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malwaredykes · 4 months

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well. here she is. miss Leigh Stasik.

trans woman. stubborn, incorrigible, eccentric. communist; she has leftist in-fighting with herself on the regular. a cannibal; she has no moral qualms about this, and its both a bit of a spiritual thing and a bit of a pragmatic thing. medic (not a doctor. no medical license). she knows for sure she had some kind of significant personality change from being shot in the head, but she doesn't remember what she was like exactly before it happened, it all became this kind of distant memory soup. shes originally from west new cali, but she grew very attached to the mojave. and has a lot of contempt for the ncr. She Will Serve Crack Before She Serves This Country. thank god the army discriminates against transsexuals etc. zero tolerance for the legion, obviously.

she firmly believes she is not nice, or kind, or compassionate, but instead her actions and her general sense of justice stem from her simply doing whats the most logical and objectively beneficial. it may be true to some extent, but she might also have a wee bit of ocd of the "i am a horrible person whos at all times like 2 seconds away from committing atrocities" variety.

shes a SCIENTIST. unofficially. she doesnt have a degree nor a chosen field of study. she makes her own hrt and other mysterious concoctions, including designer chems. which she claims she ingests injects etc not for recreational purposes, but to Enhance Her Powers And Possibilities. she reads old world books about psychology so she can manipulate people better. and makes weird contraptions and doohickeys while high. shes a HACKER of course and hacks terminals and systems for fun and just to see if she can.

her stats are out there due to implants and intense training, originally they were rather average. in-game she wears combat armor mk 2, but i see her having spruced it up like this. her main weapon is the ycs/186, the unique gauss rifle, but before that she used a modded plasma pistol. which she very much enjoyed the silly appearance of. because it was so small and with so much shit tacked on and she could just hold it in one hand like a mutated revolver like Hands up motherfucker bang bang bang lol. her melee weapon of choice is the machete gladius, but she's been training to be able to wield a thermic lance.

in my head the trajectory of her actions and the fate of the mojave that follows is different from what you can do with the game, because leigh could only go for The Secret Leftist Route Which Was Supposed To Be In The Game But We Were Robbed Of It.

boone was the first friend she made after leaving goodsprings and their relationship is particularly notable. they are Comrades, Siblings-In-Arms, Worsties (like besties but fucked up). theyve seen each other at their worst. they annoy each other on purpose. theyve had serious ideological clashes with each other and some ways in which boone perceives the world drive leigh absolutely nuts. they're ride or die for each other. theyre the kind of comfortable around each other where she'll be on the toilet and smoking a cig with the door open and talking to him, while he's naked sitting on the floor removing stitches from his leg. she's done surgery without anesthesia on him. he's projectile vomited blood on her from being poisoned by cazadores. she strongly encourages him to become a traitor to the ncr and to take part in the revolution and the formation of the new independent mojave alliance. somehow, it works on him in the end. shamefully they kinda like snuggling... boone bro come to bed man its nighty night man its beddy bye time.

shes in love with lily bowen. i havent decided yet whether she actually makes a move. but she thinks lily is sooooo dreamy. and shes right. if you dont think the enormous 203 year old blue mutant woman is dreamy thats your problem. outta her way

#leigh stasik #courier six #fallout new vegas

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a-substantial-trash-pile · 4 months

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hey guess what. it's finally time for my Stardew Valley Loredump. i’m about to ramble about my farmer and yo-yo/yoba and shane in a probably long-ass, disjointed post because i have a problem ok. not expecting anyone to read it all of course—just want to finally write these brainstorming shenanigans down. the loredump will be below the cut below the image 👇 (WARNING: IT'S LONG):

SAMUEL IZAWA:

*samuel is 28 years old, pan, japanese okinawan (no im not self projecting hahaha), and goes by he/they. main thing is that they’re from “our world” where stardew valley is a video game, but he died and ended up in the stardew universe. because i think isekai tropes are fun and silly. as the player, samuel can do things others in the stardew world can’t do, such as:

summon the in-game HUD that’s only visible to him, so he can see health/energy levels and inventory and all that.

speaking of inventory, it’s essentially a pocket dimension samuel can shove stuff in. the inventory doesn’t really care about size/weight/etc as long as it’s something the system considers an “item.” so like samuel can put a whole ass four poster bed in there but he can’t do that to a person or a whole house. samuel just needs to touch the item to make it disappear into his inventory. he can then summon it back out when he needs it. the game’s inventory limit system remains the same. samuel gets 12 slots on their own, but if they have a bag on them it increases to 36.

can access the player menu you can normally access in game. so like profile, skills, collections, relationships, etc are all there. no options or quit tab though. having the relationship tab is a nightmare for samuel, who has major insecurities about what people think of him. that tab is a quantifiable measure on how much people like him. it a real brain demon for him to know it exists and is right there for him to access anytime.

can see the “stats” of food and healing items. hp/energy recovery amounts, buffs, etc.

*funny thing is that samuel has never played SDV himself and only has knowledge based on what he’s heard and seen online secondhand. ironically he was planning on playing the game for the first time before the whole dying thing ruined it. they can’t even remember how they died, but it doesn’t bother them as much as they think it should. they didn’t leave much behind in that life.

*anyway, i’m talking a lot of game terms here, but don’t get it twisted. while samuel has all these game systems going on, the SDV world is very much a real one that doesn’t normally work by that logic. by that i mean time flows normally like in our world and there isn’t just 4 months in a year. things exist outside the valley. there’s a whole planet of places and people.

