#I love Conquest of Longbow

[samitheanxiousbean]

This is still the funniest joke in DOS era gaming

[racefortheironthrone]

How come the longbow is so associated with the English and their use of the longbow?

I imagine that there have been multiple societies that used the longbow (before or at the same time as the English), but it seems that the English are the most well known users of the longbow (at least in popular culture/thought).

The longbow was originally Welsh, but the English very quickly adopted it as one of their main weapons of war during and after the Edwardian conquest of Wales - that campaign ended in 1283, and by the time of the Battle of Falkirk in 1298, we see the English army now mainly made up of longbowmen (a lot of them Welshmen).

Moreover, the English monarchy enacted laws that reinforced this shift to a longbow-based army: the original Assize of Arms of 1181 had focused on requring freemen of England to own chainmail (or gambesons if you owned less than ten marks), helmets (or just an iron cap if you had ten marks or less), and lances as their main weapon. By the Assize of Arms of 1252, freemen with nine marks or more were required to "array with bow and arrow." By the time of the Statute of Winchester of 1285, even the poorest freemen is expected to have "bows and arrows out of the forest, and in the forest bows and pilets."

Thus, when Edward III starts up the Hundred Years War, the armies that win stunning victories at Crecy and Poitiers (and establish the lasting associaion between England and the longbow) were based on his grandfather's model. Edward would further reinforce royal policy towards longbows by enacting the Archery Law of 1363, which required that "every man … if he be able-bodied, shall, upon holidays, make use, in his games, of bows and arrows… and so learn and practise archery." Thus, longbow practice every Sunday and feast/saint's day became mandatory in England.

The English love affair with the longbow also continued much longer than in other nations. Even after the French began to use cannons against the formations of English longbowmen, and thus regained the upper hand in the Hundred Years War, (something often attributed to their adoption of the longbow, but in reality artillery was the main French adaptation) the English kept on fielding armies of mostly longbowmen. The Battle of Flodden in 1513 was largely fought with longbows; when Henry VIII's flagship the Mary Rose went down in 1545 she had 250 longbows on board (which form the material basis for a lot of our archaelogical understanding of medieval longbows); when the English militia was called up to fight the Spanish Armada in 1588, longbowmen still made up about 10% of their forces.

[candyradium]

sometimes you just gotta make a scuffed dnd build for character funsies and aesthetic coolness

[usuallyapirate]

A short Introduction to the most common Player-Races in Dungeons and Dragons as given by the DnD 5e Players Handbook:

Dwarf

“Yer late,elf!” came the rough edge of a familiar voice. Bruenor Battlehammer walked up the back of his dead foe, disregarding the fact that the heavy monster lay on top of his elven friend. In spite of the added discomfort, the dwarf’s long, pointed, often-broken nose and gray-streaked though still-fiery red beard came as a welcome sight to Drizzt. “Knew I’d find ye in trouble if I came out an' looked for ye!" 

– R.A. Salvatore, The Crysta lShard

Kingdoms rich in ancient grandeur, halls carved into the roots of mountains, the echoing of picks and hammers in deep mines and blazing forges, a commitment to clan and tradition, and a burning hatred of goblins and orcs—these common threads unite all dwarves.

Elf

“I HAVE NEVER IMAGINED SUCH BEAUTY EXISTED,” Goldmoon said softly. The day’s march had been difficult, but the reward at the end was beyond their dreams. The companions stood on a high cliff over the fabled city of Qualinost. Four slender spires rose from the city’s corners like glistening spindles, their brilliant white stone marbled with shining silver. Graceful arches, swooping from spire to spire, soared through the air. Crafted by ancient dwarven metalsmiths, they were strong enough to hold the weight of an army, yet they appeared so delicate that a bird lighting on them might overthrow the balance. These glistening arches were the city’s only boundaries; there was no wall around Qualinost. The elven city opened its arms lovingly to the wilderness.

 – Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman, Dragons of Autumn Twilight

Elves are a magical people of otherworldly grace, living in the world but not entirely part of it. They live in places of ethereal beauty, in the midst of ancient forests or in silvery spires glittering with faerie light, where soft music drifts through the air and gentle fragrances waft on the breeze. Elves love nature and magic, art and artistry, music and poetry, and the good things of the world.

Halfling

Regis the halfling, the only one of his kind for hundreds of miles in any direction, locked his fingers behind his head and leaned back against the mossy blanket of the tree trunk. Regis was short, even by the standards of his diminutive race, with the fluff of his curly brown locks barely cresting the three-foot mark, but his belly was amply thickened by his love of a good meal, or several, as the opportunities presented themselves. The crooked stick that served as his fishing pole rose up above him, clenched between two of his toes, and hung out over the quiet lake, mirrored perfectly in the glassy surface of Maer Dualdon. 

– R.A. Salvatore, The Crystal Shard

The comforts of home are the goal of most halflings‘ lives: a place to settle in peace and quiet, far from marauding monsters and clashing armies; a blazing fire and a generous meal; fine drink and fine conversation. Though some halflings live out their days in remote agricultural communities, others form nomadic bands that travel constantly, lured by the open road and the wide horizon to discover the wonders of new lands and peoples. But even these wanderers love peace, food, hearth, and home, though home might be a wagon jostling along a dirt road or a raft floating downriver.

Human

These were the stories of a restless people who long ago took to the seas and rivers in longboats, first to pillage and terrorize, then to settle. Yet there was an energy, a love of adventure, that sang from every page. Long into the night Uriel read, lighting candle after precious candle. She'd never given much thought to humans, but these stories fascinated her. In these yellowed pages were tales of bold heroes, strange and fierce animals, mighty primitive gods, and a magic that was part and fabric of that distant land. 

– Elaine Cunningham, Daughter of the Drow

In the reckonings of most worlds, humans are the youngest of the common races, late to arrive on the world scene and short-lived in comparison to dwarves, elves, and dragons. Perhaps it is because of their shorter lives that they strive to achieve as much as they can in the years they are given. Or maybe they feel they have something to prove to the elder races, and that’s why they build their mighty empires on the foundation of conquest and trade. Whatever drives them, humans are the innovators, the achievers, and the pioneers of the worlds.

Dragonborn

Her father stood on the first of the three stairs that led down from the portal, unmoving. The scales of his face had grown paler around the edges, but Clanless Mehen still looked as if he could wrestle down a dire bear himself. His familiar well-worn armor was gone, replaced by violet-tinted scale armor with bright silvery tracings. There was a blazon on his arm as well, the mark of some foreign house. The sword at his back was the same, though, the one he had carried since even before he had found the twins left in swaddling at the gates of Arush Vayem. Father’s face was as kill she'd been fortunate to learn. A human who couldn’t spot the shift of her eyes or Havilar’s would certainly see only the indifference of a dragon in Clanless Mehen’s face. But the shift of scales, the arch of a ridge, the set of his eyes, the gape of his teeth – her father's face spoke volumes. But every scale of it, this time, seemed completely still— the indifference of a dragon, even to Farideh.

– Erin M. Evans, The Adversary

Born of dragons, as their name proclaims, the dragonborn walk proudly through a world that greets them with fearful incomprehension. Shaped by draconic gods or the dragons themselves, dragonborn originally hatched from dragon eggs as a unique race, combining the best attributes of dragons and humanoids. Some dragonborn are faithful servants to true dragons, others form the ranks of soldiers in great wars, and still others find themselves adrift, with no clear calling in life.

Gnome

Skinny and flaxen-haired, his skin walnut brown and his eyes a startling turquoise, Burgell stood half as tall as Aeron climb up on a stool to look out the peephole. Like most habitations in Oeble, that particula tenement had been built for humans, and smaller residents coped with the resulting awkwardness as best they could. But at least the relative largeness of the apartment gave Burgell room to pack in all his gnome-sized gear. The front room was his workshop, and it contained a bewildering miscellany of tools: hammers, chisels, saws, lockpicks, tinted lenses, jeweler's loupes, and jars of powdered and shredded ingredients for casting spells. A fat gray cat, the mage’s familiar, lay curled atop a grimoire. It opened its eyes, gave Aeron a disdainful yellow stare, then appeared to go back to sleep. 

– Richard Lee Byers, The Black Bouquet

A constant hum of busy activity pervades the warrens and neighborhoods where gnomes form their close-knit communities. Louder sounds punctuate the hum: a crunch of grinding gears here, a minor explosion there, a yelp of surprise or triumph, and especially bursts of laughter. Gnomes take delight in life, enjoying every moment of invention, exploration, investigation, creation, and play.

