#game master struggles

[luckthebard]

Would have posted more about running Call of the Netherdeep for D&D today but I was too distracted because….

they are still making their way through the Betrayer’s Rise section and my girlfriend is out of town so they were jagering her character and I almost killed her character outright with a chasme. While she wasn’t there! I was a little stressed. 😭😭

Luckily Tyler the frat boy Chronurgy wizard used Chronal Shift after my player remembered at the last minute she could do it and we undid the attack when my reroll missed.

For real though, this was not supposed to be that deadly an encounter but they were rolling shit and I had like 10 natural 20s. Dr. Gordo, our elderly former dentist, ended the encounter with a max HP of 2.

I guess DMing is like that sometimes but players know that’s STRESSFUL from the DM side.

[vaguely-concerned]

on the one hand I think inner demons could stand to have a bit more romanced rook specific content, but on the other hand the underlying in-built implication that 'yours is the one true voice of comfort and safety in my inner world' is a sentiment and intimacy so way beyond the romantic or the platonic or any secret third thing you could care to name that it makes me lose my entire poor little mind a bit. it's so big and fundamental — near-existential — that in that exact moment at least the distinctions kind of seem irrelevant.

all the people lucanis' mind conjures up along the way are relationships he has that are unavoidably mixed and fraught in some ways even when they're also full of love (they are fraught BECAUSE they're full of love) — the good in them inseparable from things that hurt him at the same time. (it's about: the basic disorganized attachment patterns this poor guy is dragging around with him. careful with those, they're dellamorte heirlooms. what you love also inevitably hurts you and you won't be allowed to have one without the other, you have to surrender parts of your soul to hold on to what little you have left: this is the story up until now.) and the idea that rook isn't that to him — that beneath the fear of wanting them when romanced (which is more its own separate thing because within this psychology, actively wanting something and not just clinging on for dear life to even a meager status quo lest you lose it is in itself dangerous bordering on catastrophic), this is a relationship where there isn't resentment, or guilt, or shame, or dread, or rage, or self-hate, or any of the other emotions that keep him paralyzed, unable to move this way or that. no debts, nothing owed of yourself and your soul's substance except what you can freely and safely and happily give. love and freedom don't coexist — but, I mean, you're almost starting to make me think........... unless...👀👀👀. the unconditional and undramatic 'you are here and I am here with you, you can be exactly how you are right now with me and it's safe for us both even though you're afraid it won't be, I'm not going anywhere' acceptance rook shows him here that he returns to them in the big romance scene, when it's rook who needs it. the way he's just. standing there in the center of it all, like a child desperately helplessly waiting to be found, hiding in the place he hopes you'll know to look first. (rook does know. it's one of the first things they say in there.)

in short the most important room in his little mind palace for the romance is the very first room — the one where rook isn't. where, in fact, rook cannot be, because they disprove the entire structure of the place with their existence and presence in his life. with everyone else he's putting words in their mouths about what they think of him, and rook is the one who actually gets to come in to speak their own words to him — and have him listen. ('he'll listen to you, he always listens to you', 'your voice is a comfort'.) of course rook isn't present anywhere else in there — at the risk of stating the obvious to a tedious degree, they aren't one of the locks, they're bringing the key. in the very finest 'the messenger and the message' sort of way.

[delta-m]

I'm pretty sure this is a relatable mood for GMs.

[chelsiegeorgia]

Oh Super Sonic how I love thee

[thefirstknife]

Getting real sick of a certain subset of Destiny players complaining that it’s a baby game and crying to Bungie to nerf exotics and abilities when their ENTIRE POINT IS TO BE STRONG in specific ways as if they are being locked into using them.

IF YOU WANT AN EXTRA CHALLENGE STOP BEING SUCH A DPS GOBLIN AND JUST EQUIP SOMETHING THATS NOT TOP TIER META AND STOP COMPLAINING JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

MOOD. Go off.

