#huge emotional dmg

[kacchanrawr]

KAVEH NATION IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED THIS YET PLS DO IT'S DEVASTATING

[dailyadventureprompts]

DM Tip: The Debt Always Comes Due

Isn't it weird how little we engage with gold as a real gameplay system? Sure, at low level wealth makes a great questhook, the party is usually hurting for a payout so that they can afford necessary gear upgrades/ubiquitous healing potion restocks/their next trip to the magic item shop. After a while though the promise of raw wealth loses its lustre, and the party is less likely to go out of their way to accept bounties, go off chasing treasuremaps, or accept gigs from shady patrons.

Generally I'd advise that this is a sign that your party are done being run of the mill sellswords, and it's time to hit them with a big epic questline that's focused more on emotional and narrative stakes than base currency. That said, sometimes you want to run a longer adventure arc that's centred around the acquisition of wealth, but to do that, you're going to need to go against the grain on one of the foundational assumptions that underpins D&D both mechanically and narratively.

TLDR: If you want your party to be motivated by gold past their first big pay off you should consider using a "wealth hurdle", which in short is a narrative and gameplay challenge that forces them to collect not only more gold than they already have but also more gold than they could get doing what they've been doing so far. This can be anything from a crimelord calling in a debt on them or one of their allies, a powerful monster swooping in and demanding tribute, comissioning some grand construction, or funding the defence of a region. Having the hurdle active should cause problems for the party, and not clearing the hurdle before a perdetermiend deadline will immensely bad things to happen. This will force the party to take risks they otherwise wouldn't, giving a high degree of focus to their subsequent adventures that they wouldn't have if they were content.

What we're trying to fix:

At it's core, D&D is a power fantasy, and a good chunk of its gameplay mechanics regardless of edition are about acquiring new strengths, options, and assets. These assumptions are likewise built into the genre and narrative structure of most campaigns: Heroes undertake quests usually for the promise of some reward, gain experiance/hit milestones along the way, and eventually stumble across some kind of loot drop at the end. There's nothing strictly wrong with this, but it does mean that all the resource problems the heroes face in the early game (and the inbuilt motivations that come along with them) are all but resolved by the time they hit the next gameplay tier.

This is complicated by the fact that outside of 3rd party options there's not much to spend money on. The DMG (which you should totally ignore) say you shouldn't let them buy magic items, and the common wisdom would say "let them buy a keep", but that solution only appeals a niche selection of adventuring parties.

Using Weath Hurdles turns acquiring gold not just into a quest goal but a gameplay challenge, forcing your party to scour the land for potential sources of wealth (and risk upsetting whoever or whatever happens to be currently holding it) and take on challenges they'd never normally attempt if there was only survival/personal enrichment at stake.

Food for Thought:

Tradional d&d structure has the party getting a huge payout at the end of their adventure in the form of a bosshoard or questgiver reward which is a very backloaded "you can have your dessert after you finish your greens" sort of attitude. Consider switching it up sometimes: have the party's patron or employer give them a small stipend to spend on kitting themselves out, have an early game treasure haul so the party can have a mid-arc shopping episode. This is especially useful in higher level games where your party may go weeks to months without a level up as it preserves the feeling of progression and gives them new toys to play with in between the big character defining abilities.

Recently I've been learning my way around blades in the dark (can't reccomend it enough btw), and just like any other time I've wanted to learn a new ttrpg system I'm having to do a bit of neural rewiring when it comes to figuring out how to write and run sessions of the game. Coin in BitD is both an XP (used for upgrading the party's shared crew sheet) a resource (burned to upgrade the results of various rolls) and a stat ( rolled to see if the players can lay their hands on various hard to come by items). It didn't really click for me until my first group messed up really badly on what was supposed to be their introductory adventure and pissed off the local crimeboss. I was just going to have him bully them, lock them up and then have a jailbreak the next session ( it's what I'd do in d&d), but on the fly I had the idea that he'd let them go with a massive debt they needed to pay off, which forced them to either pay him a percentage of their takings on all future jobs, or do small jobs in utmost secrecy so that they could build up their own strength under his nose.