Half-Elf

Flint squinted into the setting sun. He thought he saw the figure of a man striding up the path. Standing, Flint drew back into the shadow of a tall pine to see better. The man's walk was marked by an easy grace – an elvish grace, Flint would have said; yet the man’s body had the thickness and tight muscles of a human, while the facial hair was definitely humankind’s. All the dwarf could see of the man’s face beneath a green hood was tan skin and a brownish-red beard. A longbow was slung over one shoulder and a sword hung at his left side. He was dressed in soft leather, carefully tooled in the intricate designs the elves loved. But no elf in the world of Krynn could grow a beard ... no elf, but...

“Tanis?” said Flint hesitantly as the man neared.

“The same.” The newcomer’s bearded face split in a wide grin. He held open his arms and, before the dwarf could stop him, engulfed Flint in a hug that lifted him off the ground. The dwarf clasped his old friend close for a brief instant, then, remembering his dignity, squirmed and freed himself from the half-elf’s embrace. 

– Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Dragons of Autumn Twilight

Walking in two worlds but truly belonging to neither, half-elves combine what some say are the best qualities of their elf and human parents: human curiosity, inventiveness, and ambition tempered by the refined senses, love of nature, and artistic tastes of the elves. Some half-elves live among humans, set apart by their emotional and physical differences, watching friends and loved ones age while time barely touches them. Others live with the elves, growing restless as they reach adulthood in the timeless elven realms, while their peers continue to live as children. Many half-elves, unable to fit into either society, choose lives of solitary wandering or join with other misfits and outcasts in the adventuring life.

Half-Orc

The warchief Mhurren roused himself from his sleeping-furs and his women and pulled a short hauberk of heavy steel rings over his thick, well-muscled torso. He usually rose before most of his warriors, since he had a strong streak of human blood in him, and he found the daylight less bothersome than most of his tribe did. Among the Bloody Skulls, a warrior was judged by his strength, his fierceness, and his wits. Human ancestry was no blemish against a warrior – provided he was every bit as strong, enduring, and blood thirsty as his full-blooded kin. Half-orcs who were weaker than their orc comrades didn't last long among the Bloody Skulls or any other orc tribe for that matter. But it was often true that a bit of human blood gave a warrior just the right mix of cunning, ambition, and self-discipline to go far indeed, as Mhurren had. He was master of a tribe that could muster two thousand spears, and the strongest chief in Thar. 

– Richard Baker, Swordmage

Whether united under the leadership of a mighty warlock or having fought to a standstill after years of conflict, orc and human tribes sometimes form alliances, joining forces into a larger horde to the terror of civilized lands nearby. When these alliances are sealed by marriages, half-orcs are born. Some half-orcs rise to become proud chiefs of orc tribes, their human blood giving them an edge over their full-blooded orc rivals. Some venture into the world to prove their worth among humans and other more civilized races. Many of these become adventurers, achieving greatness for their mighty deeds and notoriety for their barbaric customs and savage fury.

Tiefling

“But you do see the way people look at you, devil’s child." Those black eyes, cold as a winter storm, were staring right into her heart and the sudden seriousness in his voice jolted her.

“What is it they say?" he asked. “One’s a curiosity, two’s a conspiracy—”

“Three's a curse,” she finished. “You think I haven’t heard that rubbish before?”

“I know you have.” When she glared at him, he added, “It’s not as if I’m plumbing the depths of your mind, dear girl. That is the burden of every tiefling. Some break under it, some make it the millstone around their neck, some revel in it.” He tilted his head again, scrutinizing her, with that wicked glint in hiseyes. “You fight it, don’t you? Like a little wildcat, I wager. Every little jab and comment just sharpens your claws.” 

– Erin M. Evans, Brimstone Angels

To be greeted with stares and whispers, to suffer violence and insult on the street, to see mistrust and fear in every eye: this is the lot of the tiefling. And to twist the knife, tieflings know that this is because a pact struck generations ago infused the essence of Asmodeus – overlord of the Nine Hells – into their bloodline. Their appearance and their nature are not their fault but the result of an ancient sin, for which they and their children and their children’s children will always be held accountable.

[rainbow-dunk]

its Him... philza minecraft himself

full build and rambling under the cut!!!

Philza

6 fey wanderer ranger/2 grave cleric

aasimar (protector)

outlander

stats:

str - 12

dex - 18

con - 14

int - 10

wis - 16

cha - 12

miscellaneous:

saves: strength, dexterity

proficiencies: stealth (exp), athletics, survival, insight, perception

tool proficiencies: cards

languages: common, celestial, draconic, elvish, dwarvish

armour: light, medium, shields

weapons: simple, martial

ranger spells:

lv1: charm person, hunter’s mark, entangle

lv2: misty step, pass without trace, spike growth

cleric spells:

cantrips: spare the dying, mending, toll the dead, thaumaturgy

lv1: bane, false life, bless, healing word, cure wounds, guiding bolt, sanctuary

philza! philza! god i love philza!!!

this is another build that went through a few iterations lmao. originally i kind of made him with an almost knight image in mind, probably because he's always wearing netherite? so i started out with 1 ranger/7 conquest paladin, because of the hardcore series. but then i decided that it... didn't really work, and changed to 6 fey wanderer ranger/2 paladin, but the ability scores didn't fit him, so i switched over to grave cleric for the last two levels! grave clerics are specifically about the transition between life and death - one of the deities of that is the Raven Queen. who used to be mortal i believe. and he's an aasimar. now, i don't have any lore nailed down, but wouldn't it be fun if RQ was kristin? and once she became a god, she made it so that phil reincarnates, or cannot die from old age? who knows! i just think it's nice. i also really like the idea of a god and her cleric being lovers. fey wanderer specifically is more of just a vibes thing than anything! i just think it's neat.

protector aasimar was kind of a given for phil. i could have made him aarakocra, or winged tiefling, but i think protector fits a lot better. design wise, aasimar are fun because you can do almost anything, so for phil, he actually has a halo! it's why he wears a hat, it's very obvious if trying to sneak around. also, even when he doesn't have his wings out, his shadow has them. they're just little fun details.

phil's design has also changed from its original form, lmao. originally i gave him gold half-plate, but then i decided that it was too clunky and bad for stealth for him, so i abandoned the last remnants of the knight-like image and went all in on the studded leather. i gave him a longbow because i'd made him dex-based from the start, and his accuracy is incredible. when remaking the design, i took a lot of inspiration from japanese clothing, armour and archery! a few fun details are the way his kimono is tied up out of the way of his bow, which comes from kyudo, the japanese martial art of archery, and the glove on his right hand called a yotsugake, also from kyudo. the armour is also loosely modelled off of samurai armour, which could be made from leather. he also has a hip quiver, as it's far more practical than the back one that i originally gave him. there are also buttons on the armour's shoulders which go though buttonholes on both the kimono and the cloak, keeping the cloak out of the way of his bow. i like this design a lot.

[wearenecromancers]

Orc Week: Recap

Thus concludes Orc Week. But don’t let that stop you from discussing orcs with me! (Or any previously featured species!)

These recaps will come in three parts: The general impression all of your feedback gave me, my own thoughts on the species of the week, and then a bit on Project TOF (the fantasy TRPG I’m developing, and the reason I’m looking for feedback in the first place).

Community Input

There are three things people can agree on: Orcs are big, buff, and have tusks. And... that’s about it. There are a few other features of course, but none are nearly as unanimously decided as those three aspects.

Another feature that got mentioned (not quite as) frequently was the idea that orcs are tribal warriors who value strength (physical or otherwise) above all else (often followed by ‘and conquest’). I can see where that comes from (given the two most culturally prominent interpretations of orcs - Warcraft and Tolkien), but I find that... frustrating to say the least.

My Thoughts

Let me just start with... Orcs Deserve Better. I personally know a lot of people who love orcs, and it pains me to see how they’re typically represented. The cultural baggage of contemporary orcs is packed with racism, the result of basing fantasy creatures on people and their stereotypes - a trend that also influenced why we call them fantasy “races” instead of fantasy “species” to begin with. The very concept of “evil races” just burns my insides.

The idea that orcs have a natural bent towards evil, violence, and warfare bugs me - especially when it’s almost always portrayed alongside being dark-skinned, tribal humanoids who speak dumbed-down English. Again, I see where it comes from, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Just like I don’t have to like the fact that the myth of fairy changelings originates from medieval European parents claiming their deformed or mentally ill children weren’t actually theirs - the fairies took my real child and left us this weird one! If the abelism in that isn’t apparent to you, then idk how to help you see the racism in how orcs are typically depicted.

Anyways, the consensus that orcs are 1. Big, 2. Buff, and 3. Have tusks is... not a whole lot to go off of, but I’ll take it as an opportunity to get creative. There’s a lot of things that could end up fitting that vague of a description (and hopefully still feel like an orc).