It's incredibly annoying to me. They always use the argument of "the game should FORCE me to do things, I should not SELF-IMPOSE challenges." And like. ? I'm sorry but what? It's a video game for a big audience, it's here to be playable and accessible to the widest possible playerbase. There are plenty of ways to make the game difficult for yourself, so knock yourself out if that's your thing, but don't force others into it.

Like, I enjoy hard content, I regularly at least attempt day 1 raids, I do master raids, GMs, solo and solo flawless content and all that. But only when I want to. Sometimes I don't and I don't want to suffer in a patrol zone or struggle in a seasonal activity I'm doing for the story. The majority of the players don't want that. Designing games for the professional gamers only has NEVER been a good idea and never will be. Fifty streamers can't sustain a video game. It needs casual players who will want to come back to the game instead of feeling defeated.

One of the reasons I really enjoy helping others is because I know that casual players tend to struggle in stuff that's basic activity for me. I've seen people unable to get through a strike. I've sat for 10 minutes rezing someone who couldn't do the jump in a seasonal activity. I want those people to be able to play basic content without feeling frustrated and I want them to know that there are people out there who will help them out.

And this doesn't apply just to basic content, although it should start with that. I think all dungeons and raids and everything should be things that all players can complete. Fine, doing a master raid with all challenges should be tough, but it should be achievable with time and practice, not impossible. What a lot of these "pros" want is just completely divorced from reality.

It takes days and days of practice every time a new master raid is out for me and my team (all with thousands of hours of playtime) to get comfortable to finally finish it. We're far from casual players and it still takes a lot of time to be able to finish hard content. Making it even harder is insane to me. Like, if something is so hard that my team full of people, each with 5000+ hours of playtime and a coordinated team that's been raiding together for years now can't finish it, that means it's absolutely impossible for probably 90% of the playerbase. That's wild to me. Raids and GMs should have more people playing them. If master raids are too easy for you, Mr. I-Play-Destiny-For-A-Living, that's on you buddy. Unequip the super god tier god roll meta guns and loadouts or play something else.

And ofc, another excuse they make is "if I don't use meta, I am not going to win a raid race!" Then don't. Idk. Let me play you the tiniest violin. This affects literally nobody except a grand total of 50 people. Run your meta in day 1, and play with random shit otherwise. Play raids with all white weapons. Play without mods. Play without a HUD. Do things solo only. I don't know, make up a way to spice things up for yourself. I'm not interested in that and neither are 99% of the players out there. The game is genuinely hard enough for the majority of the players. On top of that, I am here to feel like a powerful space fantasy superhero. I am NOT here to die to dregs in patrol zones. If there's ONE thing that I know for a fact that put people off from Lightfall (as in this year of Destiny), it's the difficulty changes. They're annoying, frustrating and for some a barrier to entry more than anything else.

[pixelatedraindrops]

please can we get more sick yuma, Man over works himself to much not to be, maybe collapsing at the crime scene?

oh there's always time for more sick yuma >:3

so in chapter 1:

lack of sleep + 'sleeping' with the fan on w no blanket + walking in the rain = already getting a bit sick/feverish

then he saw the corpse w pink blood and his brain was fried

…and frankly I have no idea how he'll get out of this mess... XD

[momentomori24]

Does anyone think about how isolated Fubuki might feel being the only one to keep her memories after rewinding time? Considering the amount of trouble she gets herself into or gets dragged into, ranging from relatively harmless to downright dangerous, how many times did she have to turn back time to save herself or someone else? She can get hurt or find herself in deadly danger, and while her powers can erase that ever having truly happened, they can't erase her memories. Someone could be injured or die on her watch and then just walk and talk to her like nothing ever happened, but she'd still remember. And that's the worst part: she remembers what happened, actually experienced it herself, but it never really happened. Not as far as anyone else is concerned. While she lives with whatever trauma she endured, everyone else remains completely indifferent and the world continues on the same. How alone do you feel living like that?

