Latest Posts by chandlerman97 - Page 2

Guilty

Reblog if all you did this year was become more gay.

SNL REALLY DID THAT™

I would like the onesies please

Onesies Downunder - Gift Card Giveaway

You can win 1 of 5 $50 Gift Cards!

www.onesiesdownunder.com

5 winners will be selected at random to win a $50 Gift Card which can be used in our online store.

Each winner will receive 1 gift card code messaged to them.

Rules:

To enter, all you need to do is reblog this post.

You may enter as many times as you like.

You must be 18+ to enter this giveaway

Giveaway ends on the 1st of December 2016 11:59PM AEST

Winners will be announced via our page and messaged directly.

Best of luck to everyone!

Only Love and Proud of It

And we all looked up and sighed, as we realized the world had truly faded. When words like these, simple and pure, are seen and thought of as an impossible dream rather than a reachable goal.

concept: me, 10 years from now, living in a pretty house with my love, sipping a hot cappuccino on a rainy autumn afternoon. our dog curls up next to me in the window bench while our cat snoozes on the bed. i’m financially stable and i’m never tired anymore. the bees are safe.

I bring the Maned Wolf!

While it looks like a Fox and is called a Wolf it is actually not either, in fact it isn't closely related to any canids . It is the only species of the genus Chrysocyon and are a vulnerable species. They live in central South America and have adapted to life in the tall brush there. And the also look fab as hell.

reblog this post with a cool animal species lets make a wholesome thread

Even when your sky’s are grey you can still find beauty on these dark days

Ummm all of the yes

Butch Hartman recently revealed pics of Danny Phantom, Tucker Foley, and Sam Manson 10 years after the show concluded. And apparently, it could be soon IN A NEW SERIES! (x)

Even if people might not agree do it to benefit your mental health

Yes yes all of the yes

Here it comes my friends. Please stay healthy and well nourished this scare season.

My instant reaction when friend says they’re coming over

Hehe it’s so cuuute

Baby Charizard!

I am quite a few of these and love all of it! :D

Reblog this if... 😌

You are a, Daddy😎 Little 😌 Little boy🙂 Mommy😁 Caregiver🤗 Kitten 🐱 Any pet🐶🐺🐱🐯🦄🐈

ARE INTO, Collars💖 Stuffies💙 Coloring 💛 Disney movies💞 Anime❣ Pet play gear💕

So, i can follow you. I would love to make new friends.💙💙

What a couple of Nerds I love it!!!

News anchor Anderson Cooper professes his obsession with D&D (and his elven character) on the late show with Stephen Colbert!

Yes please!

Monomyth II: The Mentor

Another Monomythic element Joseph Campbell identified was the Mentor. The mentor is wiser, older, and more worldly than our soon to be hero. They also offer the necessary bit of encouragement. Classic examples include Merlin in Arthurian legend, Obi Wan in Star Wars: A New Hope, Moiraine Damodred in the Wheel of Time series, and maybe even Bayaz in the First Law trilogy. Vogler in his famous missive identifies “the crusty Robert Shaw character” in Jaws as a mentor.

As a DM, you can use this mentor as a tool to provide knowledge, quests, and a safety net for low level PCs. After a few levels, the mentor can make the ultimate sacrifice to raise dramatic tension. 

Knowledge Most heroes start as young foolish mortals who have decided to leave the safety of the town for the first time in their lives. They often know very little of the world beyond their homestead. The mentor can fill in this gap by being a large warehouse of knowledge for the players, even adding the occasional cosmic overview (“…the thing about a shark, he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes.”). Mentors never tell their heroes everything, the impatient protagonists aren’t going to listen anyway. The truth is hidden, overly simplified, or, if your father was seduced by the dark side, from a certain point of view.

As DMs we are all thrilled with our endless world crafting, but in reality players don’t care after four sentences. If the mentor is spouting pre-written lore, compress it down into into its barest elements. Think about how Obi-Wan explains the force to Luke: “The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.” The Star Wars Religious Experience in sixteen seconds.

Quests Along with knowledge the mentor can also give quests. This allows the DM to nudge players in a certain direction or even call them to adventure. Mentors can also use their knowledge to impart the importance of the quest to the PCs. For example, Obi Wan gets tapped for a quest to save a princess, and then drags Luke, Han, and Chewie to go along with him. Moiraine requests that Rand, Matrim, and Perrin travel to the White Tower with her. The forest spirit tells Logan to meet with Bayaz.

As a DM you need to be careful to ensure that your wizened mentor isn’t running the show. While they can offer initial quests, their influence wanes as the heroes grow in strength and knowledge. They shouldn’t be telling high level heroes what to do.

Safety Net Low level heroes are idiots. Time and time again they go off into the wilderness only to come tumbling back, bloodied, broken, and bruised. Sometimes our characters even need to be rescued. Strangely enough, mentors often have just enough magic to save everyone from certain destruction. Obi-wan saves Luke from the Tusken Raiders with a call from Krayt Dragon. Moiraine saves the town of Edmond’s Field from Trollocs with a well placed “ball of fire”. How many times does Gandalf save… everyone?

While a mentor can save the low-level party from a TPK, remember that he or she won’t always be around to protect the party. At some point they will stand against the darkness alone.