*luckily samuel has help in navigating this new world in the form of yo-yo the junimo, who is the first living thing samuel sees when he first wakes up in that joja cubicle. yo-yo helps explain a lot of things and guide samuel around in its own abrasive way. he’s also there to be like, “hey i gave you a second chance at life so you kinda owe me actually. sign this contract.” and samuel, who is a pushover and also confused, is just like, “ok.” (yo-yo sounds like danny devito btw. because i think it’s funny.)

*i call the contract a “magical girl contract” because that’s essentially what it is. samuel gets access to extra powers/abilities on top the stuff he can already do as a player. in return he fights monsters n shit for yo-yo and generally does things for them that they can’t do easily on their own. the extra benefits include:

higher pain tolerance. which isn’t always a good thing. especially when you tend to not be great with self-preservation like samuel is.

can heal most injuries by just eating/drinking stuff to regain hp.

yo-yo can teleport the both of them around as needed, but it’s tiring and it drains a lot of magic. distance matters too.

yo-yo can spawn items but it drains magic as well. the more valuable/rare the item, the more draining it is. spawning items is already a magic-intensive thing in the first place. also yo-yo isn’t creating the item out of nothing. they’re actually randomly taking it from wherever it already exists in the world. for example, say yo-yo “spawns” a jar of pickles. somebody in the world is going to open their fridge and discover their jar of pickles is missing or maybe a grocery store will have a sudden empty spot on its shelf. yo-yo doesn’t have control of where the items are taken from (or so they claim).

samuel and yo-yo’s magic pools became connected so they can both do more than they could do on their own before. this is one of the reasons why yo-yo wanted a contract with samuel, who has a larger magic pool than normal due to being from another world. but it’s possible for one side to use up all the magic for the both of them.

*samuel’s personality can be summed up as Awkward People-Pleasing Tired Sad Garbage Dork. either he’s dressed like a grandparent in sweaters and turtlenecks or he’s wearing a button up shirt with the collar undone and jeans. they usually have their neck covered in public to hide the mark of yoba embedded there. he has a “resting bitch face” as some may call, but that’s just because his brain is busy over-analyzing 193828 different things. he loves being outside in the grass and dirt, looking at bugs n shit. he’s also a nerd who likes to play video games and ramble about the lore in them (he likes RPGs the most, but if the game’s got a good story and cool world, he’s into it). they like to do things with their hands like model building/painting. in their new stardew life, they get into woodcarving after willy teaches them the basics (he carves shane a little chicken).

*samuel does NOT know how to say “no.” absolute pushover. their self-worth is based on how much they’re liked by others, which isn’t healthy obviously. he has a fear that the only way he can be liked is by being useful. he’s scared that he is inherently a bad and selfish person, because he can’t say for sure if he’s helping others purely out of kindness or because it just makes him feel better about existing. deep down there’s anger/frustration that’s accumulated over the years, anger towards himself and also others because he’s always doing things for other people—going above and beyond—but it never feels like enough. at the same time though, they hate it when these thoughts come up because they believe that you shouldn’t go into helping somebody expecting that you’ll get something out of it. he hates how much of a hypocrite he is. he hates how he bases so much of his self-worth on the opinions of others, but feels helpless to it. they usually just push these emotions down because samuel feels guilty about them. how can they be a good person if they’re thinking like this? how can they deserve to exist with this mindset? however they get a chance to let out the anger/bitterness/frustration through fighting monsters. kind of disassociating in a way. this also isn’t a good thing because his demeanor is much colder and scarier during combat. having someone who’s felt powerless for so long suddenly gain power is a dangerous thing.

*this mindset when monster fighting shatters when samuel meets krobus and realizes that monsters aren’t just the simple enemy NPCs their brain had been automatically categorizing them as. guilt galore. he gets real depressed about that for a while but yo-yo, krobus, and shane are there to help him.

*SPEAKING OF SHANE… it’s crush at first sight for samuel because hot damn is shane their type. i mean just look at him. mamma mia. haha anyyyway, they first meet at the stardrop saloon. samuel’s waiting at the bar for his to-go order near where shane is drinking. shane’s looking sad, so samuel gives in and decides they’ll start a convo to maybe distract him from whatever’s bothering him. samuel employs the “crack a dumb joke to hide the fact that i’m nervous because i’m talking to a hot person and then use that opening to introduce myself” strat. shane, being an asshole, is like, “oh so you’re the new farmer. here’s a tip: don’t bother me.” samuel takes 999 damage and their brain immediately goes “THIS IS MY FAULT I FUCKED UP like who wants to be talked to by a stranger when they’re sad goddammit why am i so bad at this?!!” it’s overall not a great first impression. after that, samuel tries to avoid shane out of embarrassment, but circumstances keep making them run into each other. for instance, samuel works a lot with marnie with her being a mentor figure to him in animal husbandry, so he and shane have a lot of opportunity to interact through that (plus marnie is secretly trying to get them closer to each other). through these meetings and shenanigans, samuel and shane get to know each other better until one day they’re friends. then good friends. then best friends. then kiss friends. then marry friends. :)

YOBA (A.K.A. YO-YO):

*yo-yo is ????? years old and goes by any pronouns but most of the time it's it/they.

