iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 6h

I haven't bought anything from WotC in six or seven years, and currently have no plan to ever do business with them again. If they become a union shop, I might relax that position.

010

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 6h

Then we met actual Minotaurs & everyone was like "Otto, take off the damn cow hat, that's racist bro" but he was like "YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!" because the Bard who usually talked him into things wasn't there that week. So we were at -6 to all Minotaur-related social rolls while Otto was visible.

000

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 6h

My horrible 3e dwarf barbarian Otto helped save a theater troupe from harpies & demanded as payment a 'sweet' minotaur mask that they used for plays. Otto was like "Hell yeah cow hat: intimidating, stylish, warm as hell, fewer fleas than most of what I'm already wearing! Otto is winning at life!"

100

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 10h

It was by a very wide margin the most sophisticated puzzle that I've successfully articulated to a group of players. Usually I keep it at much more "back of the Froot Loops box" levels of difficulty just because it's so hard to set things up so that the players aren't like "... what?"

010

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 11h

surrounded by a miasma of demonic shadow full of grasping tentacles.

100

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 11h

a valid path from one side of the room to the other. AND THEN the specific words they had chosen/rejected imbued a robot boss in the next room with specific attacks/defenses. If they chose "light" it would have laser attacks and dazzling illusionary copies. If they chose "darkness" it was

110

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 11h

But each word was paired with an antonym that was the answer to one of the other riddles, and stepping on one would deactivate the other as a line of safe spots. If you walked on "light", "darkness" would now crumble under your feet. So they also had to figure out which words to use in order to make

110

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 11h

solving the equation would tell you a set of coordinates on a 20x20 grid. The floor was a 20x20 grid. If you knew where to step on the floor that corresponded to your word, as if it were a crossword puzzle, you were safe. Otherwise it was like the floor puzzle from Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade.

211

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 11h

The "Advanced" puzzle dungeon they got for their repeat offense had some more thought put in. One room had riddles paired with equations on the walls. The answer to the riddle could be rendered down into a number with a simple substitution cypher (a=1, b=2, etc.) and plugged into the equation, then

100

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 11h

So the "Medium Difficulty" puzzle dungeon they got for their first offense was mostly stock pressure plate activated buzzsaws, spike pits under false floors, poison needles in door handles, etc. I had to whip it up on the spot because I didn't expect them to botch the getaway & wind up in custody.

220

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 14h

It took me a minute to realize Mournninja was a bat. At first I was like “of course this funeral crashing streamer has some kind of goblin vtube persona, all of these words make perfect sense in this order”

140

Reposted by Desert Leviathan

John Adams @johnadams3100.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Their epic version of 'Breathe' 🤘

0377

Reposted by Desert Leviathan

Jennifer C. Martin @notreallyjcm.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Extremely grateful for these two grocery store ladies recreating Prodigy’s Firestarter

462562820

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I get that some women can’t resist a man they perceive as a “fixer-upper”. Indeed, I owe every serious relationship I’ve ever had to the phenomenon. But Noel really is the Groverhaus of men. Load-bearing-drywall-ass personality.

29110

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Different Gremlin flavor, yeah. These ones had mixed Dwarven & Goblin ancestry, giving a strong cultural emphasis on Engineering from the former and an inherent connection to the Underworld from the latter, so they were really great at building Weapons & Traps. Thus, courthouse designed by Jigsaw.

130

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

PCs got sent to the Puzzle Dungeon once for Murder, but it was a medium-difficulty version because the court agreed that that guy probably *needed* to die, it just wasn't the PCs call to make. Later they killed a 2nd guy and were mad that the puzzle got harder on repeat offenses.

230

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Basically all Gremlin society is dudes who have their IQ test results in their bio, and if you want to navigate their laws it's a matter of managing egos just as much as familiarity with actual statutes.

130

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

If you escape unharmed you're not considered "innocent", you're considered intelligent enough that your crime must have actually been justified. Proving innocence is much more difficult, and involves tricking your accusers into self-destructive acts to demonstrate their incompetence.

130

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

One of my settings features a technocratic Gremlin society where all crimes are punished by putting you in some kind of dangerous puzzle dungeon. The more severe the crime, the more sophisticated the puzzles and deadly the traps.

142

Reposted by Desert Leviathan

Bo Thompson @gaudipern.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

A beautiful story.

1226

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Easily the most cursed thing I've seen in months. So of course I want to share it with all of you immediately.

042

Reposted by Desert Leviathan

Kasey Gifford @kaseygifford.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This is my new favorite thing.

74164835288

Reposted by Desert Leviathan

👻Skulliam🎃Boo-tler🍂Yikes🕷️ @yeets.biz · 19/09/2026

i need to know what happened

sign in a restaurant "due to recent events Bigfoot discussions are no longer permitted on the patio"

309163453177

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The most plausible-feeling theory I've seen is that they need to recruit a steady pipeline of young fresh college grads, and the MAGA-friendly part of that population is concentrated too heavily among former Frat Boys who had done heinous shit to animals as part of hazing rituals.

2310

Reposted by Desert Leviathan

the babahuck @tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

god this is good

flight of the concords scene with murray, brit and jemaine.

"How's this, then? Ed Sheeran, beloved by all, left without an opening band at present. Enter you two."

"What if we want a free Palestine, Murray?"

"I reckon you'll get lots of things for free when you're proper rockstars. This might be your ticket."

375199997

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

He looks like the halfway point of one of those videos where a cat was rescued from a sewer drain where it survived by eating beetles & the groomers are all "Sorry, this is gonna look like ass but it's just too matted to save, hopefully it'll grow back out?" while they go apeshit with the clippers.

