Now that @chronicdelusionist has finally received their copy, I can share it here!
Last autumn, I bound a couple copies of hi my name is link and welcome to jackass, one for my own collection and one to send to the author, after having an absolute blast reading it! I don’t read a lot of fanfic, but had set it aside back in 2020 to read based on the title alone and knew almost immediately upon starting that I had to bind it.
The design came to me quickly and it’s still one of my favorites thus far. It was also my first time doing a full book cloth cover, with faux leather, and painting a design on the cover with posca markers (I’d only done spine titles before). Shout-outs once more to Two Hands Paperie for having exactly the paper I need for endpapers every time~ 🤌
ChronicDelusionist was a joy to work with for my first time arranging a gift bind with a fic author, especially when I got tag teamed with covid and job layoff in November and mailing was delayed into the new year. 💖 Thank you yet again for writing such a fun fic and being so patient with me!
(More binds coming soon, I’ve made several books since but wanted to share this one first!)
I got this in the mail yesterday, and I immediately understood why fic binding has been such a tradition to bring the fic community together over the years. There’s something intensely personal and raw about holding something you wrote physically in your hands and seeing the loving little touches someone else saw fit to put into it.
I sent him back a set of unboxing photos where my eyes were shut in half of them and I pogged at the shark insets (the last photo is me - thanks for obscuring my face, good call) and I almost cried afterwards holding it. To think that someone had spent the money and care on shipping it…! In a giant box with a ton of padding, just to make sure it arrived safely! A hand-painted Jackass logo for the title I insisted on keeping silly no matter what… wowie.
Fandom is, or perhaps should be, this. A culture of mutual gifts, freely given and shared out of passion. Thank you again. This made my day seven times over. ;_;
The past couple of months, I’ve been working on a tabletop system. Gameplay focuses around
cutthroat VS matches between over-the-top rival characters in high-speed machines;
it’s one part card game, one part PvP game, one part roleplaying game. As a result, games can get pretty damn hectic.
It takes heavy inspiration from spectacular racing anime such as F-Zero, Speed Racer, Redline, and Ōban Star-Racers, so if you’re interested in those you might be interested in giving this a run as well.
I think it’s fun! I’m slightly biased, though. But I hope folks have fun, too!
Hey! I edited for this (The dev is my partner in crime) and it’s super fun!! Give it a look if you like F-Zero or intense board game experiences!
that AI art thing made me think “well it’s about time i make an avatar for this blog”, so i made an OC and in the spirit of classic megaman OCs, i drew him in MSPaint i’m not an artist, but i’m fond of his design, and i suppose it’s good to have a face to put the blog’s voice to
Stop Man /
ストップマン
Designed to be a traffic operations manager for the city. Stop Man is hooked directly into the grid and controls the lights, signs, and cameras. He prefers to hang in the shadows and manage things from behind the
scenes, but is willing to intervene directly if needed. Not necessarily
shy, just wants to get things done and doesn’t care much for the
spotlight.
Quite detail-oriented, he’s the type of person to rant at great length about minor things.
“Not so fast, there.”
Good Point: Dry-Humoured Bad Point: My Pace Like: Uninterrupted Routines Dislike: Phone Calls
Weapon: Stop Blockade Whistle to summon a triangle of rotating yellow lines that acts as a shield. Fire to launch one of the lines forward, standing up vertically; deals damage on impact and starts pushing enemies along its path. Hit Fire again before impact to stop its movement and flip it horizontal, to act as a platform.
I love how the classic Mega Man series repeatedly insists that the Robot Masters were constructed for civilian industrial roles and later re-purposed for combat, and that the areas you fight them in are simply the places where they work, and then the level design is just completely irreconcilable with any of this.
Here’s a level made of robot bones. (Robots have bones.)
Here’s a… factory where they manufacture snakes, apparently?
Here’s whatever the fuck is going on with Gemini Man.
If both the levels’ designs and the explanation the text offers for their existence are taken at face value, the world of the classic Mega Man games is much, much weirder than the supplementary media is letting on, is what I mean to say.
The given examples are exceptions, to be fair. Skull Man was constructed on Dr. Wily’s request specifically for combat by Dr. Cossack after Kalinka was taken.