*yo-yo is actually THE yoba, but they’re not the completely benevolent creator-of-all-things humans have made them out to be. maybe they were in the past, but now they’re selfish and rude and swear a lot. but they do still care, even if they don’t admit it (tsundere-ass). yoba is currently stuck in the form of a little junimo and is substantially weakened because it gave too much of itself away to the world in the past and got burned for it. because the world kept taking and taking. and now there’s war and pollution and shit and yoba/yo-yo is maybe just a teensy tiny bit angry and bitter now. but it’s ok because now they got this human from another reality to help them reclaim the pieces of itself. and maybe along the way relearn how to love the world again.

*oh also yoba didn’t create the whole planet like the creation story claims. they’re technically an alien that came across a young planet full of life and decided to stay and help it develop.

*main reason yo-yo made a contract with samuel is because it needs help finding/reclaiming the pieces of itself. pieces can usually be found in strong monsters empowered by the piece. this isn’t always the case though. sometimes it’s in an ancient artifact. sometimes it’s in a specific place like a temple. sometimes it’s in a person.

*samuel doesn’t have to deal with having an existential crisis about yo-yo, since he’s from our world where yoba doesn’t even exist as a god. yo-yo claims to be the one responsible for bringing samuel over into the stardew universe, but there are holes in their story. where did yoba even find the power to do such a thing when they’re in such a weakened state? mysterious.

*the first time yoba reveals itself to shane is kind of chaotic. it’s in the middle of the night when yo-yo suddenly appears in shane’s room, grabs his face with its little stick arms and yells, “WAKE UP!!! YOUR BOYFRIEND IS IN MORTAL PERIL!!!” shane is like, “WHAT THE F–” it was an act of desperation on yo-yo’s part, because samuel was in trouble and shane was the only one it could think of going to for help. essentially samuel meets something Bad in the deep mines, something that takes him out of commission and puts him in a trance state while draining his lifeforce. y’know, the classic kind of trance state where you need to figure out how to get the person back–how to snap them out of it. yo-yo tried and failed, so that’s where shane comes in. it’s the classic “love-interest-breaks-main-character-out-of-mind-control-with-sheer-power-of-love” trope. except shane does punch samuel during it. lovingly. in the face. hey it works ok. after the chaos is over and everyone’s safe and gathered together, samuel and yo-yo explain everything to shane (well more like samuel explains everything while yo-yo wishes outloud that they had their memory erasing powers back). shane, who is canonically an atheist, learns that this talking pottymouthed jerkass apple is actually THE yoba and is just like, “yeah. this might as well happen.” and then he remains atheist because what else are you going to do when you learn that god is a talking pottymouthed jerkass apple who calls you a bitch and is also responsible for your partner having to go do dangerous shit. he and yo-yo have a rocky relationship at first to say the least. but once they both realize how much the other cares about samuel, things get a little better.

*yeah, yoba may be a bitch and they may be angry and they may be bitter, but they really do care, even if they try to convince themselves otherwise. even though so much got taken from it, it still cares about humans and dwarves and shadow people and everything else on the planet. and when it eventually comes down to it, yoba will step up to protect what it loves, even if it means losing everything again.

SHANE FINCH:

*this post was technically supposed to just be about my farmer and yo-yo’s lore and stuff, but i gotta give some personal headcanons i have about shane… like for instance his last name is “finch.” because i thought the bird theme was cute. he’s 29 years old, bi, and half asian, half white (in our world that asian half is korean). i’m not being specific because i don’t know if korea even exists in the stardew world, since all we know in the game is that there’s a “ferngill republic” and a “gotoro empire.” i was thinking of just headcanoning that stardew’s planet is essentially the same as earth. so like most of the same countries/nations exist except the history diverged a bit along the way, leading to the ferngill republic and gotoro empire. OK SORRY for the tangent—back on topic.

*so shane is a trans man who started transitioning back in high school. he had two best friends who were very supportive and really helped him on his journey to figure himself out. those two friends were like family to him. it was good that he had this support because his parents were always pretty shitty and shane transitioning just made them act even shittier. the only good family member of shane’s is marnie, who was supportive, but she lived far away, was busy, AND wasn’t on good terms with her sister (shane’s mom), so shane didn’t get to see her much.

*the moment shane became a legal adult, he got away from his parents, finding a place with his two best friends and moving in together. oh and his friends’ names were rosa and heath. should’ve probably mentioned that earlier oops. shane, rosa, and heath go to the same college together, suffer student loans, graduate, etc. haven’t thought of what shane would get a degree in yet—most likely something “generic” because he’s unsure of what he wants to do himself (i feel u bby).

*ok so rosa and heath were dating since high school, but they were so comfortable with shane and vice versa that things never got that awkward living together. however when rosa and heath got married (“yoba, FINALLY,” shane would say), shane felt like it was time to find his own place, much to the devastation of his bffs. the apartment ended up close to where rosa and heath lived of course—the couple made sure of it (“stop backseating my apartment hunting!” “MAKE US”).

*rosa and heath get pregnant and have a healthy baby girl that they name jasmine. i headcanon jas as black (from heath’s side) and portuguese (rosa’s side). everyone is thrilled about the baby. shane was immediately offered godfather role and he happily accepted. jas was the cutest baby ever and he adored her. he babysat jas all the time.

*jas was 4 years old when rosa and heath tragically passed away in a car accident. they were coming home from a business dinner when they lost control of their car on some black ice and slid into oncoming traffic. shane was babysitting jas when he got the call. in the span of one cold winter night, shane and jas’s world shattered.