At one point, the classification of orcs based on etymology got brought up - be they mammals, goblinoids, demons, giants, or some aquatic creature. Personally, I like the idea of taking inspiration from orcas. They aren’t called “killer whales” for nothing. They fit the bill pretty well for a big, buff creature with sharp teeth. ...And also because Tolkien specifically refuted the connection in his own works (anyone who’s followed me long enough knows I have an extreme love/hate relationship with Tolkien). Consequently, the interpretation I like least is orcs as goblinoids.

Project TOF

Part of the thesis of TOF (when it comes to how to portray fantasy species) is that human-centrism is the root of bigotry in fantasy creatures. As I’ve mentioned, many mythical creatures are based on racist or abelist stereotypes. When fantasy creatures boil down to caricatures of a certain group of humans, that bigotry becomes ingrained in that fantasy’s cultural baggage.

Basing fantasy creatures on something other than humans is my main approach to decoupling fantasy from that baggage. What that other thing will be for orcs... I’m undecided. I’m really digging the orca idea at the moment, but I could use more feedback on that. A case could be made for pigs given old-school D&D’s depictions. Some form of demonic connection would play to their etymology, but that’s getting precariously close to that old “evil races” idea.

TOF also avoids tying cultural backgrounds to species, so no assumptions that every orc is born to a roving war-tribe. They may get abilities that make it easier to lean in to such a role (like a strength bonus, which would help with melee attacks), but never an ability that basically reads: “You’re from a warrior tribe, so you get warrior tribe stuff.” (Elves automatically getting longbow proficiency regardless of background is a great example I’ve used before). Species rules should focus on the biological, or the ‘nature’ to class + background’s ‘nurture.’

When it comes to stats, a bonus to Strength is an obvious choice. At the moment, my working draft is +2 Str, +1 Con, -1 Dex, -1 Wis. (Note that all species ability modifiers are opt-in in TOF, as long as they add up to zero). I plan on giving them a bite attack, since those tusks are such a defining feature for them. If I go the orca-inspired route, expect to see a swim speed. Also, people agree that orcs are big, but few specified how big... given the etymological relationship to giants, maybe I’ll move them up to the Large size category.

[ventrue-rosary]

all the even numbers for lyris

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

2: What is your character’s favorite memory?

A lot of her life has been shit, ngl. She has a few conquests which she probably remembers with a smile to this day

4: Does anyone have a crush on your character? Is your character aware of this?

I dont?? Think so?? Only the other members of the dnd party could answer that

6: What is your character’s sexual orientation?

Pansexual

8: Does your character hate anyone? Why?

She has a fair few grudges against Zilong (even though he died. Well Lyris killed him because he was a racist dragonborn). The Ambassador (for torturing her). Brigfen (one of the ambastard’s men who belittled, tortured and raped her). The last two are alive still…for now

10. Would your character ever kill someone?

She has and she will continue to do so

12: How would/does your character feel about roller coasters?

She would love the thrill of them

14: What is the cutest thing your character has ever done?

Is confessing your love to someone through a letter cute?

16: What other fictional characters remind you of your character?

None that I know of. She was a bit inspired by Vex’ahlia from Critical Role but they are quite different

18: How would your character feel about having their life recorded?

Lyris probably wouldn’t like such an invasive…invasion of her privacy

20: What is the most surprising thing about your character?

The fact she is actually a dragon could be considered a bit surprising maybe

22: What is the worst thing your character has ever done?

Been a deadbeat mom

24: What prejudices does your character have?

Err idk if she is prejudiced against groups of people (apart from the likes of cultists and bandits). More like she can be prejudiced against specific people she distrusts or flat-out dislikes

26: What is your favorite headcanon for your character?

Hmm the fact that after she was turned into an elf she worked as a prostitue and an assassin. I wrote pieces about it that I had a lot of fun writing

28: What pet would your character like to have?

A wolf, which is just as well seeing as how she has one

30: Would your character have any hobbies?

Well, she is actually proficient with a lute, so I would sat she likes to dabble with music. Apart from that, does fucking count? In a modern setting I headcanon she would love motorbikes and make an all-girl biker gang that go around beating up nazi’s, pedo’s and rapists and do various charity drives

32: What does your character look like?

Very attractive, long black hair, green eyes, perfect skin, killer body, but on the short side

34: What is cliche about your character?

She fits into certain tropes, like “mama bear”, “a lover in every port”, “heroic seductress” and probably a few more but I don’t know many tropes

36: Does anyone want to harm your character?

Oh yes

38: What role does your character play in their story?

In the campaign? She takes on a leadership role in the group, being the one who shot-calls a lot of the time, and even got a space on a council founded to deal with the cultist issue because of it

40: What would be your character’s favorite school subject?

Music. Or PE

42: What would be your character’s dream career?

I don’t see her as the type to settle down long enough to hold a career

44: What is your character proud of?

How far she has come as a person. She did a bit of soul-searching after she was exiled, and she knew she had a lot of room to grow, and needed to grow. She lapsed a lot, drank in excess and indulged in pleasures of the flesh too much. She was also prone to angry, violent outbursts…but she is growing as a person, learning to embrace her softer side.

46: Would you want to trade places with your character?

I’d consider it. She had a sucked up past but god I love her

48: How would your character type?

Keysmashes, some emojis and a lot of “listen here you little bitch”. Oh you’d bet she would get into a lot of arguments with bigots online

50: What is your favorite thing about your character?

Just…how freaking awesome she is. She’s a lot of fun to RP and damn is she strong in combat. Her angsty backstory is amazing too, if I do say so myself

52: How would your character act in gym class?

It’s be all out war. She’d mercilessly tackle everyone else, take competitive sports way too serious. She’d beat you with grace, style and finesse than brag about it to your face

54: What is the saddest thing about your character’s life?

Lyris spent 6 months as a slave and I think that probably was a big cause of her asshole nature

56: What’s one of your character’s quirks?

Her ears react to her emotions, drooping, perking and sometimes twitching like when a dogs ear does when something is irritating them when she is trying to listen in one someone’s conversation, or when she hears something she finds interesting. Also her eye’s glow in the dark, like a cats

58: Is your character dorky or more athletic?

Lyris is athletic as she’s fit and healthy and you have to be strong to use a longbow…but she’s a total dork in other aspects, like romantically

60: If you could title your character’s life, what would you title it?

I would like to title it something cool like “Trial of the Dragon” (which is the title for her story collection on Ao3) but honestly something along the lines of: “Chronicle of a Hot Mess” would be more apt. 

[faejilly]

@evilsapphyre replied to your photoset “Name: Maia Ryder Age: 24 Pronouns: she/her Sexuality: ? Pre-Initiave...”

Love me some Maia

<3

(I want more Yumi pictures, when you’re done with Sean. JUST SO YOU KNOW.)

@thedivinemissema replied to your post “I am having a lot of OC feels lately, but I cannot seem to /fic/ about...”

I feel the exact same way tbh. I love your babbling about your ocs, so you should flail around and let us all join in.

I SHOULD BUT WHERE DO I START?

@shadoedseptmbr replied to your audio post “Spotify is clearly out to get me Adelaide (Old 97′s): I remember...”

Jilly, nooo (and by no I mean, please?)

I CAN’T START HERE IT’S TOO AWFUL

wait

maybe I can? 

/oh gods I just thought of something WORSE

better?

idek anymore *laughs*

@probablylostrightnow replied to your link “Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood”

I remember Tandy FWIW. We didn't have one, but I borrowed my uncle's for a bit.

ha! I feel less old now, thank you. :D

@janiemcpants replied to your post “@janiemcpants replied to your post “@janiemcpants replied to your...”

Oh, you're right--I forgot about that, but yeah, there is some eugenics stuff in the sequel, and it's uncomfortable, to put it mildly. (iirc it's not really a subplot, it just gets mentioned a few times, but it's mentioned *favorably*, which, YIKES.) Aside from that, I did like it, but the first one was definitely the best.

well, if it’s easily skimmed past with a YIKES I may give it a shot. I’ve certainly done that with other authors over the years *sighs* why are people awful? :P

janiemcpants replied to your post “@janiemcpants replied to your post “@janiemcpants replied to your...”

But yeah, definitely see the movie! It has Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron!

THAT IS VERY A VERY COMPELLING ARGUMENT

@evilsapphyre replied to your post “@janiemcpants replied to your post “@janiemcpants replied to your...”

I shall sleep on things tonight, and then try to nudge you towards characters if I can!

THANK YOU!

ilu, btw. as I haven’t mentioned that lately <3

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include videos on the making of Raw Data & the surprise debut of Scanner Sombre, plus the history of seminal NES emulator NESticle.