Interestingly enough, the d&d game where I thought player wealth as a resource was most interestingly used was Dimension 20’s starstruck Odessy, which was a conversion of the amazing fanmade  starwars5e system. Starstruck is a parody of hypercapitalism and aptly uses money as both a narrative and gameplay feature. One character is stuck paying weekly insurance premiums on a debt he would never be able to pay down forcing him to act recklessly to acquire wealth in the immediate future. Another character was a economic and political power player and some of the best moments in the series come from her high stakes wheeling and dealing and bouncing money between accounts while the rest of the group engages in epic space battles; the rest of the crew might’ve barely got their ship out of the dogfight, but she’s the one who ensures they can pay for the repairs once they get to the space dock.   None of this would be possible without completely ignoring the normal constraints of wealth per level: gaining and losing huge sums based on moment by moment player decisions, The need for them to play along with the absurist gig economy to boost their rating and get better paying jobs, making a devil’s bargain with a corporate sponsor all so that they could risk their lives in a deadly arena fight all for the (very unlikely) chance of winning the equivalent of a million GP.  Not every campaign should, or even could so focus on money in this way, but it was FASCINATING to watch it in action. 

Artsource

[perryisle]

Yknow what? Ask games are freaking awesome here you go

💥🎭📦🌪️

yo thanks for all the asks man!! also for convenience im putting all my answers under a readmore bc im tired of scrolling past long ass posts on my own blog lol

answers below cut!!!

💥 COLLISON - what emotions do they have trouble dealing with?

SORRY i keep talking about vinny in these asks hes like the character with the most development or whatever. anyways he doesn’t really feel all that comfortable with feeling/showing empathy + receiving it too (throughout most of his early life nobody wasn’t all too nice to him and he was taught that being nice was a sign of weakness). when being shown kindness he Doesn’t Really Know how to respond yknow

🎭 MASKS - do they act differently around certain people? what's different between the way they act around friends, family, strangers, etc.?

lance has a different attitudes when it comes to his Weird “job” (vigilante crap) and his actual job (a librarian) so for sure he acts somewhat differently around certain others. when he’s doin his demon killin thing he comes off as VERY intense and unintentionally cold (he just wants to be left alone!!). when he’s doin his normal job he’s a lot more soft spoken and shows more kindness to others (not like he wasn’t nice before yknow)

he doesn’t have much friends though (sad!) so i dont think he acts differently around others depending on relationship. he does have a big connection with boss though and is very understanding towards him

📦 PACKAGE - what are some "most likely to..." that can apply to them?

here’s the answers to some “who is most likely to” questions i found online!

who is most likely to eat weird food combinations? - vinny. that man has a simple zest for life yknow

who is most likely to tell the most lame jokes? - either uriel or lance. uriel bc he’s an old ass ceo of a huge company (those guys are never funny) and lance bc he just Doesn’t have a sense of humor

who is most likely to get hungry in the middle of the night? - mae. You Know How It Is

🌪️ TORNADO - what is the biggest change you've ever made to them? how have they changed from their original version?

(ok back to vinny) ive had vinny for a while so he’s definitely changed a lot!!! super duper early vinny (before crit dmg was created) he was just this Edgy Guy that was obsessed with knives and killing people and ohhh my god i genuinely hate pre-crit dmg vinny soooo much. his design was also pretty different too (shorter hair, wore a trenchcoat along w his scarf, bigass scar on his face, TERRIBLE color palette) (the scarf was pretty much the only thing consistent throughout his design)

other big (design) changes to characters include:

uriel originally had armor

boss used to be much much taller than the rest of the cast

harmony used to be a boy (trans? who knows……………………………)

mae used to have untextured straight hair that was light blue (worst mae design btw)

[crustys-superduper-adventure]

Collaberatory Character - Dreamer

I'm (kind of) collabing with @alavyxp on TikTok, to present you with Dreamer - An OMORI, collaberatory character.

