#I have a few different design choices and modifications I added as well.

[sami-lamby123]

=]

I am an artist with free will so I gave myself actuators! =]

(Gonna make an update on it in a moment)

[why-its-kai]

ok so i took a few pics comparing original tfa prowl to samurai prowl without the armor for funsies and to compare the differences in the design. like this is just for their main bodies minus the armor since i got frustrated trying to reattach after cleaning it lol. i will get pics of him in it another time tho (and all my other transformers as well i promise!)

anyways here’s my list of notable differences between the two:

motorcycle windscreen is smooth, translucent grey on original and patterned translucent blue on samurai (matches sidecar windscreen). also translucent red and blue motorcycle siren lights on original, while blue only on samurai (also matches windscreen color)

different mold with light piping on samurai head, looks slightly smaller than original (probably to easier fit the samurai helmet). i noticed on both that prowl’s visor is actually asymmetrical and shaped like that kind of raised eyebrow expression he does in the cartoon! very hard to notice at that size but a cool detail nonetheless

different build on the upper legs on samurai prowl. has an additional joint which makes him more flexible ! also the colored plastic piece on that outside of the leg is a different color, gold on original and black on samurai.

completely different design for his back kibble. samurai prowl’s has a hinge to move it out of the way for the backpack piece with armor. there’s a little pattern underneath the kibble on the joint that looks like an internal mechanism that moves it!! he also has a little gold circle molded made to look like the point where the piece swivels/external part of the mechanism. no idea if i’m describing that well but it’s such a cool little detail ?? love those tiny details they added into the redesigned pieces to emphasize/show how it’s supposed to move!!

the throwing stars. so i forgot samurai prowl’s throwing stars are like. fake. was pulling at them so hard that my fingers hurt bc i knew how they attached/came off on the original? became terrified i was going to break him from the amount of force i was applying. i ended up consulting tfwiki after noticing the stars are not mentioned in the instruction sheet and yea they can be pried off but have been designed not to detach. they’re missing the flip-out mechanism from the original as well. weirdest part to me was the more detailed color on them compared to the original?? appears to be made with grey & black plastic with gold paint detailing while the originals were solid gold color (minus the black bottom/connector piece). like it doesn’t even match the other side where it’s only black plastic and gold paint detail?? why did they make all those extra changes to the throwing stars that made them both extra detailed & unusable instead of leaving the original, functional throwing stars??????? baffling design choice.

fewer painted accents on samurai prowl. most noticeably missing the original’s beige hands, gold wheel accents, grey waist piece (not very visible in my photos), and silver circle (?) on his back. however samurai prowl has more detailed/precision hubcap paint job instead of solid gold on the original.

the slots molded on to the forearms on samurai prowl, the wheel/shield/sword thingy from the sidecar attaches there. tfwiki noted changes in final production design of samurai prowl that shows the sidecar wheel was originally meant to split in two and attach on to both arms, closer matching the cartoon design. the photo on his instruction sheet actually is of the earlier design, which was very confusing to me when i got him lol. doesn’t seem to be built in a way that can be modified to the original design like i was able to do the voyager cybertronian megatron (i’ll definitely show him & the modification i made in detail another time) which is unfortunate.

[dealeagle6-blog]

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Content

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Hifu Aftercare.

Ultimately the wand is drawn another inch out of the vaginal canal, and also it is treated to an additional 3 minute rotation of ultrasound. Next, a three action disinfection of the FemiWand tool, the FemiWand ultrasound cartridge and also the vaginal canal itself is completed. To begin with, a genital assessment is done to assess the location and sees to it it is safe to go on. The treatment is rather non-invasive as well as it is entirely non-surgical, however it will include casting your discreetness apart for the duration of the treatment. We previously told exactly how a mum cases her ₤ 1,900 designer vaginal canal has actually transformed her sex life and also made her feel 15 years younger in the room. Bristol-based Vivo Center made use of a video clip of Genuine Housewives of Cheshire star Tanya Bardsley undertaking the treatment, which she described as "minky tightening up", on its internet site.

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Do cellulite massagers work?

Massage isn't a cure for cellulite but it might temporarily improve skin's appearance and make cellulite less noticeable. Massage does have many health benefits so it may be worth adding to your wellness regimen.

Most of the expert medical professionals are women, which is critical for social factors. After the treatment, take at least 72 hours prior to indulging in sexual activity.

What causes cellulite?

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What Can The Hifu Treatment Be used For?

How do you get rid of cellulite under your butt?

Try This: 9 Tips and Tricks to Get Rid of Butt Cellulite 1. Step up. 2. Pop squat. 3. Glute bridge. 4. Jump lunges. 5. Walking lunge. 6. Dumbbell squat to deadlift. 7. Diet. 8. Hydration. More items•

Researchers have actually established gadgets that are capable of dealing with these modifications by utilize of laser energy or radiofrequency. On the various other hand, using laser modern technology is incredibly elusive and have stressing side effects. Clinical researchers have actually discouraged this procedure as it could create various other health and wellness complications. There is no arrangement on anaesthesia or any type of numbing treatment. After hifu finchampstead , the patient can go back to the regular much less arduous activities quickly. After the initial consultation, it is the selection of the patient to go ahead with the treatment. Owing to the level of sensitivity of the topic as well as therapy generally, doctor-patient discretion is exercised.

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This may be as an outcome of different factors, amongst them menopause, childbirth, surgery and also obesity. In many cases, heavy cigarette smoking and also hysterectomy might create the vaginal area to lose its elasticity. With FemiTone, you can avoid the threats and also expenditure of surgical treatment as well as still benefit from a tighter, healthier vaginal canal.

Facelift surgical Treatment find price.

We are transparent with the costs of the therapy with the cost staying the same for every client. " I might state that it's the most professional solution I've obtained. I didn't experience any type of side effects after the therapy," states John F. To complete this amazing process, the "like a virgin" renewal antidote is placed into the vaginal area. The product is fed to offer crucial healthy elements right into the freshly created collagen fibres. An instant enhancement appears minutes after the process. When any of the highlighted occasions happens, the all-natural skin collagen is replaced with fibers that do not extend effectively.

The pointer being offered was that the decision to go on with the procedure could be taken lightly, without major factor to consider. We consequently concluded that the advertisement was untrustworthy and also breached the Code. The CAP Code called for that medical or clinical cases and signs were made only for a medical item that was certified by the MHRA or under the auspices of the European Medicines Company or for a CE-marked clinical tool. We had not seen any docudrama evidence to demonstrate that the FemiWand was a CE-marked medical gadget or accredited by the MHRA or under the auspices of EMA. Due to that, no clinical claims can be produced the product. On top of that, we had actually not been provided with any docudrama evidence to support the insurance claims that the product can be made use of to supply therapy for the conditions detailed in the advertisement.

FemiWand is preferred among women that struggle with genital laxity. Vaginal laxity can be an outcome of giving birth or simply a by-product of collagen integrity decrease that comes with age. HD Lipo Freeze modern technology provides popular cosmetic therapies. The devices have a reduced running expense as well as have the potential to create significant income. One treatment is often sufficient, however lots of females return to a comply with up session. SCOTS ladies can now freshen up 'down there' for under ₤ 100 as a Glasgow facility offers a cut rate bargain.

idea ™ Facelift.

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What foods cause cellulite?

5 Foods That Cause CellulitePizza. Pizza seems like it should be the perfect food, delivering a yummy dose of calcium and protein. Cheese. It goes without saying that if pizza contributes to cellulite, then pizza will as well. Sugary Snacks and Beverages. Refined Carbs. Processed Meats.

today’s best overall cryolipolysis ascot option like FemiWand can be the response for a Great Deal Of women. It's not the most inexpensive choice in the world for your tightening up demands, however if you can afford it as well as wish to bypass the timescale and visits to the General Practitioner then it's the ideal service.

The ad consisted of a video from the TV program "The Genuine Housewives of Cheshire" which showed a female getting ready for the procedure signed up with by her two buddies. The video clip featured the lady's comical reaction to the treatment while her friends were seen alcohol consumption Prosecco and also chuckling. We took into consideration that the casual and also amusing style of the video clip coupled with the frivolous message "FemiWand is a 20-mintue procedure that can be carried out on your lunch break" trivialised the nature of the procedure.

[jemimaboultonmessagesmultiverse]

Typography workshop

Today we worked at expanding our knowledge of type and how we can use our choices in font design to communicate what the word means without needing to read it. To do this we researched the history of type and how different parts of history have change the way letters look, for example adding serifs to your type makes it have a more olden days theme to it due to serifs being much more common hundreds of years ago. We also used collaging to further communicate the word chosen. 

The history of type

Type is constantly changing but has developed a lot since the beginning of the practise of reading and writing as now we have may different fonts and styles of writing, even down to us now having vast more variety in colour of ink and more access to them.

The creator of the first typeface was Johannes Gutenberg, and it was based on the scribes that the monks would write by hand, as before printing, the monks would have the job of scribing everything, which obviously wasn’t very time efficient and would cost a lot of money. The type was called “blackletter” and had very thick vertical lines paired with very thin horizontal lines, which worked very well when the monks scribed it but worked bad when printed due to the extreme contrasts between the thicknesses.

A fix for this was created by Nicholas Jenson, with the creation of “roman type”. The name and design of this typeface was inspired by the writing he would see on ancient Roman buildings, with the basis being straight lines and regular curves. It is extremely legible when printed and therefore worked well in replacement of blackletter, and had huge success at the end of the Renaissance. 

After roman type, Aldus and Manutius created “Italics” at the end of the 15th century, a stylised of roman type with slanted letters. When it was first invented it was as a means to fit more letter onto a page and save money, but now they are used as a way to create emphasis as they are used sparingly within normal roman type.

Not a lot changed for a couple hundred years until the 18th century when William Caslon created “old style” a style of type with fixed serifs and low contrast between thick and thin lines, making it a new standard for the legibility of type. A serif is a small line at the end of the major lines on a letter used on all lettering in the early days of printing and writing but isn’t as common nowadays, despite still being used in most publications and a lot of fonts.

Following old style, Baskerville made what is now referred to as “Transitional” typeface, which has thinner serifs and more contrasts in comparison to old style. Didot and Bodoni soon after made “Modern”, which contains extremely thin serifs and the highest contrast out of the 3 typefaces. These are now the three categories in which most serif typefaces will fit.

Eventually the serifs were removed by William Caslon’s great grandson, creating “sans serif”. This is very common now and is the type of typeface I am using right now, but it didn’t catch on at first, despite finally gaining traction during the 2nd industrial revolution, which was a big turning point within the growth of type. During this time sans serif fonts were used a lot on billboards as they are so bold and easy to read. This led to a lot of experimentation with serifs and the creation of “slab serif”, which had very thick serifs, perfect for titling. 

As a backlash to 19th century typefaces, in the early 20th century Paul Renner made “futura”, a simple sans serif font based around geometric shapes, therefore nicknamed “geometric sans”. Other sans serif fonts similar to this were created following futura, the first of which being “gill sans” made by and named after Eric Gill. It is a version of futura with more natural and less harsh curves, and therefore is commonly referred to as the humanist sans. Finally there is Helvetica, made in 1957, containing simple curves and being available in many different lines weights, this type is deemed “the world‘s favourite”.

The introduction of the computer was the final big step in the development of type, with the first type on a computer being pixel type, a very crude and rather ugly form of type which directly reflects the quality of the computers at the time. As technology got more complex, they became an aid to create new typefaces, not a hinderance, and now we have a vast variety of typefaces available to us  at the click of a button.