A quick and early newsletter this week, since we're in Texas for a few days visiting friends game-centric & non game-centric - among them Venus Patrol/ex-IGF supremo Brandon Boyer (& world's cutest megadog Scout), as well as Gamasutra publisher/EIC Kris Graft.

One thing I did find interesting from the links I still managed to excavate, though - the recent GDC video linked below about the making of VR standout Raw Data has a fairly high dislike-to-like ratio compared to other GDC videos (more dislikes than normal).

Why? Well, partly because the game dared to hit Early Access at $40 USD with a fairly linear story, by the look of it. If the hope was that VR would ensnare the 'core gamer', I'm starting to wonder whether VR experiences are even core gamer-compatible in terms of narrative, linearity & replayability. Which would be a pretty big stumbling block, if true... Anyhow, until next time?

- Simon, curator.]

-------------------

The future of dialogue in games (Alex Wiltshire / PC Gamer) "Getting to discover the politics and personalities of a new location should feel like a reward, but the same formulaic text dump from city to city can make you feel awfully weary. Being NPCsplained at with screeds of exposition and feeling you’re taking little meaningful part in it all, game dialogue can make you want to run back into the hills."

[Game] Story - What Is It Good For? (Thomas Grip / Gamasutra Blogs) "This "go write a book instead" attitude isn't new. One of my favorite articles on the subject is Jesper Juul's "Games Telling Stories?". Interestingly, I pretty much agree with all of the points that Juul raises, but reject most of his conclusions. I think that video games are very well suited for telling stories and that there is no inherent conflict. [SIMON'S NOTE: another response to that Bogost article, of course!]"

Early Access Lessons From Raw Data (Chris Hewish & Mike McTyre / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 VRDC at GDC session, Survios' Chris Hewish and Mike McTyre break down the technological and artistic challenges, insights, and decisions that continue to influence and evolve the development of Raw Data and helped it climb the Steam charts while still in Early Access. "

When Fans Take Their Love For Twitch Streamers Too Far (Cecilia D'Anastasio / Kotaku) "It was one in the morning when the Twitch streamer Ellohime heard a knock at his front door. He had been grinding away at a PC game that night in December 2015 while his infant daughter and fiancée slept. His 22-year-old brother was crashing in the central Florida home, too, and it wasn’t unheard of for him to invite friends over at odd hours. Ellohime left his desk and went downstairs to the door."

Analysis: 'Scanner Sombre' (Errant Signal / YouTube) "Scanner Sombre is the latest game by Introversion Software, the team that brought you Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON, and Prison Architect. It's definitely pretty, but what if anything is going on beneath the surface?"

Inside Marvel vs Capcom Infinite: an in-depth interview about accessibility, combos, ditching cross-platform play and sweat equity (Alex Donaldson / VG247) "I sat down with producer Mike Evans and associate producer Peter ‘combofiend’ Rosas to talk about these challenges and chat about Infinite’s gameplay systems in-depth. Rosas in particular is a voice that carries some weight with the fans – he’s a community hire of Capcom’s, and is famous in the fighting game tournament world for performing one of the greatest fighting game comebacks of all time with a lone, vulnerable Spencer in MVC3. He knows his Marvel. Here’s our chat."

Epic, near-EVE-worthy troll sabotages Elite: Dangerous community event (Lee Hutchinson / Ars Technica) "In the vast simulated galaxy of Elite: Dangerous, a years-old mystery concerning an unknown region of space called the Formidine Rift was poised to take a dramatic leap forward on Saturday. An NPC going by the name of Salomé was preparing for a frantic, fast return to the main inhabited core worlds with information that would advance the mystery’s plot. Eliteplayers could choose to try to escort Salomé to safety, or could try to gun her down."

Gamasutra Plays Playerunknown's Battlegrounds with Brendan Greene (Gamasutra Team / Twitch / YouTube) "The Gamasutra crew sits down with Playerunknown, aka Brendan Greene, to talk about the success of Bluehole's latest game Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. [SIMON'S NOTE: the Gamasutra crew are doing more and more live Twitch chats with devs, & here's a particularly notable recent one - more archived on YouTube here.]"

Tumbleseed and the obscure mechanical arcade machine that inspired it (Andrew Webster / Verge) "It never went on to become a huge hit, but for game designer Greg Wohlwend, Ice Cold Beer proved inspirational. So much so that he, along with a small team, set about taking the core mechanic and expanding on it for the new video game Tumbleseed. “We’ve got to be true to the source material,” says Wohlwend of the development process, “out of love and respect for this awesome game that not a lot of people know about.”"

Boom, Headshot! (Martin Annander / Gamasutra Blogs) "However, let’s not rail against violence. That’s not what this is about. Violence can be thrilling, its narrative exciting, and the skills required to master the gameplay can be quite rewarding to attain. We’ve played first-person shooters for decades for reasons other than murder. [SIMON'S NOTE: from a couple of weeks back, but only just spotted it - a powerful partner to Ste Curran's 'Double Tap' GDC 2017 talk?]"

How the Mixed Reality Game 'Bad News' Brings Towns Like 'Twin Peaks' to Life (Steven T. Wright / Glixel) "We were inside a sprawling exhibition hall at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,where a trio of PhD students from the University of California, Santa Cruz are showing off their project, Bad News – an interactive experience that, much like a play, incorporates aspects of real-world performance."

The Story of NESticle, the Ambitious Emulator That Redefined Retro Gaming (Ernie Smith / Motherboard) "The product of a talented programmer who designed a hit shareware game while he was still in high school, NESticle was so good that everyone looked past the fact its name was basically a dick joke."

In Gacha We Trust: The Appeal of Japanese Free to Play Games (Allen Kwan / Medium) "Richard Garfield recently penned a manifesto on free to play (F2P) games that encourage spending, or what he calls “skinnerware”. While there is perhaps a little bit of irony in the fact that the person responsible for creating one of the bigger “skinnerware” games, Magic the Gathering, writing a manifesto decrying the exploitative nature of these types of games, reading his post made me reflect on the F2P games that I play. [SIMON'S NOTE: this editorial is a little old, but popped up on social media recently & is well worth revisiting!]"

Faithfully updating the art of a classic in Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (Joel Couture / Gamasutra) "Ben Fiquet spent a great deal of time playing the 1989 Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap as a child, wandering around its wondrous worlds. The game made a strong impression on him. These feelings would well up again, years later, when Fiquet found himself working on the recently-released remake, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap."

Rock and Roll Days of StarCraft: a Development Retrospective (StarCraft: Remastered / Blizzard Entertainment) "The year was 1997, and Blizzard art director Samwise Didier’s ’65 Mustang was producing an alarming amount of smoke. The ancient vehicle was held together by little more than duct tape and prayer, and by the time Didier pulled into his garage one sunny Southern California afternoon, it was clear that neither countermeasure would suffice for long."

Interview: The creator of the Conquests adventures on what made them special (GOG.com) "During the steady stream of Quest and Larry games that established [Sierra's] legacy, a couple of less-known but no less-loved titles came along: Conquests of Camelot and Conquests of the Longbow. To celebrate their long-awaited arrival on GOG.com we've approached their creator, Christy Marx, for a chat on what made them so special to her and to so many adventure game fans."

'Hearthstone' Director Ben Brode Talks Surprise Success and Tough Choices (Joshua Calixto / Glixel) "As Hearthstone’s director, Ben Brode has a firm understanding of how much is riding on the game’s complex design. If he and his team tune things to be too random, the competitive scene suffers. Nerf a card too much, and players start to feel like their monetary investments are losing value."

Tom Hall: 5 key design lessons I learned directing Wolfenstein 3D (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "Wolfenstein 3D came out exactly 25 years ago, on May 5th, 1992. Nothing was the same after that day. “We knew it was new and special, but we were pretty blown away by the reception,” says Tom Hall, the director and co-designer of the game."

A three-year-old Elite Dangerous mystery is finally unravelling (Wesley Yin-Poole / Eurogamer) "Elite Dangerous players have taken a significant step in solving a mystery that has befuddled its most rabid secret-hunters ever since the game came out. The Formidine Rift mystery, as it's known, kicked off back in 2014 with the release of Drew Wagar's novel Elite Reclamation. Since then players have searched for clues in an attempt to solve this mystery. This week, a major discovery was made that suggests a solution is near."

Lessons from Escape Rooms: Designing for the Real World and VR (Laura E. Hall / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 GDC session, escape room designer Laura E. Hall discusses the design fundamentals and structures necessary for creating real-world experiences that offer not only entertainment, but create immersion and transportation for players in order to understand how "physical play" can be a foundation for virtual reality design and beyond. "

-------------------

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include videos on the making of Raw Data & the surprise debut of Scanner Sombre, plus the history of seminal NES emulator NESticle.