Meanwhile, the MM3 Robot Masters are all on space mining and refining installations! Specifically, if memory serves me, to look for some kind of exotic power crystals. So, Gemini Man makes sense.
While it’s still a little unclear what Snake Man’s facility is, it’s also important to remember that Dr. Wily had a hand in designing it, too, as in MM3 him and Dr. Light are working together because Wily is pretending to have turned over a new leaf. Meaning that he logically would have had an opportunity to pitch the usefulness of robotic snake factories in space exploration himself!
But how would Dr. Wily have pitched it? And why, after two games of trying to beat up Megaman and take over the world or whatever, would nobody question whether this robot snake factory was just a ruse to prepare a lair for some kind of serpentine combat robot he had a design for?
Well, actually, there is a good reason for there to be a robot snake factory! Snake Man’s bio in Rockman and Forte states that his purpose is to “scout narrow terrain”, which the English translation states in narrow spaces. As we can take the large context of MM3′s Robot Masters as mining (in space!), there is a compelling argument that he was made to control and centralize the efforts and data of a small army of robot snake surveyors in the mining effort.
However, the real reason that no one realized this was a ruse is because the classic series fundamentally operates on cartoon logic, and you may as well ask why Ash keeps falling for Team Rocket’s disguises.
If you’re going to come into a discussion that takes the question of “Why are there robot snakes?” seriously, and contribute to it with serious answers, you don’t get to turn around and say that the question shouldn’t be taken seriously. That’s just not fair!
My sibling in Light I am a mega man humour blog. the fact that I care enough to know off the top of my head why there might be a legitimate, useful in-universe justification for a robot snake factory and the fact that Dr. Light is gullible enough to fall for cartoon disguises (and in fact canonically has) coexist in beautiful harmony
I love how the classic Mega Man series repeatedly insists that the Robot Masters were constructed for civilian industrial roles and later re-purposed for combat, and that the areas you fight them in are simply the places where they work, and then the level design is just completely irreconcilable with any of this.
Here’s a level made of robot bones. (Robots have bones.)
Here’s a… factory where they manufacture snakes, apparently?
Here’s whatever the fuck is going on with Gemini Man.
If both the levels’ designs and the explanation the text offers for their existence are taken at face value, the world of the classic Mega Man games is much, much weirder than the supplementary media is letting on, is what I mean to say.
The given examples are exceptions, to be fair. Skull Man was constructed on Dr. Wily’s request specifically for combat by Dr. Cossack after Kalinka was taken.
Meanwhile, the MM3 Robot Masters are all on space mining and refining installations! Specifically, if memory serves me, to look for some kind of exotic power crystals. So, Gemini Man makes sense.
While it’s still a little unclear what Snake Man’s facility is, it’s also important to remember that Dr. Wily had a hand in designing it, too, as in MM3 him and Dr. Light are working together because Wily is pretending to have turned over a new leaf. Meaning that he logically would have had an opportunity to pitch the usefulness of robotic snake factories in space exploration himself!
But how would Dr. Wily have pitched it? And why, after two games of trying to beat up Megaman and take over the world or whatever, would nobody question whether this robot snake factory was just a ruse to prepare a lair for some kind of serpentine combat robot he had a design for?
Well, actually, there is a good reason for there to be a robot snake factory! Snake Man’s bio in Rockman and Forte states that his purpose is to “scout narrow terrain”, which the English translation states in narrow spaces. As we can take the large context of MM3′s Robot Masters as mining (in space!), there is a compelling argument that he was made to control and centralize the efforts and data of a small army of robot snake surveyors in the mining effort.
However, the real reason that no one realized this was a ruse is because the classic series fundamentally operates on cartoon logic, and you may as well ask why Ash keeps falling for Team Rocket’s disguises.
I love how the classic Mega Man series repeatedly insists that the Robot Masters were constructed for civilian industrial roles and later re-purposed for combat, and that the areas you fight them in are simply the places where they work, and then the level design is just completely irreconcilable with any of this.
Here’s a level made of robot bones. (Robots have bones.)
Here’s a… factory where they manufacture snakes, apparently?
Here’s whatever the fuck is going on with Gemini Man.