After researching the history of type I thought about how I could use this information in my own work. The direct link between pixel type and computers could work well in my own work as most articles I chose concern technology. If I did want to include serifs in my work I would use slab serifs as they are a more modern take on serifs. I will avoid serifs similar to those seen in blackletter and roman type as they aren’t very modern and therefore could communicate the wrong message within my work since the technology discussed in the articles I have chosen is very new. On the other hand, serifs like these could work well when representing the articles about mammoths and the CIA fly spy from the 70s as they are both about thing which are from a longer time ago and these typefaces could represent that.

Inspiration

When thinking about the second element of my typography work where I would be creating collaged elements to my type, I wanted to find a piece to take inspiration from, so I went to Pinterest and found this piece. I really like the simplicity of it and how it only contains a couple different photographs spliced together as I think it is very effective in corresponding visually with the word which is displayed in a ransom note style at the bottom of the piece.

There could be many meanings of this piece and multiple ways to interpret what her crisis could be, the first idea I had related to mental illness, the blue sky being clouded represents her state of mind being dull and depressed, and the mushroom cloud being in the middle could be a visual communication of being in a state of panic. The other idea I had could be that the crisis is a war, as the vintage style of the collage is similar old war propaganda posters, and the mushroom cloud could be the worry she is having concerning the war or even just something she has seen and is having a crisis about.

I also really like how there is a minimal colour palette due to the muted tone of every colour used and the block colour of the negative. This makes me consider how much the colour I use in the negative space should inform the decisions I make for the rest of the colours I use. Overall this piece has inspired me to take a more minimal approach to my collages. 

My Typography

When beginning my type I wanted to consider what I had learned from my previous research. For my first piece I chose to make it in a pixel like font as this style can directly link to the technology aspect of my articles as it was made on computers. I made it distorted so as to replicate glitching you could possibly experience if you had been hacked and I think it works well to represent the word because it is simple enough to easily get the point across.

I chose the word “hacked” to relate to my story concerning a brain chip to connect people to social media, as a big flaw in that product was how easily people would be able to hack into peoples brains with it. I added binary code coming off the word to relate to this further as if the coding is breaking.

If I was to fix some elements of this, I would use a rule to make sure the letters are straighter to emphasise the uniformity that is being broken by the hacking. I would also use a black pen instead of graphite as it is very faint in areas and is not a consistent tone which is not what I wanted, although it could be said to add to the glitchiness. I do think this piece was successful in representing the word but it isn’t to the standard I would’ve liked.

For my second piece I chose the article I have about botox curing depression. I chose the word “botox” as I felt I could effectively represent this visually with needles and clean lines, making it look precise and surgical. I chose to keep it mainly black and white with one element of colour as hospitals and medical places have to be very sterile and bright white can remind people of cleanliness. The orange I added to the middle needle reminds me of David Foldvari’s work and the way that he will only add one colour and I think it looks very striking, working to break up the monotonous black and white.

I chose a sans serif type as they look very sleek and modern and therefore I believe they work well for the subject matter. I also like the simplicity of the needles and how they are the same thickness as the lines in the letters, making them work very well in place of the lines I made them replace. If I was going to improve upon this I would maybe add more elements to the negative space that relate to botox, I could also have mad some of the letters look like distorted faces to show the aftermath of modifications.

When beginning my collages I wanted to take into consideration how simple I would keep it, so for my first collage I only used a few different images. The first image was of a woman who’s face I cut out to replace with metal imagery to make her part robot. This relates to the same article as I chose for the “hacked” type as the idea of adding an implant to someone’s head could make them into a part robot part human being: a cyborg.

 I really like how the face looks and I think it works well along with the word I chose. The darkness of the background makes the metal texture of the word “cyborg” really stand out and the warm yellow tones contrast the cool grey. For the word I collaged some metal pipes I found in a magazine together and I think they work very well although if i was to change anything about this I would maybe draw more parallels to the human side of cyborgs due to that being slightly lacking in this in my opinion. To do this I would maybe make half of the word flesh coloured to display that a cyborg is a mixture of both.

For my final collage I used the collaging aspect to make the break up the white in the background. I chose black and grey as this piece was based around a cure for blindness and the darkness could be representative of what blind people see. I then wanted to add different textures to this piece, so to begin with I closed my eyes and wrote “blind” with an oil pastel to create a rough texture in my work whilst also still relating to my chosen article by how I chose to write.

I also added some braille to further tie in to the idea of blindness a this is the form of alphabet that blind people read in. I don’t like the uniform letters I added over top of the crude oil pastel writing and if I was to change any part of that area in this piece I wouldn’t have added that as I don’t think it particularly links to the word. I also don’t like the ransom not style word towards the bottom of the piece for the same reason. I do like how it looks however, and it reminds me of the piece I found to take inspiration from off Pinterest. 

I really like the contrast of the white eyes on the black part of the the piece and the style of type I chose to put in the eyes, as it has slab serifs so still looks modern and can relate to new technology despite having serifs. Overall I somewhat like how this turned out although I should’ve been more considerate when adding certain elements and thought more about how they would further portray the narrative I was creating.

[abaxter]

E-Cigarette APV Evaluation

Greet back folks to get todays review that comes to us coming from Vaporesso and is over the new FORZ TX80 Kit. This gear is a change from cures normally see coming from Vaporesso being this their devices have an overabundance of a upscaled look for ways to them. The FORZ TX80 Kit can be described as waterproof, shockproof, dustproof kit, yes also the Tank. Vaporesso claims that finishing the airflow all the way down completely and settling the supplied plastic drip tip top on that the Aquarium is waterproof at the same time, I could be drastically wrong but I think would you first in the industry. Prior to when I tell you your experience with the FORZ Kit lets take a look at some detailed home elevators the FORZ TX80 Kit by Vaporesso.

MENU

5 presses of the potential button turns the extender both on/off

3 presses in the power button lcks the adjustment control keys

Holding that menu button with regard to 3 seconds and pressing it three times will open that menu up

First up is a new F(t) manner that sorta antics like a power competition automatically in my opinion

Next is beat mode followed by electrical power eco mode that will conserves battery lifetime

Then can come smart TC for all you Temp adjustments and various metals

In that case comes DIY manner where you can choose VW, VT, VV, BP and Super Person mode

Following is system arranged for further modifications such as brightness, display flip, version, default, auto eco

AXON CHIP 2 . 0

The new Axon processor chip 2 . 0 spent some time working very well with a immediate fire that is which means that fast you need to be cautious not to touch that fire button as soon as picking up the device since the device might give you a fright when the coil activates LOL.

I am some sort of straight wattage vaper so I couldn't explain anything about how that chip performs with TC one way or another. As i tried the new F(t) mode but truly didn't notice high of a difference from upright wattage but which might be just me. So i am very pleased with the innovative chips performance do not ever having any issues with the device itself.

SUMMARY

Using the FORZ for ones couple of weeks I've have it it has advanced, let me explain. Lake first took off the top and lower cap of the gas tank they felt gritty when re screwing both caps in place. After on the subject of 3 or 4 tank refills the top cap is fine no more gritty threads. As far as the base cap, when I adjusted out the pre-installed coil to test a 0. 4Ω coils everything was good with the threading. Just one reason I perhaps mentioned this is in the event that any of you of which buy one possess this happen to all of them, it should work by itself out very soon like mine did. This particular tank has 3 airflow slots issuing it massive circulation wide open but will dialed down to a good RDL. The gas tank is somewhat high in volume and whoshy even if smooth from uncovered to very shut down with no whistle at any choice of airflow I tested out. Flavor was typical at first but advanced with each gas tank refill.

The look with this tank is a appear of toughness of which as I said quicker was proven by having a 5 foot tumble on to hard wood floor coverings without even a nothing. I even for example the Drip Tip by using it's chrome hoop showing at the bottom. A tank fits get rid of flush to the machine adding to it's look and feel. As far as the coils go I chosen the 0. 4Ω coil at 56w because of battery everyday life, both coils conducted the same. One other factor on the tank can be that she's a good juice guzzler, which happens to be fine because together coils are quite large. I do not received a dried out hit in the quite a few tankful's of beverages used during the course of this particular review

The FORZ device itself is often a very comfortable along with ergonomic mod along with being a single 18650 device even though it is really beefed up together with the protection it isn't of which heavy in my opinion. I actually wish that it is a 21700 despite the fact that because teaming that with a tank which uses coils that want wattage in the 40-80 watt range I have to carry a increased battery if I'll be out along with it for a long time.

I really hope Vaporesso comes out with a coil nailers in the 30w vary simply for battery sustainability. The device will accommodate those that need it truly is toughness but also to help you folks looking for some thing attractive as well. This screen although to some degree on the small edge is very vivid and possesses plenty of information which are required minus a use the e-cig counter, you do purchase a puff timer although Vaporesso really should manipulate a puff counter top instead of the timer most definitely with this device.

Scrolling through the wattage vary is done fairly effective moving in. 5 increments to the max involving 80w, this device will never round robin. My partner and i tested the mods waterproof capability's in the sink full of liquid with no problems. Consequently the FORZ TX80 Kit performed perfectly for me.

I would like to help you thank Jasmine, Jessica and Vaporesso meant for providing the FORZ TX 80 Supplies for review and additionally I hope this examine helped anyone looking at purchasing one designed for themselves.

[niftybottle]

Hey @tulipsandsake, I’m your @bering-and-wells-exchange person. I saw you reblog D&D and Critical Role stuff, so I thought I’d do designs for Myka and Helena as D&D characters. Helena is a half-Drow multiclass Bard (College of Glamour)/Artificer (Battle Smith), while Myka is an old-school (2e/AD&D/Baldur’s Gate era) human dual Kensai->Mage. (I don’t have races/subclasses for everyone, but Artie is a college of lore bard, Claudia is an Artificer, Pete is a fighter, and I’m not sure what Leena is). Helena is very much a “seduce anything that moves” ~D&D Bard~, while Artie is very much not - he leans hard into the collection of lore/jack of all trades angle, and while he can play music very well he borders on anti-social. This is the source of some of the tension between them, with his distrust for her Drow parentage occupying most of the rest.

At this point I’m going interrupt to give a blanket apology if I explain something you already know - it’s hard to judge knowledge levels with a gift exchange without ruining the surprise, so I’m going to err on the side of explaining things just in case.

Helena is a bard to capture the importance of her novels, but novel-writing isn't the most practical in a fight or as a live performance, so I gave her an instrument. I chose the hurdy-gurdy, which is a (real) instrument with a very silly name. I picked it because it is very complex and mechanical, like something she might have invented or cobbled together. It’s kind of like an automatic violin or fiddle - rather than being plucked or bowed, a crank on the side is rotated, which moves a wheel across the strings. Rather than frets there are keys which hold the strings at certain points when pressed. There are also “drone” strings, which play a given note (that can be adjusted using a tuning peg) whenever the wheel is turned. You can technically “play” a drone string by holding a sting as if a guitar string as the wheel turns, but that isn’t traditional. Both drone and melody strings can be adjusted using tuning pegs, and apparently you can adjust the exact note the keys play. Some hurdy-gurdys (but not Helena's) also have additional strings not played by the wheel that can be played like a guitar. Hurdy-gurdys do not have much standardization, and the number/presence of all the different kinds of strings can vary.

