#and if it does well they might experiment with a two player game feat. link and zelda (a la it takes two maybe?)

[autumnoakes]

i think (hope) that if eow does well then there'll be more titles with protagonist/playable zelda in the future

[kiarcheo]

     Golden Crown and the Pink Menace   

Catherine had known, intellectually, that her nemesis was a teenager, but it didn’t really sink in until the day their school called because her number was the only one on their emergency contact list.

Once again it’s almost 3500 words, so it’s easier, you can read it on ao3

A/N: I wrote this months ago and then forgot about it. I had some notes and plans to write more, but I don't think it's gonna happen anymore. I felt bad just leaving it in my folder forever so I decided to post it anyway. Hope you like it.

Heavily inspired by bethanythemartian's interpretation of this writing prompt

Catherine had known that she was young. Her so-called nemesis. Maybe it was some of her most athletic feats while escaping. How she was more active during holidays periods. The recklessness, which reminded her of her past nemesis, Green Phantom, and a time where Catherine had been younger too.

Now. That had been a true nemesis. Green Phantom had seemed to have two cornerstones in their villain career: environmental causes (hence the green part of the name) and antagonising Catherine’s heroic alter-ego. From making her look like a fool every time she failed to catch them (Catherine and everyone else, to her defence, hence the Phantom part) to leaving cheeky messages on the crime scenes, Green Phantom had been a pain in her ass up until the moment they suddenly disappeared.

Pink Menace was quite different. Catherine had not even realised there was a new player in the game, to be honest. Until some corporate bigwig had gone on a rant on live television questioning why the supposed protector of the city wasn’t doing anything to stop ‘this pink menace’. Next day everyone and their cousin was talking about the recent spree of attacks to very different types of businesses, the only common link being the perpetrator, who always seemed to wear some pink in her attire. And Catherine says ‘her’ because they have met and fought multiple times and she recognises a girl when she sees one, even in mask and costume, and not because of some kind of gender-stereotyping colours crap. Not that they were particularly good either. Good enough to hide her identity? Sure. But nothing more. She supposes that villains don’t really get sponsorships for that kind of thing.

So yes. Next day everyone was talking about Pink Menace and why Golden Crown wasn’t stopping her. Catherine isn’t sure what it is with monikers and colours. Not the name she would have chosen for herself but in their business you either proclaim your chosen name first or you’ll get stuck with whatever the media and the public decide to call you. And it seemed like both her and her nemesis made the same mistake. To be fair, Catherine knows she could have gotten something much worse, and a golden crown made a good symbol for merchandise at the very least. She was happy she hadn’t gotten stuck with some kind of animal, or worse, insect. Also she knows how to pick her battles, she made a career – a real life, no masks involved one – out of it. So she agreed with the sponsors. Yeah. It’s not a free for all, those things are regulated, you know? Not everyone can be a hero™. But some accountability in exchange for insurance (you never know when you’ll end up destroying something), financial support and protection of her anonymity seemed fair. Naturally she made sure that anything she signed was absolutely watertight.

Anyway. Back to the point. Pink Menace was obviously young. But Catherine thought she was college age at the very least. Maybe recently moved away from home. Surely her parents would have realised she was out all night doing crimes. Well, maybe not the crime part, but they would have known their child was staying out all night, right? Also, as mentioned before, more activity during holidays pointed towards her being a student.

So Catherine took it easy on her. Pulled her blows most of the time. Not to say that Pink Menace wasn’t good, she definitely could put up a fight. Catherine had more experience, but in a full-out fight? She wouldn’t be overly confident about winning. But they never came down to that.

So maybe Catherine let her go away easily, hesitated just that fraction of a second before making the jump, stopped to make sure that everyone else was fine (they always were) before continuing the pursuit and by then, Pink Menace had disappeared. And if she caught a flash of pink hair around the corner or up the fire exit stairs…nobody would know (but she kept thinking that she should really tell her to secure her hair better, because that’s a sure way to get identified and caught).

And if she was a bit laxer when Pink Menace’s target was one of Henry Tudor’s properties? Well, that just happened. Surely it wouldn’t hurt too much a man who called himself ‘the King’ (with the public going along with it). And it’s not like Golden Crown has personal matters to settle with him…now, Catherine might be a different story, but thank God for secret identities.

Of course, she couldn’t just let things go all the time. Accountability, like she said. Catherine thinks Pink Menace knows that too. So sometimes she’d escape abandoning her haul as if Golden Crown had stopped her. Catherine has her suspicions that they are mostly useless things and Pink Menace still kept whatever she actually broke into the buildings for. But she has no way to prove it nor any wish to do so. And Henry never publicly complained about it. Which on one side raised alarm bells, along with the fact that she has seen Pink Menace getting away with things that had not been included in the official report (perks of her real-life job). Why not admit that something had been stolen unless you shouldn’t have had it in the first place? On the other side, it was good for her because it left her good reputation intact…which is everything in the hero-ing business.  

Also it’s not like Pink Menace was actually evil. Catherine would have classified her as a criminal rather than a villain. She always tried not to hurt people. Didn’t seem to have any grand plan besides robbing or destroying properties, mostly owned by Henry (or connected to him, she’d discover later). Media and public painted it as a rivalry, hailed Pink Menace as Golden Crown’s new nemesis after Green Phantom’s disappearance. And they got along with it. It was publicity and publicity brings money. For Golden Crown at least. It only made things harder for Pink Menace, but it’s not like they ask for the villain’s opinions in these cases. Still they had an unspoken agreement that it was for show. They both pulled their blows. Went easy on the other.

But, again, that’s not the point. The point is that Pink Menace was a villainess and Golden Crown’s nemesis. According to the press it was an all-consuming rivalry. In real life, Catherine didn’t exactly spend a lot of time thinking about it. She had a busy life. A busy double life. Superheroing doesn’t make you the big bucks. And while her real-life job gave her flexibility and freedom and, yes, money, it also gave her loads of responsibilities. In short, she got stuff going on.

So you can imagine the surprise when she got a call from a school. Saying that her ‘child’ had been taken to the hospital, nothing life-threatening, but needed to be picked up. The name they used was one of her identities. Yes, she has more than ones. Some more legal than others. She had her name changed…legally. She has a couple of identities associated with heroing…wouldn’t call them exactly legal, but they are sanctioned. But the one they called? Not connected to Golden Crown at all. She hasn’t used it in ages and she had almost forgot that she had even made it (that’s not to say that it wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny…she is nothing but careful and meticulous in what she does, always had been…with one big glaring exceptions that she tries not to think of). Anyway, she might have forgotten about it, but she was absolutely sure that she didn’t have any minor associated with it. And she certainly didn’t have a child in real life. It’s not like something you can forget until someone reminds you and you go ‘oh, yeah, I used to have one’.

She considered the possibility of it being a trap. But the identity was not associated to her hero alter-ego. Or to her real job, which also made her a fair share of enemies. The hospital seemed a weird location anyway.

So she went.

She wasn’t sure what she was expecting, considering the call she had gotten, but she was still surprised when she was shown to a room where a young girl, a teenager actually, immediately started to apologise as soon as she saw her. Saying that she had told them not to call her. A nurse interrupted the girl, explaining, probably not for the first time from the tone, that they couldn’t let her leave without her guardian signing her out.

It didn’t take long for Catherine to realise who the girl was. She didn’t know many teenagers, and those eyes were familiar. Perhaps surprising that she noticed that first as the pink hair were a dead giveaway.

As she was explained what happened and what medication and care the girl would need, all Catherine could think about was that she had hit a teenager. Less often and not as hard as she could have, but she still did it.

Catherine had a lot of questions, but she knew the hospital wasn’t the place to talk. So she signed her out. She had been prepared for a variety of scenarios, from being recognized and asked why she was using a fake name to being asked why she was picking up a random kid…but she didn’t need any of it. Apparently if you share the same last name and look old enough to be her mother (albeit a young one, Catherine would like to think), nobody asks questions.

They got out, Katherine trailing meekly behind her. Got in the car and started driving. The car was silent. Catherine was trying to reconcile the fact that not too long ago they were fighting on a roof and now she had her ‘nemesis’ in her car after springing her out from the hospital…her very teenage girl nemesis. Someone who had been a child not too long ago.

She found a spot and parked. She didn’t want to have the conversation while driving. She checked around. She wanted to be sure that they’d have privacy, but she didn’t want to come across as creepy…let’s take the teenager to a secluded spot and ‘talk’ kind of creepy.

‘So…Katherine, right?’ Catherine had been surprised that a supposed mother-daughter duo sharing a name, well, almost, didn’t raise any eyebrow…but better for her.

The girl nods.

Questions whirred around her head, but she settled on the two main ones. How did she know that name? And why did she give it?

‘I’m pretty good with computer stuff,’ the first words Katherine had uttered besides the panicky apologies at the hospital were soft-spoken. ‘And I needed an emergency contact for school.’ She chanced a glance at Catherine. ‘You’re, like, good. You’re a hero. And you’re a good person even in real life.’

Right, she knows about her identity because she is good with computers. Catherine would worry about that later, but she had a more pressing question. ‘What about your parents? Family?’ She’d understand if she had gotten hurt while out as Pink Menace, not wanting them to know about her…uhm, mostly nocturnal activities. But she got hurt at school. Surely that would make more sense.

She almost wished she hadn’t asked as Katherine unravelled her tale. How she had been the youngest of ten children, with her mom dying when she was around 5 and her father never really caring much for her. How when she was 13 her siblings’ music teacher offered to teach her too. Her dad didn’t want because he didn’t deem her worthy of spending money on but caved when Henry Mannox said he didn’t have to pay. So she started taking music lessons and she loved them…until she discovered that her dad didn’t have to pay, but she did…and not with money. How she went to her father and was told she was ungrateful and lying, an attention-seeking brat. How she was sent away and the same thing happened with her step-grandma’s secretary, and once again she was not believed. She was told she had been asking for it. Katherine had protested, saying she wasn’t. That she’d never ask for a man’s attention because she was a lesbian. She was kicked out. Her dad hadn’t wanted to do anything with her, her siblings following suit.  

Catherine would have been worried about the strangely unemotional way she was telling her story (maybe the meds she was on were making her a bit loopy?), but she was too busy trying to remind herself that she couldn’t kill people. Both her lives depended on her reputation as one of the good ones, and good ones don’t kill, even child-abusive, homophobic assholes (or do they?). And how could anyone ever think that she could be a villain, the same girl admitting that she would feel guilty at pickpocketing and stealing even if she needed it to survive because she was 14 and homeless??

Katherine went on, seemingly ignoring Catherine’s turmoil. Talking about how she realised she didn’t feel as guilty if she was stealing from assholes. How she escalated from pickpocketing those who were rude to waitresses and homeless people to following those of them who were obviously rich to their houses and breaking in. How she got quite good with lock picking and acrobatics and security systems.

And then through her school, because yes, she still had that going on too, she got an internship at one of Henry Tudor’s firms. She thought it was the occasion of a lifetime. A chance to change ‘career’, to stop stealing because she would get some money while getting experience that would hopefully help her getting a job after school. Except he was just like the others.

‘How old were you?’ Catherine croaked out. She didn’t know why she was asking. She had seen the date of birth when she signed the girl out. There was no good answer. Every time she thought Henry couldn’t get any worse, he always managed to surpass even her worst expectations.

‘Almost 16.’

That was also around the time Pink Menace appeared. Katherine nodded. She couldn’t speak up. She knew that. If her own family didn’t believe her, what chances did she have against ‘the king’ of the city? He would completely destroy her and any hope for a better future that she still held. But she could get revenge. In a way. Do something, at least. During her internship she heard things. People would talk…and well, she was just a stupid pretty little thing, wasn’t she?

Catherine ended up driving Katherine home. If you could call that so. The girl could see it written on her face, apparently, because as they climbed the stairs, and wow, Catherine didn’t even want to start thinking about what was on the walls, on the steps, on the…well, everything. She just made sure to avoid even brushing against anything at all. No questions nor documents asked costed, Katherine calmly stated, while Catherine was playing a ‘everything is lava’ extreme version game.

‘What about your…extra-curricular activities?’

Katherine locked the door before answering. It was not like she could sell Henry’s secrets. Well. She could, obviously. But who could tell her that they wouldn’t end up in even worse hands? Not for the first time Catherine wondered exactly what he was involved with, because Katherine made it sound way bigger and way worse than just industrial secrets. And that would mean the dark net, Katherine continued, and there was always an element of danger in it, even more with what she would be dealing with, and she had enough to deal with at the moment, thank you very much. She was trying to graduate school, save the world and trying not to die in the process.

So yeah, what little money she actually made was mostly for rent. Food.

‘Can I offer you something? I have,’ Katherine opened the fridge. ‘Water, and-,’ she sniffed the milk, grimaced, and threw it out. ‘Water. Sorry.’

Not a lot of it, from the pitiful state of her fridge.

‘Don’t take it wrong, but what are you doing?’ Catherine interrupted her. ‘Why are telling me all of this?’

‘I was hoping that you also wouldn’t want to let Henry get away with it, because, you know…’ Right. The girl knows her real identity too. ‘I can give you what I have on him so while I’m in jail-’

‘Wait, jail? You took me to your place thinking I would send you to jail?!? What kind of person do you think– you know what? Don’t answer that.’ Catherine looked at the girl. At the bare flat. At the hard drives that she had taken out from what had seemed an empty cupboard. ‘I’m not taking you to the police…but I’m taking you home with me.’

‘What?’

‘You heard what the doctors said. How would you even do some of that by yourself?’ Some of the instructions definitely required a second pair of hands.

‘Like I did before.’ Kat shrugs, absolutely unfazed.

As if Catherine needed a reminder, thank you very much. She hadn’t stopped thinking about it. Like that time that she knew for sure she was hurt, because she had been slower in evading her hits, and she had stumbled away rather than the usually graceful exit…Henry had boosted the next day about his security team having managed to hit ‘the Pink Menace that was hassling him’. She couldn’t stop imagining her crawling to this hole, dealing with her injuries alone. And all the times her own blows landed? She had hit a 16-year-old girl?!? That will be forever on her conscience.

‘You don’t need to now. I want to help.’

Suspicion was clear on Katherine’s face. Like she was trying to figure out why Catherine would want to help her. Fair enough, considering her experience with adults. Which made her accepting all the more important. Half-hearted protests finally petered out, a sliver of relief that someone was willing to take care of her shining through despite Katherine’s best efforts to keep a neutral face.

Catherine could help being touched by the trust Katherine was showing her, as the girl collected what she wanted to bring with her. Some clothes. School stuff. Technology…quite impressive, but ‘Can’t hack or do corporate espionage on school computers!’.

‘Is this…?’ Catherine was trying to give her some privacy, but her eyes had fallen upon a familiar choker.

‘Voice modifier? Yeah. I had just started when I stumbled upon a…hideout? It was full of gadget and stuff, and well, I took some.’ Catherine knew it reminded her of something! Green Phantom also wore a choker, albeit it was…well, green and not pink. ‘I left most of the weapons. No need to make an enemy out of the owner, you know. Also I never really wanted to hurt anybody, so…’

‘Is this everything?’

It wasn’t much, but Katherine nodded. ‘I don’t need much.’ She didn’t have much. ‘And I will be back soon anyway.’

Not if Catherine had a say in it. All the times she thought she didn’t have maternal instinct? Sure, she might have wished for children during her marriage, but she had been so happy not to have had them and she never revisited the topic after. So she thought that maybe she had ‘wanted’ them because it was expected. Because it was what she needed to have a perfect family. To keep him. But maybe she never actually wanted them. Maybe she just wasn’t made to be a parent.