Name: Dreamer | Vision: Anemo | Weapon: Bow | Constellation: Ultra Tenebras (Beyond Darkness)

Normal Attack Talent: Faraway Marksmanship

Normal Attack:

Performs up to 4 consecutive shots with a bow, dealing DMG on enemy hit.

Charged Attack:

Performs a more precise Aimed Shot that hones on onto targets, dealing DMG. While aiming, lone Anemo will gather on the the arrowhead. A fully charged arrow will deal Anemo DMG and may swirl to deal additional Swirl DMG.

Plunging Attack:

While airborne, fires off showers of arrows that deal AoE DMG upon enemy impact.

Elemental Skill: Retrospective Solo

The duet can only be played alone. Allows a soothing melody to strengthen and inspire your teammates.

Press:

Play a single chord, increasing the party's Energy Recharge by 10% for 8s and dealing Anemo DMG to enemies hit by the chorus.

Hold:

Play a phrase, boosting Energy Recharge, and CD Reduction by 25% for 8s instead, and dealing multiple instances of AoE Anemo DMG.

''Everything is going to be okay...''

Elemental Burst: Relapse

Sunny allows OMORI to take control.

OMORI:

OMORI wields the Steak Knife, which deals Anemo DMG on enemy hit. OMORI embraces Black Space. In Black Space, all enemies are Apprehended, rendering them immovable for 3s. When enemies leave Apprehension, they will take huge Anemo DMG. OMORI's attacks Swirl with Pyro, Hydro, Cryo and Electro, dealing additional DMG when activated.

This form, though it has not shown its true self, is evil. You will not see that unless you fight it.

First Passive Skill: We Will Not Succumb

After Relapse ends, the last fallen enemy will be revived with 1 HP, if there are any downed party members currently. If any Elemental Absorption appeared throughout Relapse, they will instead be revived with 50% of their HP.

Second Passive Skill: Emotional Advantage

A fully charged arrow, realesed by Dreamer, will have a 30% chance to release any type of Elemental Reaction. Elemental Absorption can occur throught this effect. This effect may only appear every 60s.

Third Passive Talent: Leader's Blessing

When Dreamer is on the field, and switches to another teammate, this teammate will have 15% increased ATK SPD, 20% increased Movement SPD and 50 additional Stamina for 10s. Does not apply in combat. This effect may only appear every 120s.

Constellation 1: Star Of Another World

The time has not yet come for this person’s corner of the night sky to light up.

Constellation 2: Star Of Another World

The time has not yet come for this person’s corner of the night sky to light up.

Constellation 3: Star Of Another World

The time has not yet come for this person’s corner of the night sky to light up.

Constellation 4: Star Of Another World

The time has not yet come for this person’s corner of the night sky to light up.

Constellation 5: Star Of Another World

The time has not yet come for this person’s corner of the night sky to light up.

Constellation 6: Star Of Another World

The time has not yet come for this person’s corner of the night sky to light up.

Thank you once again, @alavyxp for letting me extend this idea :] If there are any recommendations or commisions that anyone wants, you can contact me through the comment section or @crustytheone on TikTok.

Bye!

[proficiency-in-brewers-supplies]

Asari

[reshrodancer-blog]