Helena's bard college I went back and forth with - the college of glamour is about charming, as in the magic, which does suit her, but the college of lore would also be good. Ultimately I decided that college of lore would be better for Artie. Battle Smith, her artificer specialization, I kind of chose to make the character a little more practical to play - artillerist might have suited her character a touch more, but not too much more, and the battle smith's ability to use intelligence for (magic) weapon attacks/damage reduces the important stats to two (int and cha) rather than three (adding str or dex for weapon rolls). Helena's Steel Defender is Dickens the Mechanical Cat, and he can turn the crank for the hurdy-gurdy, letting her play it with one hand.

I don't have her backstory completely pinned down; I feel like her Drow parent escaped to the surface rather than being a functioning member of Drow society, if only to reduce the sketchiness of the alternative method of conception. Christina is definitely a valid "reason for adventuring", but Endless Wonder or fleeing the consequences of a lab accident or charm spell wearing off are also possibilities.

In terms of the illustration itself, I tried to balance bard flamboyance, artificer practicality with a touch of mad science, and Helena's canonical slightly Victorian elegance. I definitely needed the fancy bard hat, because I am of the firm belief that every bard needs a fancy hat. She's wearing a cute pair of overalls (and I now have "stylish overalls" in my google search history), but they got covered by Dickens :( . With the more muted browns inspired by the artificer half as well as her canon style, she was looking a little drab for a bard, so I added a little cape. In terms of skin/hair/eyes and being half-Drow my thoughts were kind of: leaning in to the purplish/blue/lavender skin thing some illustrations of Drow have, because between the inherent problems of the evil elves having black skin and wanting to stay fifty feet away from anything that might come close to being a race-bend I wasn't going to deal with having her skin be darker. I think it turned out OK? For some reason Helena's eye color is significant to me, so they stayed brown rather than Drow purple or something, though they wound up a bit brighter thanks to my attempts to add a little purple. Jaime Murray's hair is iconic, but more for its smoothness and luster than its color, so I was fine making it white as long as I kept the style. The hurdy-gurdy was a bit of a nightmare (twice over, since I had to ink it), which isn't surprising - I kind of cursed myself with that instrument choice, but it was so perfect ;_; . In general, and especially in comparison with Myka, Helena's illustration fought me the whole way down. If you watch the time-lapse, you can see some of the references I used, but far from all - I streamed so much hurdy-gurdy playing youtube is still confused, and the pose went through some shenanigans.

Now, to Myka. Thinking of her pre-med before pre-law before secret service vaguely remembered quote, I thought of the old Baldur's Gate fighter(kensai)->mage cheese build, and thought it might be a good way to capture that simultaneous indecision and discipline/intelligence.

Going very briefly into Baldur's Gate/2e: Kensai, in BG, is a Fighter kit. Kits, in BG and 2e both, are a little like specializations in 5e, in that they are a kind of further customization beyond the class itself. The difference is, not every character has a kit - there is a base class (fighter) and a kit is a set of trade-offs, taking away base class features in exchange for various benefits. So fighter, the base kit, is pretty similar to the fighter in other editions - good at using weapons and armor and attacking a lot. Can equip the best stuff, and use it well, but doesn't get a lot of bonuses apart from that of equipment. Kensai (in BG), on the other hand, trades the ability to wear armor (and use non-thrown ranged weapons) for scaling bonuses to to-hit and damage (abstracting some things for you), and a minor one-time bonus to natural armor, as well as the Kai ability, which temporarily maxes out damage on successful attacks, usable a few times a day, depending on class level. In short, they trade off the armor portions of the Fighter class for additional weapon bonuses.

In Baldur's Gate, if you want to build a dual fighter/wizard, kensai is a great pick for kit, since wizards can't cast in armor anyway, but they can cast spells to boost their AC, mitigating some of the disadvantage of the kit. Mage is a base class and basically what would be called a wizard in later editions. Mage kits, with the exception of wild mage (in BG), which is a whole thing I won't get into, are pretty much picking a school to specialize in - they get bonuses to spells of that school, but there is an "opposing" school which they can't use at all. I wouldn't be terribly interested in those specializations even if I could use them for Myka, but I couldn't, because of how dual-classing works.

Dual-classing in BG and 2e is one of two methods to have more than one class on a character. Which one you can do depends on your race (as does a lot of things in 2e). If you're human, you dual-class; if you're not, you multi-class. Multi-class characters are more what you'd expect from multi-classing in other editions - you have two classes, you gain levels in both. There are differences (exp is divided evenly between classes, rather than choosing what to level, class and combination restrictions), but most relevantly, you can't use any kits with multi-class characters. So, we want to dual-class, not multi-class, so that Myka can use the Kensai (BG) kit, which makes her human, which is fine.

Dual-classing, compared to multi-classing, is weird. Basically, you start off in one class, with a kit if you like, and level normally in that class/kit until you decide to switch, at which point you are done with the first class and can't level in it anymore. Then you *start over* in your new class (which cannot have a kit), as if you were a level one character in that class, without (effectively) the ability to use anything from the previous class (except hp). This continues until the number of levels in the second class exceeds that of the levels in the first class, at which point the character regains all the qualities and abilities of their first class. Dual classes can wind up quite powerful, but they require both planning and a willingness to be weaker for a time to be more powerful later (which I feel suit Myka well - she's a planner and has the patience and discipline to accept temporary weakness to be stronger later). So, given that we want to use the Kensai (BG) kit, Myka needs to start with it, and then switch to mage later, since the second class can't have a kit.

At this point I want to clarify why I keep specifying Baldur's Gate and/or D&D 2e for things. Turns out, Baldur's Gate does use D&D 2e as a base, but makes some modifications. One of the changes it makes, which I didn't know when I started this, is the Kensai kit itself. Kensai is not officially a 2e kit, and technically isn't in 2e at all. There is a (fighter-ish) class in the "Oriental Adventures" book for first edition, but it isn't quite the same, more it's own class that happens to share some tables with fighter. Since the end goal is character design, not creating a legal 2e character, I won't go too far into it, but I did create both a (cheated to level up) Baldur's Gate kensai -> mage and a (1e-ish)Kensai->(2e)Mage, using the rules from 2e for most things not directly in the Kensai class description (and ignoring the stat requirements for dual-classing since I didn't roll any 17s); screenshots of both should be in the supplemental reblog, in addition to a link to Helena's dndbeyond character sheet.

Fortunately for me and my lack of foresight, both BG Kensai and 1/2e Kensai have similar flavor: a heavily "eastern" inspired warrior with even more discipline and asceticism than standard fighters, focused on their weapons and unable to wear armor, with a restriction to either lawful (1/2e) or at least not chaotic (BG) alignments (if this sounds a little monk-ish WotC agrees - kensai is a monk specialization in 5e, being a monk that can use a not-monk weapon). Also fortunately for me, mage is wizard is mage, regardless of edition. Magic from book learning/intelligence. Not too complicated.

In terms of character narrative, in canon, I feel like coming to the Warehouse was a significant breakpoint in Myka's life and worldview. Not being a writer, this small essay notwithstanding, I'm going to sum it up as a break from tradition and from seeking the approval of her father. Where joining the Warehouse crew was for canon Myka, I want dualing from Kensai to Mage to be for DnD Myka, with reaching the point where she can use Kensai features again representing the peace with her past she eventually reaches at the warehouse in canon. What I'm picturing is: Myka is from an isolated and very traditional mountain village where the kensai tradition (and 2e mechanics) has been preserved. Myka is trained in this tradition, and has both the mental discipline and physical capabilities to excel. The people of this village are purists and don't believe in using magic, especially in conjunction with being a kensai. Somehow (at this point my having thought this through starts to fail) Myka gets ahold of some spellbooks, and with her love of books and curiosity, begins to read and reread them, until one day she casts some magic. This is against the rules, and she's kicked out of the village for "corrupting" their traditions, and now she has to make her way through the world with only her fledgling mage talent to rely on.

Talking about the illustration/design itself: given the heavily eastern vibe, I'm trying for a samurai/ronin style based on my recollections from my weeb phase. I wanted in particular with the robe/kimono to make something that would be in between the plain practicality of Myka's kensai kimono and the flashiness of wizard robes (if you watch the timelapse, you may spot the part where I accidentally took a left turn into fallout's vault boy coloration before tweaking it a bit). I also wanted to have her using magic, and I think the magic effect turned out well. Really, this illustration just came out really easy. I was just … drawing hands. If you watch the timelapse, I even saved a third hand for a while because it was so nice (but at the wrong angle). I don't know what happened. Really the only snags were the aforementioned Vault Boy Moment and coloring Myka's hair (although I did decide to leave her face as a sketch rather than try to ink it).

I think maybe I've babbled enough for now. I'll reblog this in a moment (since tumblr hates links) with character sheets, timelapses of the drawings, and a bonus doodle that came to me reading the artificer specializations.

[paleotool]

A look at the origins and evolution of our favorite camp stove…

This post was going to be a few words about the Primus stoves we all love and some images I’ve collected from around the web.  As usual, I found myself rambling all over the topic without a clear direction but here is a bit of an overview of liquid fuel stoves and how they have evolved over the past 150 years.  Clicking the image will link to a larger version in most cases.

Primus advertisement 1899. Image found on the Classic Camp Stove Forum.

Outdoor cooking has become something of a lost art for those of us raised in the industrial world, but not too long ago, what we think of as camp cooking was just plain cooking.   Several major advances made in the 19th and early 20th centuries resonate in our lives without a second thought from most of us.  Most of our grandparents or great-grandparents cooked with solid fuel (mostly wood, peat, manure, or charcoal) and their grandparents may have felt fortunate to even be able to cook indoors in bad weather. Much of the world still cooks this way and it is an eye-opener for those raised in the more industrialized countries if and when they travel abroad.

In the 19th century, the Caravan Craze, global expansionism, and long-distance campaign warfare sent massive numbers of otherwise “civilized” people back to the outdoors; often with high expectations about the board-of-fare.  Although we, as a species, have cooked over campfires for many thousands of years, this is not always convenient or desirable; whether for speed, lack of fuel, or need for a low profile in the hedgerows.  An early response to this need was the brazier or hibachi-type grill reinvented on numerous occasions in various parts of the world.  These  stoves can use small wood or charcoal but are heavy, smoky, and need large volumes of solid fuel for sustained use.  Not a good option for the traveller (sic).  When coal oil and kerosene became common, liquid fuel appeared to be the answer.

Tea at the Caravan with the Classic Svea Stove.

Although common now, liquid fuel stoves have not always been a good or safe choice for cooking on the road or in camp.  Early portable stoves used a wick and some variety of coal oil for the fuel.  The flame created with a wick is relatively low-temperature, causing incomplete combustion.

In fact, the early instructions for safe stove use are nearly the same as that of fireworks. 

“LAY ON GROUND. LIGHT FUSE. GET AWAY! – USE OUTDOORS ONLY – UNDER ADULT SUPERVISION.”

Another feature of the earliest wick stoves, due to their relatively low burning temperature, is that they exude fumes and soot, like a low-quality oil lamp. This sooting and smoke make them unpleasant at best, especially in confined spaces.  Though not a terrible option for the 1850s, they are nothing as good as what would come in the next generation.

Soyer stove.

The advancements of Alexis Soyer – The contraption above is one of the many inventions given to us by Alexis Soyer, celebrity chef and cooking guru of mid-19th century Britain.  Many of his cookbooks are still referenced and can be found for free on the web.  He was, by the way, born a Frenchman but we can forgive him this oversight for his many wonderful contributions to the world of food.