A quick and early newsletter this week, since we're in Texas for a few days visiting friends game-centric & non game-centric - among them Venus Patrol/ex-IGF supremo Brandon Boyer (& world's cutest megadog Scout), as well as Gamasutra publisher/EIC Kris Graft.

One thing I did find interesting from the links I still managed to excavate, though - the recent GDC video linked below about the making of VR standout Raw Data has a fairly high dislike-to-like ratio compared to other GDC videos (more dislikes than normal).

Why? Well, partly because the game dared to hit Early Access at $40 USD with a fairly linear story, by the look of it. If the hope was that VR would ensnare the 'core gamer', I'm starting to wonder whether VR experiences are even core gamer-compatible in terms of narrative, linearity & replayability. Which would be a pretty big stumbling block, if true... Anyhow, until next time?

- Simon, curator.]

-------------------

The future of dialogue in games (Alex Wiltshire / PC Gamer) "Getting to discover the politics and personalities of a new location should feel like a reward, but the same formulaic text dump from city to city can make you feel awfully weary. Being NPCsplained at with screeds of exposition and feeling you’re taking little meaningful part in it all, game dialogue can make you want to run back into the hills."

[Game] Story - What Is It Good For? (Thomas Grip / Gamasutra Blogs) "This "go write a book instead" attitude isn't new. One of my favorite articles on the subject is Jesper Juul's "Games Telling Stories?". Interestingly, I pretty much agree with all of the points that Juul raises, but reject most of his conclusions. I think that video games are very well suited for telling stories and that there is no inherent conflict. [SIMON'S NOTE: another response to that Bogost article, of course!]"

Early Access Lessons From Raw Data (Chris Hewish & Mike McTyre / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 VRDC at GDC session, Survios' Chris Hewish and Mike McTyre break down the technological and artistic challenges, insights, and decisions that continue to influence and evolve the development of Raw Data and helped it climb the Steam charts while still in Early Access. "

When Fans Take Their Love For Twitch Streamers Too Far (Cecilia D'Anastasio / Kotaku) "It was one in the morning when the Twitch streamer Ellohime heard a knock at his front door. He had been grinding away at a PC game that night in December 2015 while his infant daughter and fiancée slept. His 22-year-old brother was crashing in the central Florida home, too, and it wasn’t unheard of for him to invite friends over at odd hours. Ellohime left his desk and went downstairs to the door."

Analysis: 'Scanner Sombre' (Errant Signal / YouTube) "Scanner Sombre is the latest game by Introversion Software, the team that brought you Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON, and Prison Architect. It's definitely pretty, but what if anything is going on beneath the surface?"

Inside Marvel vs Capcom Infinite: an in-depth interview about accessibility, combos, ditching cross-platform play and sweat equity (Alex Donaldson / VG247) "I sat down with producer Mike Evans and associate producer Peter ‘combofiend’ Rosas to talk about these challenges and chat about Infinite’s gameplay systems in-depth. Rosas in particular is a voice that carries some weight with the fans – he’s a community hire of Capcom’s, and is famous in the fighting game tournament world for performing one of the greatest fighting game comebacks of all time with a lone, vulnerable Spencer in MVC3. He knows his Marvel. Here’s our chat."

Epic, near-EVE-worthy troll sabotages Elite: Dangerous community event (Lee Hutchinson / Ars Technica) "In the vast simulated galaxy of Elite: Dangerous, a years-old mystery concerning an unknown region of space called the Formidine Rift was poised to take a dramatic leap forward on Saturday. An NPC going by the name of Salomé was preparing for a frantic, fast return to the main inhabited core worlds with information that would advance the mystery’s plot. Eliteplayers could choose to try to escort Salomé to safety, or could try to gun her down."

Gamasutra Plays Playerunknown's Battlegrounds with Brendan Greene (Gamasutra Team / Twitch / YouTube) "The Gamasutra crew sits down with Playerunknown, aka Brendan Greene, to talk about the success of Bluehole's latest game Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. [SIMON'S NOTE: the Gamasutra crew are doing more and more live Twitch chats with devs, & here's a particularly notable recent one - more archived on YouTube here.]"

Tumbleseed and the obscure mechanical arcade machine that inspired it (Andrew Webster / Verge) "It never went on to become a huge hit, but for game designer Greg Wohlwend, Ice Cold Beer proved inspirational. So much so that he, along with a small team, set about taking the core mechanic and expanding on it for the new video game Tumbleseed. “We’ve got to be true to the source material,” says Wohlwend of the development process, “out of love and respect for this awesome game that not a lot of people know about.”"

Boom, Headshot! (Martin Annander / Gamasutra Blogs) "However, let’s not rail against violence. That’s not what this is about. Violence can be thrilling, its narrative exciting, and the skills required to master the gameplay can be quite rewarding to attain. We’ve played first-person shooters for decades for reasons other than murder. [SIMON'S NOTE: from a couple of weeks back, but only just spotted it - a powerful partner to Ste Curran's 'Double Tap' GDC 2017 talk?]"

How the Mixed Reality Game 'Bad News' Brings Towns Like 'Twin Peaks' to Life (Steven T. Wright / Glixel) "We were inside a sprawling exhibition hall at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,where a trio of PhD students from the University of California, Santa Cruz are showing off their project, Bad News – an interactive experience that, much like a play, incorporates aspects of real-world performance."

The Story of NESticle, the Ambitious Emulator That Redefined Retro Gaming (Ernie Smith / Motherboard) "The product of a talented programmer who designed a hit shareware game while he was still in high school, NESticle was so good that everyone looked past the fact its name was basically a dick joke."

In Gacha We Trust: The Appeal of Japanese Free to Play Games (Allen Kwan / Medium) "Richard Garfield recently penned a manifesto on free to play (F2P) games that encourage spending, or what he calls “skinnerware”. While there is perhaps a little bit of irony in the fact that the person responsible for creating one of the bigger “skinnerware” games, Magic the Gathering, writing a manifesto decrying the exploitative nature of these types of games, reading his post made me reflect on the F2P games that I play. [SIMON'S NOTE: this editorial is a little old, but popped up on social media recently & is well worth revisiting!]"

Faithfully updating the art of a classic in Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (Joel Couture / Gamasutra) "Ben Fiquet spent a great deal of time playing the 1989 Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap as a child, wandering around its wondrous worlds. The game made a strong impression on him. These feelings would well up again, years later, when Fiquet found himself working on the recently-released remake, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap."

Rock and Roll Days of StarCraft: a Development Retrospective (StarCraft: Remastered / Blizzard Entertainment) "The year was 1997, and Blizzard art director Samwise Didier’s ’65 Mustang was producing an alarming amount of smoke. The ancient vehicle was held together by little more than duct tape and prayer, and by the time Didier pulled into his garage one sunny Southern California afternoon, it was clear that neither countermeasure would suffice for long."

Interview: The creator of the Conquests adventures on what made them special (GOG.com) "During the steady stream of Quest and Larry games that established [Sierra's] legacy, a couple of less-known but no less-loved titles came along: Conquests of Camelot and Conquests of the Longbow. To celebrate their long-awaited arrival on GOG.com we've approached their creator, Christy Marx, for a chat on what made them so special to her and to so many adventure game fans."

'Hearthstone' Director Ben Brode Talks Surprise Success and Tough Choices (Joshua Calixto / Glixel) "As Hearthstone’s director, Ben Brode has a firm understanding of how much is riding on the game’s complex design. If he and his team tune things to be too random, the competitive scene suffers. Nerf a card too much, and players start to feel like their monetary investments are losing value."

Tom Hall: 5 key design lessons I learned directing Wolfenstein 3D (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "Wolfenstein 3D came out exactly 25 years ago, on May 5th, 1992. Nothing was the same after that day. “We knew it was new and special, but we were pretty blown away by the reception,” says Tom Hall, the director and co-designer of the game."

A three-year-old Elite Dangerous mystery is finally unravelling (Wesley Yin-Poole / Eurogamer) "Elite Dangerous players have taken a significant step in solving a mystery that has befuddled its most rabid secret-hunters ever since the game came out. The Formidine Rift mystery, as it's known, kicked off back in 2014 with the release of Drew Wagar's novel Elite Reclamation. Since then players have searched for clues in an attempt to solve this mystery. This week, a major discovery was made that suggests a solution is near."

Lessons from Escape Rooms: Designing for the Real World and VR (Laura E. Hall / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 GDC session, escape room designer Laura E. Hall discusses the design fundamentals and structures necessary for creating real-world experiences that offer not only entertainment, but create immersion and transportation for players in order to understand how "physical play" can be a foundation for virtual reality design and beyond. "

-------------------

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include videos on the making of Raw Data & the surprise debut of Scanner Sombre, plus the history of seminal NES emulator NESticle.