And it's not even like this all could've just happened before she arrived in Kanai Ward. She literally deals with this a bunch of times in the game. Whenever Yuma screws up in Chapter 3, Yakou being stabbed by the hitman in Chapter 4, that guy that fell from the casino in her DLC-- she has go back to prevent tragedy over and over again, and she only manages to save two of three people mentioned in the end. She had to live through watching Yakou dying, bleeding out on that floor twice, unable to do anything about it twice. Not to mention god knows how many times Yuma almost got them run over or blown into bits when failing to disable the bombs or caught by peacekeepers. Not to mention the two times the casino guy died on her before she unintentionally saved his life (by having him crash land onto her taxi which is already scary enough).

All this would be fucked up on its own, but her really spotty memory isn't doing her any favours at all (hell, her Forte might even be part of the reason she's as scatter-brained as she is). It kinda makes me wonder how she differentiates between what truly happened and what happened before she rewinded time (so what technically didn't happened). If she even can, that is. I would've loved to see a throwaway scene where she randomly mentions something that that only she knows happened or perfectly predicts the very near future only for someone to be like "wtf are you talking about" and brushing it off as typical Fubuki weirdness as a little hint of her Forte before its actual reveal.

Fubuki is pretty strong to deal with all the shit that gets thrown at her and still choose to be as happy and compassionate and optimistic as she is, but I'm so glad she had Yuma to lean on and didn't have to shoulder that burden of knowledge and the physical strain alone, even if it was only for a while. She deserves to finally confide in someone and some mental relief after all the times she didn't have anyone, I think. Her ability may be the most OP one out of everyone, but it's a blessing as much as it is a curse.

[wackpedion]

RAINCODERS

send me a character (or ship even!) and i'll assign them an MSI song!!! I have been wanting to do this for a while but decided to put it off until i was more familiar with their entire discography and at last... i think im ready......

[mw-draws]

any zelda fans out there?

[cephalofrog]

noah caldwell-gervais is the only motherfucker to have ever been correct about dark souls and elden rings' difficulty. no one else understands

[yewphoric]

Languages! How many do they speak? Are they literate?

If they can, what’s their fighting style? If they’re a mage, how do they handle being silenced or running out of magicka?

For Ragnar!

:D

16. Languages! How many do they speak? Are they literate?

Ragnar speaks Ta'agra and Tamrielic fluently, and enough to get around in Nordic, Dunmeri, Altmeri, and Bretic (some he's better at than others). He's not super literate. He can read basic words and such, but it was never taught to him, so he struggles to read higher-level things. He can also only read in Ta'agra and Tamrielic. Writing is an entirely different matter, as he's never really had to write. That's something Jenais has to teach him. Interesting aside: Learning the dragon language comes super easy, as does learning to read it. It feels natural to him.

17. If they can, what’s their fighting style? If they’re a mage, how do they handle being silenced or running out of magicka?

He's pretty adaptable, actually! The only thing he really struggles with is using heavy weapons, as he likes to be quick on his feet. The fighting style he favors the most and pretty much exclusively uses through his story is duel-wielding war axes. It likes the agility and damage it gets out of them. Despite its hefty build, Ragnar is surprisingly quick, and relies on dodging and weaving out of the way of attacks rather than blocking with a shield.

[rowanthestrange]

So, question. Do we think it’s Missy deliberately playing up with the neighbour re: The TARDIS cus she’s a bitch? Or she got ‘de-fobwatched’/mind-overtaken shortly into the plot?

Cus that scene is there for a reason.

[borealopelta]

DON HUME WAS A GEOLOGIST ❓❓❓

[sophfandoms53]

Putting Ratcole, Cameron, Frankie, and Cauliflower on the same level of legendary status as Britney, Taylor, Danielle, Josh, and Xavier is kinda nuts imo

[deadallover]

Idk why everyone hated her so much. She's my autistic gf

[maxwell-mtv]

The most painful part of writing fanfic, I think, is when I can no longer write my favorite characters in character because my brain has shifted all its focus towards another fandom. Apparently my brain works like my first iPhone where I needed to constantly delete old stuff to make room for the new... only for there to be remnants of the old stuff, just not the useful stuff...