Not only did Mssr. Soyer invent several useful contraptions for cooking, but he is credited with organizing the first Soup Kitchen to help the starving Irish during the Famine.

As a further claim to fame, the large unit stove he developed for the British army during the Crimean War was such and excellent design it was still regular issue 120 years later.  But I digress from our theme.

Seen in use above, this little stove was revolutionary for the time but still left much to be desired, especially if one wanted to cook with it indoors.  I don’t believe you’d catch a sane cook using something of this sort on an actual tablecloth unless it was made from asbestos but it seemed like a good idea for the advertisement.  In the 19th century, both camp and home cookery were beginning to change drastically; up to this time the two were not very different.  Along with improvements in stoves, better cooking pots, and roasting pans, other kitchen gadgets were being developed to help make cooking better and easier.  A humble and often overlooked kitchen appliance was invented in this period…

The wind-up cooking timer –

Soyer’s Alarum.

This little beauty is something that all modern cooks take for granted.  It seems obvious now, but Soyer realized that mothers, chefs, and camp cooks have many things to attend to at once.  He wisely decided that a dinging countdown timer timer could take some of the strain away from cooking and make for better prepared meals.

The coming of the pressurized stove – The Crimean war, the Raj in India, and other colonial ventures undertaken during Queen Victoria’s reign spurred on great advances in campaign living and long-term camping.  The East India Company and the regular military encouraged officers to bring the comforts of home as whole careers were spent thousands of miles from home creating and running an empire.  From this period, the Brits gave us great folding furniture, camp bedding, portable furnishings, and the Gypsy caravan but it took a Swede to take us to the next level, and camp technology has never looked back.

The pressurized kerosene stove –

Image 1914.

From the Wikipedia Entry as of October 2014:

The Primus stove, the first pressurized-burner kerosene (paraffin) stove, was developed in 1892 by Frans Wilhelm Lindqvist, a factory mechanic in Stockholm, Sweden. The stove was based on the design of the hand-held blowtorch;

The origins of the camp stove!

Lindqvist’s patent covered the burner, which was turned upward on the stove instead of outward as on the blowtorch.

Improvements and variations came quickly after their introduction.

…The Primus No. 1 stove, made of brass, consists of a fuel tank at the base, above which is a “rising tube” and the burner assembly. A steel top ring on which to set a pot is held above the burner by three support legs. Other Primus-style stoves may be larger or smaller, but have the same basic design. The No. 1 stove weighs about 2½ pounds, and measures about 8½ inches high with an overall diameter of just under 7 inches. The tank, about 3½ inches high, holds a little over two pints of kerosene and will burn for about four hours on a full tank.

We think of this type stove as a camp stove but they were marketed far and wide for household use as well.

…Prior to the introduction of the Primus, kerosene stoves were constructed in the same manner as oil lamps, which use a wick to draw fuel from the tank to the burner and which produce a great deal of soot due to incomplete combustion.

The Primus stove’s design, which uses pressure and heat to vapourize the kerosene before ignition, results in a hotter, more efficient stove that does not soot.  Because it did not use a wick and did not produce soot, the Primus stove was advertised as the first “sootless” and “wickless” stove.

These stoves are still celebrated worldwide and are in use on every corner of the planet.  They are a labor-saving device that frees their owners from fuel collection and actually lower airborne pollutants in the immediate area.  They are also credited with limiting the natural deforestation that accompanies humans living in concentrated communities.

The ads give a hint as to how far and wide the Primus stove reached around the globe.

This Radius ad is interesting as it shows the kinship or reapplication of technology from blow torch to stove with only a little modification by the engineers.  Below, this advertisement for an aftermarket pressure cap shows the need for improvement as stoves could easily become clogged and explode as a pressurized bomb.  I narrowly escaped this hazard myself when my stove nozzle became clogged on an outing.  A chemical fire-extinguisher is never a bad Idea to have handy living on the road.

The designers continually improved this simple device with, among other features, a safety cap that intentionally failed at a lower pressure than that which would have caused the stove to turn into a brass grenade.  Although safety features were invented to reduce the number of serious accidents, I suspect these little contraptions are responsible for a fair number of burns and the loss of more than a few homes, autos, and RVs.

As with any successful product, there were and are many imitators of this relatively simple design and many still on the market models come from former Soviet Union, China, and India.

Judging by the marketing, they bring nothing but bliss and happiness to the laboring mother… but seriously, these devices were probably a huge boon to the housewife no longer in need of wood or dung for cooking fuel.

The switch to gasoline –

Although introduced in the early 20th Century, the Second World War and subsequent decade saw widespread popularity of the gasoline stove for military use.  Unlike kerosene, gasoline (or purified “white gas”) is truly explosive, not just flammable.  Placed under high pressure, these are potentially bombs.  However, gasoline or derivatives can now be found almost anywhere on earth with the spread of the internal combustion engine, making this a fuel of choice for international travelers.  As per usual with us humans, we chose practicality and convenience over safety.

The iconic early stove of this design is the Svea 123 as it it is a beautiful combination of design features including simplicity of construction, easy field repair, and heating power.

Classic Svea 123 and a close cousin.

Here’s a link to lighting the Svea 123 (and a little info about why they are so cool):  “DEMYSTIFYING THE SVEA 123“

n.b. The original link was dead when I last checked but I have saved an archive copy here with credit to the author.

Variations on the theme are endless, from the Svea 123 (gasoline) to the Ultra-Primus double burner home range (kerosene).  The various designs proved themselves in kitchens, on river trips, mountain tops, and in virtually every modern backpacker’s gear in one form or another.  For much of the world, this style stove is still the centerpiece of kitchen cooking.

A different spin on the basic Svea design. The main feature of the 71 is it’s convenient packaging for the traveller.

Summitting  Everest, a pretty great endorsement.

As a side note to history, the design was so successful that many other companies copied the essential design.  Here are just a few ads for the Optimus line of stoves and lamps, another spin-off, from their own website showing a wide range of related products over the last century.

The modern era of the camp stove –

In my lifetime, liquid fuel backpacking stoves have undergone some serious refinements but overall, the system for liquid fuel stoves is essentially the same.  Safety has been a big issue, of course, but size (decrease) and fuel capacity (increase) are probably the biggest changes.  Many stoves use canister fuel (butane or propane), alcohol, or solid fuel pellets; but I won’t get into those as they are beyond our scope and interest here.

A new era; the MSR XGK multi-fuel stove.

The final round of changes came from Mountain Safety Research and its later competitors.  The big innovation was to separate the fuel tank from the burner assembly and add a pressurizing system to the tank.  Small but efficient details were added like the self-lighting sparker, self-cleaning tube, and the inclusion of a lightweight wind screen.  I have used one of these for used with pretty good success but I still find myself choosing the Svea 123 for many journeys.

Links and Further Information –

This post is woefully inadequate in so many ways but it is meant as a quick overview of the pressurized liquid fuel stove we all love so much.  Here are some links to some great information on the web.

And my all time favorite, the Svea 123. We have been friends for many years.

If you don’t already own a 123, click the images to find out more.

With aluminum cup.

The Base Camp is a specialist equipment internet retailer based in Littlehampton, Southern England since 1986.  They stock classic stoves and have an excellent selection of obsolete parts.

A H Packstoves Supplies and Parts – is an online seller with a wide variety.  He always has good stuff and some hard to find parts.

The Fettle Box is a good source for pieces and parts for your classic stove. I have had good luck with them.

Finally, the Classic Camp Stoves Forum.  Several images above were found here.  Information about virtually every kind of stove available.  History, art, repairs, tutorials, and reprints are all available on the Forum.

Click here for the mother load of information about Classic Stoves.

More stove ramblings to come…

Classic Liquid Fuel Stoves A look at the origins and evolution of our favorite camp stove... This post was going to be a few words about the Primus stoves we all love and some images I've collected from around the web. 

[catharinegaither-blog]

How To ConvertApe &Cue ToMp3 In Mac OS X?

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Added assist of ID3 Tags ("Consumer Text", "Encoder by", "Modifed by", "Orig Artist", "Orig Album", "Orig Filename", "Orig Lyricist", "Orig Year", "Lyricist", "SubTitle", "Content Group", "Key", "BPM", "Writer", "Copyright", "Consumer URL", "ISRC", "Play Depend", "Album Artist", "Disc", "Conductor").

[shannonmurakami-blog]

Free MP3 Cutter Joiner Options And Related Software

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Should you only have a few small information to convert, we recommend using one of the free programs we reviewed. The benefit of spending $30 on audio conversion software program is the power to transform a lot of information rapidly. Audials Tunebite is $forty, which is the most costly software program we tested, however it may well document streaming audio and video companies and converts greater than forty import formats. Macsome Audio Splitter Freeware, also called Macsome Audio Splitter, is the only MP3 splitter freeware, specifically designed for Macintosh. With this device, you can quick minimize any unprotected MP3 or AAC files into smaller parts with no quality loss. In addition, Macsome Audio Splitter supports you to import your goal audio file in a batch and then split them one by one based on your totally different needs for each file. Furthermore, online mp3 cutter-cut songs free the ID tags may be preserved and edited as properly.Take your mouse and drag over the mp3 recordsdata to pick them. Then drag them to the center part of the window (the place it says Drag audio files and folders here). What makes it superior to different normalizers is that it also allows you to statistically analyze how loudly your files sound to the human ear. It adjusts the MP3 file straight, so there's no high quality lost by decoding and re-coding.Pazera Free Audio Extractor provides you a easy answer for extracting parts of video info and converting them to the most well-liked audio codecs. To begin with its mp3 merger perform you'll need to rearrange it first and launch it. Now on the Audacity's interface hit File; Open and cargo your complete mp3 tracks that you just need to be a part of collectively. I wish to particular my extreme satisfaction collectively together with your Free MP3 Merger utility. As a joiner you'll be able to be a part of plenty of audio information collectively to make a single large file.

[less-than-hash]

Endless Night Class

If you’re interested in studying game design, Atlus has provided a rare (possibly unique) opportunity in their Persona Endless Night Collection.

Be warned: I’m about to spend a lot of words advocating that you acquire, play extensively, and critically examine their three Persona dancing games. I’m in no way associated with (and have never been associated with) Atlus. Nor am I an evangelist for any of these three games individually (though I do enjoy them). Taken together, though, I think they prove both fascinating and illuminating, and it’s rare to find a series as odd as this collected like this.

I provide some possible alternatives for similar exercises at the bottom of the post.

For the uninitiated, Atlus released a beatmatch game for the Vita a few years back based on the fourth of their teenage dating-sim slash Jungian dungeon delve Persona games: Persona 4: Dancing All Night. (I’ll be calling this P4D.)

I’m personally a big fan and played the crap out of it for months. Which is not to say that it’s without some pretty significant flaws. 

A few weeks ago, they released their follow-up(s), Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight (P3D) and Personal 5: Dancing in Starlight (P5D). 

The fact that any of these games exist at all is pretty weird. They’re beatmatch games that serve as spin-offs (and in two out of three cases, sequels) to narrative focused hundred-hour RPGs, each themed around dancing, despite the fact that dancing is in no shape, form, or fashion important to the core games. 

Stranger still, the two new releases are essentially the same game from both a systemic and narrative perspective. The characters are different, the music is different, the UI is different, but essentially everything else - the mechanics, the UX, the inciting narrative, the way story content is accessed, the loot - is exactly the same. 