The long awaited Yakuza 0 review

To make things clear, this is my first Yakuza game. I haven’t played any other ones and i’ll most likely compare the game to Far Cry 3 or Nier: Automata since i’ve played those games recently and are fresh on my mind. There’ll be slight spoilers for the first 3 chapters. You can skip this part if u don’t wanna hear about the pacing problem. I’ll put the different parts into segments like i did the first time. Starting with the story, the biggest problem that the game has is it’s pacing. I guess it’s kinda unavoidable to not have pacing issues since you play as 2 different characters and their events unfold in different speeds, but the start is a real mood killer. The game opens up with you playing Kiryu in a high tension cinematic, then just makes you walk around with your best friend for like good 5-10 mins. After some bullshit, the game ramps up and gives you, probably, the best fighting gauntlet in the game, and a fantastic boss fight at the end. Next chapter, running around and doing fetch quests for buncha homeless people, the “fighting gauntlet” in this chapter is non existent, and the boss fight is less than stelar.  The first boss fight has stakes, Kiryu knows the character for a while, and we’ve had enough time to get to hate him. The second one, the stakes are considerably lower and we get like 2 scenes with the character, which is obviously not enough time to flesh out the character, and the reason for fighting him is kinda dumb. We beat the boss, have a talk and the chapter ends. Next chapter begins with quite a long cutscene, following bunch of unrelated characters, this is obviously made this way to make Majima’s(second MC), reveal as big as it is, considering the following games, but i haven’t played any of them so the bait didn’t work. The game doesn’t shy away from re-using bosses multiple times, but the reusal doesn’t bother since most of the have a huge role in those current events and the title card before each bossfight makes it very much worth it. Otherwise, the game has a great story, the characters are well thought out, kinda 1 dimentional but they do their job GREAT. The twists are good, and the ending might be a bit bitter-sweet, it still is a good wrap-up to everything. The game has horrible pacing issues in the first few chapters, the middle’s pretty decent, and gets kinda bad towards the end but not as bad as the first part. That’s the story-based pacing issues. The gameplay part doesn’t get any better during the main quests all you do is: 1.watch cutscenes 2. fight. That’s all there’s to it, no different minigames, considering there’s shit ton of it in the game. Well except 3 parts of the game where u play Karaoke twice and a toy grabbing machine once and well, 2 “stealth” sections”.  And the last problem that the story holds is the presentation, there are 4 different ways the game presents it’s story: 1. Fully animated cutscenes with voice acting, 2. In-game-engige with voice acting, 3.In-game-engige with no voice acting, 4.weird visual novel style. My problem with this begins with the fact that the fully animated cutscenes are not that long, also there are multiple time where the game switches from animated to engine to animated again. I know the game is made with a low-budget but these are still problem. Second problem being the in-engige cutscenes, the amount of animations the in-engige cutscenes have is pretty low, and it gets obvious pretty fast, the characters start doing the same movements and this might be a problem of mine but some of those animations really annoyed me. I don’t have any problems with the visual novel style, except that it’s not used a lot during the game, maybe about 5 times in the whole game. To leave the story part in a high note, the voice acting is amazing, you can feel every bit of emotions whenever characters talk and it enhances the story by a thousand easily. Huge amount of work is put into the side content into the game, considering Kamurocho and Sotenbori are basically few streets big, it’s filled with stuff to do to the brim. Starting from Karaoke to bowling, from western gambling to japanese gambling and 100 different substories, which are well-written. It has it’s cheesy moments but the writers knew about that fact and double downed on it which just makes it much better. The amount of care that’s put into the mini-stories is amazing, you do different things almost every time, it doesn’t have the same problem as the main story. Comparing this to smth like Far Cry 3, Yakuza 0 beats the game with ease. FC3′s side quests boils down to, go shoot ppl and fetch smth, i’d give’em a pass if they were well written but the story in the side quests is dogshit. Here’s an example: A lady asks you to check a plane wreckage, you go inspect the place, a man asks you what you are doing, you tell’im about the lady and he goes “There’s no lady in this village”, quests ends. Like what the fuck is that supposed to be, that’s it, no conclusion, Jason doesn’t question it, nor does he react. Meanwhile in Yakuza 0, you teach a Dominatrix how to act dominant, kids see you doing it and the game turns that awkward situation into a lesson for the dominatrix. The problem lies in the fact that non of the side quests have voice acting and they use the in-engine cutscenes. But i can forgive that for being amazingly entertaining. And the reward you get from the side quests are worthwile, almost everything in the game connects to something else. The biggest side-quests in the game are Kiryu’s Real Estate plotline, and Majima’s Cabaret Club plotline, which is the main way of making money. Both have similar story beats, both has to fight against the best 5 respective businessmen.  