Maybe she was wrong, Catherine mused weeks later watching Katherine setting up a veritable workstation in a corner of her home office. The girl had agreed to remain with her even after her injuries had healed. She also agreed that Pink Menace would take a backseat while she focused on school. With her previous ‘nemesis’ turned tech support, Golden Crown’s life was definitely easier and less busy. Which meant more time to devote to taking ‘the king’ down. And once he would be dealt with, Catherine would move onto every single person who had ever hurt Katherine.

So yeah. Maybe she was wrong. Because Catherine is pretty sure that she had basically adopted a teenager and it had been the best decision she had ever made in her life.

[innuendostudios]

We’re talking about adventure games again! Or, more accurately, we’re speaking in the context of adventure games about why some genres are hard to define, different ways of thinking about genre, and what genre is even for.

If you'd like to see more work like this, please back me on Patreon! Transcript below the cut.

Hi! Welcome back to Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood? Meditations on the life, death, and rebirth of the adventure game.

Adventure game.

Adventure game.

Ad. Ven. Ture. Game.

What kind of name is that, “adventure game”? It’s an atypical way of categorizing video games, I’ll say that much. We usually give game genres titles like "first-person shooter," "real time strategy," “turn-based role-playing game.” Real nuts-and-bolts kinda stuff. Meanwhile, "adventure" seemingly belongs on a turnstyle of airport paperbacks, in between "mystery" and "romance." When they slap that word on a game box, what is it supposed to communicate to us?

Other one-word genres, I can see how they get their name. A horror game is horrifying, a fighting game earns its title. But how is exploring an empty, suburban house an adventure? Why is exploring a universe not?

When I started this series, I offered up the rough-and-tumble definition of adventure game, “puzzles and plots,” and said maybe we’ll come up with a better definition later. That was… four years ago. Sorry about that. I know it’s a little late, and a lot has changed, but I did promise. So we’re gonna do it.

Today’s question is: What makes an adventure game an adventure game?

This is a tricky sort of question to ask, because, upon asking, we might stumble down the highway to “what makes an adventure novel an adventure novel?”, “what makes a rail shooter not an RPG?”, and that road inevitably terminates with “what even is genre?”, the answer to which is a bit beyond the scope of a YouTube video essay… or, it would be on anyone else’s channel, but this is Innuendo Studios. We’ll take the long road.

Welcome to Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood? A philosophical interrogation into the meaning of genre in and beyond the gaming idiom, with the adventure game as our guide.

***

The historical perspective reveals only so much, but it is a place to begin.

If you don’t know the story, in 1976, Will Crowther released Colossal Cave Adventure, a text-based story game set in an underground land loosely based on a real Kentucky cave system. The game would describe what was happening in a given location, and players would type simple commands to perform tasks and progress the narrative, usually a verb linked to a noun like a book that writes itself and responds to directives. This was the first of what we’ve come to call “interactive fiction.”

Crowther’s game - often abbreviated, simply, Adventure - inspired a number similar titles, most famously Zork, which was called an “adventure game” for the same reason Rise of the Triad was called a “Doom clone” - because they were more or less mechanically identical to the games they descended from. This is where the genre gets its title.

But the evolution from then to now has been oddly zero-sum, every addition a subtraction. As more and more adventure games came out, the text descriptions were eventually replaced with graphics, still images replaced with animations, the parser replaced with a verb list, and the keyboard itself replaced with a mouse. In the progression of Zork to Mystery House to King’s Quest to Maniac Mansion to Monkey Island, you can see how each link in the chain is a logical progression from the game preceding and into the one that follows. But you end up with a genre that began comprised entirely of words on a screen but that, by the early 90’s, typically possessed but did not, strictly speaking, require language. There is no question wordless experiences like Dropsy and Kairo are direct descendents of Monkey Island and Myst; that they are therefore in the same genre as Wishbringer, despite zero obvious mechanical overlap, is, for a medium that typically names its genres after their mechanics… weird.

(Also, for anyone confused: Nintendo used to delineate games that explored a continuous world from games that leapt across a series of discrete levels by calling the latter “platformers” and the former “adventures,” and an earlier game in that model was the Atari game Adventure, which was, itself, a graphical adaptation of the Crowther original, so what 90’s kids think of when they hear “a game in the style of Adventure” depends on whether they played on computer or console, but that lineage eventually embraced the even fuzzier “action-adventure” and is not what we’re here to discuss.)

So the connection between the genre’s beginnings and its current incarnation is less mechanical than philosophical. Spiritual, even. Something connects this to this, and we’re here to pin down what.

Now, you may be readying to say, “Ian, it’s clear the determinant of what is or isn’t an adventure game is pure association and there is no underlying logic, you don’t need to think this hard about everything,” which, ha ha, you must be new here. I would counter that, as soon as a genre has a name, people will (not entirely on purpose) start placing parameters around what they consider part of that genre. Even if it’s just association, there is some method to which associations matter and which ones don’t. So shush, we’re trying to have a conversation.

***

Another one-word genre named after a philosophical connection to a single game is the roguelike, christened after 1980’s Rogue. And, in 2008, members of the International Roguelike Development Conference in Berlin set about trying to define the genre. (I promise I’m not just going to summarize that one episode of Game Maker’s Toolkit.) Attendees began with a corpus of five games that, despite not yet having an agreed-upon definition, were, unequivocally, roguelikes, an attitude roughly analogous with the Supreme Court’s classification of pornography: “even if I can’t define it, I know it when I see it.” And, from these five games, they attempted to deduce what makes a roguelike a roguelike.

So perhaps we can follow their example. We’ll take a corpus of five games and see what they have in common. How about The Secret of Monkey Island, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, Myst, Beneath a Steel Sky, and Trinity? All five visually and mechanically dissimilar - three third-person and two-dimensional, one first-person and three-dimensional, and one second-person and made of text (no-dimensional?) - yet no one would dispute they’re all adventure games.

Okay! We can see a lot of common features: dialogue trees, inventory, fetch quests. But here’s the rub: to define the genre by the first two would be to leave out Myst, and defining it by the third would leave out Gabriel Knight, and, honestly, any one of these would exclude LOOM, which I think anyone who’s played one would look at and say, “I know an adventure game when I see one.”

For the sake of inclusivity, we could go broad, as I did with my “puzzles and plots,” and, while this does include everything on our list, it also, unavoidably, includes games that provoke the wrong reaction, like Portal - “I know a puzzle-shooter when I see one” - and Inside - “I know a puzzle-platformer when I see one.” Trying to draw a line around everything that is an adventure game while excluding everything that is not is no easy feat.

The best adventure game definitions are written in a kind of legalese; Andrew Plotkin and Clara Fernandez-Vara have both tackled this, I would say, quite well, with a lot of qualifications and a number of additional paragraphs that specify what counts as “unique results” and “object manipulation.” It takes a lot of words! And no disrespect - I can’t have an opinion in less than twenty minutes anymore - but I can’t help thinking we could go about this a different way.

What the Berliners cooked up in 2008 was, instead of a lengthily-worded definition, a list of high- and low-value factors a game may have. The absence of any one was not disqualifying, but the more it could lay claim to the more a game was… Rogue-like. These were features that could exist in any game, in any genre, but when they clustered together the Berliners drew a circle around them and say, “the roguelike is somewhere in here.”

A central idea here is that the borders are porous. If we apply this thinking to the adventure game, we could say that Inside and Portal are not lacking in adventure-ish gameplay; they simply have too low a concentration of it to be recognized as one.

This is genre not as a binary, but as a pattern of behavior.

***

So, to unpack that a little, I’m going to use an allegory, and, before I do, I want you to know: I’m sorry.

In 2014, professor and lecturer Dr. Marianna Ritchey, as a thought experiment demonstrating the socratic method (I’m sorry), hypothesized a conversation between Socrates and Euthyphro (I’m sorry) in which Socrates posed the internet’s second-favorite argument: is a hotdog a sandwich? (I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. We’re doing sandwich discourse.)

Ritchey imagined Socrates asking Euthyphro to define “sandwich,” and sparking the dialectic in which Euthyphro offers up increasingly-specific definitions of “sandwich” and Socrates challenges each one with something non-sandwich that would necessarily fall under that definition: is a hotdog a sandwich? is a taco a sandwich? are three slices of bread a sandwich?

Now, in this scenario, Socrates is - as is his wont - being a bit of a tool. Euthyphro does all the work of coming up with these long, legalistic definitions and, with one, single exception, Socrates sends him back to square one. But Socrates is making a point, (or, rather, Ritchey is): can we really claim to know what a sandwich is, if we can’t explain why it’s a sandwich? Perhaps we should admit the limits of our common sense. Perhaps we should embrace the inherent uncertainty of knowledge.

Or perhaps we could tell Socrates to stop having flame wars and think like a Berliner.

Does “sandwich vs. not-sandwich” have to be a binary? Could we not argue that a sandwich has many qualities, few of them critical, but a plurality of which will increase a thing’s sandwichness? Are there many pathways to sandwichness, a certain Platonic ideal of “sandwich” that can be approximated in a variety of ways? What if the experience of “sandwich” can be evoked so strongly by one factor that some leeway is granted with others? What if many factors are present, but none quite so strongly that it generates the expected sensation? The question then becomes which factors contribute most to that experience, and how much slack can be granted on one axis provided another is rock solid.

A sandwich is not merely an object. It is a set of flavors, textures, sensations, and cultural signifiers. We so often try to define objects by the properties they possess and not by the experience they generate. But a sandwich does not exist solely on the plate, but also in the mouth, and in the mind.

Let us entertain that it’s fair to say a difference between a chip butty and a hotdog is that one feels like a sandwich and one does not.

***

In 2012, the internet was besotted with its fourth favorite argument: “Is Dear Esther a video game? You know, like really, is it, though?” And David Shute, designer of Small Worlds, a micro-exploration platformer (and maaaaaaaaybe adventure game?), countered this question with a blog post: “Are Videogames [sic] Games?”

Shute invoked the philosophical concept of qualia. A quale is a characteristic, an irreducible somethingness that a thing possesses, very hard to put into words but, once experienced, will be instantly recognizable when it is experienced again. Qualia are what allow us to, having seen a car, recognize other cars when we see them and not confuse them with motorcycles, even if we haven’t sat down to write a definition for either. And if we did try to formalize the distinction - say, “a car has four wheels and fully encloses the operator” - our Socrates might pop in to say, “Well then, friend, is this not a car? Is this not a car?” To which Shute - and, by extension, we - might comment that Socrates is, once again, being a buttface.

“If I remove the wheels from a car, then it no longer provides the basic fundamental functionality I’d expect a car to have. But it’s still a car – Its carness requires some qualification, admittedly, but it hasn’t suddenly become something else, and we don’t need to define a new category of objects for ‘things that are just like cars but can’t be driven.’”

What’s special about qualia is that they’re highly subjective and yet shockingly universal. We wouldn’t be able to function if we needed a three paragraph definition just to know what a car is. Get anywhere on Route 128?, forget about it. These arguments over the definition of “game” or “sandwich” ask us to pretend we don’t recognize what we recognize. Socrates’ whole rhetorical strategy is pretending to believe pizza is a sandwich. And anyone who doesn’t care about gatekeeping their hobby will see Dear Esther among other first-person, 3D, computer experiences and know instantly that they fall under the same umbrella. Certainly putative not-game Dear Esther has more in common with yes-game Half-Life 2 than Half-Life 2 has with, for instance, chess.

Shute goes on, “To me, it’s obvious that Dear Esther is a videogame, because it feels like one. [W]hen I play Dear Esther I’m experiencing and inhabiting that world in exactly the same way I experience and inhabit any videogame world – it has an essential videogameness that’s clearly distinct from the way I experience an architectural simulation, or a DVD menu, or a powerpoint slideshow. I might struggle to explain the distinction between them in words, or construct a diagram that neatly places everything in strict categories, but the distinction is nonetheless clear.”

This is the move from plate to mouth. If you’re trying to define the adventure game and you’re talking only about the game’s features and not what it feels like to inhabit that world, you’re not actually talking about genre.

***

So if we want to locate this adventure experience, and we agree that it can, theoretically, appear in any game, we might look for it where it stands out from the background: in an action game. Let’s see if we can find it in Uncharted. It’s a good touchstone because we know the adventure experience is about narrative gameplay, and Uncharted has always been about recreating Indiana Jones as a video game; converting narrative into gameplay.

When attempting such a conversion, a central question designers ask is, “What are my verbs?” Nathan Drake’s gotta do something in these games, so we look to the source material for inspiration. A good video game verb is something simple and repeatable, easy to map to a face button, and Indiana Jones has them in abundance: punch, shoot, run, jump, climb, swing, take cover. All simple and repeatable; you can get a lot of gameplay out of those.

But that’s not all there is to Indiana Jones, is there? There’s also… well, colonialism, but turns out that translates pretty easily! But... Indy rather famously solves ancient riddles. And he cleverly escapes certain death, and has tense conversations with estranged family members, and finds dramatic solutions to unsolvable problems. And none of these are simple and repeatable; in fact, they’re dramatic because they’re unique, and because they’re complex. And Uncharted renders all of these sequences the same way: with a button remap.

When Drake talks to his long-lost brother, or discovers the existence of Libertalia, his jumpy-shooty buttons turn into a completely different set of mechanics for just this sequence, and then go back to being jumpy-shooty. Where, typically, you have a narrative tailored around a certain set of core mechanics, here, the mechanics tailor themselves around a certain narrative experience. And each of these narrative experiences tailors the mechanics differently.

What if we made a whole genre out of that?

Adventure games are the haven for all the misfit bits of drama that don’t convert easily into traditional gameplay. In the old games, you’d never ask “what are my verbs,” because they were at the bottom of the screen. Or, if it was a parser game, your list of possible verbs was as broad as the English language; if a designer wanted to, they could, technically, have every valid action in the game involve its own, unique verb. Rather than specialized, the mechanical space of possibility is broad, the verbs open-ended, even vague, meaning different things in different contexts. The idea is that any dramatic beat can be rendered in gameplay provided you can express it with a simple sentence: push statue, talk to Henry, use sword on rope. Nathan Drake shoots upwards of 2000 people in a single game, but he’s not going to solve 2000 ancient riddles, and he shouldn’t. What makes ancient riddles interesting is you’re not going to come across very many in your life. So maybe the mechanics should be as unique as the event itself. And maybe discovering what this event’s unique mechanics are is part of the gameplay.

The best word we have for these moments is “puzzle.”

Adventure games aren’t named after their core mechanics because, by design, adventure games don’t have core mechanics. Puzzles have mechanics, learning them is the game, and they can be whatever you can imagine. Which is not to say they will be; many games over-rely on inventory and jumping peg puzzles. Even in a near-infinite space of possibility, there are paths of least resistance. But many adventure games have neither, and many are built around single mechanics that don’t appear in any other games.

An adventure game puzzle isn’t simply a thing you do to be rewarded with more plot, it is an answer to the game’s repeated question: what happens next? It was literally the prompt in many versions of Colossal Cave. How did The Stranger find the linking book that took them to Channelwood? How did Robert Cath defuse the bomb on the Orient Express? How did Manny Calavera find the florist in the sewers of El Marrow? It is story told through gameplay, and gameplay built for telling stories.

So I would amend my prior definition, “adventure games are about puzzles and plots,” to “adventure games are about puzzles as plots.”

Beyond that, if you want to know what understand the adventure game experience, you may just have to play one (I suggest Full Throttle).

***

Rick Altman argues we too often define genres by their building blocks, and not what gets built out of them. If you want to write science fiction, you have many components to work with: spaceships, time travel, nanomachines. You can make sci-fi out of that. But what if you take the component parts of science fiction and build… a breakup story? Or a tragicomic war novel? Is it still sci-fi? Let me put it to you this way: if somebody asks you to recommend some science fiction to them, and you say "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," how likely are they to say, "yes, this is exactly what I was asking for"?

