#hopefully this isn't too dense to read :'D

[tr0v3]

Welcome To The Trove

An Indie Game Blog!

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Hello! My name is Matt, and I often wonder with these kind of things...where do we start? Will people be confused? Do I need more exposition, or less?

For those of you who want it, here is a more detailed breakdown of what this blog is about!

If you feel like you got all the memo you needed from 'indie game blog', then feel free to get reading on any of the other articles here!

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So why is it called 'The Trove'?

I'm usually not great at coming up with names for projects/accounts/social media pages - almost all of my others were named by someone else! For this though, I knew I needed one word, a word that was simple and memorable, but also unique and meaningful. 'Trove' checks all of those boxes, and connotes the idea of hidden treasures, which I think perfectly suits the premise of covering indie games - they might not be the most obscure ones ever, but hopefully this blog will showcase and highlight some of the amazing things to be found in games that might not get as much attention!

What kind of articles do I post?

Essays! Not just game reviews, not just opinion pieces, but proper articles with theses - there's no point in writing bog-standard 'game good because xyz' articles when its been done a million times already. Hopefully this blog succeeds in bringing more complex and nuanced discussions about the finer points of these brilliant, underrated videogames.

Its vital to me that these aren't bland, simplistic articles that lack substance, but I'm also conscious about sounding too academic/dense for my audience, so I'm aiming for 1000 words maximum on all of my articles (but if I use fancy words you don't know, look them up in a dictionary!)

No, the games I write about aren't neccessarily the most obscure ones ever (I'm aiming for more well known ones to begin with anyways), and no, not every essay will be absolutely mind-blowing, but that leads into my next question...

What makes this blog unique?

I'm a historian, and even in Public History I don't see videogames discussed much! Books, Radio, Film & TV, they all have decades of well-established historiography and respect as mediums of literature, art and even education - but videogames? Not so much...

With this in mind, I want to use the transferable skills I've garnered at university to bring more in-depth debate and analysis to videogames than you typically see online! This isn't a history blog, but maybe I could sneak in one or two posts about the historicality of certain games...

In any case, my endeavour is bring about nuance and complexity, but with a fun and stylish writing style!

That's all for now!

Perhaps I'll update this and turn it into some kind of FAQs...otherwise, please follow and share this blog, I would love to see engagement grow! Thank you for reading =D

[acealistair]

THANK U @dorianpavus @beesbeesfearfear

this is gonna be long so

first, some context: i play Finch, an arcane trickster rogue who is a high elven princess, but also a tiefling. the big antagonist of this arc is a high elf named Lord Frost, who is the lead spymaster of my dad the elven empire and a very high level wizard (he was slinging 7th level spells at us in our first fight; we are only level 7 ourselves). he's been around for who knows how many centuries and is directly responsible for carrying out terrorist operations against the wood elves, who the high elves very much want to conquer. our party has traveled to the continent the wood elves live on for tangential reasons i won't get into, but that's how/why we ran into the guy.

Frost ends up manipulating us, very much against our will, into retrieving some powerful, proto-elven artifact for him from a mysterious ruin. early on into the journey, we're trying to figure out how we're gonna turn the tables on him, bc we absolutely don't want to enable his plans, and also fuck him on a personal level bc he messed with us. i recall that i JUST SO HAPPEN to have a scroll of true polymorph (yes, the 9th level spell) on me, granted to me during a heist i pulled via a very fortunate roll on a loot table. wouldn't it be so satisfying if we could polymorph Frost into something small and humiliating and crush him???

we formulated a loose plan to have our warlock, Donahue, fake his death one way or another and then tail us back to Frost, where he would cast the spell from the shadows to catch him off-guard. Donahue was specifically chosen bc he has the lucky feat and the highest arcana score of everyone. when exactly would he fake his death? and how was he gonna track us on his own with a -1 to survival? dunno, we'd figure it out! this was a month or two ago in real time.

