For Those Who Have Overactive Guilt Complexes Like Me…

Las leyes de la física son inquebrantables.

inspired by the ‘your afternoon was already ruined’ post

Death Star Stormtroopers: “Freeze!”

Han: (panicking, trying to come up with a lie): Woah there don’t shoot, uh, you can’t shoot us because—because this guy is Darth Vader’s son! You don’t want to be responsible for shooting Darth Vader’s own flesh and bone do you?”

Luke: *glares incredulously*

Stormtroopers: “That is the dumbest thing—”

Leia: (done at this point, absolutely done with this rescue, better than Han at lying) “Exactly! Why would we tell you something so phenomenally insane if it weren’t true! Why do you think Darth Vader is so obsessed with finding Rebels, huh? Call him he’ll tell you!”

Luke: (also done, much better than Han at lying): “Or you could just shoot us; I’m sure my father, Darth Vader, inventor of the lightsaber, would be thrilled to meet the men who killed his son and his son’s friends.” *waves lightsaber arrogantly*

Stormtrooper 1: “Maybe we should call this in. I mean—he’s got a lightsaber, so that’s—that’s Vader stuff anyway.”

Stormtrooper 2: “are you kidding me right now?”

Leia: *shoots them while they’re distracted*

Han: “…We’re friends?”

//

Tarkin: “The rebels said what? You incompetent fool, how could you buy such an absurd stalling—”

Vader: “My…son…”

Tarkin:

Tarkin: Oh fuck THIS.

This is I think, my best prep tip as a DM:

When the players are about to visit a new town, pre-generate several NPCs who fit the demographics of the town, but don't give them jobs. Your town is Mostly human, with a number of halflings and gnomes? Make a list that's mostly humans with some halflings and gnomes mixed in, with names that match the vibe you're going for and maybe the barest description + a quirk of some sort.

So the list would look something like this:

Ophelia Bracegurdle, older Halfling woman who laughs a lot

Norabecka Johnson, a young human woman who seems tired

Geraldofinio Babblecock Nimsy, gnome gentleman who takes pains to maintain a fabulous mustache

Etc.

Then, when the players are like, "Can I go to the blacksmith?" You look at your list of NPCs and the one at the top is Ophelia Bracegurdle. She's your blacksmith now. Then they want to go to the tavern, where Norabecka is the innkeeper and Geraldofinio is a patron having a drink at the bar. He's using a straw so he doesn't mess up his mustache.

If they had gone to the inn first, Ophelia would have been the innkeeper with Norabecka as the patron, and then Geraldofinio should have been a blacksmith with some sort of mustache guard to keep the sparks off.

Making the list ahead of time doesn't take much time, and you can often re-use the people you never got to at the next town.

Your world will seem vibrant and interesting and like you have everything planned out.

Have fun!

in fucking tears rn

Things that are going to happen in 2024 according to Star Trek:

1) the absolutely giant homeless-population of the USA (or was is just New York? Idk, I‘m from Europe) is going to start a civil-war fighting against the upper class and police.

2) Ireland is going to get united

It sucks that people are treating the Reddit blackout as a joke or assuming it's impotent rage over a minor decision bc it's Reddit when like. No, a tech company shutting down access to their API by forcing third-party devs to pay completely unreasonable fees ($12,000 per 50 million API requests, which to the largest third party clients would be tens of millions of dollars) and in the process destroying both accessibility apps and moderation tools is Bad Actually

I can't stress enough how much I miss StumbleUpon