Blade Runner is what happens when you use science fiction to build film noir. Dark City is what happens when you use film noir to build science fiction. So what defines a genre, the bricks, or the blueprint? Any meaningful discussion should account for both.

Adventure games are mechanically agnostic, all blueprint. You can build one out of almost anything. We took the long road because the ways we’re used to thinking about genre were insufficient.

***

So: from a few steps back, the adventure game isn’t even that weird. Game genres are usually named after their mechanics, and a small handful are left in the cold by that convention. This would have been a much shorter conversation if not for the fact that video games run on a completely different set of rules from every other medium that has genres.

...but do they, though?

What actually is genre for?

Well, Samuel R. Delany - yes! yes, I’m still talking about this guy - describes genre not as a list of ingredients but a recipe. Imagine for me that you’ve just read the following four words: “the horizon does flips.” If this is just a, for lack of a better word, “normal” story - not genre fiction - that’s gotta be some kind of metaphor, maybe for the protagonist feeling dizzy, or when the drugs start to hit. Whatever it is, it can’t be literal; the earth and sky do not change places in naturalistic fiction.

But they can in fantasy. Certainly stranger things have happened. And they can in science fiction, but by a different set of rules: now there’s a “why.” It’s gotta be something to do with gravity or the warping of space; even if the story doesn’t explain it, it has to convince you, within a certain suspension of disbelief, that such a thing is happening in our universe. Whatever it is, it’s not magic.

These four words can mean many things. Genre informs you which of the many possible interpretations is the correct one. (For what it’s worth, they’re Barenaked Ladies lyrics about being in a car crash.) The label “science fiction” isn’t there to tell you whether a story has rayguns, it’s there so you know which mechanism of interpretation you should employ.

Genre not what’s in the book. It’s how you read the book.

The opening chapters of a mystery novel may be, by the standards of any other genre, excruciatingly dull. A lot of descriptions of scenery and a dozen characters introducing themselves. But, because you know it’s a mystery, these first pages are suffused with portent, even dread, because you know someone’s probably gonna die. And some of these mundane details are just that, but some of them are clues as to who committed a crime that hasn’t even happened yet. You are alert where you would otherwise be bored. And you know to watch for clues, because you know you’re reading a mystery. Those are the genre’s mechanics.

Genre dictates the attention to be paid.

Words, sounds, and images don’t mean things on their own. They have to be interpreted. If part of genre is the audience’s experience, it’s an experience that audience co-creates, and it needs clues as to how. I’ve said before that all communication is collaborative. Here’s what results from that: all art is interactive.

Video games are not unique in this regard, they are simply at the far end of a spectrum. But if the purpose of genre is to calibrate the audience into creating the correct experience, perhaps it makes sense that the most interactive medium would name its genres after what the player is doing.

So the label “adventure game” is, to the best of its ability, doing the same thing as “adventure novel,” and as “first-person shooter,” if, perhaps, a bit inelegantly. There may be better ways to straddle all these lines, but the shorthand reference to an old text game gets the job done.

So that’s the end of our journey. I really hope we can do this again, and preferably not in another four years, but we’ll see how thing shake out. Regardless, I’m glad you were with me, and I’ll see you in the next one. It’s been an adventure.

[eponymous-rose]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E38 (October 16, 2018)

Tonight’s guests are Sam Riegel and Taliesin Jaffe (and, as always, Dani Carr and... Tiny Corner Max?)!

Announcements:

The latest episode of Between the Sheets, featuring Daytime Emmy Award-Winning Sam Riegel (TM), aired last night and will be available on YouTube tomorrow morning. Sam: “I feel like this channel is mostly just you and me talking?” Brian: “Are you saying that everyone else is just riding our coattails?” Taliesin: “He’s also saying that you look a lot like Liam at this point, and he can’t tell the difference.”

Another episode of All Work No Play will debut this Friday on the Critical Role Twitch (uploaded to YouTube on Sunday). In this episode, Sam and Liam do yoga... with goats. TJ Storm and Travis Willingham guest star!

Next week the cast will be at London MCM! Taliesin: “I’m packing slightly more tweed.” Brian: “Gettin’ tweedy with it.”

There’s a new (harp music) Laura Bailey emote on the CR Twitch for subscribers.

@critrolestats for this week’s episode:

The M9 hit 150 natural ones in this episode. Number 150 was Jester’s acrobatics check to get away from the yuan-ti abomination.

Jester also set the record for the most natural ones in a single episode: 5. The previous record of 4 was held by Nott and Beau. Brian: “You guys remember these are not still going to charity, right?” Sam and Taliesin: “What?”

Taliesin was the one who helped Momlan glue on her elf ears. Taliesin: “I would be very nervous if my mom were going out there.” Brian: “Well, she’s got hundreds of years of secrets on you.” Taliesin: “Mom of the damned.”

Cad’s definitely been upset about being around undead; Taliesin’s rolled a few times to see if there’ll be a worse freak-out, but there hasn’t been one so far. “The notion is that there’s a direction things are supposed to move, and [undead] is something moving against the grain in an intense way. What’s the point of having an imaginary organized religion of any kind if you can’t have something they’re fundamentally against?”

Nott’s extremely far from her comfort zone right now, being outside the Empire, working for a captain on the sea who’s threatened their lives: “There’s snakes and lizards and... wouldn’t you drink, dude?!”

Given how much he’s been getting the shit kicked out of him lately, is there a breaking point for Cad? “Probably. I haven’t really finished nailing him down emotionally yet. I genuinely don’t know what zen people do when everything goes to shit.” Jester’s speech genuinely comforted him a lot. “Apparently Laura knew what to say.” Sam notes that the party hasn’t really had a chance to sit down and ask him questions about himself so far. Taliesin mentions that Cad’s been ordering drinks but hasn’t actually been drinking.

Nott’s fallen into the role of the mom friend mainly because nobody else has (everyone agrees that Caduceus is more of “a wise pothead”). Brian: “Everyone seems to have so much baggage right now. Half the people seem focused on just holding it together, the other half are focused on the mission.” Dani: “Somebody has to be the level-headed one.” Sam: “And why can’t that leveling force come from a three-and-a-half-foot insane goblin alcoholic?”

Once Caduceus levels out (he’s still a little shell-shocked), he’s going to realize that he’s surrounded by “unhealthy lunatics” and will want to do something about that.

Sam’s done some research about chemistry (although he wants to make more of a cheat sheet after Travis’ experience with sailing), knowing it might come up with Nott’s alchemy knowledge. Taliesin is trying to learn more of what Sam terms “that fungus shit”. Also tea, and zen. Sam: “I was thinking you should go to a morgue and see how bodies decompose.” Taliesin: “Oh, I have some experience in that.” 

(don’t worry; it’s just some friends in forensic anthropology)

Gif of the Week: Taliesin casts Detect DM Shenanigans.

“There was a certain order to the universe that he has come to expect, and it has been thrown into great disarray.” Cad was expecting the Epic Quest to save his home, but he wasn’t expecting the Mighty Nein. He’s mainly staying because of what Jester said about not necessarily needing to understand what’s happening right now. “He’s confused and trying his best to just let things happen, because that’s how the Wildmother works.”

Nott’s been surprised by some of the Mighty Nein’s actions, but so far she knows it’s out of necessity. She doesn’t view the incident on the docks as quite as bad as some of the others did---it was chaotic and based in self-preservation rather than actively causing harm. “But some of the other actions lately have been surprising to her.” Sam points out that she and Caleb did a lot of things to survive, and that she still steals a lot, and reminds everyone that she lives in a very morally grey area. She’s not thinking of leaving at this point, and all the high-stakes trauma has brought her closer to the group. “It’s a fucked-up dysfunctional family, but it’s starting to look a little bit like a family to her.”

Taliesin and Sam are both enjoying being moral compasses of the party this campaign, in major contrast to the previous campaign. Brian: “You were a teenage asshole. You were a teenage dirtbag.” Taliesin: “It’s so weird. I love it.” Sam: “Oh man. We’d better step up our game. If we’re the moral compasses...” Taliesin: “We’re like Cracker Jack compasses, we almost point north.”

Cad’s got a lot of abilities he just doesn’t use very often. “He knows that some of it is... rude? Death cleric, man, they’ve got some insane shit.” Cad doesn’t have the same opinions on life and death as most people. Brian: “How surprising.”

Taliesin is having “a ton of fun” playing Caduceus. “I love Molly... and the character. Too easy.” No, but seriously: “I loved playing Molly, but the nice thing I got to do with Caduceus that I didn’t get to do with Molly is we had an established group and I got to create a character that was useful to the dynamic both mathematically and emotionally.”

Sam: “Wait, is it twitch.tv or twitch.com? Oh my god, I’ve been putting the wrong links on my Twitter for like a year.”

Cad was very selective about who he told about Jamedi, and purposely didn’t tell Nott because he knew she’d tell others. Sam, trying to keep a straight face: “Nott’s nothing if not trustworthy.” He’s more surprised that Caduceus has figured that out already, given how little he knows about Nott. “Maybe it speaks less to Nott and more to Caduceus being judgey...” Taliesin clarifies that it wasn’t so much that Nott was untrustworthy, it was more than Nott couldn’t keep a secret. Sam, as a player, was shocked that the rest of the party didn’t instantly tell everyone that “we are being led through the jungle by a dead guy.” Taliesin points out that with two clerics (Brian: “well, a cleric and a battle Mercy”), they literally have a button they can push to make him go away if they need to.

Sam: “It seems like Fjord’s going into a real bad place without any information, and Nott’s there to support and make sure he doesn’t die, but it seems like a bad idea.” Taliesin: “This seems like a test of one’s soul, and Caduceus is on board but aware that this could go badly.” Taliesin also points out that the rest of the group isn’t aware of the creepiest stuff going on because they weren’t there for it.

Fanart of the Week: the group (sans Jester and Caduceus) inside Leomund’s Tiny Hut! 

Taliesin got recognized in public, and the fan immediately called out the two clerics for going off on their own in the middle of the night. Taliesin: “It was a good burn.”

Caduceus had some experience with fights pre-M9 (grave robbers, wildlife). Taliesin: “Have you ever seen Cemetery Man? Shit gets weird!”

There’s a brief interlude while everyone arranges a movie night. As you do.

Has Nott been feeling protective toward members of the Nein other than Caleb? Fjord is probably the next-likely candidate, followed by possibly Yasha. Sam: “Caduceus is just too tall.” Taliesin: “I feel that.”

Taliesin describes Lesser Restoration as “the aspirin of D&D”. He’s done some healing of illness before, but this has just been a bad time. Sam points out that in the last campaign they didn’t really have to deal with disease so much. “I assume it’s Bird Flu.”

Scanlan stealing the gun was messing with both Taliesin and Percy. Nott is interested in the mechanics of the gun, interested in the chemistry of gunpowder, and has already designed and manufactured one explosive arrow as a result. “But Nott has also noticed that there’s people with guns wherever they keep going, and it might be a good idea to have a gun. It’s a self-preservation thing. If that also happens to mess with Taliesin Jaffe, I’m not going to say no to that. I mean, the heart does what the heart does. If that happens as a result, we’ve all grown as people.”

They realize there’s about a four-foot height difference between Caduceus and Nott. Taliesin: “He squats.” Dani: “He’s got killer calves.”

Caduceus is very, very good at reading people. Nott doesn’t lie because of goblin upbringing, but more out of her travels with Caleb and having her first impulse to be to get out of any situation by lying to stall/delay/confuse. 

Taliesin: “Why lie to a plant?”

There’s a brief interlude about telling your plants inappropriate bodily measurements. As you... do? Brian: “I’m calling an Uber right now. I’m sorry. I’m done.”

Taliesin is collecting spells based mainly on what he can guess might be helpful. He doesn’t need a lot of damage-dealing, so focuses more on deflecting and healing. He’s picked out some feats he’s interested in to make Caduceus less likely to take damage. “That’s been a problem. I don’t like being hit.”

It is pointed out that all of Sam’s characters in the campaigns have had high intelligence and low wisdom. “That’s a pretty great winning combo for comedy.”

Legends of the Hidden Talks Machina:

Overwatch mains? Sam: “What’s a main?” Taliesin: “It’s like Quidditch...”

Taliesin is a support main, especially Zenyatta and Brigitte.

Brian is a D.Va main (woo!) and also plays a lot of Orisa.

Look, I gotta cheer on anyone who also mains D.Va. Those are the rules.

They agree that watching Sam play as Hanzo would be funny, but decide Roadhog would be the best. Sam: “Yeah. It’s Hog Noon. Is that what he says?” Brian: “Yep.”

What’s Matt’s character name?  Sam: “Tyrone McCabe.” Brian: “It’s close!”

Ghost stories? Taliesin: “I’ve been ghosted.” Sam: “I saw some raccoons in my backyard?” Taliesin: “I got attacked by a skunk when I was in my hot tub.”

Taliesin: “Now I’ve seen a ghost.” Past and present combine:

Taliesin has a 1930s stripey swimsuit, because of course he does.

What (harp music)-style sound cues would they have? Taliesin: The sound of building a temple in the original Warcraft. Sam: An... explosion? Brian: The sound of my mom’s tears because he never became a doctor. Taliesin: “I was thinking the Golden Girls intro.”

Goth advice for the week, courtesy of Taliesin: Best style eyeliner is eyeliner on day 2. Put on the eyeliner before the shower. Know if your choker’s loadbearing.

[cyberkevvideo]

Throne of Night Theory Builds Extras Part 2: The Aquatic Drow and Companion

This build come about by pure coincidence. I had been searching around for more art by Michael and then I came across this. At the time it never dawned on me that it was without the Fire Mountain Games on it. All I saw that Michael’s name and website attached. As such, this is an extra build that wasn’t part of the “Throne of Night” AP. At least, it doesn’t appear to be. That didn’t stop me from coming up with a build though.

I honestly have no idea what this art was originally meant to go with. The site I found it on has since closed, but thankfully I found the art before it disappeared completely and  was able to save it to my Pinterest folder so I could use it at a later date.

If anyone knows, please tell me the origin of this picture/what its intended use was. It’s really cool to look at.

After looking over the build, be sure to read my final words regarding how things may or may not go after this and “Throne of Night” in the future.

I will say that I do have one more planned entry for the “Throne of Night” AP, but it’s not regarding a build or anything like that. It’s something I’ve been putting together with other game designers and a few players. It was something far too big for me, so I invited others I trusted the opinions of. I’m not sure how long it’ll take before I do that particular post though. We’ve already been working on it for a week, and it hasn’t seen much conclusion so far.

As always, for space reasons, I’ll be cropping the encounter build.

All images shared here were done by the forever fantastic and amazingly talented Michael D. Clarke, aka SpiralMagus

I do not have a Patreon or a Kickstarter, but I do have a Ko-Fi page (linked) for those who are looking to support me monetarily. There is no pressure or obligation to do so.

Finally, before I get to it, I hope everyone’s staying safe right now.

When I found this picture, I had just started up the builds for Book 5, when the PCs were traveling the Sunless Seas, and I absolutely thought this was someone who would aid the party in discovering what happened to all the kidnap victims, and not a random picture that was meant to be used for something else entirely separate from this AP. Well, for the purposes of this build, that’s its new intended designation.

The best part is because this build is completely extra, that means it’s entirely for fun and doesn’t need to conform to the OGL rules that the others would have to. To publish sources outside the official company, you need special permission to use non OGL material, or reproduce everything in its entirety. For example, a feat that’s not OGL would need to be placed in a side bar on the same page, a nearby page, or at the back of the book. In my experience,  when I first started, I unfortunately put a publisher or two in that predicament without realizing. I’ve since been told what consequences my actions have had with their books. It’s not necessarily a problem, but it does add unnecessary word counts to books that tight printing guidelines, so I knew there’s no way Gary would put himself in the position. But this? All bets are off, and it was fun to colour outside the lines, even if just a little.

