indie_games | Member Posts

Today is sunny and mild, a beautiful spring day. It rained again last night.

I fed the birds. I heard a bluejay screaming but didn't see it.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

List of tabletop RPG with unusual premises

Most of these are darker than I'd want to play, but the premises are interesting. Among my favorites with unusual premises:

The Details of Our Escape -- Played with a standard 28-tile set of dominos instead of dice, players control a caravan of over 2000 people in search of a new home.

The Far Roofs -- a game of talking rats, and monstrous gods, and you.

Underisles -- a roleplaying game based on sign language, actually the third in a set.

World Tree: A Roleplaying Game of Species and Civilization -- set on, yes, an enormous tree with eight prime species; one of the rare games with no human characters.

Current Mood: busy

althea_valara

So lately I've been going to bed between 9pm and 10pm, partially due to Dog, partially out of boredom or tiredness. This means I have ALSO been getting up early. Well, last night I stayed up until past 11pm, doing the new Main Scenario Quests in Final Fantasy XIV, which meant I was TIRED when finished and went straight to bed rather than post this.

1. one creative thing I did today

Nada, it's patch day! Okay, I did answer one question on Ravelry. But I didn't do any creative work myself because I didn't have time. I'm fine with this.

2. one thing I'm proud of today

Well. I had intended to get up early and do the Alliance Raid before starting work, but then I didn't sleep well and got up later than intended. I considered doing the raid anyway, because I *do* set my own hours and thus they are flexible, but I thought, "Wouldn't you feel better doing the raid after having gotten some work done, so raid is now a reward?" So I chose to do work first. I'm pretty pleased with myself for having done so.

3. video game progress

PATCH DAY PATCH DAY PATCH DAY!!!! I did indeed do the Alliance Raid in the afternoon, and then MSQ after dinner. I had fun with both, but think I enjoyed the raid more (though MSQ's trial was FUN). This is not to say MSQ was bad! Just that the raid hit more of my pleasure centers from being a former FFXI player in its heyday.

I must link this tumblr post, which

lassarina shared with us. It's about the recent keynote, not the patch:

Yoshi P should bring back Alaimbert of the Spiked Butt as a boss and give him a move called Butt Slider so he can say to fans: "Well? This is what you asked for, right?"

--verodynamix on tumblr

I wheezed laughing at that!

And now, SPOILER TIME! Here's my notes and reactions from the patch.

First up, alliance raid. This is very detailed, listing the bosses you face and some of their moves, so SPOILERS AHOY!

Alliance Raid SPOILERS

Alliance Raid clear! I rolled 99 on minion, whee!

first boss is Shantotto - There is no trash before her. She is quite formidable, as one might expect. I didn't recognize the music but I'm guessing it's from A Shantotto Ascension, an add-on scenario. I was tripped up by two mechs. First, she puts BLM's uh, sigil thingy they stand in, all over the arena. You need to dart into the one she's in and then follow her to other ones quickly. I didn't realize this at first and died. Also died twice to a move that I thought was a symbol that meant action was happening ON ME to the ENTIRE RAID, but I think everyone sees it on themselves? It's a wind move. Before she does it, she days a Tremor or Quake move that juts out pieces of the arena, you have to go in an alcove so you don't get blown away. This really confused me and I panicked first time and just stood there because it looked like it would affect EVERYONE and I didn't know the safe place to stand, if that makes sense. I finally got it after getting blown off a second time. Lots of deaths in this one, and I basically floor tanked.

next is Aht Urghan: BESIEGED!!! I was squeeing because I loved Besieged back in the day. It's a server-wide battle people can join and fight in. This is just a series of trash, but harder than normal trash.

then you get transported to Nzyul Isle and face Alexander, the boss of the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expac, leading someone to say "HOW MANY TIMES DO I NEED TO KILL YOU?" hahaha. I felt most of the moves for him were self-explanatory, just had difficulty DOING them. Wifh practice I should do better.

Next up is the Ru'met Gardens area where first you have some trash, but again, a little more difficult. There are pot-like enemies (not magic pots, more like obelisks I guess but we always called them pots). They have eye-like symbols painted on them, and just like FFXI, will do an attack in the direction they're gazing, so stay out of the AoEs,. I'd focus on them first. They're a Ae'ryn (SP?) add too, but that is not that bad. The pots are worse.

next boss is Promathia, the final boss of the Chains of Promathia expansion. - During the middle of this fight, you're transported/shifted to Promyvions, a dark creepy area. You will be fighting adds named Memory Receptacles. They do a move called Empty Seed, a knockback that you need to position yourself so you end up in one of the four corner walls. Besides that, this fight has a LOT of dodging, so stay nimble

last boss Phase 1 is Shinryu. Unfortunately, I had technically difficulties and blackscreened after the CS, so I missed the phase 1 fight (I had to crash the game and get back in). 🙁 I did make it back for second half! I won't spoil transition cutscene or final form, but again, there is a lot of dodging, and I think some moves will feel a little familiar.