*rosa and heath didn’t have any reliable relatives either. those relatives only came to take the money and belongings. shane was the only one jas had, so he adopted her. he tried his best to pick up the pieces. he really did. he lasted for a year trying to raise a kid on his own with the salary of a dead-end job, but he knew the situation wasn’t good with the money and how much his mental health was spiraling. he knew he and jas were in dire need of more support (“jas deserves better than this”). so he turned to the one person he had left to rely on: his aunty marnie. and that’s how shane and jas ended up in pelican town.

*shane’s joja jacket was actually originally rosa’s. rosa worked as an accountant for joja and would get free promotional items all the time from the company. the jacket was one of the only things she actually ended up using because “it’s pretty comfy for being joja bs.” she would wear it all the time, much to her more fashion-conscious husband’s chagrin (yet he would patch up any holes she’d get in it anyway). after rosa died, shane kept her jacket. there were a lot of memories in it.

~~~

ok that’s it for now. if anyone actually read all that, thank you for even wasting your time to process my ramblings. i’m sorry it’s so fucking long like jfc.

*who is mr. qi?

#stardew valley #stardew valley shane #stardew valley farmer #sdv shane #sdv farmer #sdv yoba #ocs #long post #loredump

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himbeereule · 1 year

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Орлёнок (Eaglet)

Орлёнок (Eaglet) is an interactive story set in a country similar to 1910s-1920s Russia. You're a member of the overthrown Imperial Family, shaping the future of the Empire by virtue of arms.

It aims to be equal parts role-playing, dress-up and strategy game, with an emphasis on romance.

Although there will be no explicit nsfw scenes, it does include graphic descriptions of the horrors of war as well as personal tragedies, so please refer to the content warnings at the end of this post.

(as the project is still a wip, this overview is somewhat incomplete and will be gradually updated in tandem with the progress of writing)

DEMO: here (v0.0.2a, 21.06.2024)

Forum post: here

Number Spelling Function (IF writer resource): here

Secondary project: @a-dying-wish-if Tertiary (mini-)project: @perceptron-failure-if Quaternary project: [redacted]

The Empire of Nevetskiya - old, proud, and utterly dilapidated. While the Industrial Revolution has enabled other Monarchies - after a few quickly suppressed workers' uprisings - to become modern colonialist superpowers, exerting their influence all over the world, Nevetskiya is still overwhelmingly agrarian, and barely holding onto its outlying territories acquired in golden times long past.

Your Father Emperor, while ruling with an iron fist and unquestionable authority over the common people, is completely dependent on the shaky loyalty of the High Nobility, who frustrate any attempt to modernize the economy or administration, out of fear upstart merchants might, in time, replace the old Aristocracy.

When a sloppily executed coup d'etat eventually leaves your family dead and you a refugee, it becomes time you grab the reins of your destiny and amass an army to liberate and rebuild the country in the way you envision.

(this is meant to be a concise overview - a more exiting and detailed description of features can be found in the offical Interest Check Thread post)

extensive character customization

extensive army customization - both in a strategy and in a dress-up game sense

focus on story over stats - success is determined on the battlefield, not by your character's personality

five distinct regions with a wide cast of characters

complex personality system - for example, how your character actually feels and what they show to the world are separate things

several ways to rule - will you become a traditional Monarch, a Military Dictator, a democratically elected Head-of-State, or maybe proclaim yourself a Living Saint?

choose how much modernization is needed - will you allow women to bear arms, at the cost of offending the traditionalist nobles? Introduce tanks at the cost of foreign powers gaining influence?

how far will you go for victory? A political police, mass executions and the use of special types of weaponry might give you an edge, but is your vision really worth it?

a total of ten romanceable characters

(this naturally might contain slight spoilers)

The ROs

★ Yakov Tymofiyevich Sokolovskiy / Liliya Tymofiyevna Sokolovskaya ★

The Intelligence Director (gender-selectable)

One of your four original companions. As a member of the High Nobility, you've met them before - maybe you've even been childhood friends?

But even if you know them, it's hard to tell what they're truly like, as they seem to switch personalities effortlessly depending on the situation.

Their work is a mystery to seemingly everyone, but they always get results: as long as you let them act freely, no enemy agent has any chance to harm you or your cause.

Age: mid-20s

★ Semyon Ivanovich Orlov / Selena Ivanovna Orlova ★

The Cavalry Officer (gender-selectable)

One of your four original companions. A war hero and renowned expert when it comes to horses, the only reason they were not yet promoted to a lofty position in the War Ministry is their pragmatic approach to new developments, which hasn't mixed well with the typically very traditionalist views of the old Imperial officer corps.

Possessing a subdued but strong charisma and deeply respected by their soldiers as a wise parent figure, they are a solid pillar of support to you, and will reliably get things done - though some people might consider the cost for that too high sometimes.

Age: early 30s

★ Mikhail Pavlovich Voronin / Marina Pavlovna Voronina ★

The Young Visionary (gender-selectable)

One of your four original companions. They shot up through the ranks by impressing the War Ministry with bold new ideas for utilizing modern technologies and are hailed as a genius by many - though the older officers dismiss them as a dreamer at best and incompetent fool at worst.

With you, they hope to have found someone who'll appreciate their visions for the future - plus, their relative eccentrism has left them in dire need of a friend.

Their technical expertise might just prove to be the key to your success - if you can secure the foreign support needed to get the modern equipment needed to utilize it.

Age: early 20s

★ Leon Isayev / Leah Isayeva ★

The Noble Academic (gender-selectable)

One of your four original companions. Born to wealthy nobles, they graduated the Imperial Officer Academy with perfect grades, and feel honour-bound to your family.

They were the one to gather your initial force of loyalists and act as your primary advisor. But their loyalty is to the Imperial system, with you just a symbolic representative - can you convince them that you and your vision deserve their loyalty beyond that?