I will say that had I not figured out that this wasn’t AP related, I had honestly considered doing a summoner build with the eidolon looking like a variant version of the hippocampus. Why? Because the drow had read up on them, they seemed cool, and she really wanted one. Instead, we get a druid and her actual hippocampus. I’m surprisingly happy about this change.

Despite this being a Book 5 build, she’s only a CR 15. The PCs are supposed to be level 14-16 during this time, and I didn’t want to make her so powerful that she’d be capable of possibly soloing encounters on the PC’s behalf. I mean, she is a controller type build with lots of summoning potential, and doesn’t really involved with fights personally, although she’s still capable in her wild shape.

Unlike the gug slave, who is meant to fight the party first, then be won over and unleashed upon its slavers, this drow is meant to be an ally right out of the gate. An ally that might be willing to share her discovery of a secret area that might just eventually lead to the sealed doors of the trapped demigod lich.

Slight tangent: Book 7 was going to be an “extra adventure” that was unlocked in the Kickstarter, where you discovered the demigod lich and apparently gained his phylactery and became a lich as well? Maybe stole the lichdom? I honestly wish I could say that anything regarding that encounter or discovery of location is mentioned anywhere, but sadly it’s not. At least not that I ever found. Just art for the phylactery, the lich, and the lich disintegrating? Losing power? You can see more of that in my Phylactery Guardian build. What was seen, however, was when Gary released the “world map”, there’s a spot all unto itself called the Hidden Sea. It’s my belief that that’s where the lich resides. Sadly, with the Fire Mountain Games site gone, so it the map. Thankfully, a much smaller, resized one was put up on /tg/, renamed “Underground Seas map.“

As for this drow’s story, she’s just a drow that loved the Sunless Seas, and felt drawn to it, and wanted to explore it during her younger years. A few years ago, she discovered a wounded hippocampus that had somehow been swallowed up by the above waters and dragged down the underground seas. She saved it, nursed it back to health, and they’ve been inseparable ever since.

QUILDAN BAENERVS    (CR 15; 51,200 XP) Female drow aquatic druid 16 CN Medium humanoid (aquatic, elf) Init +2; Senses darkvision 120 ft.; Perception +8 DEFENSE AC 18, touch 13, flat-footed 16 (+4 armor, +1 deflection, +2 Dex, +1 shield) hp 111 (16d8+32) Fort +13, Ref +10, Will +18; +2 vs. enchantments Defensive Abilities deep diver, resist ocean’s fury +4; DR 8/slashing or piercing; Immune sleep; SR 21 Weaknesses light blindness OFFENSE Speed 30 ft., swim 30 ft. Melee +1 shortpear +15 (1d6+3/x3) Ranged mwk light underwater crossbow +15 (1d8/19–20) or      +1 shortpear +15 (1d6+3/x3) Special Attacks wild shape (level –2) 7/day Druid Spells Prepared  (CL 16th; concentration +22)   8th—earthquake, word of recall   7th—animate plants, heal, mass cure moderate wounds   6th—antilife shell, greater dispel magic, mass bear’s endurance, mass bull’s strength   5th—animal growth, blessing of the salamander, cure critical wounds, death ward, raise animal companion   4th—atavism, echolocation, freedom of movement, rusting grasp, thorn body   3rd—cure moderate wounds, greater longstrider, thorny entanglement (R-DC 19), water breathing (already cast on companion), wind wall   2nd—aquatic cavalry, barkskin, beast speak, resist energy, tar ball   1st—blend, bristle, goodberry, heightened awareness, speak with animals, wave shield   0 (at will)—detect magic, guidance, mending, read magic Spell-like Abilities (CL 16th; concentration +18)   Constant—endure elements (cold only)   1/day—dancing lights, darkness, faerie fire STATISTICS Str 14, Dex 14, Con 12, Int 8, Wis 22, Cha 14 Base Atk +12; CMB +14; CMD 27 Feats Augment Summoning, Divine Interference, Evolved Companion (cold resistance), Monstrous Mount, Monstrous Mount Mastery, Mounted Combat, Natural Spell, Spell Focus (conjuration) Skills Handle Animal +15, Heal +13, Knowledge (geography) +8, Knowledge (nature) +10, Perception +17, Ride +14 (+16 to stay in the saddle), Spellcraft +6, Survival +14, Swim +14; Racial Modifiers +2 Perception, +8 Swim Languages Druidic, Elven, Undercommon SQ aquatic adaptation +8, amphibious, poison use, nature bond (companion), nature sense, natural swimmer, timeless body, wild empathy (aquatic or water subtype only) +10 Combat Gear lesser extend metamagic rod, wand of air bubble (5 charges), wand of cure light wounds (39 charges); Other Gear +1 wild studded leather, darkwood buckler, +1 short spear, masterwork light underwater crossbow with 20 bolts, mithral dagger, belt of incredible dexterity +2, cloak of resistance +2, headband of inspired wisdom +4, ring of protection +1, aegis of recovery, assisting gloves, elixir of vision, polymorphic pouch, spell component pouch, diamond (worth 5,000 gp), 236 gp SPECIAL ABILITIES Aquatic Wild Empathy (Ex) An aquatic druid’s wild empathy functions only on creatures that have a swim speed or the aquatic or water subtype; however, she can improve the attitude of any such creature with Intelligence 2 or less regardless of type, including mindless creatures. Deep Diver (Ex) An aquatic druid gains DR/slashing or piercing equal to 1/2 her level. This damage reduction also applies against spells and spell-like abilities that inflict damage by grappling or crushing (e.g., black tentacles, crushing hand). She never takes pressure damage from deep water. Poison Use (Ex) Drow are skilled in the use of poison and never risk accidentally poisoning themselves. Drow favor an insidious toxin that causes its victims to lapse into unconsciousness—this poison allows drow to capture slaves with great ease. Drow Poison—injury; save Fortitude DC 13; frequency 1/minute for 2 minutes; initial effect unconsciousness for 1 minute; secondary effect unconsciousness for 2d4 hours; cure 1 save. Resist Ocean’s Fury (Ex) An aquatic druid gains a +4 bonus on saving throws against spells of the water type or the exceptional or supernatural abilities of creatures with the aquatic or water subtype.

--drow’s name means “sea strider, blessed of the depths” --companion’s name means “water ally”

BRIZABBAN    (CR —; — XP) Female hippocampus N Large animal (aquatic) Init +4; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, scent; Perception +12 DEFENSE AC 32, touch 14, flat-footed 28 (+4 armor, +1 deflection, +4 Dex, +14 natural, –1 size) hp 97 (13d8+39) Fort +12, Ref +13, Will +9; +4 vs. enchantments Defensive Abilities devotion, evasion, improved evasion; Resist cold 15 OFFENSE Speed 5 ft., swim 80 ft. Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft. Melee 2 bites +17/+12 (1d6+8), tail slap +11 (1d4+4) STATISTICS Str 24, Dex 18, Con 16, Int 3, Wis 14, Cha 11 Base Atk +9; CMB +17; CMD 32 Feats Blind-Fight, Combat Reflexes, Bodyguard, Endurance, Iron Will, Weapon Focus (bite) Skills Acrobatics +12, Perception +12, Stealth +4, Swim +15; Racial Modifiers +8 Swim Languages understands Undercommon SQ link, share spells, water dependency Tricks attack, come, defend, down, fetch, guard, heel, perform, seek, stay, track Gear +1 studded leather barding, amulet of mighty fists +1, cloak of resistance +1, headband of inspired wisdom +2, ring of protection +1, beast bond brand, bit and briddle, exotic military saddle SPECIAL ABILITIES Water Dependency (Ex) A hippocampus can survive out of the water for 1 minute per point of Constitution. Beyond this limit, a hippocampus runs the risk of suffocation, as if it were drowning.

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

And this concludes the planned builds for Throne of Night. Anything else would honestly be just the monster stats as they are, or something with a Simple Class Template, or the Simple Advanced Template. Sadly, it’s as easy as that. At least from what I can see.

If I do any other builds, it’ll be because I had some kind of epiphany and was asked/paid to do them.

Thank you for coming with me on this journey to theory build what may have been an amazing, award-winning, underground adventure path for Pathfinder 1e.

[thisdaynews]

Chelsea: Maurizio Sarri exit - five questions Blues must answer

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Chelsea: Maurizio Sarri exit - five questions Blues must answer

Maurizio Sarri had never won a major trophy before lifting the Europa League in May, having spent much of his career in Italy’s lower leagues

The entrance to the Chelsea manager’s office might as well be a revolving door.

Following the departure of Maurizio Sarri to Juventus, the club are looking for their 12th different manager under the ownership of Roman Abramovich.

Three of the previous 11 were temporary, including Guus Hiddink, who was at Chelsea for just 27 games but still had time to make an impact.

Since 2004, Chelsea have endured only one season that could be termed a complete write-off, when they failed to win, or finish second, in a major domestic competition or reach the last four in Europe. Only five times in that period have they finished a campaign empty-handed.

Against that backdrop, it is reasonable to ask what do Chelsea want – and, more importantly, is there anyone who can actually give it to them?

Quiz: Can you name all of Chelsea’s Premier League managers?

Why Sarri is leaving Chelsea with reputation intact

Football Daily podcast: So long Sarri – is Pogba next?

Who could Chelsea turn to?

For all the difficulties Chelsea managers tend to encounter, there will be no shortage of candidates linked to the vacancy.

The most obvious is record goalscorer Frank Lampard, who is in charge of Derby County.

Lampard ended his first season as a manager with defeat by Aston Villa in the Championship play-off final. The 40-year-old says he expects to stay at Derby but has also said he will speak to owner Mel Morris about his plans.

Lampard is steeped in Chelsea history, won 11 major trophies during his 13 years at the club, and is adored by supporters, even though he eventually moved to join Manchester City before ending his career in Major League Soccer with New York City.

Frank Lampard took Derby to their first Championship play-off final for five years

At Derby, Lampard also linked up with former team-mate Jody Morris, who developed an impressive reputation during five years working with Chelsea’s youth teams. That might improve the pair’s chances of taking over at Stamford Bridge, given the transfer embargo the club are facing.

Given Chelsea loanees Fikayo Tomori, Mason Mount and Tammy Abraham were all involved at Wembley and others, such as Reece James, have also impressed in season-long moves, Morris’ inside knowledge would be a major asset in deciding which of these youngsters have the capability to step into the first-team picture.

Lampard would be a huge departure for Chelsea, though. They have not appointed an English manager since Glenn Hoddle in 1993 when John Major, a lifelong fan, was prime minister.

Nice boss Patrick Vieira has more experience. Prior to his return to France he was in charge at New York City after a spell working as Pep Guardiola’s reserve-team manager at Manchester City, but his London links are to Arsenal.

Massimiliano Allegri is available after leaving Juventus but said on Thursday he intends to take a year out. Former France and Paris St-Germain coach Laurent Blanc may also be spoken about – but he has been out of the game for three years.

Wolves manager Nuno Espirito Santo is also of interest. Nuno has taken Wolves from the Championship to seventh in the Premier League – and European qualification – in the space of two seasons. He is known to be hugely ambitious and for all the promise Wolves have shown during his time at Molineux, Chelsea represents a significant step up.

How will the transfer embargo impact the recruitment of a new manager?

Even if Chelsea are prevented from signing players until the summer of 2020, there would still be one significant new arrival for a new manager to work with – Christian Pulisic, at £58m the club’s third most-expensive signing.

Given “big-six” rivals Tottenham, Arsenal and Manchester United did not sign anyone for a similar sum during 2018-19, having to “make do” with that one transfer is not a hardship for Chelsea, especially as there are so many younger players to come through.

The issue – if there is one – is having to work with someone else’s squad.

Sarri might think N’Golo Kante playing wide and Jorginho in central midfield is an excellent combination, but plenty disagree. If Kante is moved to a more defensive role, Jorginho is of little value. Add the departure of star man Eden Hazard to that and suddenly a Chelsea side that scraped into the top four is significantly weakened.

This being Chelsea, while a manager might be appointed with the idea of retaining faith beyond the point at which players can be bought again, there is no guarantee he would survive a disappointing campaign.

Chelsea have won the Europa League twice under the ownership of Roman Abramovich (left)

What does a Chelsea manager need to do to keep his job?

The easy answer is to keep Abramovich happy. The detail is more complex.

Sarri’s exit is the first of the Abramovich era when it could be argued a permanent manager has gone on his own terms.

His departure was convenient for Chelsea, though.

Unlike Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte – both fans’ favourites – Sarri was disliked by Blues supporters, who did not appreciate either his tactics or team selections.

Chants of “you don’t know what you’re doing” were frequent. Their incredulity at the time it took Sarri to find homegrown youngsters Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Callum Hudson-Odoi a place in his team was deep-rooted.

Nevertheless, Sarri secured a top-three Premier League finish – something Chelsea have bettered only twice in eight seasons – won the Europa League and reached a second cup final, feats they have not managed in the same season since their Champions League-winning campaign of 2011-12.

So, without Juventus’ intervention, Abramovich would have needed to decide whether to keep a – relatively – successful manager disliked by supporters, as opposed to getting rid of one who was not doing so well but retained support in the stands.

Abramovich has seemed to scale down his lofty ambitions in recent years. While Luiz Felipe Scolari was sacked when it appeared the club might not finish in the top four in 2009, and Carlo Ancelotti was axed for not winning anything in 2011, Mourinho survived a trophyless season three years later and Conte made it to the end of the 2017-18 campaign even though Chelsea were fifth from 25 February to the end of the season.

So the chances are Sarri would have survived had he not upset the fans. As he did, Chelsea were happy to listen when Juventus came calling.

Will they look for a director of football?

One of the sub-plots to Chelsea’s Europa League final against Arsenal was a story that appeared a few days before claiming former Blues keeper Petr Cech would be returning to the club as technical director.

Tellingly, while Cech did not wish to elaborate on the story, he did not deny it.

Cech holds the Premier League record for the most clean sheets ever and the most in a season

But it is hard to see how the 37-year-old, who retired as a player after Arsenal’s 4-1 defeat in Baku, can have amassed the necessary experience to fulfil a conventional technical director role.

Since Michael Emenalo’s exit in November 2017, director Marina Granovskaia has been in charge of negotiating transfers and new contracts, a situation that troubled Conte.

What the appointment of a Cech-type figure might do is create a bridge for the manager to the club’s hierarchy, thus potentially reducing the scope for conflict.

Has manager turnover affected the dressing room?

Remarkably, Chelsea have carried on winning no matter which name appears on the manager’s door.

While irritation between the man responsible for putting a team on the pitch and the people who control the finances has flared frequently, Chelsea’s chain of command has ensured the club avoided stockpiling players who fit different managerial philosophies and become surplus to requirements when a change is made.

However, it does feel a shift in outlook is coming.

Abramovich has scaled back his funding from his early years. A much-publicised – and hugely expensive – ground redevelopment is on hold. Planning permission will have to be revisited if enabling work does not commence by the end of January 2020 and, until there is clarity over that, rumours about Abramovich selling up will not go away.

Sarri’s reign ended with Chelsea claiming the 16th major honour of the Abramovich era – but they had won only eight in their entire history before the Russian bought the club in 2003.

With a transfer ban looming, are the club prepared to look longer term with their next manager?

It would potentially mean taking a step backwards, in order to secure the stability they have so often lacked.

Or are they going to carry on as they have before, believing it will carry on delivering success on the pitch?

The identity of Sarri’s successor will tell which way Abramovich has decided to go.

