smews - Tumblr blog

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Re: The Veilguard worldstate and prior choices.

I know that we don't all have to have opinions about every little thing, nor do we have to share them but I just wanted to add one more voice in case others feel the same.

We haven't played the game. We don't know what the story is, not really. All of the marketing and communication from devs so far seem intent on stressing that the game will be about found family and your companions. I can see a case being made for characters being very focused on the task at hand. Harding might have opinions and stories all about every event in Inquisition, but will the events of The Veilguard present her with a situation where she would want to mention the Chargers? Would the narrative be served by it?

How much will we be interacting with Morrigan? Is she in a position where she would feel comfortable or want to mention having or not having a son when the gods are unleashing chaos? Will we get to really know her as Rook or will we interact once and then the rest of the time she shows up is just us observing her?

Will Rook even get to interact directly with the Inquisitor? Or will we only see them in Solas's memories?

What story are they really aiming to tell here? People who have gotten to play it say that it has more impactful choices and branching situations based on those choices than any other Dragon Age game. Did this branching mean that they couldn't incorporate prior decisions, or did they find that the story they wanted to tell didn't require input of previous decisions?

I'm disappointed, yes. But I'm not angry and I can think of potential reasons why they would go this route. My prior choices still matter to me and to my experience and personal narrative when playing the previous games.

My long-winded point is that we don't know. Play the game, don't play the game. Like it, don't like it. It is okay to be upset and to feel let down. I'm sure I will have some criticisms, but I can't criticize what I haven't played yet.

And for those who feel greatly affected by this, please remember that this is not a direct attack on you. The writers are telling the story that they want to tell, we get to consume it. Maybe we'll send it back to the kitchen, maybe we'll get some mods and add some salt and pepper if it's not to your taste, but please don't threaten or attack the chefs. This is not a waffle house.

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I may have swayed his attention with the concept art today.

I was showing my friend some of The Veilguard companions and he was immediately hooked on Davrin. (Yes, I know it should be "who's". I wasn't about to interrupt the interest)

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I was showing my friend some of The Veilguard companions and he was immediately hooked on Davrin. (Yes, I know it should be "who's". I wasn't about to interrupt the interest)

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Anyone else suddenly seeing a lot of hard right posts suggested to them? On Tumblr, of all places??

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Holy hell this is good

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I'm not saying I'm obsessed with Baldur's Gate 3. It's just that they did an amazing job with the soundtrack.

Though I know I'd be in good company if I were obsessed. If.

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D is Devexian/Charlie from campaign 3, right?

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These Days - An Introduction!

Hi everyone! I’m going to try something new on this ol’ Tumblr.   Welcome to These Days, a blog series on the PBS Digital Studios Tumblr. I’m Leslie, the PBSDS Tumblr person (among many things), and once in a while I’m going to ask those in front and behind the cameras of our PBSDS shows “What are you into these days?” Here we go!

ANNA ROTHSCHILD Host, Writer, Animator, Editor of Gross Science (@grossscience)

For all the science nerds like me out there, I would highly recommend Marie Brennan’s A Natural History of Dragons series.

The books take place just before the industrial revolution in a world very much like our own, with one major difference: dragons exist. The narrator is a famous woman scientist recording her lifetime of adventures studying dragons. So far, there are three books in the series, and I just started the last one. I’m typically much more of a science fiction fan than a fantasy fan, but this series reads more like swashbuckling historical fiction than fantasy.

And, if you can’t get enough dragons, check out the tabletop game Dragoon. You are a dragon competing against other dragons to amass the most gold. Dianna (i.e. PhysicsGirl) and I played the other day and had a blast.

MIKE RUGNETTA (@mikerugnetta) Host, Writer of PBS Idea Channel Somehow I’ve played Dungeons and Dragons (or Dungeons and Dragons-like things) for nearly most of my life, and yet a last week ago was the first I’d heard of Gygaxian Unnaturalism.  It was in a piece by Matthew Neagley over at Gnome Stew and it’s had me thinking ever since. 