Increasing Dramatic Tension So for the first 5-8 levels, the mentor has been aiding our adventures. Saving their butts when the adventure got too real, asking them to keep the dark lord imprisoned, and dropping the occasional, if obfuscated, knowledge bomb (“Dude, Vader totally killed your father…”). Hopefully your characters have come to know and respect their mentor as a friend and a honored member of the adventuring party. So far so good.

Now, if you are familiar with all of the examples that I have been spouting, what happens to all of them?

Obi-Wan: Slain in a duel with Vader Moiraine: Presumed dead after a fight with Lanfear Quint: Eaten by Jaws. Gandalf: Dies fighting a Balrog. Merlin: Beheaded or disappears, depending on the tale.

Half way through the story, the mentor is killed by agents of Darkness. Although their spirit may live on to spout lore (from a certain point of view) or the mentor may even get resurrected, but for now the heroes going to have to face the darkness alone.

If you use a mentor, this is an utterly important step. Remember the adventure is about the heroes not the mentor, and like the flamboyant Mercutio, she or he cannot be more fun than the PCs. Use this to your full advantage. The death of a mentor should increase dramatic tension and provide meaning. Gandalf’s fight with Balrog, Obi-Wan’s with Vader, and Moiraine’s with Lanfear are all excellent examples of this. The mentor makes the ultimate sacrifice because they truly believe in the heroes.

Pulling it all together Although not required for a good campaign, this is an expected trope, and stories can feel empty without someone filling this role. If used with care, an NPC mentor can enhance the game at lower levels, and ultimately increase the dramatic tension in the story. Here are a guidelines to follow when using a mentor:

While the mentor can be more powerful than the heroes, the he or she shouldn’t steal the spotlight

Avoid long winded speeches. Keep pre-written lore to a minimum and don’t flesh it out. This allows the story flexibility to bend to player agency.

Mentors should only be for low level characters, once the players get past Level 5 or so (in D&D 5e) the mentor should take a reduced role.

The mentors should be respected by the PCs, this may not be time for a “bumbling” character

These are just guidelines, bend and break the trope and see what happens.

The Final Bits: Variations on a Theme Once you understand the role of the mentor in a heroic story, you can begin to play with trope. Maybe you can collude with a PC (who starts a few levels higher) who acts as the Mentor to the rest of the party. If they sacrifice themselves for the party, their death would be ultimately more dramatic than the death of an NPC.

Or maybe, the mentor is only interested in using the PCs as pawns in their schemes (Bayaz from the First Law series is a good example of this). How are the PCs going to feel if, time and time again they saved the Mentor, only to be wrapped up in his schemes for power?

Playing against the expectations this trope provides can be just as dramatically powerful fulfilling them.

This coloring book would be so amazing for both kid and adult alike!

Share your passion with children’s book The ABCs of RPGs. Find more information here

(Art by the talented euclase).

Once, long ago, Anael said that humans understand many things, but they do not truly understand war.

Castiel has bled upon thousands of battlefields, because there was not just one battle to force Lucifer back into the cage. Day after day, he would clash blades with the twisted forms of angels and humans which once were whole. And, at the end of those seemingly endless days, he would help carry the broken bodies of their dead to where they would be laid to rest.

(His genocide of the angels, under the name of a new God, did not even come close to the body count of those battles. He would sit among the bodies of thousands, the ashes of their wings left to disintegrate in the vast corners of Hell. And he would feel nothing.)

It is not in the days of peace when brotherhood is formed. Brotherhood is born in fire and blades and blood. Brotherhood is born in loss, in the mutual, terrible decisions one must make. 

Castiel fought beside Anael, Uriel, and Balthazar, thousands of years on end. The words they spoke eventually faded from his mind - everything does, especially in times like those. But he remembers those moments clearer than anything, those moments when their fates were tangled.

Anael. The moment when the flames of Hell had risen, burning half of his feathers to crisps. He’d fallen, hard, his armor dented, his eyes unseeing. He was sure he was going to die, until her arms had wrapped around him, and they were together, one, brother and sister under the eyes of all who understand. 

(He didn’t see her die. He knows, with her blood on his hands, that he should have.)

He and Uriel, fighting side by side, their blades one. Uriel’s wings had been beautiful. Golden, like the sun. The war had hardened him, just like it hardened everyone.

According to Heaven, the replacement of laughter for pain was a price that must be paid. For the greater good. 

(Anael had stabbed Uriel, for him. Uriel had made his choice. Staring down at his body, Castiel had thought that the price that Heaven had asked was much too high.)

Balthazar had thrown himself upon a blade for Castiel. Castiel remembers this, clear as day. The day after Lucifer had been forced back into his cage, Balthazar had left Heaven. And Castiel had let him.

(Castiel’s blade had slid into Balthazar’s back easy as anything. Castiel had felt Balthazar’s Grace slip away, and didn’t think twice about the decision at the time. Now, it’s on a list of regrets which extends for miles, regrets forged in good intentions.)

Humans have war. But it does not last as long, and nowhere near as bitter. Demons and angels, two sides of the same coin, would fight and kill forever, in the name of a greater purpose. Humans cannot understand wars in the ways that angels fight them. 

(“We’re expected to kill,” Anael had said. “We’re expected to kill, and then we’re expected to feel nothing.”)

He does not feel nothing.