Read More

[hbombedtopeace]

We must go deeper: gaming industry and the quest for immersion

The first computers were created for utilitarian purposes, but since there is nothing we won’t do to avoid boredom, they also paved the way for the creation of a new entertainment industry. About fifty years later, video games represent an important part of mainstream popular culture, having published significant works of art, launched lucrative franchises, and moving enough money in its finances to rival Hollywood. Gaming is, in many ways, still an emerging field, but with the potential to be as defining to our times as filmmaking has been for the 20th century. Of course, by virtue of its origin, no other entertainment branch is as tightly linked to “common”, accessible technological advancements. The greatest annual event of the industry (the Electronic Entertainment Expo aka E3) not only showcases upcoming releases of major game developers, but hardware advancements – on a yearly basis. Gaming tech is developing rapidly, and major efforts in these developments have always focused on furthering the one advantage games have over any other forms of media: immersion.

Immersion, defined quite drily, is “a perception of being physically present in a non-physical world”. Less drily, if we consider escapism to be the point of entertainment, then it might be the peak form of escapism: becoming a different person in a different world. Good fiction strives to be immersive, but video games, due to their interactive nature, have an edge in this. You always control the actions of an avatar; you always have a medium to affect your agency on the world of the game. The more impactful one’s agency feels, the more immersive a game is. However, the medium that separates player and avatar will always be there – or will it?

Hardware innovation in the gaming industry has been trying to eliminate this barrier for years now – with varying degrees of effectiveness. A few years back – think 2009 – the buzzword all over the gaming scene has been “motion controls”. Nintendo has released its Wii console, and it felt incredibly futuristic. I myself remember encountering a Wii for the first time: I was about 12, and it was over at the flat of a friend whose tech-savvy father managed to acquire a console from abroad quite early. I’ve never been a sporty kid, but I couldn’t have been more delighted to play a simulated game of tennis: it really felt like jumping ahead into the future, holding a controller in my hand, waving it around like a tennis racket, and seeing the cartoonish figure react on the screen in tandem with my movement. I wasn’t the only one dazzled by the console’s capabilities: the press coverage on motion controls in general sounded incredibly optimistic on what possibilities these miracle machines have opened up. Other major hardware developers followed in Nintendo’s footsteps: Microsoft has brought out the Kinect, Sony introduced the PlayStation Move. However, if we take a look at the hardware market today, motion controls have failed to become the widespread innovation they hoped to be, and only a handful of software offers motion control compatibility. What happened?

What happened is that game journalism failed to do its job properly. Journalism in this field is oversaturated with shills, and thus, on aggregate, is mostly incredibly uncritical of major developers (this allows devs to ride uncritical waves of hype to success, and its utter lack of ethics might be the topic of a future post). Motion controls were indeed a fun development, but due to an almost complete lack of physical feedback, motion controls ended up not enhancing, but breaking immersion. Simply put, if your avatar’s hand is supposed to rest on a flat surface, it will be somewhat off-putting to have your hand raised in the air, with no physical support. These sort of minor annoyances all eventually added up and, coupled with the difficulty of developing for motion sensors resulted in the gimmick’s loss in popularity.

But if there is one thing that fuels the games industry, it’s cycles of hype: if motion controls were not the way to go, where else could we turn?

Enter VR.

Ever since computer-generated worlds became a concept, fiction writers have played with the idea of a computer simulating an entire world altogether. Early works in this topic include Gibson’s Neuromancer or Stephenson’s Snow Crash (which proved itself to be eerily good at predicting what sort of technologies we’ll be developing in the future, inspiring the creation of both Wikipedia and Google Earth). Snow Crash especially discusses virtual reality through the concept of the Metaverse: a piece of virtual landmass, accessible via network connection, which is important enough to warrant its own “real”-estate market. And, of course, you accessed the Metaverse via donning a special set of goggles.

This all might sound incredibly familiar if you’ve ever seen an Oculus Rift or any of its competitors. Virtual Reality headsets, as opposed motion controls, don’t change the control scheme of a game too much. However, they do bring the game world closer to you – the distance between you and the game is physically reduced. Moreover, the headset does account for your movements, allowing you to look around in first person, and observe the game as if you really were a part of it. Additionally, some forms of motion control can be incorporated into these experiences as well – although the wisdom of blindly stumbling around in a room can perhaps be debated.

VR is not without its drawbacks, though. For example, extended use of the headsets is known to cause nausea, which is something of an issue when the recommended length of a gaming session is usually somewhere between two to three hours. We, however, seem not to have learned from our mistakes, and the hype train rides on without much disturbance, criticism frequently drowned out by the cheering masses.

I don’t mean to sound like a spoilsport here. Ultimate immersion sounds as much fun to me as to anyone else. However, I can’t help but think that the point of escapism is very much to escape our physical constraints as well. Thus, I don’t think immersion is merely a question of hardware. One of my favourite games critics, Yahtzee Croshaw, once proposed that immersion is enhanced the most if the control scheme of the game is so intuitive that it effectively functions as an extension for your own nervous system. And, honestly, the most immersed I have ever been in a game has not been through any sort of fancy hardware, but sitting behind my own screen, controlling my character in Dishonored, jumping off rooftops and performing physical feats I never could, using very fine-tuned controls.

Hardware advancements will always be difficult to introduce, and I’m not sure the most of us would want to strap ourselves into overly complicated rigs to play our favourite games. In contrast, a well-crafted game can draw you in just by how great it just “feels” to play it. Perhaps the industry’s focus should be less on cluttering our living rooms with more and more advanced software, but on crafting more involving experiences – harder may that be to sell at E3.

But, hey, hell do I know, I’m just a nerd with an internet connection.

[cleretic]

The problem with ‘Riddler Plots’ in RP

Something I’ve seen plenty of times in roleplaying of all stripes are DMs including overt puzzles into a plot or scene they’re running. We’re talking about direct, unobfuscated tests of knowledge and problem-solving, sometimes absent of any in-story justification outside of ‘finding a puzzle that needs solving’. They’re usually puzzles that the DM themself either designed or adapted. I’ve taken to calling these ‘Riddler Plots’, because that’s what they’ve always reminded me of: the exact kind of challenges the Batman villain uses, that are only there for the sake of puzzles.

You could also call them ‘Da Vinci Code Plots’, but I think the Riddler’s actually a step up.

I don’t want to take away from the work inherent in designing a good puzzle; it’s a skill I definitely don’t have. But designing a good puzzle is a world different from designing a good puzzle for roleplaying purposes, and one that’s suited for the former might well be god-awful for the latter. I want to explore that, expose the problems and potential solutions.

When talking about this, I think it’s best to start with an example that gets everything wrong, before exploring how to do it well. What I don’t want to do, though, is shame people who have actually done these things wrong in RP; we all make mistakes, and we can all learn from them. So rather than actual or mocked-up RP examples, what I instead want to do is use missions from The Secret World as examples: to explore why missions like these would or wouldn’t work as a scene or plot in roleplaying, because of reasons that tie into the problems with Riddler Plots, and what we might be able to do to improve them.

“Fly through my maze, Superman!”

Superman 64 is a famously bad game for many reasons: extremely poor controls, countless glitches, terrible graphics, the list goes on. But perhaps the most important single reason to me was always right there in the title: ‘Superman’. The game’s very title delivered a specific promise, that it then failed to deliver on, because it couldn’t possibly make you feel like Superman when you’re just flying through a ring maze. There’s a reason one of the biggest compliments given to the Arkham games is that they make you feel like Batman.

(I promise I’ll stop referring to DC Comics stuff now.)

This is the problem that the worst Riddler Plots bring: players are coming to the plot as roleplayers, for roleplaying. And an overt puzzle isn’t roleplaying. Characters aren’t the ones interacting with an overt puzzle: the players are.

Consider Digging Deeper from The Secret World; this would be awful in a strictly roleplaying context, despite being a good mission in the game, but let’s explore why.

In the context of the game, this is one of the earliest investigation missions, and acts to teach you the skills in looking up pertinent knowledge that you’ll need in future investigation missions. This works, because the game is directly challenging the player; it doesn’t care about the character. But if it were a roleplayed scene it would fall apart, as the characters themselves have no agency, and the players can’t possibly roleplay out a solution. They have to solve it themselves.

This problem only becomes more present when you enter spheres like freeform online roleplaying and in many MMOs, because at the very least tabletop roleplaying has tools to mitigate this. In a tabletop game, there are often skill rolls or feats built into the game that players can enforce, to bring an in-character element to an out-of-character puzzle. Those tricks aren’t in play in many other roleplaying mediums, and so the players are either left to solve the puzzle themselves, or try to use nebulous parts of their character to negotiate help from the DM. And in my experience, ‘I don’t know classical music, but my character definitely would’ is rarely accepted without something to enforce it.

Not only that, but the puzzle is directly present to an almost comical degree: you have to solve a puzzle, for no other reason than because the puzzle is there, there’s no logical, in-story reason the obstacles in place are puzzles. This is also true in the game, but in roleplaying it would be even more egregious because it takes away all potential alternate approaches that could be roleplayed out.

The DM has thrown away the central draw of roleplaying for the players, and is instead forcing them to fly through their maze.

So there’s two major problems here preventing this from being a good roleplaying experience. How do we fix them? Let’s take them one at a time, starting with the first mentioned, and what doing it right could look like.

Character Skills and Accepting Alternatives

So, the problem is that we have a puzzle--or series of puzzles--that exist to both the player and character on the exact same level. The player and character would be using the exact same approaches and skillsets, and there is effectively no difference between the two until the puzzle’s been solved. This is a problem if the goal is ‘providing a good roleplaying experience’, so how do we solve it?

Of course, this has already been solved by tabletop games, although implementing the solution is another matter: respecting and utilizing the skills or equipment the character has actually been written up to have.

Using another Secret World mission as basis, let’s use Death and Axes, which does well to demonstrate avenues that could be pursued to improve a puzzle in roleplaying. This is a mission all about following fragmented clues left by ghosts (both figurative and literal) to discover the identity of their killer. With all the clues put together, the player is expected to figure out themselves who the murderer is. In a roleplaying setup, this works pretty well, but it does have the problem that the player and character are on the exact same level.

But what if they weren’t?

This mission involves learning from literal ghosts; what if one of the characters being played actually was a medium, and so could communicate better, and glean more information? Or alternatively, what if somebody’s playing a police detective, somebody whose whole profession is figuring these things out?

In both of these cases, the planned elements of the plot should be bent or revised, to respect and aid the fact that somebody’s character is uniquely suited for solving this.

Alternatively: who’s saying that your solution is the only way forward?

Consider the mission The Orochi Group; you sneak into a research camp, to learn just what these guys are doing. I bring this up because of a specific point in the mission, where you force a tent to evacuate by contaminating their air conditioning. It gets everybody out, allowing you to get in, but then you’ve got the problem of dealing with the gas you put in there yourself. Interestingly, this isn’t a problem that the game outwardly gives you an answer to. You can muscle your way through the debuff it gives you--and in fact this is the only option in Secret World Legends--but there’s another way.

Near the place you start the mission is a side mission, Up In Flames, that gives you a hazmat suit. Wearing this suit means the debuff is never applied, allowing you to complete the mission without trouble. This was clearly the intended way…

But it’s not the only way. Other ways to filter gases also work: a mission introduced later gives you a respirator that also works. But even at launch, there was another one: Illuminati players are given, as part of their faction uniform, a gas mask that turns out to be functional. So, if Illuminati players are smart enough, this puzzle never even exists for them. That rewarding of lateral thinking, using resources available in-character, is fantastic, especially for roleplaying.

These two approaches do great to help players feel more like they’re actually roleplaying out a solution, but both of them (the latter more than the former) require the DM to do something extremely difficult: to accept their creation being broken. Either by providing more information than the players have personally ‘earned’ through the character doing the hard work, or by smashing past the puzzle entirely though alternative approaches. This is why many DMs will refuse to do this, out of a desire to protect their creation. And in freeform or MMO roleplaying, they’re the ones with all the keys to progress; the players only have the tools to interact that the DM has permitted, because the lack of an established system means they have none of their own.

This is an obstacle the DM needs to overcome, not the players. DMs in any medium need to understand that roleplaying is inherently collaborative and creative, that the other players are not subordinate. And if they want to break the DM’s toy, it’s not up to the DM to tell them ‘no’: it’s to help them figure out how.

Immersion in the RP’s world

Immersion is a tricky word in gaming, because it implies a quality that’s hard to attain, but not necessarily helpful. But when designing an in-RP puzzle, some of it is needed.

Remember the example of Digging Deeper. There is no effort made to make those puzzles fit in-universe, it is squarely intended for the player. And that’s fine for the game, it’s working in the lines it drew up for itself, but it won’t work for an RP puzzle. What’s needed is to link it to the world it’s taking place in, rather than the world the players are in.

The puzzle needs to make sense as something that exists within the game’s world. That can be hard sometimes, but ensuring you have answers to some simple ‘who, what, why’ questions will go a long way.

Who made this thing?

What is it supposed to do?

Why is it a puzzle? Why is it this specific puzzle?

Having some firm answers ingrained into the puzzle and its presence itself will help to entrench it in the game’s world rather than our own, thus helping it be more of an actual roleplaying experience rather than a diversion from such.

For an example on how to approach this, we’re turning to Obstructive Persons; a mission that tasks you with infiltrating the Morninglight cult’s underground crime and surveillance operations. This one’s brilliant, because every single step of it is grounded in the world of the game, and is presented in such a way that every part of the process makes reasonable sense. We can answer all of the questions above, comfortably:

Who made it? Obviously, the Morninglight.

What’s it supposed to do? The system you’re infiltrating is a secret operative network, designed to keep out uninitiated.

Why is it a puzzle? Because we’re trying to get through security used by that operative network. It’s not linear, because we ourselves are not initiated; there’s implied to be training and context we don’t have.

This puzzle works perfectly within the world of the game, because every question about it can be answered, and every step makes total sense based on the surroundings, and the one preceding it. In a roleplaying plot version of this, you can see a lot of this playing out because of actual character agency and behavior, rather than progress happening ‘because Greg figured it out’.

Both this flexibility and immersion need to be in place for a puzzle in roleplaying to work; to make it something that the characters are interacting with, rather than solely a challenge posed to the players.

There’s one more thing I need to raise, though. Something that’s much harder to figure out a solution to, and I would say it’s the reason that a plot can’t purely be puzzles like if the Riddler wrote it.

The Fighter Problem

So you’ve taken these things into account, and designed this elaborate puzzle (or puzzles) that’s designed to be able to work with character skills. One that fits perfectly within the world. And you’re willing to adapt it when somebody comes up with something you didn’t. You’re fine, right? You can go ahead, everyone’s gonna be happy!

Except that you’ve forgotten somebody. Somebody we’ve not mentioned in this whole discussion, but someone who undeniably exists within the group you’re pitching your roleplaying plot to, especially when the environment is a game:

The dedicated warrior.

This is a problem across every single medium someone could be roleplaying a puzzle-focused plot in: it inherently cannot permit somebody whose character is focused on combat. Whose character reasonably knows little else other than skills relating to combat. I’ve met plenty of people playing these characters, and they would all be ruined if a puzzle came up--several of them actually were. It doesn’t matter if the DM gives them a caesar cipher, references to Shakespeare, or even a literal jigsaw puzzle; the character is out of play, either totally unable to participate or working much slower than anybody else, even if the player wants to join in.

Picture this from the warrior’s player’s point of view, because this is a lose/lose/lose situation for them from a roleplaying perspective:

They sit it out completely, because their character can’t contribute.

They contribute only out-of-character as a player (depending on who else is involved, this option might not even be possible).

They break character, having them come to conclusions or propose solutions that their character would normally never do, just so they can participate.

I can’t show you an example that demonstrates how to fix this. Because I can’t give a simple fix for this problem at all: there is no easy way to give the warrior something to do during a dedicated puzzle. My only suggestion is that you design your plot so that those people can be important to it: that there is something for them to fight. But that wouldn’t make it a pure puzzle like I’ve been talking about, and it still means that your puzzle acts as a time-out for them.