fast-forward to today's session; we're at the end of the ruin and the room the artifact is in has this "statue" of an ancient priest/mage that we quickly deduce had been petrified, and he's holding a book with an ancient spell on it called "devour sunlight." our cleric is able to learn this spell but doesn't know exactly what it does, and we also determine that the dude was touched by an Actual God and are getting the vibe that maybe he was petrified because he'd dared to cast it.

after that, we defeat two big scary robotic guardians with much more ease than anticipated and get our hands on the artifact, so we're feeling pretty good, and are trying to figure out how to transport the artifact safely when suddenly there's a flash of light on the floor above us, and we all immediately assume correctly that Frost had unexpectedly arrived in person to take it right then and there.

we fucking PANIC. our ranger tells Donahue to drop and act like he's dead, and our cleric makes him chug the feign death potion we'd prepared. the rest of us are sitting there going "WAIT! DONAHUE CAN'T CAST THE SPELL IF HE'S FUCKING DEAD!" all of us for a solid few seconds think we've utterly fucked up our plan. luckily our DM hints that the paladin can wake him back up with lay on hands, so they slap him and he's very confused but i message him to keep acting like he's dead but be ready to cast the spell.

Frost reveals himself, and somehow our confusion and distress works in our favor, actually helping us be more convincing in our fake grief. Opal, our dragonborn cleric, had actually legit started crying bc she thought she'd botched the plan, and rolled a nat 20 deception check when Frost was scrutinizing us. Donahue also rolls a decent performance check.

Frost goes "oh, i'm sor-- no, i can't even pretend i care." this pisses Opal off, bc how dare he show so little respect even for fake dead, and she decides to. try out that nifty, potentially cursed new spell she just learned and has NO IDEA what it does.

what it does is deal 46 damage to Frost despite him succeeding the saving throw, but then does 23 damage to Opal in turn. so that's fun!

but of course this prompts everyone to roll initiative. NONE of us, including our DM, were expecting to fight Frost this session!!

Frost rolls first on initiative and takes his turn. to cast feeblemind. on Opal. and succeeds. so now our healer has 1 intelligence, 1 charisma, can't cast spells, and can only make the save to end the spell once every 30 DAYS. at least she can still fight 😭

but we don't have time to worry about that just yet, bc our barbarian goes in to attack, and it's worth noting that he's a lil dumb so he legit thought Donahue had died, so he's going all in yelling about avenging him.

then our ranger goes, and instead of attacking he has a big brain moment and runs up to grapple Frost, with the intention of binding his hands so he can't cast spells. one of the major risks with our polymorph plan is that we know Frost can cast counterspell, but if his hands are bound he can't do any spells with somatic components! ranger manages to grapple him (this is where the screaming irl begins) but it takes both of his attacks, so he can't try to tie the hands until his next turn.

but luckily it's my turn next, and of course i have a ridiculously good sleight of hand score, so i take it upon myself to finish the job and successfully tie Frost's hands (more screaming lol)

Donahue gives up the ruse now that Frost is restrained and distracted and attempts to cast the spell. it only takes two tries to get the roll (DC 19 arcana bc it's, y'know, a 9th level spell nbd) and the DM makes Frost's saving throw in front of everyone. HE ROLLS A NAT 1. (cue SO MUCH SCREAMING. this is where i cry for a hot second because omfg it worked)

so Frost, this at-least-level-15 wizard, is now a small rock, specifically with a crude etching of his face in it. Donahue runs off to go concentrate on the spell for an hour to make sure it's permanent while everyone else stands guard to make sure none of his cronies show up. they don't, and the spell goes permanent! however we do realize that it's possible for Frost to do some kind of soul transference if he truly dies, so we decide to keep him as a rock for now.

so yeah that was our session! it felt so on-brand for our group and D&D in general to turn a pretty dismal situation into our favor and actually pull off a ludicrous plan we had hahaha. so many small details worked in our favor, like how Frost showed up alone (bc he was cocky and didn't think we'd try anything after how he fucked us up the last fight we had with him). now we just gotta find someone to cast greater restoration on Opal 😭

anyone wanna hear about the amazing d&d session i just had 👉👈