broad strokes of your story in advance, you need to plan something and you can't plan for everything - so having a good idea of what's coming is usually the right move - it's only bad if you refuse to let the story go to other places.

[–] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago

My friend you put that exceptionally

[–] sammytheman666@ttrpg.network 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yesterday, I had a bad session, and I wish to have a second opinion.

There is railroading, a concept that you talked a lot about, and I wish to present to your wisdom this new concept that I will call : gagging.

Gagging is when a DM... talks to much. Maybe it's describing every single action and consequence, maybe it's overdescripting areas and people, maybe it's not letting the players talk enough when it's their time, it's something in between these 3 and more.

Every player know not to interrupt the DM. So that also means that as the DM, you might want to consider if what you are saying matters enough, interests the players, is required or not, and if your players are receptive to it to some degree.

I think it's a bigger problem whenever a DM is following a module... badly. By badly, I mean they want to convey everything the module tells them to convey, but they also try to put their spin on it, making them talk more hesitantly, slower, with more pauses. If they would just read the descriptions aloud, it would be smoother and faster. If it were their creation, they probably could give details and descriptions easier since it's theirs. But when DMs try to go in between and don't prepare enough, it makes every description a crawl that you stop listening to midpoint because you know it won't really matter enough to force yourself to listen to it.

The main point of gagging as a concept to me is not so much to force players down a specific path without their input, as railroading is more or less that but with nuances, but more a way to keep the players from talking and inputing their choices, dialog or interactions into the game.

Since DMs have the mike when they talk, and since interrupting them is taboo (which I fully agree with), it then becomes very important to weight what they say and how they say it in a way that don't turn players off.

And yes, yesterday I had what I would call a gagging DM. It wasn't the first session with them, but probably the last, as I lost complete interest in the campaign. Not only because of the gagging of course. But it fucking sucks for me to leave a campaign in which I had some amount of fun, but not enough to stick around.

[–] ahdok@ttrpg.network 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Generally speaking, if the style of a table just isn't right for you, and you're not having fun, it's better to drop than it is to just carry on attending and feel miserable about it.

However, you may not want to drop in some instances - maybe the DM is a close friend and you want to support them, maybe you don't have any other options for campaigns to join, maybe you've got sunk costs and you're near the end and you just want to see it out, etc..

In that case you could try talking to the DM about it to help them improve... Not in a "hey you suck" kind of way, but in a "Can we talk? I've got some suggestions that might help make the game better" kind of way.

If it's a close group of friends you could try running a side campaign or a mini-campaign yourself, and, provide the group examples where the game runs a little better (not in a "you're doing it wrong let me show you" kind of way, just in a "hey I have a mini-campaign I'd like to run" kind of way.)

Remember that no DM is perfect, and everyone is learning and improving all the time, and that the primary purpose of playing together is to have fun.

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[–] VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

She may live in her house, but they're still in different rooms (for now) so they technically each have their own place. Which means Razira asked a valid question, more or less.

[–] sammytheman666@ttrpg.network 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But... what is railroading here ?

[–] ahdok@ttrpg.network 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Just a little joke.

"Railroading" is when the DM of your game removes choices, or only gives you once choice for where the story is going next. Because "your place" and "my place" are the same place, the joke is that this is a railroad story - it's just a joke, not serious.

[–] sammytheman666@ttrpg.network 5 points 1 year ago

Huh. Okay. I missed that joke sorry with the title. But yeah, thank you, I know what railroading is.

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