Conclusion

Puzzles are hard. Roleplaying puzzles are harder.

That doesn’t mean they’re not worth pursuing, or can’t be fixed. It just requires more than the skills inherent in constructing the puzzle in the first place. It requires writing, it requires integration with the world, it requires improvisational thinking.

But perhaps most importantly it requires compromise, and humility. The DM’s willingness to to pull apart the puzzle machine they’ve built, and the humility to realize that not everybody is going to be happy with it in the first place.

[kluaranhkgevc410-blog]

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[sheminecrafts]

Mobile gaming is having a moment, and Apple has the reins

It’s moved beyond tradition and into the realm of meme that Apple manages to dominate the news cycle around major industry events, all while not actually participating in said events. CES rolls around and every story is about HomeKit or its competitors; another tech giant has a conference and the news is that Apple updated some random subsystem of its ever-larger ecosystem of devices and software .

This is, undoubtedly, planned by Apple in many instances. And why not? Why shouldn’t it own the cycle when it can — it’s only strategically sound.

This week, the 2018 Game Developers Conference is going on and there’s a bunch of news coverage about various aspects of the show. There are all of the pre-written embargo bits about big titles and high-profile indies, there are the trend pieces and, of course, there’s the traditional ennui-laden “who is this event even for” post that accompanies any industry event that achieves critical mass.

But the absolute biggest story of the event wasn’t even at the event. It was the launch of Fortnite and, shortly thereafter, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds on mobile devices. Specifically, both were launched on iOS, and PUBG hit Android simultaneously.

The launch of Fortnite, especially, resonates across the larger gaming spectrum in several unique ways. It’s the full and complete game as present on consoles, it’s iOS-first and it supports cross-platform play with console and PC players.

This has, essentially, never happened before. There have been stabs at one or more of those conditions on experimental levels, but it really marks a watershed in the games industry that could serve to change the psychology around the platform discussion in major ways. 

For one, though the shape of GDC has changed over the years as it relates to mobile gaming, it’s only recently that the conference has become dominated by indie titles that are mobile centric. The big players and triple-A console titles still take up a lot of air, but the long tail is very long and mobile is not synonymous with “casual gamers” as it once was.

“I remember the GDC before we launched Monument Valley,” says Dan Gray of Monument Valley 2 studio ustwo. “We were fortunate enough that Unity offered us a place on their stand. Nobody had heard of us or our game and we were begging journalists to come say hello, it’s crazy how things have changed in four years. We’ve now got three speakers at the conference this year, people stop you in the street (within a two-block radius) and we’re asked to be part of interviews like this about the future of mobile.”

Zach Gage, the creator of SpellTower, and my wife’s favorite game of all time, Flipflop Solitaire, says that things feel like they have calmed down a bit. “It seems like that might be boring, but actually I think it’s quite exciting, because a consequence of it is that playing games has become just a normal thing that everyone does… which frankly, is wild. Games have never had the cultural reach that they do now, and it’s largely because of the App Store and these magical devices that are in everyone’s pockets.”

Alto’s Odyssey is the followup to Snowman’s 2015 endless boarder Alto’s Adventure. If you look at these two titles, three years apart, you can see the encapsulation of the growth and maturity of gaming on iOS. The original game was fun, but the newer title is beyond fun and into a realm where you can see the form being elevated into art. And it’s happening blazingly fast.

“There’s a real and continually growing sense that mobile is a platform to launch compelling, artful experiences,” says Snowman’s Ryan Cash. “This has always been the sentiment among the really amazing community of developers we’ve been lucky enough to meet. What’s most exciting to me, now, though, is hearing this acknowledged by representatives of major console platforms. Having conversations with people about their favorite games from the past year, and seeing that many of them are titles tailor-made for mobile platforms, is really gratifying. I definitely don’t want to paint the picture that mobile gaming has ever been some sort of pariah, but there’s a definite sense that more people are realizing how unique an experience it is to play games on these deeply personal devices.”

Mobile gaming as a whole has fought since the beginning against the depiction that it was for wasting time only, not making “true art,” which was reserved for consoles or dedicated gaming platforms. Aside from the “casual” versus “hardcore” debate, which is more about mechanics, there was a general stigma that mobile gaming was a sidecar bet to the main functions of these devices, and that their depth would always reflect that. But the narratives and themes being tackled on the platform beyond just clever mechanics are really incredible.

Playing Monument Valley 2 together with my daughter really just blew my doors off, and I think it changed a lot of people’s minds in this regard. The interplay between the characters and environment and a surprisingly emotional undercurrent for a puzzle game made it a breakout that was also a breakthrough of sorts.

“There’s so many things about games that are so awesome that the average person on the street doesn’t even know about,” says Gray. “As small developers right now we have the chance to make somebody feel a range of emotions about a video game for the first time, it’s not often you’re in the right place at the right time for this and to do it with the most personal device that sits in your pocket is the perfect opportunity.”

The fact that so many of the highest-profile titles are launching on iOS first is a constant source of consternation for Android users, but it’s largely a function of addressable audience.

I spoke to Apple VP Greg Joswiak about Apple’s place in the industry. “Gaming has always been one of the most popular categories on the App Store,” he says. A recent relaunch of the App Store put gaming into its own section and introduced a Today tab that tells stories about the games and about their developers.

That redesign, he says, has been effective. “Traffic to the App Store is up significantly, and with higher traffic, of course, comes higher sales.”

“One thing I think smaller developers appreciate from this is the ability to show the people behind the games,” says ustwo’s Gray about the new gaming and Today sections in the App Store. “Previously customers would just see an icon and assume a corporation of 200 made the game, but now it’s great we can show this really is a labor of love for a small group of people who’re trying to make something special. Hopefully this leads to players seeing the value in paying up front for games in the future once they can see the craft that goes into something.”

Snowman’s Cash agrees. “It’s often hard to communicate the why behind the games you’re making — not just what your game is and does, but how much went into making it, and what it could mean to your players. The stories that now sit on the Today tab are a really exciting way to do this; as an example, when Alto’s Odyssey released for pre-order, we saw a really positive player response to the discussion of the game’s development. I think the variety that the new App Store encourages as well, through rotational stories and regularly refreshed sections, infuses a sense of variety that’s great for both players and developers. There’s a real sense I’m hearing that this setup is equipped to help apps and games surface, and stayed surfaced, in a longer term and more sustainable way.”

In addition, there are some technical advantages that keep Apple ahead of Android in this arena. Plenty of Android devices are very performant and capable in individual ways, but Apple has a deep holistic grasp of its hardware that allows it to push platform advantages in introducing new frameworks like ARKit. Google’s efforts in the area with ARCore are just getting started with the first batch of 1.0 apps coming online now, but Google will always be hamstrung by the platform fragmentation that forces developers to target a huge array of possible software and hardware limitations that their apps and games will run up against.

This makes shipping technically ambitious projects like Fortnite on Android as well as iOS a daunting task. “There’s a very wide range of Android devices that we want to support,” Epic Games’ Nick Chester told Forbes. “We want to make sure Android players have a great experience, so we’re taking more time to get it right.“

That wide range of devices includes an insane differential in GPU capability, processing power, Android version and update status.

“We bring a very homogenous customer base to developers where 90 percent of [devices] are on the current versions of iOS,” says Joswiak. Apple’s customers embrace those changes and updates quickly, he says, and this allows developers to target new features and the full capabilities of the devices more quickly.

Ryan Cash sees these launches on iOS of “full games” as they exist elsewhere as a touchstone of sorts that could legitimize the idea of mobile as a parity platform.

“We have a few die-hard Fortnite players on the team, and the mobile version has them extremely excited,” says Cash. “I think more than the completeness of these games (which is in and of itself a technical feat worth celebrating!), things like Epic’s dedication to cross-platform play are massive. Creating these linked ecosystems where players who prefer gaming on their iPhones can enjoy huge cultural touchstone titles like Fortnite alongside console players is massive. That brings us one step closer to an industry attitude which focuses more on accessibility, and less on siloing off experiences and separating them into tiers of perceived quality.”

“I think what is happening is people are starting to recognize that iOS devices are everywhere, and they are the primary computers of many people,” says Zach Gage. “When people watch a game on Twitch, they take their iPhone out of their pocket and download it. Not because they want to know if there’s a mobile version, but because they just want the game. It’s natural to assume that these games available for a computer or a PlayStation, and it’s now natural to assume that it would be available for your phone.”

Ustwo’s Gray says that it’s great that the big games are transitioning, but also cautions that there needs to be a sustainable environment for mid-priced games on iOS that specifically use the new capabilities of these devices.

“It’s great that such huge games are transitioning this way, but for me I’d really like to see more $30+ titles designed and developed specifically for iPhone and iPad as new IP, really taking advantage of how these devices are used,” he says. “It’s definitely going to benefit the App Store as a whole, but It does need to be acknowledged, however, that the way players interact with console/PC platforms and mobile are inherently different and should be designed accordingly. Session lengths and the interaction vocabulary of players are two of the main things to consider, but if a game manages to somehow satisfy the benefits of all those platforms then great, but I think it’s hard.”

Apple may not be an official sponsor of GDC, but it is hosting two sessions at the show, including an introduction to Metal 2, its rendering pipeline, and ARKit, its hope for the future of gaming on mobile. This presence is exciting for a number of reasons, as it shows a greater willingness by Apple to engage the community that has grown around its platforms, but also that the industry is becoming truly integrated, with mobile taking its rightful place alongside console and portable gaming as a viable target for the industry’s most capable and interesting talent.

“They’re bringing the current generation of console games to iOS,” Joswiak says, of launches like Fortnite and PUBG, and notes that he believes we’re at a tipping point when it comes to mobile gaming, because mobile platforms like the iPhone and iOS offer completely unique combinations of hardware and software features that are iterated on quickly.

“Every year we are able to amp up the tech that we bring to developers,” he says, comparing it to the 4-5 year cycle in console gaming hardware. “Before the industry knew it, we were blowing people away [with the tech]. The full gameplay of these titles has woken a lot of people up.”

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Mobile gaming is having a moment, and Apple has the reins

Mobile gaming is having a moment, and Apple has the reins

It’s moved beyond tradition and into the realm of meme that Apple manages to dominate the news cycle around major industry events all while not actually participating in said events. CES rolls around and every story is about HomeKit or its competitors, another tech giant has a conference and the news is that Apple updated some random subsystem of its ever-larger ecosystem of devices and software.

This is, undoubtedly planned by Apple in many instances. And why not? Why shouldn’t it own the cycle when it can, it’s only strategically sound.

This week, the 2018 Game Developer’s Conference is going on and there’s a bunch of news coverage about various aspects of the show. There are all of the pre-written embargo bits about big titles and high-profile indies, there are the trend pieces and, of course, there’s the traditional ennui-laden ‘who is this event even for’ post that accompanies any industry event that achieves critical mass.

But the absolute biggest story of the event wasn’t even at the event. It was the launch of Fortnite and, shortly thereafter, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds on mobile devices. Specifically, both were launched on iOS and PUBG hit Android simultaneously.

The launch of Fortnite, especially, resonates across the larger gaming spectrum in several unique ways. It’s the full and complete game as present on consoles, it’s iOS-first and it supports cross-platform play with console and PC players.

This has, essentially, never happened before. There have been stabs at one or more of those conditions on experimental levels but it really marks a watershed in the games industry that could serve to change the psychology around the platform discussion in major ways.

For one, though the shape of GDC has changed over the years as it relates to mobile gaming – it’s only recently that the conference has become dominated by indie titles that are mobile centric. The big players and triple-A console titles still take up a lot of air, but the long tail is very long and mobile is not synonymous with “casual gamers” as it once was.

“I remember the GDC before we launched Monument Valley,” says Dan Gray of Monument Valley 2 studio ustwo. “We were fortunate enough that Unity offered us a place on their stand. Nobody had heard of us or our game and we were begging journalists to come say hello, it’s crazy how things have changed in four years. We’ve now got three speakers at the conference this year, people stop you in the street (within a two block radius) and we’re asked to be part of interviews like this about the future of mobile.”

Zach Gage, the creator of SpellTower, says that things feel like they have calmed down a bit. “It seems like that might be boring, but actually I think it’s quite exciting, because a consequence of it is that playing games has become just a normal thing that everyone does… which frankly, is wild. Games have never had the cultural reach that they do now, and it’s largely because of the App Store and these magical devices that are in everyones pockets.”

Alto’s Odyssey is the followup to Snowman’s 2015 endless boarder Alto’s Adventure. If you look at these two titles, three years apart, you can see the encapsulation of the growth and maturity of gaming on iOS. The original game was fun, but the newer title is beyond fun and into a realm where you can see the form being elevated into art. And it’s happening blazingly fast.

“There’s a real and continually growing sense that mobile is a platform to launch compelling, artful experiences,” says Snowman’s Ryan Cash. “This has always been the sentiment among the really amazing community of developers we’ve been lucky enough to meet. What’s most exciting to me, now, though, is hearing this acknowledged by representatives of major console platforms. Having conversations with people about their favorite games from the past year, and seeing that many of them are titles tailor-made for mobile platforms, is really gratifying. I definitely don’t want to paint the picture that mobile gaming has ever been some sort of pariah, but there’s a definite sense that more people are realizing how unique an experience it is to play games on these deeply personal devices.”

Mobile gaming as a whole has fought since the beginning against the depiction that it was for wasting time only, not making ‘true art’, which was reserved for consoles or dedicated gaming platforms. Aside from the ‘casual’ vs. ‘hardcore’ debate, which is more about mechanics, there was a general stigma that mobile gaming was a sidecar bet to the main functions of these devices, and that their depth would always reflect that. But the narratives and themes being tackled on the platform beyond just clever mechanics are really incredible.

Playing Monument Valley 2 together with my daughter really just blew my doors off, and I think it changed a lot of people’s minds in this regard. The interplay between the characters and environment and a surprisingly emotional undercurrent for a puzzle game made it a breakout that was also a breakthrough of sorts.

“There’s so many things about games that are so awesome that the average person on the street doesn’t even know about,” says Gray. “As small developers right now we have the chance to make somebody feel a range of emotions about a video game for the first time, it’s not often you’re in the right place at the right time for this and to do it with the most personal device that sits in your pocket is the perfect opportunity.”

The fact that so many of the highest profile titles are launching on iOS first is a constant source of consternation for Android users, but it’s largely a function of addressable audience.

I spoke to Apple VP Greg Joswiak about Apple’s place in the industry. “Gaming has always been one of the most popular categories on the App Store,” he says. A recent relaunch of the App Store put gaming into its own section and introduced a Today tab that tells stories about the games and about their developers.

That redesign, he says, has been effective. “Traffic to the App Store is up significantly, and with higher traffic, of course, comes higher sales.”

“One thing I think smaller developers appreciate from this is the ability to show the people behind the games,” says ustwo’s Gray about the new gaming and Today sections in the App Store. “Previously customers would just see an icon and assume a corporation of 200 made the game, but now it’s great we can show this really is a labour of love for a small group of people who’re trying to make something special. Hopefully this leads to players seeing the value in paying up front for games in the future once they can see the craft that goes into something.”

Snowman’s Cash agrees. “It’s often hard to communicate the why behind the games you’re making — not just what your game is and does, but how much went into making it, and what it could mean to your players. The stories that now sit on the Today tab are a really exciting way to do this; as an example, when Alto’s Odyssey released for pre-order, we saw a really positive player response to the discussion of the game’s development. I think the variety that the new App Store encourages as well, through rotational stories and regularly refreshed sections, infuses a sense of variety that’s great for both players and developers. There’s a real sense I’m hearing that this setup is equipped to help apps and games surface, and stayed surfaced, in a longer term and more sustainable way.”