Age: late 20s

★ 'Little' Semyon/Selena Shvets ★

The Hero (gender-selectable)

A young cavalry officer and leader of your Southern Forces. A protegé of the "other" Semyon/Selena, they lack their cynical pragmatism, but make up for it with a firm belief in the triumph of a better world.

Some may call their optimism naive, and their personality has been mockingly compared to a Golden Retriever, but they have proven time and time again that underestimating them on the battlefield results in a crushing defeat.

Age: early 20s

★ Nikola ★

The Rebel (nb)

Leading an anti-authoritarian peasant uprising in the West, Nikola is more likely to be your enemy than your ally - but they don't seem to care enough about politics to refrain from flirting with you, so... there might be a basis of mutual understanding there?

Their personality is pretty sweet, at least - if you ignore the fact they'll cheerfully gun down prisoners if they feel like it.

Age: mid-20s

★ Rakhmil/Rakhilya Feldman ★

The Logistician (gender-selectable)

A member of the Western Rebel Army and best friend of Nikola's adoptive sibling, they've poured their soul (and countless nights without any sleep) into somehow maintaining the rebels' supply network in the face of their rapidly swelling numbers.

Unhappy with Nikola's carefree attitude, they might end up aligning with you instead in order to save their cause.

Age: late 20s

★ Arseniy Matveyevich Lebedev / Amaliya Matveyevna Lebedeva ★

The Enemy (gender-selectable)

Grand Duke Lebedev, the main leader of the Aristocrat faction, stood by and watched when your family was executed. Arseniy/Amaliya is their younger sibling, and serves as military commander of his personal forces that aid several warlords in their efforts to establish their own petty kingdoms.

But they're already uncomfortable with their brother's methods, and if you can convince them that you're not actually "an incompetent little puppet who's trying to ruin the country out of arrogant delusions", they might become a very valuable ally.

Age: mid-20s

★ Lyudmila Demyanovna Naumova ★ (f)

A minor noble who reluctantly turned into a Warlord in order to protect her territory and her people. All she wants is peace - but she'll not hesitate to fight if she believes it necessary.

Unfortunately, you can't just ignore her - all must choose a side in this war - but you have options how to deal with her. Will you subdue her by force? Or fall back on the age-old option of political marriage to secure an alliance?

Age: late 20s

★ Jan/Jana Novotný ★ (gender-selectable, under certain circumstances)

A member of your Personal Guard who has distinguished themself and eventually rises to become its commander. Others might betray or doubt you, but Novotný only cares about one thing - your continued, unharmed existence.

And they will go to any lengths to guarantee it.

Age: mid-20s

CONTENT WARNINGS

...will be added as they become relevant in the demo.

#орлёнок #eaglet #wip #work in progress #choicescript #interactive fiction

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theresattrpgforthat · 2 months

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Hello!

I've always wanted to do a stealth game/campaign, but all my attempts to hack it into DnD have failed. Do you have any suggestions for a stealthy system? Not something as abstract as Knives in the Dark (tbh, I just have never been able to get into it) but something that hits the Assassin's Creed feeling of watching the target, making a plan, and then sneaking through the base taking out guards and hiding their bodies and such. Preferably on a grid map or similar, s we're terrible at theatre of the mind.

Thanks!

THEME: Stealthy Games.

Hello there, so I did some digging and I found plenty of stealth games, although none of them seem to really require a map in order to play. That being said, I don’t think that should stop you from providing maps to your players, even if they’re abstract! Some of these games might ask you to sketch out a rough map of the town or building that you’re in, which may help you provide your players with some visual references as they sneak around, trying not to get caught. When it comes to stealth, I think of three things: horror, heists, and spies.

Delta Green, by Arc Dream Publishing.

Born of the U.S. government’s 1928 raid on the degenerate coastal town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, the covert agency known as Delta Green opposes the forces of darkness with honor but without glory. Delta Green agents fight to save humanity from unnatural horrors—often at a shattering personal cost.

Delta Green comes highly recommended as a great way to play an X-Files type rpg, mixed in with the Cthulhu mythos. It uses a d100 system and is based in the modern day, casting your characters as former members of government agencies, recruited into a super-secret bureau that investigates supernatural things - and keeps those things hidden from the common public. The stealth of this game is mostly about covering up the eldritch and unnatural, even if it means framing someone else or condemning a beloved building.

Your characters in this game have some familiar pieces to them, such as six stats with the same titles as you’ll see in games like D&D. However, you’ll also have pieces like Bonds, which represent relationships that keep your character grounded, and a Sanity system that I’m personally not crazy about (I do not recommend this game for a group that doesn’t like trite mechanization of mental health disorders), but that gives you a way to incur penalties that aren’t just physical damage.

This looks to be the closest to a traditional rpg on this list, and with all the elements to keep track of, I can see how a physical map would be helpful. However, keep in mind that there isn’t a pace or speed stat attached to these characters, so things like line of sight or distance probably won’t be super granular - if you are shooting things you may have broad range bands to determine how difficult something is, but the final decision will be a GM decision, not something necessarily determined in the rulebook. Because the setting is a modern one, I think finding visual references for locations in this game would be very very easy.

If you want a taste of the game before you put your money down, you can check out the Free Starter Rulebook!

Minutes to Midnight, by Oliver S.

Minutes to Midnight is a game powered by Blades in the Dark about a crew of spies, trying to disrupt the balance of power in a modern cold war. They will have to stand strong in the face of their vicious opposition and handle a fragile web of untrustworthy informants, devious intrigues and deadly lies.