A quick and early newsletter this week, since we're in Texas for a few days visiting friends game-centric & non game-centric - among them Venus Patrol/ex-IGF supremo Brandon Boyer (& world's cutest megadog Scout), as well as Gamasutra publisher/EIC Kris Graft.

One thing I did find interesting from the links I still managed to excavate, though - the recent GDC video linked below about the making of VR standout Raw Data has a fairly high dislike-to-like ratio compared to other GDC videos (more dislikes than normal).

Why? Well, partly because the game dared to hit Early Access at $40 USD with a fairly linear story, by the look of it. If the hope was that VR would ensnare the 'core gamer', I'm starting to wonder whether VR experiences are even core gamer-compatible in terms of narrative, linearity & replayability. Which would be a pretty big stumbling block, if true... Anyhow, until next time?

- Simon, curator.]

-------------------

The future of dialogue in games (Alex Wiltshire / PC Gamer) "Getting to discover the politics and personalities of a new location should feel like a reward, but the same formulaic text dump from city to city can make you feel awfully weary. Being NPCsplained at with screeds of exposition and feeling you’re taking little meaningful part in it all, game dialogue can make you want to run back into the hills."

[Game] Story - What Is It Good For? (Thomas Grip / Gamasutra Blogs) "This "go write a book instead" attitude isn't new. One of my favorite articles on the subject is Jesper Juul's "Games Telling Stories?". Interestingly, I pretty much agree with all of the points that Juul raises, but reject most of his conclusions. I think that video games are very well suited for telling stories and that there is no inherent conflict. [SIMON'S NOTE: another response to that Bogost article, of course!]"

Early Access Lessons From Raw Data (Chris Hewish & Mike McTyre / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 VRDC at GDC session, Survios' Chris Hewish and Mike McTyre break down the technological and artistic challenges, insights, and decisions that continue to influence and evolve the development of Raw Data and helped it climb the Steam charts while still in Early Access. "

When Fans Take Their Love For Twitch Streamers Too Far (Cecilia D'Anastasio / Kotaku) "It was one in the morning when the Twitch streamer Ellohime heard a knock at his front door. He had been grinding away at a PC game that night in December 2015 while his infant daughter and fiancée slept. His 22-year-old brother was crashing in the central Florida home, too, and it wasn’t unheard of for him to invite friends over at odd hours. Ellohime left his desk and went downstairs to the door."

Analysis: 'Scanner Sombre' (Errant Signal / YouTube) "Scanner Sombre is the latest game by Introversion Software, the team that brought you Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON, and Prison Architect. It's definitely pretty, but what if anything is going on beneath the surface?"

Inside Marvel vs Capcom Infinite: an in-depth interview about accessibility, combos, ditching cross-platform play and sweat equity (Alex Donaldson / VG247) "I sat down with producer Mike Evans and associate producer Peter ‘combofiend’ Rosas to talk about these challenges and chat about Infinite’s gameplay systems in-depth. Rosas in particular is a voice that carries some weight with the fans – he’s a community hire of Capcom’s, and is famous in the fighting game tournament world for performing one of the greatest fighting game comebacks of all time with a lone, vulnerable Spencer in MVC3. He knows his Marvel. Here’s our chat."

Epic, near-EVE-worthy troll sabotages Elite: Dangerous community event (Lee Hutchinson / Ars Technica) "In the vast simulated galaxy of Elite: Dangerous, a years-old mystery concerning an unknown region of space called the Formidine Rift was poised to take a dramatic leap forward on Saturday. An NPC going by the name of Salomé was preparing for a frantic, fast return to the main inhabited core worlds with information that would advance the mystery’s plot. Eliteplayers could choose to try to escort Salomé to safety, or could try to gun her down."

Gamasutra Plays Playerunknown's Battlegrounds with Brendan Greene (Gamasutra Team / Twitch / YouTube) "The Gamasutra crew sits down with Playerunknown, aka Brendan Greene, to talk about the success of Bluehole's latest game Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. [SIMON'S NOTE: the Gamasutra crew are doing more and more live Twitch chats with devs, & here's a particularly notable recent one - more archived on YouTube here.]"

Tumbleseed and the obscure mechanical arcade machine that inspired it (Andrew Webster / Verge) "It never went on to become a huge hit, but for game designer Greg Wohlwend, Ice Cold Beer proved inspirational. So much so that he, along with a small team, set about taking the core mechanic and expanding on it for the new video game Tumbleseed. “We’ve got to be true to the source material,” says Wohlwend of the development process, “out of love and respect for this awesome game that not a lot of people know about.”"

Boom, Headshot! (Martin Annander / Gamasutra Blogs) "However, let’s not rail against violence. That’s not what this is about. Violence can be thrilling, its narrative exciting, and the skills required to master the gameplay can be quite rewarding to attain. We’ve played first-person shooters for decades for reasons other than murder. [SIMON'S NOTE: from a couple of weeks back, but only just spotted it - a powerful partner to Ste Curran's 'Double Tap' GDC 2017 talk?]"

How the Mixed Reality Game 'Bad News' Brings Towns Like 'Twin Peaks' to Life (Steven T. Wright / Glixel) "We were inside a sprawling exhibition hall at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,where a trio of PhD students from the University of California, Santa Cruz are showing off their project, Bad News – an interactive experience that, much like a play, incorporates aspects of real-world performance."

The Story of NESticle, the Ambitious Emulator That Redefined Retro Gaming (Ernie Smith / Motherboard) "The product of a talented programmer who designed a hit shareware game while he was still in high school, NESticle was so good that everyone looked past the fact its name was basically a dick joke."

In Gacha We Trust: The Appeal of Japanese Free to Play Games (Allen Kwan / Medium) "Richard Garfield recently penned a manifesto on free to play (F2P) games that encourage spending, or what he calls “skinnerware”. While there is perhaps a little bit of irony in the fact that the person responsible for creating one of the bigger “skinnerware” games, Magic the Gathering, writing a manifesto decrying the exploitative nature of these types of games, reading his post made me reflect on the F2P games that I play. [SIMON'S NOTE: this editorial is a little old, but popped up on social media recently & is well worth revisiting!]"

Faithfully updating the art of a classic in Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (Joel Couture / Gamasutra) "Ben Fiquet spent a great deal of time playing the 1989 Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap as a child, wandering around its wondrous worlds. The game made a strong impression on him. These feelings would well up again, years later, when Fiquet found himself working on the recently-released remake, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap."

Rock and Roll Days of StarCraft: a Development Retrospective (StarCraft: Remastered / Blizzard Entertainment) "The year was 1997, and Blizzard art director Samwise Didier’s ’65 Mustang was producing an alarming amount of smoke. The ancient vehicle was held together by little more than duct tape and prayer, and by the time Didier pulled into his garage one sunny Southern California afternoon, it was clear that neither countermeasure would suffice for long."

Interview: The creator of the Conquests adventures on what made them special (GOG.com) "During the steady stream of Quest and Larry games that established [Sierra's] legacy, a couple of less-known but no less-loved titles came along: Conquests of Camelot and Conquests of the Longbow. To celebrate their long-awaited arrival on GOG.com we've approached their creator, Christy Marx, for a chat on what made them so special to her and to so many adventure game fans."

'Hearthstone' Director Ben Brode Talks Surprise Success and Tough Choices (Joshua Calixto / Glixel) "As Hearthstone’s director, Ben Brode has a firm understanding of how much is riding on the game’s complex design. If he and his team tune things to be too random, the competitive scene suffers. Nerf a card too much, and players start to feel like their monetary investments are losing value."

Tom Hall: 5 key design lessons I learned directing Wolfenstein 3D (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "Wolfenstein 3D came out exactly 25 years ago, on May 5th, 1992. Nothing was the same after that day. “We knew it was new and special, but we were pretty blown away by the reception,” says Tom Hall, the director and co-designer of the game."

A three-year-old Elite Dangerous mystery is finally unravelling (Wesley Yin-Poole / Eurogamer) "Elite Dangerous players have taken a significant step in solving a mystery that has befuddled its most rabid secret-hunters ever since the game came out. The Formidine Rift mystery, as it's known, kicked off back in 2014 with the release of Drew Wagar's novel Elite Reclamation. Since then players have searched for clues in an attempt to solve this mystery. This week, a major discovery was made that suggests a solution is near."

Lessons from Escape Rooms: Designing for the Real World and VR (Laura E. Hall / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 GDC session, escape room designer Laura E. Hall discusses the design fundamentals and structures necessary for creating real-world experiences that offer not only entertainment, but create immersion and transportation for players in order to understand how "physical play" can be a foundation for virtual reality design and beyond. "

-------------------

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include videos on the making of Raw Data & the surprise debut of Scanner Sombre, plus the history of seminal NES emulator NESticle.