In addition, there are some technical advantages that keep Apple ahead of Android in this arena. Plenty of Android devices are very performant and capable in individual ways, but Apple has a deep holistic grasp of its hardware that allow it to push platform advantages in introducing new frameworks like ARKit. Google’s efforts in the area with AR Core are just getting started with the first batch of 1.0 apps coming online now, but Google will always be hamstrung by the platform fragmentation that forces developers to target a huge array of possible software and hardware limitations that their apps and games will run up against.

This makes shipping technically ambitious projects like Fortnite on Android as well as iOS a daunting task. “There’s a very wide range of Android devices that we want to support,” Epic Games’ Nick Chester told Forbes. “We want to make sure Android players have a great experience, so we’re taking more time to get it right.“

That wide range of devices includes an insane differential in GPU capability, processing power, Android version and update status.

“We bring a very homogenous customer base to developers where 90% of [devices] are on the current versions of iOS,” says Joswiak. Apple’s customers embrace those changes and updates quickly, he says, and this allows developers to target new features and the full capabilities of the devices more quickly.

Ryan Cash sees these launches on iOS of ‘full games’ as they exist elsewhere as a touchstone of sorts that could legitimize the idea of mobile as a parity platform.

“We have a few die-hard Fortnite players on the team, and the mobile version has them extremely excited,” says Cash. “I think more than the completeness of these games (which is in of itself a technical feat worth celebrating!), things like Epic’s dedication to cross-platform play are massive. Creating these linked ecosystems where players who prefer gaming on their iPhones can enjoy huge cultural touchstone titles like Fortnite alongside console players is massive. That brings us one step closer to an industry attitude which focuses more on accessibility, and less on siloing off experiences and separating them into tiers of perceived quality.”

“I think what is happening is people are starting to recognize that ios devices are everywhere, and they are the primary computers of many people,” says Zach Gage. “When people watch a game on Twitch, they take their iPhone out of their pocket and download it. Not because they want to know if there’s a mobile version, but because they just want the game. It’s natural to assume that these games available for a computer or a playstation, and it’s now natural to assume that it would be available for your phone.”

Ustwo’s Gray says that it’s great that the big games are transitioning, but also cautions that there needs to be a sustainable environment for mid-priced games on iOS that specifically use the new capabilities of these devices.

It’s great that such huge games are transitioning this way, but for me I’d really like to see more $30+ titles designed and developed specifically for iPhone and iPad as new IP, really taking advantage of of how these devices are used,” he says. “It’s definitely going to benefit the AppStore as a whole, but It does need to be acknowledged however that the way players interact with console/PC platforms and mobile are inherently different and should be designed accordingly. Session lengths and the interaction vocabulary of players are two of the main things to consider, but if a game manages to somehow satisfy the benefits of all those platforms then great, but I think it’s hard.”

Apple may not be an official sponsor of GDC, but it is hosting two sessions at the show including an introduction to Metal 2, its rendering pipeline, and ARKit, its hope for the future of gaming on mobile. This presence is exciting for a number of reasons, as it shows a greater willingness by Apple to engage the community that has grown around its platforms, but also that the industry is becoming truly integrated, with mobile taking its rightful place alongside console and portable gaming as a viable target for the industry’s most capable and interesting talent.

“They’re bringing the current generation of console games to iOS,” Joswiak says, of launches like Fortnite and PUBG and notes that he believes we’re at a tipping point when it comes to mobile gaming, because mobile platforms like the iPhone and iOS offer completely unique combinations of hardware and software features that are iterated on quickly.

“Every year we are able to amp up the tech that we bring to developers,” he says, comparing it to the 4-5 year cycle in console gaming hardware. “Before the industry knew it, we were blowing people away [with the tech]. The full gameplay of these titles has woken a lot of people up.”

[othersportsnews-blog]

This time it Will not count ... and that is a very good point for the MLB All-Star Video game

New Post has been published on https://othersportsnews.com/this-time-it-will-not-count-and-that-is-a-very-good-point-for-the-mlb-all-star-video-game/

This time it Will not count ... and that is a very good point for the MLB All-Star Video game

MIAMI — Rob Manfred’s legacy as Key League Baseball commissioner will ultimately be formed by the answers to some thought-provoking concerns. The video game will search markedly various if and when pitch clocks, robotic umpires and worldwide growth grow to be element of Manfred’s quest to broaden baseball’s enthusiast base and have it resonate with a younger audience.

Versus that massive-photo backdrop, the stakes of an exhibition video game in the center of July look nearly like a housekeeping chore. But MLB takes its All-Star Video game incredibly severely. As Manfred strives to embrace the upcoming, he is exhibiting that it’s probable to make a assertion by allowing go of the past.

Immediately after 13 several years of trying to inject the All-Star Video game with a perception of urgency by awarding the successful league residence-area edge in the Earth Sequence, MLB is getting a action back in time. The “This Time It Counts” era is no a lot more, and Tuesday night’s video game at Marlins Park will be performed largely for league delight.

With no gimmicks or catchy slogans to fall back on, MLB is hoping that followers tune in for a glimpse of Aaron Choose‘s mammoth power and Cody Bellinger‘s sweet uppercut swing — not since the success in Miami could tilt the harmony of the Earth Sequence.

When: Tuesday, July 11, eight p.m. ET In which: Marlins Park, Miami

• MLB All-Star Video game residence web page • Finish manual to All-Star week • This time it Will not count • Giancarlo Stanton’s massive second • Just how huge is Aaron Choose?

Considering that the debut of the “This Time It Counts” initiative in 2004, 10 of 13 teams with residence-area edge have won the Earth Sequence. That stat alone served persuade baseball’s final decision-makers that it was time for a improve. Below the revised format, the staff with the finest standard-time history will now have residence-area edge in the Sequence.

“Every thing has a shelf lifestyle,” Manfred told ESPN.com. “It is really some thing we have in all probability been too gradual to recognize in some cases in the video game. What persons came to realize is residence-area edge is genuinely sizeable in the Earth Sequence. It is really in all probability the cherry on best of that ice product sundae. The Cubs won 103 video games past calendar year, and they were not residence either weekend. It just doesn’t look quite correct, does it?

“It served put aim on the All-Star Video game, but the negatives seemed to be of escalating relevance. We came to the conclusion there ended up other methods to retain the players motivated and retain the All-Star Video game as the finest all-star video game in specialist sporting activities.”

Take cash, for starters. The players from the successful staff will get $20,000 just about every, even though the losers will consider residence absolutely nothing. That isn’t really a large amount of dough for, say, Clayton Kershaw, who’ll make an average of $1 million for just about every of his projected 33 commences with the Los Angeles Dodgers this time. But it might get the juices flowing for some players in a place-club-facet-wager type of way.

No matter, the improve seems to be well-liked with players, followers and purists, numerous of whom struggled with the contradictions of linking residence-area edge to a midseason exhibition.

A single of those players, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright, inadvertently designed a stir when he prompt that he grooved a pitch to Derek Jeter as a goodwill gesture throughout the Captain’s remaining All-Star visual appearance in 2014. Wainwright, a 3-time All-Star, isn’t really building the journey to Miami, but he is happy that the video game has arrive to its senses and dispensed with the “This Time It Counts” initiative.

“It was absurd,” Wainwright stated. “It was a horrible rule. If [the video game counted], we would have Clayton Kershaw throwing 5 innings and Max Scherzer throwing four, but you just won’t be able to do that. Groups do not want their fellas to toss a lot more than 1 or two innings. Or maybe a dude has a sore wrist, and they do not want him getting 3 at-bats.

“They primarily based residence-area edge in the playoffs on some thing when your incredibly finest players are not playing all nine innings. I did not realize that. The full technique was genuinely flawed, in my impression. I feel they did the correct point switching it back.”

It is really 1 of the most legendary photos in Midsummer Basic record. In 2002, then-MLB commissioner Bug Selig threw up his hands when each All-Star teams ran out of pitchers — and the video game was declared an 11-inning tie. Andy Lyons/Getty Images

Study Previous AND existing All-Stars, and they frequently concur that you will find a harmony to be struck between placing on a video game experience and reveling in the All-Star Video game perks, which vary from accumulating autographs and driving in Corvette Stingray convertibles at the pregame parade to landing front-row seats for the Dwelling Operate Derby.

MLB Players Association government director Tony Clark, a 2001 All-Star with the Detroit Tigers, thinks Earth Sequence residence-area edge was in no way the motivational force it was produced out to be. “I was lucky enough to participate in in the All-Star Video game and I saw the discussions in the clubhouse and the dugout, and these video games usually count,” Clark stated. “Irrespective of whether you are a pitcher or a hitter, you do not want to embarrass your self. You want to execute effectively for your self, your spouse and children, your staff and your league. That is not the headline now. But the truth is, the aim has usually been the similar and will go on to be the similar.”

Washington’s Bryce Harper applauded this year’s improve and stated he favors the new Earth Sequence residence-area edge rule. Several other stars in Miami stated they do not hope the tone of the video game to improve significantly less than the revised set up.

“I do not feel it’s heading to improve the way fellas compete,” Boston Purple Sox nearer Craig Kimbrel stated. “I do not feel a dude is heading to consider and strike a ball farther or toss a ball more challenging just since residence-area edge in the Earth Sequence is on the line. As specialist athletes, we want to gain every video game we participate in, so I do not see why this video game would be any various.”

Baseball has usually grappled with how considerably the Midsummer Basic must issue. Aged-timers like to reminisce about Warren Giles’ barging into the clubhouse and firing up the troops with a pregame pep communicate throughout his tenure as National League president from 1951-1969. A calendar year after Giles’ retirement, Pete Rose took that inspirational concept to coronary heart when he bowled in excess of AL catcher Ray Fosse in a violent collision to score the successful run.

Check out out ESPN’s protection of the 88th Midsummer Basic at Marlins Park in Miami.

We stacked some of this year’s MLB All-Stars — as effectively as some recognizable names from the NFL and NBA — versus the Yankees’ six-foot-7, 282-pound rookie correct fielder.

Statistically, the 27-calendar year-outdated is the best participant in Marlins record — although that suggests a lot more about his franchise’s frequent turmoil than his manufacturing. Now, as the Midsummer Basic hits South Seashore, Stanton has a opportunity to glow brighter than at any time.

2 Linked

The box score from that 1970 All-Star Video game at Riverfront Stadium displays a bygone era. The two starting pitchers, Jim Palmer and Tom Seaver, just about every threw 3 innings, even though AL shortstop Luis Aparicio and left fielder Carl Yastrzemski logged 6 at-bats apiece.

The most new starting pitcher to go 3 innings in an All-Star Video game was Atlanta’s Greg Maddux in 1994, and the most new American League starter to accomplish the feat was Kansas City’s Bret Saberhagen in 1987. As the several years handed, baseball did almost everything but hand out participation trophies to make certain every participant appeared in the video game and followers acquired to see their team’s star in action.

Disaster struck in 2002, in commissioner Bud Selig’s hometown of Milwaukee, when All-Star managers Joe Torre and Bob Brenly ran out of pitchers. The video game ended in an uncomfortable 7-7, 11-inning tie, and Selig was photographed in an awkward pose — hands lifted with an expression that fell someplace between beseeching and bewildered — that set him up for substantial ridicule.

Manfred, who was operating as baseball’s main labor law firm at the time, defends the final decision to website link the video game to Earth Sequence residence-area edge, even although he was in favor of jettisoning it past winter season.

“At the time we went to ‘This Time It Counts,’ it was critical in terms of trying to keep the All-Star Video game as a genuinely leading amusement item,” Manfred stated. “I know some persons like to be essential of leagues when they’re responsive to their broadcast companions. But the reality of the issue is our broadcast companions, specifically for our jewel gatherings, are genuinely critical to us. The All-Star Video game is an critical element of marketing the video game, and Fox genuinely felt this improve was critical in terms of building the video game competitive.

“From time to time improve sends a concept that is critical. If you go back 15-16 several years, we had fellas playing a few of innings and leaving the clubhouse — matters you just do not see any more. ‘This Time It Counts’ was element of a interaction to the players as to how critical the All-Star Video game is to our video game in the massive photo.”

All-Star Video game rosters have changed from 30 to 34 to 32 since the 2002 tie in Milwaukee, and Manfred stated diligent pregame pitching strategies mapped out with respective managers must stop the kind of nightmare circumstance that approximately transpired at Yankee Stadium in 2008, when the video game lasted 15 innings and David Wright and J.D. Drew came perilously shut to coming in to pitch.

That stated, Manfred is trying to keep an open up brain. He doesn’t rule out the risk of the All-Star Video game 1 working day adopting the tiebreaker rule utilized in the Earth Baseball Basic, in which runners are stationed on 1st and next bases at the begin of the 11th inning.

“People today ended up pretty essential of us using that in the small leagues, but the reality of the issue is, if you saw it in the WBC video games, it was pretty exciting,” Manfred stated. “For an exhibition video game, would we communicate about that? Yeah, we’d communicate about that. Would we do it? I do not know.

“Supplied that the All-Star Video game is not a standard-time video game, it’s a large amount much easier to communicate about principles that might be made use of especially for that video game.”

Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright took some warmth after he prompt to reporters that he grooved a pitch to Derek Jeter throughout the 2014 All-Star Video game in Minnesota. Now that the video game is an exhibition again … allow the extra fat pitches fly! Rob Carr/Getty Images

Although “THIS TIME It Counts” was intended to raise Tv scores, its effect was questionable at finest. The declining audience for the All-Star Video game displays the shifting viewing behaviors of the American public — and the myriad selections obtainable to everyone with absolutely free time and a distant button.

At its peak in 1976, the All-Star Video game attracted an audience of 36 million persons on ABC. That was very good for a 27.1 ranking and a fifty three share. Final calendar year on Fox, the video game drew an all-time low of eight.7 million viewers, very good for a five.4 ranking and a 10 share.

The extensive-vary demographics are also worrisome. In 2016, the median age for the All-Star viewing audience was fifty four.six several years outdated.

That viewer erosion has taken place regardless of MLB’s initiatives to arrive at every marketplace. Players from all 30 teams are represented, and followers go on to pick the starting lineups and entire the rosters through the Final Vote.

“It was absurd. It was a horrible rule. If [the video game counted], we would have Clayton Kershaw throwing 5 innings and Max Scherzer throwing four, but you just won’t be able to do that. … The full technique was genuinely flawed in my impression. I feel they did the correct point switching it back.”

Adam Wainwright

The All-Star Game’s attraction as a signature occasion has genuinely been tempered by a shifting media landscape. Fans can splurge for the MLB More Innings package and see Choose dent the bleachers seven days a week, and interleague participate in has blurred the traces between the NL and AL.

Even so, MLB’s All-Star Video game carries on to outdraw the exhibitions of the other 3 important specialist sporting activities, all of which have struggled to develop identities for their all-star video games through the several years.

“The NFL has its struggles with the Professional Bowl,” stated Lee Berke, a sporting activities media consultant in New York. “Nobody would like to get injured. The NBA All-Star Video game is a fantastic offensive show, but no one would like to participate in protection. They’re trying to handle that. The NHL has arrive up with an interesting approach with three-on-three hockey and more quickly-paced video games, and that would seem to have captured people’s fancy.

“The point about the Key League Baseball All-Star Video game is it’s usually been legitimate. They’re playing a genuine video game, with persons sliding and hitting and playing protection. Supplied its longevity, it’s usually been the mark versus which other leagues have modeled their all-star video games.

“The idea that it ‘counts’ for some thing in no way genuinely factored into why persons observe in the 1st place. They tune in for a legitimate opposition with the best players going through just about every other in configurations you have in no way observed right before.”