We play to find out if our agents can thrive in the cutthroat world of espionage. While the public may never know about their impact, their actions shape the political landscape and outcome of conflict. Will the players prevent the outbreak of a global disaster and use their influence to create a better future? Will they attempt to send the opposing bloc into a turmoil and establish a lasting hegemony? Or will their actions lead the world down a path of war and nuclear destruction?

The Forged in the Dark system uses a cycle in between missions and downtime, sinking your characters into the heart of the action as they pursue clandestine missions in locations built by the group in a session 0. Since the game takes place in the real world, using maps of real cities might be a great way to keep they players visually engaged, and using a city that the group has been to or is familiar with might also make it easier for the group to visualize the kinds of buildings and streets where their spies may be sneaking, scheming, and sleuthing.

Madstones, by xiombarg.

Those who know magic exists at all are the rich and teams of breakers like yourself that go into the jartowns for the Archons. Jartowns are created by burning folk alive in a wicker man, in a ritual known only to the oldest jet-setting Archons.

A jartown is an isolated area of spacetime that was cut out of our reality. Most jartowns consist of a small amount of space (enough for a suburb or town) and a loop of several years. Jartowns become more magickal and horrific with each loop, creating madstones.

Madstones are small things, from actual stones to human organs, infused with concentrated, distilled magic. They're secretly coveted by the wealthy.

In this tiny 24XX-based tabletop RPG, players are breakers, desperate folk from the occult underground who find a way into the jartowns, hothouses for magick, to perform errands for the ultrarich Archons.

Play as a variety of roles, from sawbones to sinner to spook, and choose to hail from one of four origins, including jartown native.

24XX games are another toolbox that you can pick up and play around with to help you get started with creating your own experiences. Your character consists of a few skills and gear packaged together in a character class. In Madstones, these classes are various specialists, trained to deal with different elements that might pop up when you go delving into eldritch pockets of reality. There is both a stealth and a combat specialist in this game, but there’s also classes for things like a getaway driver, a hacker, and an occult specialist.

24XX games also exist because of their OSR predecessors, meaning that combat is risky, and often deadly - and therefore finding other ways to solve the problem is implicitly encouraged. However, the openness of the system means that your players don’t necessarily need to resort to stealth - they might prepare an elaborate ritual, create a unique piece of technology, or just decide to run away as fast as they can. In regards to maps, I think you could probably use a typical dungeon framework: leading the characters through various rooms or sections of the pocket dimension, and throwing horrors and weird environments their way.

Night’s Black Agents, by Pelgrane Press.

The Cold War is over. Bush’s War is winding down. You were a shadowy soldier in those fights, trained to move through the secret world: deniable and deadly.

Then you got out, or you got shut out, or you got burned out. You didn’t come in from the cold. Instead, you found your own entrances into Europe’s clandestine networks of power and crime. You did a few ops, and you asked even fewer questions. Who gave you that job in Prague? Who paid for your silence in that Swiss account? You told yourself it didn’t matter. It turned out to matter a lot. Because it turned out you were working for vampires.

Vampires exist. What can they do? Who do they own? Where is safe? You don’t know those answers yet. So you’d better start asking questions. You have to trace the bloodsuckers’ operations, penetrate their networks, follow their trail, and target their weak points. Because if you don’t hunt them, they will hunt you. And they will kill you.

A combination of modern spy fiction and vampire intrigue, Night’s Black Agents uses the GUMSHOE system, which is an investigative roleplaying system that provides your characters with resources they can spend to get into secret locations, compete against vampiric agents, and pick up information to help you put together the details of a conspiracy. In Night’s Black Agents, finding clues isn’t left up to chance - you will always get information as long as you tell the GM that you’re using a relevant skill. The obstacles in this game are more likely going to involve getting in and out of sticky situations - and if your opponents are vampires, well, stealth is likely going to be a more appealing than trying to slit their throats.

GUMSHOE games don’t need grid maps either, but a rough map of the city or country is probably very helpful, and it might be fun to draw the floor plans of various buildings that your players investigate in order to help them determine what areas may be the most interesting places to search for clues.

The Breathing, by Fistful of Crits.

You reside in The Archive, an unending and depthless structure spiralling deep into the dark and misty depths, devoid of life and presided over by a being known only to you as The Archivist.

The Archive is made up of windowless rooms and halls that vary greatly in their height, size and danger. All these spaces house numerous shelves containing the collected knowledge of the world outside of The Archive; a place you have been told you must earn your access to. The price of your freedom comes from the discovery of new or forgotten knowledge that can be found in the deepest parts of the structure.

You, and a few others, are known as The Breathing, in a place full of creatures who were once like you but ultimately failed in their bid for freedom; now known as The Breathless.

The Breathing is just an example of a broader style of game, using a system called Breathless. Breathless games use a series of polyhedral dice that deteriorate as you use them, with different dice attached to different skills. Throughout the game you pause to “take a breath”, and re-set your skills, bringing your dice back to their threshold. However, pausing to take a breath also gives the GM a chance to introduce a new trouble or complication, creating a cycle of mission, rest, mission, rest, etc.

As a game system, Breathless is pretty light and is fairly easy to hack. But the lightness of the rules also allows for creativity and add-ons, which could include rules for movement or placement. Since the game rewards finding ways to solve problems without having to resort to direct conflict, I can see games like this encouraging characters to think carefully about when to use their resources and when to just… sneak around the problem. If you want to include maps and a grid, you could provide a blueprint of a room inside The Archive and watch the players try to navigate it using their limited resources, with designated “rest areas” that they would have to get to in order to take a Breath.