But first, necessary background! Gygaxian Unnaturalism is named after Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax. It describes the weird, arguably unnatural characteristics of tabletop game worlds: bizarrely laid out caves, vicious beasts unreachable by reason and hell bent on tearing you (the player) but not each other to shreds, confusingly fickle magic and machinery, and so on. 

On Gnome Stew, Neagley points out that in the earlier days of D&D, these characteristics were accepted without question, but that of course players would eventually want some explanation for the strange state of the world they’re spending so much time in. His post offers three such in-universe explanations for the unnaturalism of fantasy worlds.

I can’t help but ponder other, related fictional tropes: are there in universe explanations for why bad guys congregate at abandoned construction sites? Maybe dug up construction sites are the mook spawning point for a Live Earth’s antibodies. Or maybe there’s a newsletter: “Tough Lots Today”.

The other thing is Neagley’s implication that as time goes on, audiences need more explanation. Anecdotally, at least, I can dig it - looking back on older Hollywood films, the Continuity Error and the Unexplained Motivation don’t strike me as such significant faux pas as they do in modern films. If this is a trend, and the trend continues, what does Unnaturalism Accounting look like in the year 2175?

NICOLE SWEENEY (@sweeneysays) Post Production Supervisor of Crash Course (@thecrashcourse)

My recent obsession is the game Twilight Struggle except by “recent” I mean “for all of 2016.“ 

I loved this game initially because of a weird obsession with Cold War History (see also: The Americans, best show on TV, except just kidding, don’t watch TV! Just watch YouTube videos) and this game’s fidelity to its theme is just wonderful. 

The scoreboard is a straight up tug-of-war in which each gain is countered by a loss and so on and so forth. The feeling of the game is incredibly tense, which might not be everybody’s jam, but is thematically ON POINT. That tension is something which is very difficult to properly convey in a history book, but which the experiential nature of a (well designed) game demonstrates very effectively. Everything from the game mechanics to the text on the cards is both thematically excellent and also really informative and educational. 

The fact that the board is literally a world map is such a brilliant depiction of the ways in which the entire world was sucked into an ostensibly two-sided conflict. Plus, most of my other favorite board games lose a lot of their appeal with only 2 players.

That’s it for now! Next time you’ll hear from 3 more PBSDSers on what they’re into these days. Now it’s your turn. What are YOU into these days?

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The Honey Locust (Gleditsia triacanthos) is a tree with way to much armor for any living leaf browsers. According to one theory, it grew spines to protect it from mammals that are now extinct!

Learn more about these and other ghosts of evolution with this video from It’s Okay To Be Smart.

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Glamorous green

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Getting snazzy for the holidays

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All the stripes you can handle.

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That “new scientific breakthrough discovery” you just read about on that news site/blog/Facebook page? It’s almost certainly wrong. This article from Vox is a seriously important thing that, if you care about science, you really need to read, like right now. 

My take: The tendency of the media to report on what is *NEW* in science is indicative of what I think is the largest perspective gap between scientists and nonscientists. 

The general public (<- apologies, I hate how homogenous that word is, because there is no single “general public”, but I have to use it here) seems to crave novelty and has a tendency to view every scientific finding as forwardprogress and individually meaningful, but science is a an ongoing process of self-correction and repetition. It doesn’t have an “end” and any single study is almost certainly wrong, or at the very least doesn’t tell the full story.

This is why I have tried to steer clear of reporting on “breaking” science news in my own efforts here on OKTBS. Science communicators and journalists, we need to make a commitment to covering science as a process and not as a series of breakthroughs. When science IS reported that way, we run the risk of losing people’s trust when science later must later correct or contradict itself, which is something that will absolutely happen, because that’s what science does. We must also make people comfortable with the idea uncertainty and science-as-a-process is a good thing!

I’ll shut up now. Go read this.

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HEY, MOM?