Larry Walker lent some levity to the 1997 All-Star Video game when he turned close to and batted correct-handed — and turned his batting helmet close to too — versus Randy Johnson. AP Picture/Beth A. Keiser

WILL AN UNDETERMINED participant increase to the occasion with an act of spontaneous theater at the 2017 All-Star Video game, now that Earth Sequence residence-area edge is no more time driving on the final result? Historical past suggests an unscripted second of enjoyment is usually just a plot twist away.

Randy Johnson, the quintessential snarler, allow his hair down in the 1993 Midsummer Basic, when he unleashed a fastball in excess of John Kruk’s head all the way to the backstop. Kruk induced raucous laughter by feigning coronary heart palpitations right before flailing at a 3rd strike and returning to the dugout. In 1997, Colorado correct fielder Larry Walker created an face for the ages when he turned close to and batted from the correct facet, relatively than experience a Massive Device slider left-handed.

During the 2002 tie in Milwaukee, Minnesota’s Torii Hunter climbed the wall and robbed Barry Bonds of a residence run, and Bonds responded by lifting Hunter in the air in a display of interleague bonding. Warren Giles would not have been delighted.

The tone changed in new several years, when players who strove to entertain located themselves on the defensive. In 2012, Detroit pitcher Justin Verlander appeared to be undermining the “This Time It Counts” ethic when he talked about lights up the radar gun and giving the group a show after he gave up 5 1st-inning runs in an eight- loss. Final calendar year, David Ortiz engaged in a playfully bewildering give-and-consider with the late Jose Fernandez, who prompt that he was heading to toss a cookie as a parting reward for the retiring Massive Papi.

Wainwright was pilloried for failing to consider the video game severely enough and exhibiting disrespect to Jeter by implying that the Yankees’ captain wanted a assisting hand for his 1st-inning double in 2014.

Wainwright, who told reporters he required to give Jeter a few of “pipe shots,” maintains to this working day that he was playing to gain, intended no disrespect to Jeter and was simply just guilty of a terrible choice of words and phrases. But he also understands that the All-Star Video game is an exhibition, and some of the fondest recollections that players consider from the occasion are only peripherally similar to baseball.

“It is really a enjoyment knowledge,” Wainwright stated. “You want to sit there and communicate shop with Clayton Kershaw and Madison Bumgarner. A few of several years in a row, I performed cards with Freddie Freeman and Craig Kimbrel. I viewed Michael Cuddyer do magic methods. I rode in the parade. The video game is enjoyment, too. But it’s genuinely just validation for all the difficult perform you have done to get there.”

As Wainwright’s friends assemble in Miami for this year’s video game, they’re freed from the restraints of a flawed technique and at liberty to have all the enjoyment they want. The fans’ reaction, as usually, will be the supreme barometer of whether or not Manfred and baseball’s final decision-makers produced the correct simply call.

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[junker-town]

Southampton 2016-17 season review: Results, roster changes, and summer transfer targets

A forgettable season could trigger a managerial change at Southampton.

On first glance, it hasn’t been a bad season for Southampton. Eighth place in the Premier League and a trip to Wembley for the EFL Cup final — where they were unfortunate to be beaten by Manchester United — are two fine achievements, and certainly not dramatically beneath what a club of their size can realistically expect. It can’t have been easy for manager Claude Puel to fill the boots of Ronald Koeman, though the Frenchman ostensibly did a perfectly respectable job.

However, close inspection will reveal ongoing discontent among Saints supporters. Aside from the three relegated clubs, only Watford and Burnley scored fewer goals in the Premier League this season; and Saints supporters witnessed only two home wins in the league after December. Put it like that, and the rumours suggesting Puel’s head is on the chopping block begin to make more sense. A decision is expected in the next few days.

What went right

We should be wary of assuming Puel had an easy job at Southampton. They may well appear an established Premier League club, but each summer at St. Mary’s tends to come with the departure of at least one or two senior squad members. Last summer it was actually three: Sadio Mané, Gradiano Pellè and Victor Wanyama — key first-team players — all departed; veteran defender José Fonte followed suit in January. Add to that the fact that Koeman himself also left, and the job looks a rather unenviable one.

So for the Saints to finish in the top half of the table is no mean feat, especially considering Puel’s often had to rely on fielding youngsters. It’s easy to understand why supporters would be discontent at his negative tactics, but they should be careful what they wish for — the bitter experience of other Premier League clubs can prove the old adage that the grass really isn’t always greener on the other side.

What went wrong

To put it simply, Southampton just haven’t scored enough goals. Remarkably, of the nine Premier League home games Southampton have played in 2017, they've failed to score in six of them — including each of the last five. The murmurs of discontent are more understandable when you consider the expense paid by the matchgoing fan.

Of course, Puel would argue — with considerable merit — that his tactics steered his club comfortably through what could have been a turbulent period, that the ends justify the means, and give the Saints a strong base on which to build next season. But to swashbuckle is the English way, and even at a club like Southampton — often seen as a model of progressive thinking — results cannot come at the cost of entertainment. It’ll be very interesting to see whether the board agree, or whether they consider Puel too safe a pair of hands to sack.

Reasons for optimism

Southampton head into the summer in quite a relaxing situation. Their squad is almost certainly too good to go down next season, but their star players not quite good enough to be plundered by Liverpool bigger clubs. Virgil van Dijk and Ryan Bertrand are sure to attract some attention, but the Saints may be able to put up a more stubborn fight to keep them than they have some of their former talents. Add to that the attacking firepower demonstrated by Manolo Gabbiadini after his arrival from Napoli in January, and it seems clear that Southampton still have hope for improvement.

It’s unlikely that we’ll see them challenging for the Champions League any time soon; if this season has demonstrated anything, it’s that the period of inexorable improvement at St. Mary’s is certainly over. But they’re about as solid a mid-table club as it’s possible to be, and one with the talent to seriously challenge for the domestic cups. Can supporters really ask for much more than that?

What they need this summer

Southampton have no obvious areas of weakness, meaning we can expect them to follow the patient transfer strategy that has served them so well over the last few seasons. They scout well, buy low and sell high, and it’s little wonder that they’re once again being linked with players from far afield. Galatasaray’s Portuguese attacker Bruma is one such name, and at only 22, the youth international looks like a very Southampton kind of player. He could also offer the kind of penetrative wing-play the Saints’ record signing Sofiane Boufal failed to provide in an underwhelming first season in the Premier League.

Bruma’s young compatriot Rúben Semedo, currently of Sporting Lisbon, has long been linked with a move to St. Mary's, and too ticks many of Southampton’s boxes. Supporters may worry that his arrival could pave the way for the departure of van Dijk — both play in central defence — but it’s certainly better for the Saints to be well-prepared in the event a big club is willing to drop an extortionate fee on the Dutchman this summer.

However, given their lack of goalscoring prowess, current rumours suggest attacking players are top of Southampton’s wish list. Chris Wood enjoyed a prolific season with Leeds United in the Championship and has attracted interest from the Premier League, while Nigerian teenager Henry Onyekuru has shot to prominence after an impressive season at Belgium’s Eupen. Both should be relatively affordable and eminently gettable, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see either donning the red and white stripes next season.

Any other transfers are likely to be based on who exits and how much Southampton gets for them, which is a bit of a mystery at the moment. Van Dijk seems most likely to leave, and he’ll collect a massive fee if he does. You might see Southampton get a big more ambitious with their signings if he collects their biggest ever sale price.

[sherristockman]

Simple Brain Training Techniques Can Turn You Into a Memory Master Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola How’s your memory these days? If you’re like most, you could probably use some help in this area. Your memory holds a record of your entire life and helps shape your identity, but the ability to form memories does not occur until around the age of five. In the video above, two-time world memory champion Alex Mullen and fellow medical student Cathy Chen explain a memorization system called Memory Palace, also known as Method of Loci,1 which can help you improve your short-term recall. The process involves using a space or location you’re familiar with to memorize unfamiliar or new things. The reason it works so well is because most people have very good spatial and visual memory. As noted by Chen, “Visualizing an image makes it way more memorable and interesting to your brain than, say, random names or numbers.” As an example, Chen and Mullen explain how you might memorize items on your grocery shopping list. You probably know your dining room really well, so to memorize “eggs” on your list, mentally travel into your dining room, look at a bowl of, say, fruit, and imagine a hen has laid eggs in your fruit bowl. Then, when you’re in the store, you can mentally travel around the space (your dining room), recall the bowl of fruit — and the funny image of eggs laid in the bowl. Another example: Imagine toothpaste smeared all over your placemats. When you recall the placemats, you automatically remember the item on your list, namely the toothpaste. You Too Can Become a Memory Master According to recent research,2,3,4 anyone can become a memory master by training their brain using these kinds of techniques. In fact, people who had never used memory techniques prior to the study were able to master it, and in just six weeks, their brains began resembling those of the world’s top-ranked memory masters. The study also confirmed what Chen and Mullen say — that the memory centers in memory masters’ brains communicate very strongly with their visual and spatial centers, and this appears to be a key to their impressive feats of memorization. As noted by CNN:5 “[Researcher Boris Nikolai] Konrad said this is because of how memory athletes train: by picturing familiar places and filling them with imaginary objects, like a cow eating moss to represent the city of Moscow.” Essentially, what you’re doing is improving and expanding the connectivity between different centers in your brain. You’re not altering the actual structure. Compared to using a technique like Memory Palace, memory training involving repetition showed only minor gains in recall. They also didn’t improve the connectivity in their brain, which was evaluated using brain scans. If you want to try it out or learn more about Memory Palace, visit MemoCamp.com.6 Other mnemonic devices — tools to help you remember words, information or concepts — include using: Acronyms (such as PUG for "pick up grapes") Visualizations (such as imagining a tooth to remember you have a dentist's appointment) Rhymes (if you need to remember a name, for instance, think "Shirley's hair is curly) Chunking, which is breaking up information into smaller "chunks" (such as organizing numbers into the format of a phone number) Other Activities That Help Improve Memory and Keep Your Brain Sharp Advances in brain research have revealed the human brain has remarkable plasticity, or the ability to regenerate and form new connections throughout your life. “Use it or lose it” applies here, and previous research7 has shown engaging in stimulating social activities, artistic pursuits and crafts such as knitting or quilting8 help keep your mind sharper with age and prevent cognitive decline. As reported in the Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services:9 “Chess and bridge are leisure activities that demand working memory and reasoning skills. Older adults who play bridge score higher on working memory and reasoning measures compared to non-players and working crossword puzzles has also been associated with maintained cognition in older adults.” Other helpful pastimes include the following: • Learn a new language. Language lessons have been shown to provide a beneficial brain workout and increase neuronal connections10 • Meditate. While it may seem you’re not doing much of anything in terms of challenging your brain when meditating, research shows it alters the structure of your brain for the better and has a number of neurological benefits, including improved attention and concentration11 • Listen to Mozart. It's long been theorized that listening to music may boost your brainpower; you've probably heard of the "Mozart Effect," which suggests listening to classical music can help make you smarter. Indeed, research12 shows people who listen to Mozart’s classical music have an increase in brain wave activity linked to memory, understanding and problem solving. Interestingly, music composed by Beethoven showed no such effect. According to the researchers:13 “These results may be representative of the fact that Mozart's music is able to “activate” neuronal cortical circuits (circuits of nerve cells in the brain) related to attentive and cognitive functions” • Sniff rosemary oil. Engaging your olfactory senses may also have an effect on memory. Smells get routed through your olfactory bulb, the smell-analyzing region in your brain, which is closely connected to your amygdala and hippocampus, brain regions that handle memory and emotion. One study14 found people who sniffed rosemary essential oil performed better on memory tasks than those who did not. The aroma of peppermint has also been shown to enhance memory and increase alertness. Indeed, research shows that odors are especially effective as reminders of past experience, much more so than cues from other senses, such as sights or sounds15 • Laugh it up. Laughter has been shown to improve memory by reducing levels of the stress hormone cortisol.16 As explained by study co-author Lee Berk, doctor of public health: "It's simple, the less stress you have the better your memory. Humor reduces detrimental stress hormones like cortisol that decrease memory hippocampal neurons, lowers your blood pressure, and increases blood flow and your mood state … There are even changes in brain wave activity towards what's called the gamma wave band frequency, which also amp up memory and recall. So, indeed, laughter is turning out to be not only a good medicine, but also a memory enhancer …" Sources to Add to Your Brain Training Arsenal If you’re not quite ready to take up a foreign language, piano lessons or knitting, you may still be able to bolster the growth of new brain cells and neural connections by challenging your mind with various games and puzzles. Here are a few resources you can try: • Lumosity:17 This brain-training app provides personalized brain workouts using more than 50 different cognitive games designed to boost memory, attention, problem solving and more. • Brain HQ:18 Developed by Michael Merzenich, Ph.D., professor emeritus at the University of California, who has pioneered research in brain plasticity (neuroplasticity) for more than 30 years, Brain HQ is a computer-based brain-training program that can help you sharpen a range of skills, from reading and comprehension to improved memorization and more. Like Lumosity, the website allows you to track and monitor your progress over time. While there are many similar websites, Brain HQ is one of the oldest and most widely used. • Iota: Iota19 is a card game involving placing cards in grids according to simple rules that require complex moves and strategic thinking on your part. This game must be played with at least one other person, so it makes for a fun social activity while also improving spatial relation skills, visual discrimination and strategic thinking. • The Puzzle Book. Nancy Linde's “399 Games, Puzzles and Trivia Challenges”20 is a popular book with games designed to improve neurogenesis, or the formation of new brain cells. Each puzzle is designed to get your brain thinking in new ways and targets cognitive functions such as logical thought, language and attention. Physical Exercise Also Boosts Cognitive Functions and Memory Last, but certainly not least, no article on improving memory would be complete without at least a brief mention of physical exercise. As noted by psychiatrist Dr. John J. Ratey, author of “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain,” there’s overwhelming evidence that exercise produces large cognitive gains and helps fight dementia. For example, studies show those who exercise have a greater volume of gray matter in the hippocampal region, which is important for memory.21,22 Exercise also prevents age-related shrinkage of your brain,23 preserving both gray and white matter in your frontal, temporal and parietal cortexes, thereby preventing cognitive deterioration.24,25 One of the mechanisms by which your brain benefits from physical exercise is via a protein called brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Exercise initially stimulates the production of a protein called FNDC5, which in turn triggers the production of BDNF, which is a remarkable rejuvenator. In your brain, BDNF preserves existing brain cells26 and activates brain stem cells to convert into new neurons, effectively making your brain grow larger. Another mechanism at play here relates to a substance called β-hydroxybutyrate, which your liver produces when your metabolism is optimized to burn fat as fuel.27 Your brain can use both glucose and fat for fuel, but the latter is preferred. When glucose is depleted from exercise, your hippocampus switches over to use fat as a source of energy, and it is this fuel switchover that triggers the release of BDNF and subsequent cognitive improvement. When your blood sugar level declines, β-hydroxybutyrate serves as an alternative source of energy. That said, β-hydroxybutyrate also blocks histone enzymes that inhibit the production of BDNF. So, it seems your body is designed to improve BDNF production via a number of different pathways in response to physical exercise. Interestingly, research also shows that exercising four hours after learning something new helps you retain what you’ve just learned long-term.28,29 The same effect was not found when the exercise was done immediately after learning. Why this four-hour delay boosted memory retention is still unclear, but it appears to have something to do with the release of catecholamines, such as dopamine and norepinephrine — naturally occurring chemicals in your body known to improve memory consolidation. One way to boost these catecholamines is through exercise, and apparently delayed exercise is part of the equation. One of the best ways to have your body create ketones is to teach it to burn fat as your primary fuel. Not only will this radically improve your memory and brain function but will address the primary cause of chronic disease, which is mitochondrial dysfunction. One of the most effective ways to learn how to burn fat as your primary fuel is my new book "Fat for Fuel" which can be pre-ordered now with some exciting bonuses.