Essentially Atlus made two games worth of content for the exact same “engine” and released them at the same time. It’s a little as if Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas had been released on the same day (had New Vegas not made any modifications to Fallout 3′s gameplay systems).

But here’s the kicker: for $100, you can get the “Endless Night Collection,” which contains both of the new releases and a code for the digital version of the original Dancing All Night (for PS4, if you get the PS4 bundle).

In other words, for $100 you get:

A game from mid-2015 developed for the Vita.

A follow-up to that game based on a different property developed for simultaneous release on PS4 and Vita.

A second follow-up to that game based on yet a different property developed for simultaneous release on PS4 and Vita, to be released at the same time as the above.

In addition to which, one of the two new games is a spin-off of a 12 year-old PS2 game while the other is a spin-off of a game that released last year.

That’s a whole lot of design from a whole lot of sources over a pretty long time kind of piled up on top of itself.

To an extent, that’s not wildly different from, say, being able to purchase a Witcher 1, 2, and 3 bundle. But there are a few other things that lend these particular games to study:

There’s minimal change in the basic gameplay systems, allowing you to focus on what things the devs decided to alter between games.

The games can be approached almost entirely non-linearly. You will miss nothing by not playing them in the order they were released. You certainly need not play them in their numeric order. Even within the games, the narrative and songs are released in a fairly non-linear order. (This is less true in P4: Dancing All Night, but that’s part of the point of this exercise.) 

The gameplay loop can be approached in chunks as short as five minutes.

Due to the confluence of the above, you can easily and comfortably jump back and forth between all three titles.

These games marry narrative-focused properties to a traditionally narrative-light genre.

All that said, here are a few things to keep in mind:

The games are not wildly accessible to those with difficulty hearing, seeing, or performing quick finger movements.

Having a working knowledge of Persona 3, Persona 4, and Persona 5 will dramatically deepen your experience of the dancing games. If you haven’t played them (which is reasonable - that’s a roughly 300 hour and $120 investment for all three, and Persona 3 has not aged well at all, especially from a systems design perspective), it’s worthwhile to at least familiarize yourself with their plots, themes, characters, art styles, and UI.

Possessing a knowledge of both rhythm games and music will allow you a deeper awareness of some of the gameplay changes that occur between the games.

SO, let’s say I’ve convinced you to acquire a copy of the games. What about them should you be studying as you play them?

What changes did the devs make between 2015′s P4D and the two 2018 games? What does each change accomplish? What need, challenge, or issue do you think the change was in response to?

Some examples:

P4D includes a visual novel-style story mode while P5D and P3D do not. Yet they still contain interactive narrative scenes. What do these two different presentations accomplish? Why do you think Atlus changed their tact in the newer games? For bonus points, compare against the narrative presentation in the Persona 4 Arena fighting games.

It’s not merely the mechanical presentation of the narrative content that changed between the games - the scope, focus, and tone of the two recent games is markedly different from P4D. P4D tells a single, linear narrative, while P3D and P5D seem much more interested in their casts’ varied interpersonal relationships. In the older game, the player encounters a small cast of entirely new characters. In what I’ve played of the newer games, there are no new characters at all. Consider why that is. I'm almost positive that the answers are neither “they’re lazy” or “it was cheaper” (though “the cost didn’t justify the reward” could very well be part of the rationale).

Progression in P4D is wildly different from that in P3D and P5D. Consider how this requires the player to approach the content. Think about why the devs may have decided to change progression in such a radical way.  

Item progression, too, is handled entirely differently in P4D than in P3D/P5D. P4D included a currency system that’s entirely gone in the new games. Why do you think that is? Further, what types of items exist in the former that aren’t in the latter? Does the functionality of some of those item types exist elsewhere in the game? Why change that presentation? Some of these changes will feel like cuts, but I promise it would have been cheaper to leave some of these systems as they were. So if the reasoning wasn’t strictly financial, what was it?

There is a single addition to the core mechanics of the game between P4D and the new releases - the double beat. Why do you think it was added?  

Compare the background videos during song gameplay in P4D to that in P3D and P5D. You’ll notice that the latter two are significantly less busy from a VFX perspective. (While I haven’t closely studied it, I suspect they’re also less complex in terms of camera cuts and camera angles.) Why do you think that is, especially given that A) games within series strongly tend towards bigger, brighter, and brasher over time; and B) the original Persona 5 possesses a much flashier visual style than Persona 4? Why are the dance sequences in P5D less flashy than those in P4D?

Similarly, passing any song in P4D got you a brief cutscene in which the dancing character summoned their persona. These are absent from the newer games. Consider why that might be. (In this case, the answer “It was cheaper” may have a lot of merit, but that’s probably not the sole reason. How do those little cutscenes at the end of each song impact the way the player interacts with the game? Especially in the common use case of the player wanting to retry the song to improve their score.)

This requires a little more familiarity with music and game design, but try to observe the ways in which the authoring of the beatmatch play changes between P4D and the newer games. The mechanics are exactly the same, but the way the devs present challenges within those mechanics are different. Try to identify how, then consider why. For bonus points, examine this through the lens of questions 4, 5, and 6 in the next section.

Much of the UI art in P4D is a major departure from that of the original Persona 4. On the other hand, P3D and P5D tend to hew much more closely to their sources for their UI art. Why do you think that is? Especially consider what’s accomplished by P3D’s emulation of a 12 year-old PS2 game. (Full disclosure: I hate it.) Strangely and interestingly, though, P3D straight up steals a bit of UI from P5D, which it takes from Persona 5. (Hint: it’s when the player is prompted to speak.) Why do you think this is? (This is a spot where the financials may have played a role. Creating the art asset for P3D to use the same UI in these moments certainly cost more than not having to create that asset. However, that cost may have been significantly cheaper and safer than changing that aspect of the UI’s functionality between the two concurrent games. Is that why it was done? I can’t say. It’s worth thinking about what the decision accomplishes from a non-financial perspective, too.) 

A major change between P4D and P3D/P5D’s conversation UI is the discontinued use of character portraits during speech. Those portraits already exist for both Persona 3 and Persona 5, so why not use them?

Alright, that’s a bunch to chew on solely from the perspective of differences between the games over time.

But it’s also worthwhile to carefully consider the choices that remain consistent across the titles. These are the things the devs felt strongly enough about to hold onto when they could have changed or jettisoned them.

The controls in all three games are exactly the same (though there’s a little fuzziness between platforms where certain inputs don’t map 1 to 1 between them). What do you think the developers consider so successful about these controls that they didn’t adjust them at all in the three years between the release of P4D and the latter titles?

Similarly, consider the control inputs chosen. Identify why d-pad right and Square aren’t used during dance play. Then consider how else the developers could have tried to address that issue. Why do you think they landed on the solution that they did?

Up at the top of this post, I mentioned that despite their overt focus on the idea and act of dancing (and the narrative’s examination of dancing from perspectives social, physical, and cultural), these are not dancing games. So why do you think these games are about dancing at all? The developers could absolutely had the beatmatch play represent something like the characters calling on their personas to battle shadows - or carrying out heists in the case of P5D. Or playing music in a band. So why the focus on dance? How does that interact with the base Persona games? Consider the role that “practice” and “training” play in both the dancing games and the RPGs. How is it reflected in the narrative of the games? How is it reflected in the way the player interacts with the game?

Clearly the player isn’t actually dancing - so what experience do you think are the devs hoping to inspire in the player as they perform each song? How do you think they wanted you to feel while you’re playing?

The audio chosen for the beat match is incredibly specific. Listen to the sound the game makes when you successfully hit a single beat. To the sound the game makes when you hit a linked beat. A sustained beat. Each of these are different, and each is immediately recognizable. Unless I missed something, none of these sounds change between the original P4D and the recent releases. (Though the new games let the player edit the sounds that play for each beat type.) Why do you think the audio team chose those sounds? How do those specific sounds contribute to the player’s experience of the game?  Looking back to question 4, how do these sounds make the player feel when their actions evoke them?

Once you’ve got an answer for questions 4 and 5, consider how successful you think the devs were in evoking that experience. Which aspects of the game undermine that experience? Which support it? Are there aspects that undermine it present in P4D that no longer exist in the recent releases?

Play the game on the three basic difficulties. Are your answers to question 6 different on the different levels of difficulty?

Go play (or watch a video of) Guitar Hero, Rock Band, or one of their sequels. What sounds do those games make when the player successfully hits a beat? More interestingly, what’s the audio response to missing a beat in Guitar Hero or Rock Band? Compare that to the audio response for missing a beat in the Persona dancing games. Why do you think those teams chose those dramatically different approaches?

Carefully consider the gameplay goals and how they’re presented to the player. The player is scored numerically, but they also reside on a continuum of “approval” (presented by dancing green alien invader-looking shadows in P4D and by bar meters in the newer releases). The latter of these is given tremendous and repeated audio feedback in the form of barks from the player’s companions. Additionally, the game displays how many successful beats the player has had since they last missed one. (And look at how the game defines this - it isn’t only a Missed beat that breaks a combo, but one rated Good.) Finally, the game assigns a text rating at the end of a performance: Not Cleared Stage Cleared Brilliant King Crazy Consider how all of these forms of feedback relate to one another. Why do all of these exist? Do they need to? What problems do you think they were implemented to solve?

Really think about the numerical score. How do you think it’s calculated? (Hint: the player increases that score over the course of their playthrough - it’s not tabulated at the end based on the report card of information presented about their performance.) Note that I don’t mean the specifics of exactly how many points each beat is worth, because I have no idea what those specifics are. (I could probably Google it, but part of the point of this is to consider what the player’s experiencing is.) What purpose does it serve?

For that matter, look at the elite King Crazy rating. Consider how it’s earned (by hitting every beat in a song, including scratches, with either Perfect or Great precision). Why do you think that’s the goal the developers set for the player? And why call it “King Crazy?” (I don’t think the answer to that question is localization-related or preciousness with the original language. The two recent games are called Persona 3: Dancing Moon Night and Persona 5: Dancing Star Night in Japan. Though I suppose if preciousness preserved the term in P4D, a desire to retain the same scale might result in the persistence of the term.)

I mentioned near the top of this post that these games aren’t wildly accessible. Consider specifically what aspects of the game would make it difficult for different kinds of people to enjoy playing it. If you were the developer, how might you try to address some of these issues?

During narrative segments, P3D and P5D (and to a lesser extent P4D, given its visual novel style) make a marked departure from the RPGs they’re based on in terms of perspective. Neither Persona 3 nor Persona 5 are first-person games, and the dancing segments involving the protagonist in P3D and P5D are similarly third person. Consider the first person perspective of the narrative in P3D and P5D. What does it accomplish? Why do you think the developers chose it?

Whew, that’s a lot. You doing okay?

In the famous words of Douglas Adams’s towel, DON’T WORRY. You don’t need to know the answers to all of those questions. I certainly don’t. 

I’ve got pretty strong suspicions about some of them, interpretations or ideas about most of them, and educated guesses about the rest. For some of these questions, the only people who know the answers for sure are those who were in the room when the decision was made. And hell, maybe they’ve forgotten!

The point is that if you’re going to be successful in design, you should be willing to dig deep into what a game’s doing when you experience it. Interrogate the game. Try to suss out the developers’ intentions. Resist the urge to pass judgment on them - to say that their choices are right or wrong, good or bad - but feel free to consider how you might have tried a different approach.

And then consider what obstacles those different approaches might hit.