I’VE BEEN WATCHING A LOT OF MOVIES AND IT TURNS OUT EVERYONE IS BASICALLY SUPPOSED TO IGNORE THEIR PARENTS FOR A SOLID FIVE OR SIX YEARS WHILE THEY DO ALL KINDS OF ILLEGAL SUBSTANCES AND EXPLORE A WIDE VARIETY OF SEXUAL SCENARIOS BEFORE FINALLY EMERGING AS NASCENT ADULTS, WHEREUPON THEY QUICKLY COME TO REALIZE ALL THEIR PARENTS’ ADVICE AND WARNINGS WERE VALID BUT ULTIMATELY USELESS IN THE FACE OF A DOGGED DETERMINATION TO SELF-ACTUALIZE, LEADING TO AN EARNEST APOLOGY AND A HARD-EARNED RESPECT BETWEEN PSEUDO-EQUALS THAT DEEPENS AND BECOMES THE MATURE FAMILIAL BOND.

SO I’M GOING TO BORROW THE CAR AND A COUPLE PACKS OF CIGARETTES AND FUCK OFF FOR LIKE, HALF A DECADE.

I LOVE YOU, THOUGH. AND DON’T WORRY, WE’LL GET THROUGH THIS.

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Did you know, you can quit your job, you can leave university? You aren’t legally required to have a degree, it’s a social pressure and expectation, not the law, and no one is holding a gun to your head. You can sell your house, you can give up your apartment, you can even sell your vehicle, and your things that are mostly unnecessary. You can see the world on a minimum wage salary, despite the persisting myth, you do not need a high paying job. You can leave your friends (if they’re true friends they’ll forgive you, and you’ll still be friends) and make new ones on the road. You can leave your family. You can depart from your hometown, your country, your culture, and everything you know. You can sacrifice. You can give up your $5.00 a cup morning coffee, you can give up air conditioning, frequent consumption of new products. You can give up eating out at restaurants and prepare affordable meals at home, and eat the leftovers too, instead of throwing them away. You can give up cable TV, Internet even. This list is endless. You can sacrifice climbing up in the hierarchy of careers. You can buck tradition and others’ expectations of you. You can triumph over your fears, by conquering your mind. You can take risks. And most of all, you can travel. You just don’t want it enough. You want a degree or a well-paying job or to stay in your comfort zone more. This is fine, if it’s what your heart desires most, but please don’t envy me and tell me you can’t travel. You’re not in a famine, in a desert, in a third world country, with five malnourished children to feed. You probably live in a first world country. You have a roof over your head, and food on your plate. You probably own luxuries like a cellphone and a computer. You can afford the $3.00 a night guest houses of India, the $0.10 fresh baked breakfasts of Morocco, because if you can afford to live in a first world country, you can certainly afford to travel in third world countries, you can probably even afford to travel in a first world country. So please say to me, “I want to travel, but other things are more important to me and I’m putting them first”, not, “I’m dying to travel, but I can’t”, because I have yet to have someone say they can’t, who truly can’t. You can, however, only live once, and for me, the enrichment of the soul that comes from seeing the world is worth more than a degree that could bring me in a bigger paycheck, or material wealth, or pleasing society. Of course, you must choose for yourself, follow your heart’s truest desires, but know that you can travel, you’re only making excuses for why you can’t. And if it makes any difference, I have never met anyone who has quit their job, left school, given up their life at home, to see the world, and regretted it. None. Only people who have grown old and regretted never traveling, who have regretted focusing too much on money and superficial success, who have realized too late that there is so much more to living than this.

Wunderkammer: Did You Know  (via sucked)

Preach.

(via mad-as-a-marine-biologist)

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I’m happy to announce that I’m soon to be the proud owner of that glow-in-the-dark space t-shirt. Unfortunately, unlike the universe itself, the USPS does not deliver astronomical goodies at the speed of light. When I wear it, I’m gonna stand just like that, too … cool, thoughtful, spacey.

It’s from Portland’s Make It Good, who offer several other pieces of glowing garb in their Etsy store. It’s like wearing the ceiling of your childhood bedroom! 

(I know I follow someone who linked to this shop recently, but I didn’t bookmark it, so thank you, whoever you are … my wardrobe is the better for it)