#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.

[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

[mw-draws]

any zelda fans out there?

[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......

[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.

[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

[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...

[letthestorieslive]

3 and 30 for ao3 wrapped?

Hi spike, thanks for sending this <3

3. What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits) ?

Honestly, I am so proud of every fic I wrote this year. Because I managed to write in english, which is so not my first language (and sometime words are hard and languages just kind of merge in my head and what I'm saying or writing doesn't make sense anymore), and because I managed to write on a tight time schedule (5 fics in two months, which three and a half of them were written in one month for Scottuary).

I guess that if I have to choose one tho, it would probably be (Help) I'm Alive. It was the first fic I wrote this year and that fic has history : I rewrote it a lot, discarded it because of frustration, worked on it again, put it on hold to work on developing other ideas, deleted almost everything, rewrote some sections, deleted other sections, paused it again to start writing another fic and came back to it hit by inspiration.

30. Biggest surprise while writing this year ?

Working with a beta reader, hands down.

I've told @scribeoffate several times that I was thinking about asking someone to be my beta reader to see if it was something that could work for me but my shy ass never acted on it. Until last December and it was like one of the best decision I made that month ? I definitely got more confident as grammar and spelling were correctly correct this time (and it was my biggest mental block when writing in another language).

And the back and forth was SO GOOD !! Maybe because I had like the greatest mind as a beta (@momentofmemory i'm forever grateful <3) but talking about some sections of fic, and how to make it more flowing was really great. Like Anatomy of Healing Aching Scars would not be the same without her. So yeah, a really good surprise.

[bigbluetrans]

those koco trials go from 0 to 100 real quick and by that I mean what the fuck is the master king koco's trial

[impossible-rat-babies]

no don’t like watching ultimate/savage raids for the mechs—it’s for the Music. It’s for the STORY