020

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

He always looks to me like he's just got out of the shower, but for the first time after several months of camping in a ditch.

120

Reposted by Desert Leviathan

Alex Winter @alexwinter.com · 16/09/2026

True story.

166155153043

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I also wanted him to be the only feature of this religion with definitive gameplay stats. Angels don't descend to earth. You don't get Spells by Praying. The whole faith may be bullshit. But HE is out there. Is he really THAT guy? From Scripture?? Or some other thing that wears that name for fun?

000

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

There are more adversarial, "evil" spiritual forces in this setting, but I wanted him as more of a Coyote, Anansi, or a Loki early in his character arc. An inscrutable self-serving mischief-maker. The guy who makes wagers at the crossroads with fiddle virtuosos, not the First Inmate of Forever-Jail.

100

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The Creator is an absentee clockmaker type who left to check in on other projects and placed stewards/angels/subordinate gods in charge of things, but they can't actually boss the Brother around. He has no authority, but no one has authority over him. He's free of all bonds and obligations.

100

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Working on a monotheistic religion for a TTRPG setting, still wanted a trickster figure that's more Book of Job Satan, less Book of Revelation Lucifer, stumbled across the idea "What if God had a loser younger brother who was mooching a couch in this Creation instead of making a world of his own?"

110

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Click here to see a response so long and rambly that Bluesky (temporarily) banned my account for spam because of it. No one who's familiar with my GM style will be shocked in the slightest.

111

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Fun fact - this chain of replies ran long enough that the Bluesky automod straight up terminated my account. But they reinstated it less than 10 minutes after petitioned for review. I guess it didn't take long for them to go "this isn't bot activity, this is autism."

010

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

The Shieldbearers were indeed so popular that the NEST grew wary of their influence and had BlackBIRD infiltrate them to stir them up to open dissent until FireBIRD could declare open war on them without the general public rioting over it. A rare example of inter-wing cooperation.

110

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Most famous of these were the Baetylus Shieldbearers, who at their peak were actually well respected by most citizens, and had their funding supplemented by generous donations from some of Baetylus’s wealthiest citizens, particularly the Stonecutters Guild (more or less a Dwarven Mafia).

110

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Some of these mundane government bodies maintained civil peacekeeping forces, but these were poorly funded and fairly toothless, more like emergency militias that would rally if a monster got loose from a wizard’s lab, very disinterested in enforcement or investigation.

110

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

There was still technically a mundane government - the Regent of Illiaster, the District Councilors of Baetylus, the Mayors and Sheriffs and whatnot of outlying towns and territories. None of these had any real authority remaining that the NEST couldn’t overrule.

110

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

The innermost circle of BIRD was the Novel Emergent Spellcraft Tribunal (NEST), who started as just the body that determined if new magic would be forbidden, restricted, or publicly disseminated. Over time, as the only body with real power over the Wizards, the NEST annexed all executive functions.

110

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

MockingBIRD is a special case in that it wasn’t an officially chartered BIRD wing, but rather a conspiracy embedded in the other seven wings with unclear objectives. At least allegedly. MockingBIRD may in fact have not existed at all outside of rumors. I mention them only for the sake of completion.

110

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

SeaBIRD (foreign trade and diplomacy), ThunderBIRD (research and magical education), SongBIRD (mundane education, entertainment, and propaganda), and HummingBIRD (civic maintenance and sanitation) all had limited authority to police their own agents, and did so with varying degrees of effectiveness.

110

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Any time SnowBIRD agents tried to do their job, any but the most out-of-favor wizard would have enough connections through family, lab partnerships, and “secret” societies to pull strings and have charges dismissed. SnowBIRD at large was seen as a career dead end for the terminally self-righteous.

110

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

The division of environmental regulation, SnowBIRD, also had some law enforcement power on paper, in as much as it was their job to make sure no wizard’s magic caused enough disruption to the natural world to render the region uninhabitable. In practice, SnowBIRD’s authority was all bark, no bite.

110

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Meanwhile in retaliation BlackBIRD spent a ton of resources digging up dirt on FireBIRD officers or manufacturing evidence where none could be found. And BlackBIRD rarely shared intel that would assist FireBIRD in performing their duties, preferring to let them be humiliated by high profile failure.

110

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Inter-department rivalry kept FireBIRD and BlackBIRD from operating at peak efficiency, and they often got in each other’s way. A major cause of injury or death for undercover BlackBIRD operatives was FireBIRD strike teams burning down whatever criminal enterprise they were embedded in.

110

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

On the other hand you couldn’t make a rude face in Illiaster without getting an automated fine for it from BlackBIRD’s extensive network of scrying crystals. But the aristocratic wizard families at the very top could act without restraint because the harshest fines were still pocket change to them.

110

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

If low city folks wanted to knife each other in the streets, no one in the government gave a damn… unless one of the dead was an employee and/or test subject whose loss inconvenienced the magical research labs that were the backbone of the economy.

110

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Fortunately for player characters who mostly operated in Baetylus (the “low city” on the surface under the floating “high city” of Illiaster) neither flavor of BIRD Cop really cared what poor people did in poor neighborhoods, so long as it didn’t inconvenience the fascist wizard oligarchy.

110

Desert Leviathan @desertleviathan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

In my Wizard City campaign the Baetylus-Illiaster Research Directorate (BIRD) had two divisions that were police-adjacent: the violent militarized FireBIRD who handled active enforcement and the sinister covert BlackBIRD who handled investigations and surveillance. Both were very bad news.

110