Personally (get it?), I think that the Endless Night Collection provides a really rare, interesting opportunity to dig into these kinds of questions across multiple related games. If you don’t want to or can’t look at these particular titles, try to find similar opportunities. Search for games that might provide rewarding insights through archaeological examination. Some possibilities:

You a WoW player? Find a vanilla server and take a long, focused look at the way the game’s changed since launch.

The base Mass Effect trilogy was developed over a relatively short period of time (the console life cycle of the 360), but each game plays significantly differently from the one before. Despite the fact that you’re playing the same character (kind of) in each, the stats that represent that character, the way that character moves, and the UI through which you inhabit the character all change dramatically between each title. (My Shepherd in ME1 was spec’d as a healer. Remember when an ME character could be a healer?)

If you’re into Obsidian’s games, play through Baldur’s Gate 2, Pillars of Eternity, and Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire and ask questions like those above of these games. The original PoE essentially sold itself as a modern BG, so in what ways did it actually emulate those old games, and in what ways did the devs decide a different direction was better? What further did they then change for the sequel to their own game?

Find those changes, those differences large and small, give consideration to what the experience accomplishes (or fails to) on either side of the change, and imagine what the devs were trying to accomplish with their adjustments.

Anyway, I should probably sleep at some point, or so Morgana would tell me.

Good luck! <#

[paydayloansptjblog-blog]

Advertising a Structured Settlement

With the innumerable net web pages, adverts, authorized jargon and advanced troubles encompassing structured settlements, it is simple to become overwhelmed and annoyed when you are simply just exploring for responses and simple facts. Whether or not you've received a structured settlement now, or if you are just making an attempt to far better fully grasp them, you've arrive to the correct position for sifting by the messy information.

What is a Structured Settlement? A structured settlement is a collection of confirmed payments (annuities) made above a particular time period of time and is normally the consequence of an injury settlement or another situation in which you are awarded accessibility to a significant sum of revenue. It is the different to accepting an upfront lump sum. Structured settlements are individualized designs intended to assistance you address current and potential bills. Doing work carefully with an experienced legal professional can assist you to establish an successful structured settlement to give you the stability of a fixed money above a established period of time of time. Illustration - how it may do the job: Melissa is injured in a major vehicle accident and is now unable to do the job for the next calendar year. As a solitary dad or mum, she has two younger young children to care for, not to point out her mounting professional medical costs. She is aware that she has to pay $25,000 in health-related expenses at the current time, and she understands that she will will need medical procedures in a couple of months that will price an additional $twenty,000. Her structured settlement can be set up to give her a lump sum to spend the existing healthcare charges ideal now, and be structured to give her an supplemental lump sum at the time of her surgery. It can also give her more month-to-month payments equal to her wage for the calendar year that she is not able to function, including an additional regular monthly payment to retain the services of another person to assist her care for her kids although she is recovering from her injuries and clinical procedures. As soon as Melissa goes back to work, month-to-month payments may stop or be diminished. Varieties of Structured Settlements Selected Interval / Period of time Specified Annuities: Annuities with a selected period of time for the payments to be compensated out. They can be created regular, quarterly, semi-every year, each year, and many others. On your loss of life, all remaining payments are built to you beneficiary. Existence Annuity: Periodic payments for a assured number of years (based mostly on your life expectancy) or for lifestyle, whichever is up 1st. Again, the beneficiary receives any remaining payments should really you die in advance of the complete total is paid. Short-term Existence Annuity: Shell out you for a specified quantity of many years if you are continue to dwelling, so your annuity ends when you die. There is certainly no provision for a beneficiary to gather remaining payments. Lifetime Contingent Lump Sum: You can obtain a lump sum, furnished you are alive on the due date. If you die just before this day, your beneficiary is not entitled to the quantity. Lump sum: You can established it up to obtain the lump sum on a distinct date, say, fifteen years from now. Your beneficiary will receive the lump sum on the long term day if you have died just before then. The Information Although structured settlements have a wonderful diploma of overall flexibility during the determination-generating approach (how a lot money do I want now, how substantially cash will I want in the potential, what are my current needs?), as soon as you concur to the terms and sign the arrangement, you can NOT change the provisions. It is hugely proposed that you have an attorney and reliable broker assist you to establish the greatest payment approaches for your circumstance. You may want to talk to the broker to occur up with quite a few diverse scenarios and payment schedules so you can get a extensive search at your options. So, even if your situation modifications down the street, your payments will not. Which is why it is extremely critical to be comprehensive and very careful when creating your payment program. Insufficient Payments Sadly, daily life has a way of throwing off our very well-assumed-out and effectively-intentioned options. Even if you've got done all your research, shopped all around for the most effective broker, interviewed lots of attorneys and meticulously planned an successful payment timetable, you may perhaps nevertheless incur a big unpredicted price. Need to this variety of problem arise, and you are strapped for income, you would like to be able to make some adjustments to your settlement prepare. Of study course, this is prohibited. But you do have yet another alternative. You could take into account providing a part or all of your remaining structured settlement payments to an intrigued 3rd celebration. Deciding to Market Ahead of you decide to sell, think about what you want/need to have the income for. An fast medical expense, buying a household or the determination to go again to school are usually considered very good causes.   If you have any queries relating to where and how to use 소액결제현금화, you can contact us at our own page. Analyze your wants and the needs of your loved ones as nicely. Perhaps you want a new dwelling. Do you have kids approaching faculty age? If so, you can not only incur considerable tuition bills, you are going to also have fewer of a need to have for a larger sized home. Providing your payments will final result in a loss from the whole sum. Take into account no matter whether or not it is essential for you to sacrifice the protection and upcoming total amount of money prior to you make a conclusion. You will have to realize the implications, positive aspects and pitfalls so you can come to feel at ease earning an informed choice. Will I Get the Total Amount of money That I Would Receive More than a Time period of Time? No. The amount you would receive above a period of time is calculated by adding desire to the principal amount. As an alternative, you may well obtain the present-day value of the total. This present-day benefit may possibly have to be further discounted to go over the costs to do the offer. The relaxation will be despatched to you in one lump sum. You may want to shop all around to obtain out where by you can get the most effective deal. Court Get To ensure that you will not be taken advantage of in this fragile approach, the governing administration launched a new federal legislation in 2002 that involves you to seek courtroom acceptance when you offer your structured settlement. This legislation operates in conjunction with point out legislation to immediate how the transaction will be completed. Not only does this law shield you, the seller, it also aids the insurance companies who concern that they will confront tax effects as a outcome of the sale. The law states really evidently that annuity proprietors and companies do not and will not owe taxes as a consequence of this transaction. This breaks down the barrier that you may well generally encounter from a reluctant insurance coverage enterprise. Providing Possibilities You do not have to provide the full remaining volume, or any unique volume, if you so wish. Below are your advertising solutions: Full quantity: The purchaser calculates the present-working day price of the payments and provides a lump sum Aspect of the payments: Only a precise amount of the potential payments are marketed at their current-working day price Percentages: You may market a share of every payment and continue to keep the remaining harmony for by yourself Pitfalls of Promoting Shady brokers. Providing your payments will call for you to make contact with a broker who can enable acquire care of the proceedings. This means that you may possibly run into some match-actively playing and/or manipulation ways if you materialize to be working with a shady broker. They may perhaps guarantee you a higher quotation, only to occur back and say that they can not do the deal as is unless of course they get far more income from you. Other brokers may well declare to be "competent" when they have only finished a week-lengthy course. Make certain you're working with a broker who has a few of years encounter in structured settlements and is a member of the Better Business Bureau. You stop up shedding dollars. As stated previously, you will not get the overall amount of money you would acquire around time if you decide for advertising your payments. As a result you shed some dollars and the security of future payments. It will take time. However the federal legislation demanding courtroom oversight in these proceedings allows defend you, it also delays you from obtaining the revenue as before long as you may have hoped. If you will need the revenue suitable away, this could frustrate you and hinder your plans for prompt payment. Normally as soon as you decide to sell your payments the approach can get as very little as 4 weeks and as prolonged as 12 months to acquire the court buy and for you to acquire your lump sum. Positive aspects of Offering The most important reward of providing your structured settlement payments is, clearly, that you will get a lump sum of money for which you can make use of in any way you decide on. This offers you amplified adaptability in working with your income, and can give peace of brain if you have an quick price that couldn't be paid any other way.  

[fallenhero-rebirth]

400 followers!

Yep, we’ve reached the big round number (well big for me, I’m no celebrity) so it’s time to post another snippet of book two. This time I decided to post a bit of a Steel/MC scene I am working on. It doesn’t have any plot spoilers, it’s basically relationship building, so it should be safe for everyone. Coding-wise, it’s in the middle stage. I’ve added the major choices, but haven’t added personalization, thus it assumes a lot of things that might not be true about your MC (that you’re a known telepath, that you went into Argent’s mind and so on.)

That’s usually how my process works:

1: Write what amounts to a short story, detailing a single path. The fun bit, this part is easy.

2: Add the major paths and fake choices. The hard work.

3: Add the personalization from various tags depending on who people are and what they have done. Keep checking those tags....

4: Once enough of these have been written to form a coherent story section, play through it again and again, adding things and checking for flow.

5: Once everything flows, add flavor text, check for grammar and describe surroundings and fill things out. Also known as the other fun bit.

WIP outtake below (in stage 2, raw, no spell checking, some code):

*label kitchen

The kitchen might be small, but it still got all the amenities needed for government employees. Not that you are interested in anything but the coffee machine, but it's still interesting to see how much things had changed since their last headquarter. Everything was newer now, shiny and somewhat impersonal, as if there was a company in charge of designing breakrooms for all the Ranger teams. Perhaps there is.

You don't care as long as you get a decent cup of coffee.

The cups are impersonal as well, there's no trace of the old ones, chipped and personal, and in Ortega's case, one that you had given ${him}. Did someone throw them out when they moved?

You didn't expect to care. Or to get hurt by it.

It feels like a lifetime ago. Longer. Perhaps it is a testament to how deep you had slipped in the painful mire of memories that it takes you a few seconds to notice Steel in the doorway, watching you. Frowning.

"Want a cup?" You gesture with your coffee, exaggerating your familiarity with the room just to deepen his frown and dispel your own gloom. It works.

"What you are doing here?" Steel keeps frowning, hovering on the doorstep as if he's afraid you're going to steal something. You smile a little at the thought, today your intentions are pure.

"Waiting for Ortega," you say, quite honestly, as you drop a couple of cubes of sugar in the coffee.

"That figures." You can see Steel's shoulders relax, and after a moment of hesitation he steps inside, heading for the fridge. "I still don't like that you've been given access like this."

"Access like what? To your pantry?" You sit down at the table, making yourself a smaller, non-threatening target. Not that it matters, Steel is taller than you since his latest modifications. You doubt that he's intimidated by you physically. He should be. "Afraid that I'm going to steal some cookies to go with the coffee? Or sell the secret that someone's not been doing the dishes?"

"That's no secret. That's Herald." This time the sigh is audible, and the frown is aimed at the pile of dirty dishes piled in the sink. Someone had eaten dinner recently. Messily.

"I like that you can still make a joke."

"It wasn't a joke." Steel gives you a look, that for once is closer to neutral. Are you an ally in his fight against sloppiness?

"Huh," you say, wondering whether you should take this chance to connect. It couldn't hurt trying to break some of the ice between you.

*fake_choice  #"I would have figured Argent for sure."    "I would have figured Argent for sure."

   "Not Ortega?"