This certainly isn’t a solution in a box, but it might provide some interesting tools to help you build the experience you’re looking for.

Night Reign, by Sinister Beard Games.

Night Reign is a roleplaying game of stealth, guile, violence and devilry for a GM and one or more players, set in a quasi-Edwardian metropolis perched on an inhospitable peninsula beset by toxic black rain and ruled by a corrupt cabal of Noble Houses.

You take the role of members of The Red Right Hand, a conspiracy loyal to the recently deposed royal family, using your talents in assassination, infiltration and dark sorcery to strike out at your oppressors.

A game all about the things you do in the shadows, Night Reign uses cards to resolve conflict, rather than dice. It also uses a token system to help you overcome obstacles without having to resort to violence - loud, messy, dangerous violence. The Ruled by Night system (which has an SRD that you can download for free) is about balancing the suspicion you’ve already raised against an increasing cost to being stealthy. You spend Shadow tokens in order to be able to attempt to do something, and try to get a hand as close as possible to 21, or at least higher than whatever the GM draws. Your characters will also have powers that can be very effective, but are likely to draw a lot of attention, so using them is risky.

Because of how this game runs, things like movement and speed are not likely to be tracked. However, I don’t think mapping out a location so that the players can understand where things are or what kind of space they’re in is going to hurt the experience. The SRD describes something called City Conditions, which appear to be elements of the fiction that might result from the characters’ choices, or provide obstacles to the players. If you have a map of the city in front of you, you could draw symbols on the map to indicate what’s happening as the story progresses, and even cross out places that have been destroyed.

Heist, by Hark Forsooth Games.

HEIST: Get the Crew Together is a cooperative RPG where you and a group of suave, savvy and slick fellow crooks plan and execute capers, grabbing the fanciest loot from the world's wealthy elite.

Heist is great for fans of shows like Leverage or movies like Ocean’s 11: you’re going to steal something shiny from someone who certainly doesn’t deserve it, and you’re going to do it with style. While combat is an option, your characters will also have to deal with suspicious marks, security systems, laser grids and bank vaults. The characters are composed of special talents and personal flaws, and the GM has the task of designing something the game calls Murphy’s Gun - a major twist that will reveal itself midway through the heist.

It can be tricky to determine what to prep for a game like this, but one thing that you can for sure prep is the location. Design the building, draw the floor plan, and come up with obstacles for the different areas - there’s not really movement tracking in this game but having the layout will certainly help your players come up with ideas about how to get in, get out, and get rich.

Another thing to consider…

Mothership doesn’t have any stealth skills, but what it does have is the incentive to be sneaky. If an alien horror is moving through the ship, you’re more likely to try and stay out of it’s way - and having no stealth skills means that the players have to describe what they’re doing to stay hidden; climb into vents, squeeze yourself into cupboards, and try to wriggle into the space suit. However, this doesn’t mean that you’re not rolling - you might roll to clamber over something or to fit yourself into something, or you might roll to scope out a location to find an exit or suitable hiding place. It’s also excellent in terms of maps - plenty of adventures will provide at least a blueprint of the space station or ship that you’re exploring, which you can use to spook your players with fresh horrors.

#stealth #tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #game recommendations #dnd #asks #indie ttrpg

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gatitties · 1 year

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So how about this.... some king, saitama, genos and tatsumaki (Separate) headcanons with a reader who's an A class hero and their power involves video games physics. An example of that would be where reader had the power to interact with the world as if it is in a video game which as you may know has these:

The System

Video Game/Game Mimicry

Video Game Imitation/Mechanics

Virtual Reality Mimicry

The user can alter the laws of physics to mimic any and all video games. This power can give the user a wide variety of abilities like he can use a cheat code from a real game to trick his foes and avatar manipulation that creates modulate personality character identities (Think of it as a character customization except irl). Reader also has an instant learning ability so anything reader sees or wants new information they acquire, they can immediately learn and master any form of knowledge that can comprehend with ease. There's also a dimensional storage ability that reader can store anything inside their item box and can summon them back with relative ease. Actually just to make this quick I'm just gonna have to send this link so it would better explain everything: https://powerlisting.fandom.com/wiki/Video_Game_Physics anyways for personality I imagined reader to have a more laid-back attitude and relatively has a lot of patience when it comes to dealing people that can anger others quickly yet he's also confident and outgoing that likes to hang out with people no matter what you are as long as you don't try to harm him. Reader works a bartender and tends to meet other heroes (or villains who happens to visit that place) they always put on a polite behavior despite the mistreatment they'd often receive from other customers. also they never lose to a single game match like ever! No matter how professional you are at a video game or how much you do speedruns. reader is always one step ahead of you and even if you cheat they would immediately spot it. and speaking of speedruns, they also have a streaming channel on youtube in which they do all sorts of challenges. Other than that reader is pretty much the person you'll love to hangout with.

─King, Saitama, Genos & Tatsumaki x hero!reader

─Summary: just a few headcannons of your relationship with these heroes

─Warnings: none

King

─ He probably met you from one of your streams early on, then you saved him from a monster he was completely terrified of, only taking a quick look at his 'character' stats to detect the terror behind that straight face.