I would be happy to go again with anyone who wants company ❤️

OMG I GOT CASTING HANDS TOO!! I had some RDMs in the party so I didn't expect to get it, with my poor roll. but yay!

also the cutscenes are gorgeous

And here's some reactions to MSQ:

MSQ reactions! SPOILERS!

first quest, bit of snark: man am I glad my glam is the Isle Explorer's outfit with the backpack so that when I retrieved the key, I could pretend I was pulling it out of the backpack and not my ass

still first quest: okay, what's with the dirt on Tataru's nose? It was immediately noticiable to me. guess I play more and see if they explain it!

second quest: dungeon already? okay then

post dungeon, on moon - livingway: "I don't foresee any major problems." gate: ROAR!!! Livingway: "Oh. Nope. We're doomed." I laughed very much at her delivery of that

unlocked trial, MUSIC TIME!!!! <3!!. Also, I chose the "no time to explain!" answer to Zero's "What are you doing here?" and she said "Leave it to you to state the obvious." and I laughed at that, too. I knew we'd see her again, but glad we ARE, because I missed her

whaaaat, why is queue 30 minutes? I expected a fast queue, but I guess everyone's hitting it at the same time and clogging the servers, boo

trial over: that was fun, and I don't think I died once, YAY!

I might natter more about it later, but right now I have to get ready for gym with mom.

Current Mood: pleased

alisx

A wall of glass-blown anatomical hearts. They have electrified plasma inside them like those lightning ball things they sell in novelty shops.

Went to the local glassworks after lunch today. Which was a Mistake, because now I want one of these glass electric plasma hearts soooooooo baaaaaaad.

Leave a comment.⁺

ysabetwordsmith

This year during Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, I'm writing about reading as a way of becoming an expert in a given subject. Read Part 1: Introduction to Becoming an Expert, Part 2: Architecture, Part 3: Dance, Part 4: Music.

Three Weeks for Dreamwidth Part 5: Painting

Painting is a visual art based on meaningful marks. I'll include both drawing and painting here, as they use some of the same materials to similar ends. Popular media include acrylic paint, charcoals, colored pencils, ink, oil paint, and watercolor. It's really a spectrum because some media can be used for both, like watercolor pencils or ink. All known human cultures make art, hence the huge range of drawing and painting styles. Here on Dreamwidth, check out

art,

drawesome,

everykindofcraft, or

justcreate. See also lists of Drawing and Graphics communities for more ideas.

Three Weeks for Dreamwidth April 25-May 15

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

vriddy

*screams into cushion* I love this story so much

It feels so good to step into this world again and spend time with the characters. I think it's one of the most original settings I've ever created and I'm enjoying it so much. I'm describing places and thinking, "I want to visit there too!!!" Later, I know I'll be describing a haunting location where many people die and I won't want to visit, but! It's still a cool building that I'd like to see from afar!! This is such a good time.

I think it also feels good to simply be writing words again. I have a bunch of stuff to rewrite, missing scenes, and so on. Stepping into a character's mind and experiencing the world from their perspective feels so nice. I spent most of March planning these revisions, and most of April finishing up the editing and proofreading of the Cursed Witch. (We do not talk about how far behind I am on my GYWO pledge 😨) It's just nice to putter around with words again! And thanks to all the planning I did last month, it feels like informed and useful changes rather than the kind of editing where I sputter about, unsure if my changes really improve anything or might not be making things worse actually. Of course, I could be lying to myself about that, but that's okay! I'm still embracing the good feels :D

ysabetwordsmith

Everyone needs contact comfort sometimes. Not everyone has ample opportunities for this in facetime. So here is a chance for a cuddle party in cyberspace. Virtual cuddling can help people feel better.

We have a cuddle room that comes with fort cushions, fort frames, sheets for draping, and a weighted blanket. A nest full of colorful egg pillows sits in one corner. There is a basket of grooming brushes, hairbrushes, and styling combs. A bin holds textured pillows. There is a big basket of craft supplies along with art markers, coloring pages, and blank paper. The kitchen has a popcorn machine. Labels are available to mark dietary needs, recipe ingredients, and level of spiciness. Here is the bathroom, open to everyone. There is a lawn tent and an outdoor hot tub. Bathers should post a sign for nude or clothed activity. Come snuggle up!