A quick and early newsletter this week, since we're in Texas for a few days visiting friends game-centric & non game-centric - among them Venus Patrol/ex-IGF supremo Brandon Boyer (& world's cutest megadog Scout), as well as Gamasutra publisher/EIC Kris Graft.

One thing I did find interesting from the links I still managed to excavate, though - the recent GDC video linked below about the making of VR standout Raw Data has a fairly high dislike-to-like ratio compared to other GDC videos (more dislikes than normal).

Why? Well, partly because the game dared to hit Early Access at $40 USD with a fairly linear story, by the look of it. If the hope was that VR would ensnare the 'core gamer', I'm starting to wonder whether VR experiences are even core gamer-compatible in terms of narrative, linearity & replayability. Which would be a pretty big stumbling block, if true... Anyhow, until next time?

- Simon, curator.]

-------------------

The future of dialogue in games (Alex Wiltshire / PC Gamer) "Getting to discover the politics and personalities of a new location should feel like a reward, but the same formulaic text dump from city to city can make you feel awfully weary. Being NPCsplained at with screeds of exposition and feeling you’re taking little meaningful part in it all, game dialogue can make you want to run back into the hills."

[Game] Story - What Is It Good For? (Thomas Grip / Gamasutra Blogs) "This "go write a book instead" attitude isn't new. One of my favorite articles on the subject is Jesper Juul's "Games Telling Stories?". Interestingly, I pretty much agree with all of the points that Juul raises, but reject most of his conclusions. I think that video games are very well suited for telling stories and that there is no inherent conflict. [SIMON'S NOTE: another response to that Bogost article, of course!]"

Early Access Lessons From Raw Data (Chris Hewish & Mike McTyre / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 VRDC at GDC session, Survios' Chris Hewish and Mike McTyre break down the technological and artistic challenges, insights, and decisions that continue to influence and evolve the development of Raw Data and helped it climb the Steam charts while still in Early Access. "

When Fans Take Their Love For Twitch Streamers Too Far (Cecilia D'Anastasio / Kotaku) "It was one in the morning when the Twitch streamer Ellohime heard a knock at his front door. He had been grinding away at a PC game that night in December 2015 while his infant daughter and fiancée slept. His 22-year-old brother was crashing in the central Florida home, too, and it wasn’t unheard of for him to invite friends over at odd hours. Ellohime left his desk and went downstairs to the door."

Analysis: 'Scanner Sombre' (Errant Signal / YouTube) "Scanner Sombre is the latest game by Introversion Software, the team that brought you Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON, and Prison Architect. It's definitely pretty, but what if anything is going on beneath the surface?"

Inside Marvel vs Capcom Infinite: an in-depth interview about accessibility, combos, ditching cross-platform play and sweat equity (Alex Donaldson / VG247) "I sat down with producer Mike Evans and associate producer Peter ‘combofiend’ Rosas to talk about these challenges and chat about Infinite’s gameplay systems in-depth. Rosas in particular is a voice that carries some weight with the fans – he’s a community hire of Capcom’s, and is famous in the fighting game tournament world for performing one of the greatest fighting game comebacks of all time with a lone, vulnerable Spencer in MVC3. He knows his Marvel. Here’s our chat."

Epic, near-EVE-worthy troll sabotages Elite: Dangerous community event (Lee Hutchinson / Ars Technica) "In the vast simulated galaxy of Elite: Dangerous, a years-old mystery concerning an unknown region of space called the Formidine Rift was poised to take a dramatic leap forward on Saturday. An NPC going by the name of Salomé was preparing for a frantic, fast return to the main inhabited core worlds with information that would advance the mystery’s plot. Eliteplayers could choose to try to escort Salomé to safety, or could try to gun her down."

Gamasutra Plays Playerunknown's Battlegrounds with Brendan Greene (Gamasutra Team / Twitch / YouTube) "The Gamasutra crew sits down with Playerunknown, aka Brendan Greene, to talk about the success of Bluehole's latest game Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. [SIMON'S NOTE: the Gamasutra crew are doing more and more live Twitch chats with devs, & here's a particularly notable recent one - more archived on YouTube here.]"

Tumbleseed and the obscure mechanical arcade machine that inspired it (Andrew Webster / Verge) "It never went on to become a huge hit, but for game designer Greg Wohlwend, Ice Cold Beer proved inspirational. So much so that he, along with a small team, set about taking the core mechanic and expanding on it for the new video game Tumbleseed. “We’ve got to be true to the source material,” says Wohlwend of the development process, “out of love and respect for this awesome game that not a lot of people know about.”"

Boom, Headshot! (Martin Annander / Gamasutra Blogs) "However, let’s not rail against violence. That’s not what this is about. Violence can be thrilling, its narrative exciting, and the skills required to master the gameplay can be quite rewarding to attain. We’ve played first-person shooters for decades for reasons other than murder. [SIMON'S NOTE: from a couple of weeks back, but only just spotted it - a powerful partner to Ste Curran's 'Double Tap' GDC 2017 talk?]"

How the Mixed Reality Game 'Bad News' Brings Towns Like 'Twin Peaks' to Life (Steven T. Wright / Glixel) "We were inside a sprawling exhibition hall at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,where a trio of PhD students from the University of California, Santa Cruz are showing off their project, Bad News – an interactive experience that, much like a play, incorporates aspects of real-world performance."

The Story of NESticle, the Ambitious Emulator That Redefined Retro Gaming (Ernie Smith / Motherboard) "The product of a talented programmer who designed a hit shareware game while he was still in high school, NESticle was so good that everyone looked past the fact its name was basically a dick joke."

In Gacha We Trust: The Appeal of Japanese Free to Play Games (Allen Kwan / Medium) "Richard Garfield recently penned a manifesto on free to play (F2P) games that encourage spending, or what he calls “skinnerware”. While there is perhaps a little bit of irony in the fact that the person responsible for creating one of the bigger “skinnerware” games, Magic the Gathering, writing a manifesto decrying the exploitative nature of these types of games, reading his post made me reflect on the F2P games that I play. [SIMON'S NOTE: this editorial is a little old, but popped up on social media recently & is well worth revisiting!]"

Faithfully updating the art of a classic in Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (Joel Couture / Gamasutra) "Ben Fiquet spent a great deal of time playing the 1989 Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap as a child, wandering around its wondrous worlds. The game made a strong impression on him. These feelings would well up again, years later, when Fiquet found himself working on the recently-released remake, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap."

Rock and Roll Days of StarCraft: a Development Retrospective (StarCraft: Remastered / Blizzard Entertainment) "The year was 1997, and Blizzard art director Samwise Didier’s ’65 Mustang was producing an alarming amount of smoke. The ancient vehicle was held together by little more than duct tape and prayer, and by the time Didier pulled into his garage one sunny Southern California afternoon, it was clear that neither countermeasure would suffice for long."

Interview: The creator of the Conquests adventures on what made them special (GOG.com) "During the steady stream of Quest and Larry games that established [Sierra's] legacy, a couple of less-known but no less-loved titles came along: Conquests of Camelot and Conquests of the Longbow. To celebrate their long-awaited arrival on GOG.com we've approached their creator, Christy Marx, for a chat on what made them so special to her and to so many adventure game fans."

'Hearthstone' Director Ben Brode Talks Surprise Success and Tough Choices (Joshua Calixto / Glixel) "As Hearthstone’s director, Ben Brode has a firm understanding of how much is riding on the game’s complex design. If he and his team tune things to be too random, the competitive scene suffers. Nerf a card too much, and players start to feel like their monetary investments are losing value."

Tom Hall: 5 key design lessons I learned directing Wolfenstein 3D (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "Wolfenstein 3D came out exactly 25 years ago, on May 5th, 1992. Nothing was the same after that day. “We knew it was new and special, but we were pretty blown away by the reception,” says Tom Hall, the director and co-designer of the game."

A three-year-old Elite Dangerous mystery is finally unravelling (Wesley Yin-Poole / Eurogamer) "Elite Dangerous players have taken a significant step in solving a mystery that has befuddled its most rabid secret-hunters ever since the game came out. The Formidine Rift mystery, as it's known, kicked off back in 2014 with the release of Drew Wagar's novel Elite Reclamation. Since then players have searched for clues in an attempt to solve this mystery. This week, a major discovery was made that suggests a solution is near."

Lessons from Escape Rooms: Designing for the Real World and VR (Laura E. Hall / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 GDC session, escape room designer Laura E. Hall discusses the design fundamentals and structures necessary for creating real-world experiences that offer not only entertainment, but create immersion and transportation for players in order to understand how "physical play" can be a foundation for virtual reality design and beyond. "

-------------------

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include videos on the making of Raw Data & the surprise debut of Scanner Sombre, plus the history of seminal NES emulator NESticle.