   "I've met ${his} mom, remember? Dishes gets done in that household." You can't help but smile at the memory. Another life. Another world. Did you use to be happy once?

   "Hmm..." You're not sure what kind of look Steel is giving you, but it's different from the ones you usually get.

 #"I could have put money on it being Ortega."    "I could have put money on it being Ortega." You smirk a little, ribbing Ortega was the one thing you and Steel shared back in the day.

   "$!{he}'s innocent. For once." Steel adds the last words with enough hesitation that you can't help the smirk widening into a proper smile.

   "Do I dare to ask what he's done now?" It has to be something, you don't need to read his mind to see that.

   "It doesn't matter, it's not..." the words drift off as he looks at you oddly.

 #"Good job trying to shift the blame," I joke.    "Good job trying to shift the blame," you joke. "Is Herald the closest thing you have to an intern?"

   "That's not..." it takes a moment for Steel to catch up, but when he does the sigh is heavy enough to be audible. "You were joking. Of course."

   "Of course," you say, sipping your coffee, the picture of innocence. "I know you're too neat to tolerate a mess."

   "It's simply easier to clean it right away," he says, looking a little awkward.

   "You don't need to explain yourself, you know? It's not a moral failing to do the dishes." You can't help but smile at the look on his face.

   "Hmm..." You're not sure what kind of look that is, but it's different from the ones you usually see carved on Steel's scarred face.

"What?"

"Maybe I have been a bit unfair to you." He speaks the words slowly, reluctantly. But he means them, you don't get the feeling he's trying to deceive you.

"Maybe?" you ask, one eyebrow raised to underline your point.

"I just don't like mysteries." Turning his back to you, he finally opens the fridge, grabbing an unmarked squeeze bottle.

"I think you're making me seem more mysterious than I really am." What is in that bottle? Something nutritious and horribly tasting if you're reading the look on his face as he takes a pull. "I mean if you compare me to Lady Argent, I..."

"I didn't say I was at ease with her either," he interrupts, sitting down at the table across from you. The chair protests a bit under his considerable weight, but the furniture here is built for his use.

*fake_choice  #"Remember when you fell through that chair at the Mayor's old office?"    "Remember when you fell through the chair at the Mayor's old office?"

   "I've been trying to forget that," he says, suppressing a groan. "Thank you so much for reminding me."

   "I aim to please." You finish your coffee with a wink.

 #"Hah! I was right, you don't trust her. I recognize your dour looks."    "Hah! I was right. I recognize your dour looks by now, I've seen enough of them."

   "That's not something to be proud of."

   "For either of us, I should say." You finish your coffee with a wink.

 #"Have you considered that maybe it's not us, maybe it's you being a bit paranoid?"    "Have you considered that maybe it's not us, maybe it's you being a bit paranoid?"

   "Being paranoid is my job."

   "Only if you're right." You finish your coffee with a wink.

"This feels all too familiar..." He takes another pull from the bottle, followed by another grimace.

For a moment or two, there is silence between you. Not a comfortable silence by any means, but a neutral one. No aggression, at least none aimed at you.

An opportunity?

"Listen..." you hesitate briefly, for show as much as anything. If you're going to have any hope of him lowering his guard you have to play this right. "What is it really that bothers you so much about me?"

"Do you want a list?"

"Start at the top then," you suggests, amicably.

"You're a telepath." Steel doesn't even have to think before answering, and it's not like you didn't suspect that had something to do with it.

"I am." You look straight into his eyes and smile. "Are you afraid I'm going to read your mind?"

"I have assumed that you already are."

"Chen..." you press your fingers to the bridge of your nose as if to ward off a headache. "It doesn't work that way." The headache doesn't disappear, Steel is still there when you open your eyes.

"So you say." He has crossed his arms, and from the look on his face you imagine he's probably thinking really hard about something he wants you to pick up. Just to prove a point.

*fake_choice  #I'm curious, I'll try to browse his mind,    "Nothing I say am going to change your mind, is it?" You brush the gentlest mental fingers over the surroundings, trying to feel if there's something here, if it's a trap.

   *if subterfuge > 70      You sense nothing.

   "Doubtful," Steel replies, and you can feel his resentment.

   "I don't need for you to trust me." You turn your back to him, ostensibly waiting for the machine to churn out another cup. Instead you focus on the angry thoughts of Steel behind you, finding...

   Huh. Not anger. You stare at the slowly filling cup, leaning into Steels mind behind you, finding suspicion, yes, but also regret. Mostly regret.

   "I don't distrust you," he admits since you've gone silent. "You're allowed to be here." He's guilty. Guilty over how he's been treating you, but also over how things turned out.

   "I'm glad I'm not seen as a danger to the team," you're not quite sure how to deal with this information, so you grab your cup and turn around with a neutral smile. "Though maybe you are a danger to me. Helping Lady Argent like that... she could have killed me. $!{wear}, she nearly did. She's dangerous."

 #I'll get some more coffee and change the subject.    "Nothing I say am going to change your mind, is it?"

   "Doubtful."

   "I don't need for you to trust me." You have your back turned, waiting for the machine to churn out a new cup. "Just to tolerate me."

   "I am," he admits. "You're here."

   "I'm glad I'm not seen as a danger to the team," you turn with the cup and a smile. "Though maybe you are a danger to me. Helping Lady Argent like that... she could have killed me. $!{wear}, she nearly did. She's dangerous."

 #I'll try to explain how it works.    "You don't understand," you start, and since Steel doesn't interrupt, you continue. "Just imagine that you were inviting me to your apartment. Just because I walk through the door doesn't mean that I will run around and tear open every closet and open every drawer. A telepathic intrusion is not something that just happens, it requires work, and is dangerous."

   "You are still seeing my apartment." A stone might have budged, he does not.

   "Is that so bad? I mean I can see how it could be, if you had something to hide in there and never wanted anyone to see."

   "It's not like that."

   "I know it's not. My point is, my telepathy isn't telling me anything that a conversation with you over coffee would. Reading someone's intention is not that different from reading someone's body language."

   "You can do a lot more than that."

   "I'm not Locus, I'm nowhere near Alpha level. Helping Argent like that... she could have killed me. $!{wear}, she nearly did. She's dangerous."

"Stop." Steel holds up a hand, giving you a stern look. Did you go too far?

*fake_choice  #I've had enough playing nice, I'll get up and leave.    INSULT AND WALK OUT, TO NEXT SCENE WITH ORTEGA

 #I apologize, I'm here to build bridges, not break them.    "Sorry" you say, just in case. You're here to build bridges, not break them. "I'm not here to complain about Argent. In fact, I gave her a talk about teamwork earlier."

   "That's unlikely." It doesn't look like he believes you.

   "I never joined the Rangers," you say with a sigh. "But you can't say we didn't work well together."

 #I said nothing wrong, if he can't take it, it's his fault.    "You know I'm right," you say with a shrug. You can't win with Steel, but maybe you can drive a wedge into the team. "She's a wild card."

   "Unlike you?" He looks almost amused at the concern.

   "I never joined the Rangers," you say with a sigh. "But that doesn't mean I want you to fall apart."

"I know" he admits, with an honesty that surprises you. "I wish you would have."

"What? Joined?"

"Yes."

"I wouldn't submit myself to their background checks. You know that."

"Reason two on my list."

"Not everyone is in good standing with the US government, that doesn't mean that they're bad guys."

"But it does mean that they are untrustworthy."

"Or have enemies."

You can see that he's on the verge of asking more. There's a softness to his thoughts that you've rarely felt, as if he's actually listening to what you are saying without preconceptions. The question is, what are you going to do about it?

[hacks-and-heroes]

Hacks and Heroes #2

So let's talk about a favorite series of mine, Fallout. And what better time? With Fallout 76 on the horizon like a mediocre tsunami, the SEO is perfect.

The question is how would one go about adapting Fallout into a tabletop setting. Well that's easy actually, plus there are a bunch of hacks out there for Fallout already. I'm gonna point out a few key things that make a Fallout setting, and then get into the hacks.

So first there's themes. The most forefront and clear theme of Fallout has always been the cautionary tale of nuclear war. Atomic annihilation and Cold War era fear mongering is shown through its mix of propaganda posters, devastated landscapes and visual aesthetics. The distinct 1950s art style, especially Vault Tec’s Vault Boy, show a campy contrast to the horrors the world shows. Things like the upbeat music and pulp sci-fi weaponry mask a dark undertone. For those who plan on game mastering a Fallout game, I highly recommend playing the first two iterations to really get a sense of this tone.

Political agendas, conflicting ideologies, fate of technology, capitalism, communism, colonialism; all play a part in a great Fallout story. A good mix of these elements will truly help bring together any Fallout story.

So let's get into the hacks:

Fallout GURPS/Exodus-

I want to start with the two oldest Fallout hacks. Fallout has a history with GURPS, being the system it was first based on. Originally, GURPS was in the title of the first game. However, after a rift between developers, GURPS was dropped. However, several years ago someone revived the idea by adapting Fallout for the GURPS RPG system. While I have never played GURPS, it seems this system is the closest you'll get to a system that feels like the original games would translated to paper.

If you prefer a system with more number crunch, GURPS is a safe bet. It's also a well made book with a lot of detail and lore. It was made around the time of Fallout 3, so it may feel a bit outdated. It does include stuff from Fallout Tactics though. So I appreciate that.

Now onto Exodus. Exodus is a “licensed" Fallout game. Or at least that was the idea. At some point during its creation, the license was pulled. So what would have been Fallout d20, became Exodus. One of the major problems with this particular game is that it is a game based off the d20 Modern system. Sadly for the old SRD games, they have not aged well, especially d20 Modern. I only recommend this adaptation if you really enjoy the old d20 games like 3.5 and Modern. Even then, the poor cover up and woeful bestiary will probably be a turn off.

Fallout 5th Edition-

To start, this is probably one of the best and most detailed fan conversions I've seen. It has so much content for what is essentially a free sourcebook. The font and graphic design is great. There is multiple racial subtypes, backgrounds, and over 100 pages of Fallout monsters. There is a piecemeal armor system that will be a nice touch for those most familiar with Fallout 4. Seriously, for a class based system, this is probably one of the best portrayals of Fallout. Hell, it has stats to play a goddamn Eyebot. Who wouldn't??

Now it isn't all perfect. The biggest flaw is that many of 5e’s base classes are considered unviable. This would be fine, should the book offer replacements. Instead the book suggests purchase of a supplement that has classes more suited for the game. I totally understand why this is such, after all it is a free fan made conversion. However, an additional class or two would have more incentivized purchase of the other book. The only other gripe is that that 100 page bestiary is a lot of the same creatures with very minute changes. Similar to the games, though in a pen-and-paer RPG it's a bit needless.

(I will have a review of that class supplement for those interested midway thru the next week.)

On a side note, while there are Pathfinder hacks for Fallout, there aren't any detailed enough to really mention. With enough effort, one could customize it to fit a Fallout setting. I may go into it in the future as I tackle other topics.

Savage Fallout-

Okay so now we get into the most extensive collection of Fallout hacks. There are a handful of these for Savage Worlds, so we’ll just go at them in no particular order.

Savaged Fallout!

When you Google Savage Worlds Fallout, this is the first one that you’ll encounter. On a blogspot aptly named, there are about 13 PDF downloads by Shane Hensley. It is clearly a passion project, having started in 2003, though it has gone dark since 2016.