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

This poem came out of the January 6, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from

see_also_friend. It also fills "The End of the World" square in my 1-1-26 card for the Public Domain Day Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with

fuzzyred. It belongs to the Shiv thread of the Polychrome Heroics series. It follows "Cause a Riot of Color."

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Based on the general fund poll, "No Faster or Firmer Friendships" has 10 new verses. Josué reads a funny poem to Maria-Vera.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

This poem came out of the April 7, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from

nsfwords. It has been sponsored by the general fund poll. This poem belongs to the series Monster House.

Warning: Do not read with mouth full.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Positive tipping points could help nature recover faster than expected

The research shows how ecosystems can cross thresholds that trigger rapid recovery, not just collapse.

These shifts, known as positive tipping points, could unlock large-scale ecological restoration.

Environments have a lot of tipping points between stable variations. One I've seen before is a pond cycle. It can be clear with lots of bass and fewer minnows, or murky with lots of minnows and fewer bass. If you're looking for tipping points that aid recovery, consider...

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

This year during Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, I'm writing about reading as a way of becoming an expert in a given subject. Read Part 1: Introduction to Becoming an Expert, Part 2: Architecture, Part 3: Dance.

Three Weeks for Dreamwidth Part 4: Music

Music is a performing art based on patterned sounds. It includes both musical instruments and singing, together or separately. All known human cultures make music, so that creates tremendous variety. Here on Dreamwidth, check out

beautifulmechanical,

onesongaday and

tfc_musicianships.

Three Weeks for Dreamwidth April 25-May 15

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

This is an advance announcement for the Tuesday, May 5, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl. This time the theme will be "Older Scenes and Forgotten Characters." I'll be soliciting ideas for characters we haven't seen in a while, dimensional travelers, time travelers, man out of time, alternate self, historians, futurists, explorers, inventors, quantum mechanics, quantum physicists, mad scientists, partners, teachers, clergy, leaders, superheroes, supervillains, teammates, alien or fantasy species, failure analysts, ethicists, activists, rebels, other remnant characters, revisiting older scenes, filling in details, missing scenes, learning from the past, moving on to the next scene, researching, revising theories, teaching, adventuring, leaving your comfort zone, discovering things, conducting experiments, observation changing experiments, troubleshooting, improvising, adapting, cleaning up messes, cooperating, bartering, taking over in an emergency, saving the day, discovering yourself, studying others, testing boundaries, coming of age, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, preparing for the worst, expecting the unexpected, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, returning home, older storylines and series, the multiverse (quantum physics), the multiverse (F&SF), landing pads, world portals, liminal zones, schools, churches, libraries, laboratories, supervillain lairs, makerspaces, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, starships, alien planets, magical lands, foreign dimensions, mysterious storms, crystal balls and other magical scrying devices, chronoscopes and other technological scrying devices, psychohistory (academic), psychohistory (science fiction), puzzling discoveries, sudden surprises, travel mishaps, the buck stops here, trial and error, weird food, secret ingredients, supplements that turn out to be metagenic, intercultural entanglements, asking for help and getting it, strange loops, fix-its, enemies to friends/lovers, lab conditions are not field conditions, superpower manifestation, the end of where your framework actually applies, ethics, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.

Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

An Army of One features the autistic secession in space.

Arts and Crafts America is largely about using crafts to solve problems.

The Bear Tunnels is about time travel to early colonial New England.

The Blueshift Troupers travel space to help planets in distress.

A Conflagration of Dragons involves civilization collapse.

Daughters of the Apocalypse is mostly about poor, brown, nonmale, queer, and/or disabled people.

Eloquent Souls features soulmates and soulmarks.

Feathered Nests is science fiction about avian aliens with unusual sex/gender dynamics.

Fledgling Grace has a mortal realm, an angelic realm, a demonic realm.

Hart's Farm is a Swedish free-love commune.

The Hollow Way features various mystical occurrences including strange travel paths, but the series is apparently unpublished.

Kande's Quest has a mortal realm and a demonic realm.

Monster House includes a variety of unusual characters.

Not Quite Kansas has an angelic realm, a demonic realm, and two versions of a mortal realm.

The Ocracies is a fantasy setting with diverse political systems.

One God's Story of Mid-Life Crisis has a mortal realm and a divine realm.

Path of the Paladins has a mortal realm and a divine realm.