Kiryu’s job is to go around buying real estate and turning it into profit. This takes a long time and you aren’t doing anything to make the money, you buy the land and wait until the money flows in. Meanwhile Majima has a minigame where you have to keep the customers and your hostesses happy. The way you acquire managers and security for kiryu, and hostesses for Majima is through substories, which also tie into a lot of the minigames in the game, like dancing, fishing and such. What people complain about is the fact that you make the most money from Kiryu’s story while doing nothing, meanwhile you make 1/10th of the money with Majima since you actually have to pay attention for that. But i think the fact that those 2 thing contradicting each other works for it’s favor, you can swap characters after the game’s main story ends, you can send your advisors to collect the money and swap to Majima to do his part of the story. And to kinda offset the money problem early game, Majima’s upgrades cost considerably less than Kiryu’s. The upgrade system, i think it’s pretty bad. Most of the upgrades feel insignificant, for someone who’s new to the game i don’t think they’ll remember most of the combos that you unlock and the ones they’ll upgrade doesn’t change much aside from “deal more dmg”, “get more heat”. And the weird upgrade grid that the game has just adds unneccesary confusion. The fighting on the other hand. The fighting is great, the hits have weight to them. Every hit gives off a great visual and audio feel. The heat actions are over the top and gruesome. The game has 3 different styles for each character: Balances, fast and weak, strong and slow. Kiryu’s styles are more “practical��� meanwhile Majima has the more “fun” styles. But both have broken styles which just makes the other styles obsolete. You can unlock a 4th style for each character if you complete the business subplots. One big problem with the balance of the game comes from the healing system. You can hold 20 healing items which heal the character for 75%. You can get these the moment you are allowed to roam the world, there’s no lock behind these and make the game a cakewalk even on the highest difficulty and ruin the mood of the game quite a bit, especially on bossfights. Imagine having 20 health bars, meanwhile the bosses have 2 to 6 maximum. Hence why i decided to handicap myself and only you maximum of 2 healing items per fight, after that each fight felt like a challenge and the victories felt a lot more impactful. But i shouldn’t be handicapping myself to make the story games feel more impactful, the game fails at that pretty badly. But if the game has a great soundtrack, even the most unbalanced fights can feel epic. And needless to say, Yakuza 0 has a phenomenal soundtrack, each fighting style has a different music tied to it, almost all of the bosses have music attached to them and the way they are integrated into the fight is fucking amazing. Especially towards the end, the music reaches amazing heights. Doesn’t matter how dull the fighting gets, the music will keep you pumped up until the last second you play. And you will get bored of the fighting, if you want to 100% the game. This game has one of the worst 100% metrics. The game makes you do EVERYTHING and sometimes do stuff multiple times. It took me 186 hours to 100% the game. Did i get frustrated of how bullshit the gambling is ? Yes, absolutely. The way the game adds up your score is when you stop playing certain minigame. This automatically sets your brain to quit the moment you go below the number you started with, so u quit after winning a round or losing a round and it becomes quite frustrating after some time. Catching every fish, playing every song in disco, beating up 200 enemies which each style, which one of them is unlocked really late into the game, you’ll get sick of it. And like i said before, there are japanese gambling minigames, like koi-koi and mahjong. I love Mahjong, it’s fucking fantastic but Sega could’ve done a better job if they wanted to include a japanese minigame with japanese symbols in the game. Thankfully this is fixed in Yakuza 6 and i’m glad. There are a lot of flaws with the game, but i love it without any doubt. The way the game captures the Japanese environment and culture, the amount of stuff you have in the game, the out of this world soundtrack, the high points of the story, the way the different side contents bleed into each other without any problems, and i’d recommend this game to everyone. 9/10