I’m gonna get the bad out of the way first. This hack is ugly, poorly laid out, and sometimes confusing. The books are almost entirely black and white with a plain font. Only do the location books get anything in the way of images, though the actual maps tend to be weak. The hindrances added to the game are actually quite good, representing traits from the game quite well. The edges on the other hand...are extremely poor. Anyone who has played a lot of 3.5 or Pathfinder will start having flashbacks as they see edges boasting +1 to two skills with no flavor text. Compared to some of the later Savage Fallout stuff, it’s pretty sad. My final complaint is the Weapons Cache book is a supplement that details out things like Alien weapons, Chinese weapons, and a few other unique items from the games. However, the book is not more than a bunch of paragraphs and stat blocks.

Now onto the good stuff; both the Wasteland Survival Guide (Player’s Handbook) and Overseer’s Manual (GM’s Guide) are well made, new mechanics are introduced well, and the items will bring back fond memories of Fallout 2. The location books are a fun homebrew addition. I have not read all of them, however, they are good for brainstorming if nothing else. If you’re looking for a hack for Fallout for Savage Worlds, this is not a bad first place to start.

Wild Wastes

This one won’t come up right away, but I was quite pleased to have discovered it. If I was going to run a Savage Fallout game, I’d probably be referring to this book the most. To start, it is a beautiful two PDF set, barely clocking in at over 20 pages. The backgrounds and fonts fit the Fallout aesthetic and the layout is pleasing to the eye. It uses some licensed Fallout art in it, which helps it for sure.

By contrast to Savaged Fallout, the edges in this book are fantastic. Now okay, mechanically they aren’t much different than Savaged Fallout, but they at least look nice. There are less hindrances, but the ones that remain hold up on their own. Also the race options are fleshed out well, and there are two options for Super Mutants, if you are so inclined. This hack also introduces the Psyker. Basically this is adding psychic powers into Fallout, which may seem out of place to those who don’t know about Fallout Tactics. Truly it’s a fun idea, but whether it stays is up to your GM.

The second PDF that goes along with Wild Wastes is a 9 page add-on for equipment. There isn’t a lot to say about it besides that it is extensive. While it isn’t 5e Fallout extensive, it does have weapons, armor, and items from every game and more. If you are looking for items for your Savage Fallout game, look here.

Fallout: And How to Survive in the Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland When Your GM is a Total Dick.

Quite the mouthful there. So this hack is similar to Wild Wastes in that it uses a lot of licensed Fallout art...also it is only about 16 pages. That said, it is much more dense. The inner workings are black and white, but more well laid-out than Savaged Fallout. The font is a better choice and while tiny is laid out in a way that’s not hard to follow. This hack also stands out because it essentially works stand alone. You’ll need the core Savage Worlds book for more in-depth rules, but the character creations process and most hindrances and edges are included in the book.

One of my only gripes with this particular hack is its approach to weapons. Similar to GURPs, weapons are more or less divided into categories of damage, and then just given flavor for their look. While I can see the plus in this way, it tends to leave your players and GMs in the dark if they aren’t used to doing so. The armor is also truly wimpy (a +4 bonus for power armor??). That also extends to the races which get one trait a piece before being forgotten.

To circle back to something positive, this hack does include “tinkerin’”, a skill for customizing weapons and armor. It’s a simple enough system and more than welcome for those who like having to craft unique weapons.

Gunrocksgaming Savage Fallout

This isn’t a PDF like the previous three hacks. This one is a blog that includes very little but is worth mentioning for a few reasons. It has rules for character creation, which include playing robots, a first for these hacks. There are little in the way of hindrances but the edges are good. The equipment is sparse but well done, as are the setting rules. This hack does have another plus which it is the second of these hacks to have a bestiary. It’s hard to compare how these monsters compare to their in-game counterparts but with two hacks it probably wouldn’t be easy to make one that satisfies you.

Aaaaand that’s all for now!

While there are no doubt other Fallout hacks for other games, these were the best I could come across. I’ll cover it more in a future post, but another excellent post-apocalypse game is Apocalypse World, as well as the system it is built on. It can also be used for Fallout, with some modifications.

I hope you all enjoyed this and found it informative. Feel free to comment, send feedback or ideas for later posts. Next week I’ll be back with a different kind of post. This week was all about hacks that already exists. What if there’s a game you want that doesn’t have a hack though. Well, you’ll have to make it up yourself then! So next week we’ll tackle another Bethesda brand favorite, Dishonored!!

[elstine-harboson]

Misconceptions: Pirates & Privateers.

Alright, let’s do this.  First let me thank @wiedaashcroft for asking questions about pirates and inspiring me to write a long-winded post about Pirates and their slightly more legal version Privateers (Which are Pirates that are working for a Government to attack/raid other Government ships.) this should be relatively fun, and I know plenty of Pirate Roleplayer’s so I hope they can take something away from this to add into their roleplay.  Without further pause, let’s dive into this.  ---------

We all have that imagine in our mind, a burly pirate with an eye patch and a ‘cutlass’ that is wide enough to be used as a dinner plate. Well, let me be the first to crush your dreams and fantasies.

Before I dive into the details of each weapon, let’s first examine the ideas behind these weapon choices. The primary thing to keep in mind as you’ll see is the size and reach of these weapons; keep in mind a ship is not a wide open field where swinging a long weapon is a capable strategy. On a ship there’s at least a dozen and two different things you can accidentally hit or run into if your weapon is too long - and as you can imagine, getting your sword stuck in the mast is a bad idea. In addition, it wasn’t just the deck of a ship that pirates were invading, but also the below decks of any given ship - and those places are DANGEROUS. It’s very close quarter combat, it’s dark, the ship is still rocking back and forth - you can’t go in there with a German Claymoore, that’s for sure. The idea is to keep something compact, but strong - think of it as min/maxing in a game.  

(Cutlass) Typically displayed is not really a cutlass at all but typically a high fantasy version that’s closer to a scimitar in the way it’s crafted. A cutlass, an actual cutlass, is typically much thinner as you’d expect with a sword. It is a thin, single-edged weapon that is primarily used for slashing and hacking in the same ways as a machete; though typically it also has a hand guard of some form as was common for the time. The benefit of a cutlass is the curve of the blade, it allows for much deeper and thus deadlier cuts as well as adding a bit of weight at the tip of the blade to add some heft in every swing. The curve also made the blade relatively shorter than a straight sword - making it a little easier to use on the ship.

(Small Sword) A small sword is essentially what it sounds like; think of a standard arming sword or even a broad sword and make it a little smaller everywhere - say two to three feet in blade length. The difference between a Small Sword and Cutlass is primarily that a small sword is typically double-edged and designed for thrusting. This sword was primarily used for duels, though it’s not unheard of for it to be used in raiding a ship. Again as mentioned, the main benefit was that this weapon was small - essentially just a long knife, making it ideal for the close encounters on a ship. The disadvantage here is it’s largely a finesse weapon, considered a gentleman’s weapon - this was not something you could just swing around and if blocking against a heavier weapon it was possible to break. Not exactly what you think of when you hear of pirates, but there you have it.

(Spadroon) This sword was pretty common, close to the same usage as a cutlass. This sword is a sort of mix between the Small Sword and the Cutlass, offering typically a single-edge, possibly a slightly curved tip or straight tip. The hilt and hand guard (Loop guard) were designed with protection in mind and served a pirate well, preventing many hook-hands from happening. The sword was designed for both thrusting and cutting, the only disadvantage really was it was typically a little longer than the other swords making it less common to be used under the top deck. 

(Rapier) The grandfather of the Smallsword, the Rapier was a classic just as the golden-age of piracy was flourishing. Rapiers come in all lengths, sizes, and shapes - but primarily they were about a foot longer than smallswords with a similar, thin-bladed design keeping thrusting as the primary profession of the blade. Typically this sword was centered around dueling, but there were plenty that used this weapon through the golden age of piracy as a sort of badge of honor. 

(Dagger) The dagger is, and was essentially just a small sword - or a large knife. Most pirates would have one of these for the variety of uses it’d have from cutting rope and food, to serving well in close quarters combat, or as a spare secondary weapon should they get disarmed. Daggers were excellent for under the deck in the dark, and close confines where the accurate thrust of a smallsword or rapier became less likely to find their mark with the rocking of the ship. 

(Boarding Ax) My personal favorite, and perhaps the least-known weapon of pirates. The boarding ax was a very popular weapon, next up there with the cutlass and spadroon; it was a compact weapon with a lot of heft in each swing no matter how tight the space of combat was - making it an ideal weapon for pirates and privateers alike. In addition to the broad ax head that’d easily break through a rapier and smallsword’s parry, it also would typically have a spike on the backend of the ax; used by pirates to assist them in climbing up ships to their desired location - though it’d also do severe damage to anyone it came in contact with. This was definitely a favorite, and popular option for anyone on a boat.

(Boarding Pike) Personally I think ‘Pike’ is a misrepresentation here, it’s a spear - typically a throwing spear, or even closer to a javelin. That being said, this very short pike was shortened for obvious reasons - making it more reliable on the close confines of the ship. The Boarding Pike was typically used as a volley weapon, a group throwing them at once as they closed in on the enemy ship - sometimes the pikes would even have ropes to help crossing over. In addition, the pikes could be used to defend the ship - preventing people from coming over with your superior reach. 

Now that we’re all relatively on the same idea of the weapons used aboard ships of pirates; let me stress that there is hardly a difference between the weapons pirates used and the weapons say... The British Royal Navy used. Why is this? Because a lot of pirates originated from their government-based navies. How else do you think they’d be able to steer a ship and navigate properly? They were trained and educated by a skilled government program. That being said, there weren’t a lot of differences in the weaponry used from merchant vessels to pirates, to navy, and privateer vessels. That’s because the weapons they had worked, and they worked really well - there were minor modifications and weapon used and variety changed not depending on whether they were merchants or pirates; but typically rather on their nationality. For instance, Spaniards typically favored rapiers up until the end of the golden age for piracy.  

A lot of times for merchants they’d have military or mercenary escorts on a separate ship entirely. Typically the merchants would have to pay for these services obviously, but most merchants were stocked with people able to do more paper work and properly navigate - not warriors. They wanted the crew to be as small and efficient as possible to keep cost down, and split the potential income into larger bundles. That’s why Pirates kinda exploded in popularity because initially merchants were just driving about with hardly any protection, making it very easy for pirates to just come aboard. 

Now, Privateers and Pirates are different on a few levels - but let me assure you, a Privateer is a Pirate. The difference is a Privateer is hired by a Government to raid another Government’s ships while avoiding their own hiring party’s ships. It was essentially bribing, and it was a very common strategy. Think of it a lot like the 1960s with the cold war; the United States and Russia were funding different organizations, rebels, and governments to fight the side being funded by their enemy. We supported South Korea, and Russia supported North Korea - we were having wars using third parties primarily. It’s the same concept with Privateers, having wars with our competition without directly declaring war on them. 

Pirates and Privateers weren’t all generally bad people; they were desperate people in desperate times. There’s far more instances of pirates being fair and polite than them being barbarians that slaughter everyone aboard an enemy ship - were there some like that, sure, but not all - not most. As I said, Pirates were largely former naval soldiers; they had a bit of pride and respect for their work and other folks of the sea. 

Hope you folks learned something from this, I plan to discuss firearms at a later date - thus I did not mention them here, and I didn’t want to make this longer than it already was. If you have any questions feel free to ask, if you have any corrections or notes, by all means let me know!  Thanks for reading!