P.I.E. is urban fantasy with a disabled hera.

Schrodinger's Heroes is all about trying to save the world from alternate dimensions.

The Steamsmith features a black, genderqueer, British steampunk engineer.

The Time Towers compares time travel to Jenga.

Tripping into the Future is about one-way time travel and its consequences.

Walking the Beat is lesbian romance.

Shorter series appear on the Serial Poetry page.

Or you can ask for something new.

Linkbacks reveal a verse of any open linkback poem.

If you're interested, mark the date on your calendar, and please hold actual prompts until the "Poetry Fishbowl Open" post next week. (If you're not available that day, or you live in a time zone that makes it hard to reach me, you can leave advance prompts. I am now.) Meanwhile, if you want to help with promotion, please feel free to link back here or repost this on your blog.

( New to the fishbowl? Read all about it! )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is cloudy, mild, and damp. It stormed most of yesterday. The patio was underwater several times. There are little logjams of twigs at the edges of where the giant puddles were. The fields have floodles, which is normal for this time of year. Finally.

I fed the birds. I haven't seen any yet.

I put some flats of plants outside to get some sun.

EDIT 4/28/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 4/28/26 -- I planted 3 different stonecrop sedums under the maple tree near the 'Autumn Joy' there.

I've seen a fox squirrel.

EDIT 4/28/26 -- I planted 2 different yarrows in the septic garden.

I saw a brown thrasher foraging in the recently mowed grass.

EDIT 4/28/26 -- I planted a 'Morello' hyssop by the barrel garden. It will offer orange to red trumpet-shaped flowers for hummingbirds.

EDIT 4/28/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 4/28/26 -- I planted 3 different phlox in the wildflower garden.

Poppies and irises have buds. :D

I saw a single clear track in the driveway mud, possibly fox.

EDIT 4/28/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is National Superhero Day. Here are some resources...

Celebrate National Superhero Day at Dinner

How to Celebrate National Superhero Day

A Superheroes List! 20 Superhero Day Activities

Ultimate Guide to Planning a Superhero Party for Kids
Looks like the same tips will work just as well for adult fans.

I have two relevant series:

Polychrome Heroics is my superhero fantasy series.

Skills Heroes Need is nonfiction about knowledge useful in emergencies.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

13 Queer Supers Stories for Superhero Day!

Happy Superhero Day!! We love a good caped (or uncaped) crusader, and so we present a list of our favorite superhero stories. Reminder, though, that the line between a hero and a villain is thin, and that a magical girl is a flavor of superhero, right?

These look promising.

If you want more, see my QUILTBAG Characters list and scroll down to Polychrome Heroics where some of them have superpowers. Antimatter and Stalwart Stan is queer teen enemies-to-lovers.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

thewayne has posted about a site called Bookshop.org. It's an alternative to Amazon that gives 80% of its profits back to independent bookstores. I like that.

Curious, I visited the website. What I found on the front page was even more interesting. Amazon just kind of slops things at you. But Bookshop is ... surprisingly like an actual bookstore in how it organizes its "hey look at this" material. At the top is a rotating rack of several hot items. Below that are horizontal rows of books in categories: New Books, Bestsellers of the Week, a couple more featured titles, 50 Books for Earth Day: Literary and Climate Fiction, Independent Press Top 40 Nonfiction Bestsellers, Step into the world of Castle Knoll with these cozy murder mysteries!, Acclaimed Crime Procedurals from Michael Connelly, For the Love of Bookstores and Libraries, Indie Next List Books: April 2026, There's a Jesse Q. Sutanto book for that!, queer whimsy, Get in the Know: Billionaires, Big Tech, and Monopoly, You Can Do It: Cookbooks for the Busy (and Lazy), and so on. It works exactly the way bookstores put things on tables and racks near the front of the store to snag attention. Want to browse a table? Click on it to see the full list of its books. Want to pick up a book? Click on it to get a summary description. You aren't relying wholly on an algorithm to find things; you can skim for topics you like and explore those.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: impressed

alisx

But the phrase’s core reasoning is insultingly naive. It doesn’t work well for most things: “A car is just a tool, it matters how you drive it.” Well . . . oil and gas is destroying the climate, seatbelts help save lives whether or not someone is a good driver, and since the invention of cars, American city design has become utterly unwalkable and unlivable.

So there is much more to tools than how we use them.

Frank Elavsky on tools.

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3W4DW Day 4 Check-in: PATCH DAY!!

1. one creative thing I did today

2. one thing I'm proud of today

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