A quick and early newsletter this week, since we're in Texas for a few days visiting friends game-centric & non game-centric - among them Venus Patrol/ex-IGF supremo Brandon Boyer (& world's cutest megadog Scout), as well as Gamasutra publisher/EIC Kris Graft.

One thing I did find interesting from the links I still managed to excavate, though - the recent GDC video linked below about the making of VR standout Raw Data has a fairly high dislike-to-like ratio compared to other GDC videos (more dislikes than normal).

Why? Well, partly because the game dared to hit Early Access at $40 USD with a fairly linear story, by the look of it. If the hope was that VR would ensnare the 'core gamer', I'm starting to wonder whether VR experiences are even core gamer-compatible in terms of narrative, linearity & replayability. Which would be a pretty big stumbling block, if true... Anyhow, until next time?

- Simon, curator.]

-------------------

The future of dialogue in games (Alex Wiltshire / PC Gamer) "Getting to discover the politics and personalities of a new location should feel like a reward, but the same formulaic text dump from city to city can make you feel awfully weary. Being NPCsplained at with screeds of exposition and feeling you’re taking little meaningful part in it all, game dialogue can make you want to run back into the hills."

[Game] Story - What Is It Good For? (Thomas Grip / Gamasutra Blogs) "This "go write a book instead" attitude isn't new. One of my favorite articles on the subject is Jesper Juul's "Games Telling Stories?". Interestingly, I pretty much agree with all of the points that Juul raises, but reject most of his conclusions. I think that video games are very well suited for telling stories and that there is no inherent conflict. [SIMON'S NOTE: another response to that Bogost article, of course!]"

Early Access Lessons From Raw Data (Chris Hewish & Mike McTyre / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 VRDC at GDC session, Survios' Chris Hewish and Mike McTyre break down the technological and artistic challenges, insights, and decisions that continue to influence and evolve the development of Raw Data and helped it climb the Steam charts while still in Early Access. "

When Fans Take Their Love For Twitch Streamers Too Far (Cecilia D'Anastasio / Kotaku) "It was one in the morning when the Twitch streamer Ellohime heard a knock at his front door. He had been grinding away at a PC game that night in December 2015 while his infant daughter and fiancée slept. His 22-year-old brother was crashing in the central Florida home, too, and it wasn’t unheard of for him to invite friends over at odd hours. Ellohime left his desk and went downstairs to the door."

Analysis: 'Scanner Sombre' (Errant Signal / YouTube) "Scanner Sombre is the latest game by Introversion Software, the team that brought you Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON, and Prison Architect. It's definitely pretty, but what if anything is going on beneath the surface?"

Inside Marvel vs Capcom Infinite: an in-depth interview about accessibility, combos, ditching cross-platform play and sweat equity (Alex Donaldson / VG247) "I sat down with producer Mike Evans and associate producer Peter ‘combofiend’ Rosas to talk about these challenges and chat about Infinite’s gameplay systems in-depth. Rosas in particular is a voice that carries some weight with the fans – he’s a community hire of Capcom’s, and is famous in the fighting game tournament world for performing one of the greatest fighting game comebacks of all time with a lone, vulnerable Spencer in MVC3. He knows his Marvel. Here’s our chat."

Epic, near-EVE-worthy troll sabotages Elite: Dangerous community event (Lee Hutchinson / Ars Technica) "In the vast simulated galaxy of Elite: Dangerous, a years-old mystery concerning an unknown region of space called the Formidine Rift was poised to take a dramatic leap forward on Saturday. An NPC going by the name of Salomé was preparing for a frantic, fast return to the main inhabited core worlds with information that would advance the mystery’s plot. Eliteplayers could choose to try to escort Salomé to safety, or could try to gun her down."

Gamasutra Plays Playerunknown's Battlegrounds with Brendan Greene (Gamasutra Team / Twitch / YouTube) "The Gamasutra crew sits down with Playerunknown, aka Brendan Greene, to talk about the success of Bluehole's latest game Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. [SIMON'S NOTE: the Gamasutra crew are doing more and more live Twitch chats with devs, & here's a particularly notable recent one - more archived on YouTube here.]"

Tumbleseed and the obscure mechanical arcade machine that inspired it (Andrew Webster / Verge) "It never went on to become a huge hit, but for game designer Greg Wohlwend, Ice Cold Beer proved inspirational. So much so that he, along with a small team, set about taking the core mechanic and expanding on it for the new video game Tumbleseed. “We’ve got to be true to the source material,” says Wohlwend of the development process, “out of love and respect for this awesome game that not a lot of people know about.”"

Boom, Headshot! (Martin Annander / Gamasutra Blogs) "However, let’s not rail against violence. That’s not what this is about. Violence can be thrilling, its narrative exciting, and the skills required to master the gameplay can be quite rewarding to attain. We’ve played first-person shooters for decades for reasons other than murder. [SIMON'S NOTE: from a couple of weeks back, but only just spotted it - a powerful partner to Ste Curran's 'Double Tap' GDC 2017 talk?]"

How the Mixed Reality Game 'Bad News' Brings Towns Like 'Twin Peaks' to Life (Steven T. Wright / Glixel) "We were inside a sprawling exhibition hall at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,where a trio of PhD students from the University of California, Santa Cruz are showing off their project, Bad News – an interactive experience that, much like a play, incorporates aspects of real-world performance."

The Story of NESticle, the Ambitious Emulator That Redefined Retro Gaming (Ernie Smith / Motherboard) "The product of a talented programmer who designed a hit shareware game while he was still in high school, NESticle was so good that everyone looked past the fact its name was basically a dick joke."

In Gacha We Trust: The Appeal of Japanese Free to Play Games (Allen Kwan / Medium) "Richard Garfield recently penned a manifesto on free to play (F2P) games that encourage spending, or what he calls “skinnerware”. While there is perhaps a little bit of irony in the fact that the person responsible for creating one of the bigger “skinnerware” games, Magic the Gathering, writing a manifesto decrying the exploitative nature of these types of games, reading his post made me reflect on the F2P games that I play. [SIMON'S NOTE: this editorial is a little old, but popped up on social media recently & is well worth revisiting!]"

Faithfully updating the art of a classic in Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (Joel Couture / Gamasutra) "Ben Fiquet spent a great deal of time playing the 1989 Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap as a child, wandering around its wondrous worlds. The game made a strong impression on him. These feelings would well up again, years later, when Fiquet found himself working on the recently-released remake, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap."

Rock and Roll Days of StarCraft: a Development Retrospective (StarCraft: Remastered / Blizzard Entertainment) "The year was 1997, and Blizzard art director Samwise Didier’s ’65 Mustang was producing an alarming amount of smoke. The ancient vehicle was held together by little more than duct tape and prayer, and by the time Didier pulled into his garage one sunny Southern California afternoon, it was clear that neither countermeasure would suffice for long."

Interview: The creator of the Conquests adventures on what made them special (GOG.com) "During the steady stream of Quest and Larry games that established [Sierra's] legacy, a couple of less-known but no less-loved titles came along: Conquests of Camelot and Conquests of the Longbow. To celebrate their long-awaited arrival on GOG.com we've approached their creator, Christy Marx, for a chat on what made them so special to her and to so many adventure game fans."

'Hearthstone' Director Ben Brode Talks Surprise Success and Tough Choices (Joshua Calixto / Glixel) "As Hearthstone’s director, Ben Brode has a firm understanding of how much is riding on the game’s complex design. If he and his team tune things to be too random, the competitive scene suffers. Nerf a card too much, and players start to feel like their monetary investments are losing value."

Tom Hall: 5 key design lessons I learned directing Wolfenstein 3D (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "Wolfenstein 3D came out exactly 25 years ago, on May 5th, 1992. Nothing was the same after that day. “We knew it was new and special, but we were pretty blown away by the reception,” says Tom Hall, the director and co-designer of the game."

A three-year-old Elite Dangerous mystery is finally unravelling (Wesley Yin-Poole / Eurogamer) "Elite Dangerous players have taken a significant step in solving a mystery that has befuddled its most rabid secret-hunters ever since the game came out. The Formidine Rift mystery, as it's known, kicked off back in 2014 with the release of Drew Wagar's novel Elite Reclamation. Since then players have searched for clues in an attempt to solve this mystery. This week, a major discovery was made that suggests a solution is near."

Lessons from Escape Rooms: Designing for the Real World and VR (Laura E. Hall / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 GDC session, escape room designer Laura E. Hall discusses the design fundamentals and structures necessary for creating real-world experiences that offer not only entertainment, but create immersion and transportation for players in order to understand how "physical play" can be a foundation for virtual reality design and beyond. "

-------------------

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]