If both the levels’ designs and the explanation the text offers for their existence are taken at face value, the world of the classic Mega Man games is much, much weirder than the supplementary media is letting on, is what I mean to say.
The given examples are exceptions, to be fair. Skull Man was constructed on Dr. Wily’s request specifically for combat by Dr. Cossack after Kalinka was taken.
Meanwhile, the MM3 Robot Masters are all on space mining and refining installations! Specifically, if memory serves me, to look for some kind of exotic power crystals. So, Gemini Man makes sense.
While it’s still a little unclear what Snake Man’s facility is, it’s also important to remember that Dr. Wily had a hand in designing it, too, as in MM3 him and Dr. Light are working together because Wily is pretending to have turned over a new leaf. Meaning that he logically would have had an opportunity to pitch the usefulness of robotic snake factories in space exploration himself!
We started this blog primarily because we’ve recently passed enough internal alpha iterations that we wanted to go public with progress. That being said, our roadmap at this point is looking pretty simple: we’ve got a solid skeleton and just fleshed out all the muscles, so we’ll running a testgroup to see how everything feels. If things feel good, we’ll go ahead. If things don’t, we’ll continue adjusting. Sounding simple and being simple, however, are two entirely separate things. This system’s been in development for a few years, and a lot of things have changed have changed. A LOT of things, actually. Our first test run was barely more than a character creation system with a few dice attached.
If there’s one thing I can safely say from beginning to end, though, I’ve had one specific goal in mind I’ve been wanting to emulate for this system: I wanted to play a run-and-gun platformer, and I wanted to play a run-and-gun platformer with my friends. Now, playing a video game of it is obviously going to be more efficient at this goal than any tabletop game is going to be. But I don’t think it’s an impossible prospect, and more importantly there’s freedom and flexibility in tabletop RPGs that video games don’t allow you to have. Having a 1:1 port is obviously not too feasible, but we can still focus on the basic aspects that make them fun to play and try to port them over.
To that point, what makes a platformer fun for me? What do I want to emulate?
not dead, still building up the queue again, will be back in action once again
in the meantime, did you know that
- Megaman Soccer is canon - Power Fighters/Power Battles isn’t - and the entire X and Zero series is officially an AU?
I’m actually gonna cry you have to be fucking with me, please be fucking with me
i am not
(soccer takes place specifically after MM4; this is more a technicality since there is an officially-stated placement for the game, unlike B&C and Rockboard, and there’s nothing that contradicts it or removes it)
(meanwhile, this is outright confirmation that power battle and power fighters are in a parallel world)
(likewise: the x series, and zero series by extension, is only a possible future rather than the future)
thankfully, none of this gets in the way of people’s ability to freely tweak whatever they want for the sake of fanon or headcanons, but boy fucking howdy does it make the mind reel out of all the game series storylines in the industry, megaman is definitely one of them
Welcome to the (tentatively-titled) X Cathedra Tabletop RPG Dev Blog.
We are a small pair of independent developers that have been working on, as per the name, a tabletop RPG system taking after the Megaman series–particularly Megaman Classic and Megaman X.
Temporarily code-named X Cathedra (trust us, the official name sounds much cooler), the system is a d6-based roll-over skill-modifier system. X Cathedra emphasizes fast tactical play, flexible character creation, and narrative freedom in how players can approach problems.
The system has been in development for the past two years (since 2019-2020!), and there’s still several things that need to be worked on before official release. But testing has gone on for a while, and now we’re starting to reach a comfortable point where the game can be talked about in public.
On this dev blog, you’ll receive news and updates about the system, we’ll talk about development as it goes on, we’ll share bits and pieces that are ready to be shown publicly, we’ll express opinions on styles of play that we’re trying to emulate, we’ll talk about our inspirations for the aspects of the system, and more.
While both of us have been involved in the independent creative scene for a long time (one of us is a gamedev, the other is an artist/author), neither of us have done a tabletop RPG from scratch before…this trek is going to be a new journey for all of us. But it’s a journey we’re willing to take, and it’s a journey that we hope you all have fun on.
Fight! For everlasting peace!
We’re finally unveiling it! I’m so excited to share with everyone.