─ You found it so amusing that you indirectly encouraged him with a drink at the bar where you worked, after which he became a regular customer.

─ Although you had to change the meeting place because there were many King fans who came to ask for autographs, there were only a couple of people who wanted your autograph, and it was not even because you were a hero, but because of your streams.

─ Anyway, you found yourself at his house every time you had free time, when you found out that he played video games and watched your streams he desperately tried to deny it, you didn't give it any importance and now he's one of your most competitive rivals.

─ Luckily you can give more life to the games you play, King is used to playing against npc or Saitama and it's always very easy to win, so his mission right now is to beat you.

─ He will definitely run towards you if there are monsters nearby, you have incredible power and despite being A-class, he thinks you can eradicate any kind of threat or at least aspire to more than A-class.

─ Your relationship is based on a constant fight to break records in any game, whether it is the best streak in Valorant, speedruns in Mario 64 or winning in Mortal Kombat, although the rivalry increases much more in Mario Kart, peace was never an option.

Saitama

─ He met you in the middle of a battle, completely fascinated by being able to change your 'character' and appearance, he asked you if you could change his appearance too, although you could 'program' reality in a certain way, his change would not last forever.

─ After that silly situation, he found you at work and stayed for a while chatting, which made him visit the bar more when he needed to get away from Genos for a bit.

─ He takes care of all the people who have a bad treatment towards you when you work, although you simply don't care, he insists that you should not let disrespect pass.

─ He encourages you to change some parameters of reality to play some jokes on bad customers, you only get carried away sometimes changing the appearance of those people to something ugly.

─ Smoke comes out of his head whenever you play games because you are unbeatable, more than once you let him win to see his happy face, although if he rubs it too much in your face you will not let him win again.

─ You feel a little envious of his great power, it's not that you complain about yours, but sometimes it's tedious to have to think of a video game mechanic to transfer it to reality and fight, it's not so easy to change weapons from a shooter to sorcery from a fantasy rpg and he just has to throw a punch.

─ You are somewhat similar so when you both need calm or are saturated you get together to have a tea or coffee without the need to start a conversation, you just enjoy the program that is on television.

Genos

─ You became a Saitama 2.0 for this boy when he saw you fight, you will have him as a puppy in your work until you agree to train him once and for all.

─ However, no matter how much you explained to him that you only had powers by copie stats from video game characters to use them to your advantage, you couldn't help him much for that, so you simply supported him in the silly ideas that Saitama invented.

─ He didn't care that you were a class lower than his, after all Saitama was C-class and was his trainer, he thought that having two would only make him stronger.

─ He's not that big a fan of videogames, so unfortunately you spend more time having small battles against him in your free time, you weren't as good in combat as you were in videogames but luckily Genos was easy to read and distract with reality bending.

─ He won't tolerate a single disrespect towards you when you work, even though you don't care about the bad comments, you don't even have time to blink and those people are kicked out.

─ He'll put on your streams in the background while he cleans house, he's probably subscribed and donates from time to time to ask when you're free for a rematch.

─ Probably you will lend him some robotic parts or weapons from some games like Metroid, Megaman, Metal Gear Solid or Call of Duty, although they will not last infinitely in the real world.

Tatsumaki

─ She started a rivalry with you because you started to get the attention of some of the administrators of the hero association, you were just an A-class, you weren't that great.

─ You decided to ignore her silent threats during meetings, although when it was your turn to battle together she always did something to stand out from you, you really didn't care, it's not like you put in that much effort in battle.

─ After a while she left the childish attitude and found herself frequenting your bar, at first it was to follow you closely, then for chat with you.

─ She will begin to admire your fighting method because it's never the same and you learn quickly about your opponents, coming to imitate their attacks, you always change the game mechanics to your liking, although she will not admit it out loud.

─ At a certain point she offered you a class upgrade because you really were much better than a simple A-class, but you turned it down, you had enough work already and being a hero was only an occasional thing, she got mad at you for saying no.

─ She doesn't like to lose so she won't waste her time playing games with you, nor will she admit that she watches your streams and that's why she knows that she won't be able to beat you in any video game.

─ She makes a competition for everything she can think of in what she can beat you, you don't give a shit about her tsundere attitude and you just flow with it, if she wants to compete, it's never a bad thing to have a healthy rivalry with someone.

#one punch man #one punch man x reader #request #reader insert #saitama x reader #king x reader #tatsumaki x reader #genos x reader #headcannons #sfw #reader is not specified so...#fem reader #male reader #gn reader #opm #opm x reader #hero!reader

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bonefall · 6 months

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I hope you find a way to keep starclan involvement minimal because making them able to zoom call frostpaw so directly at any time raises the obvious question of why she (or anyone else in riverclan who wasn’t in on the conspiracy frankly) aren’t told who did it earlier

I’m curious if Splashtail was rejected for lives or if he refused to take them on principle

The solution is very simple. Most angels can't communicate directly! What's the point of speaking in omens and signs and prophecies if you can just say what you want

Between the realms of life and death is a sort of veil, like a strange, dusty membrane. A spirit can cross through it and try to influence the mortal plane, but it's got that disconnected feeling of working in heavy gloves.

Still, it's reliable to zip down and drag a couple of items to the nearest Cleric. They're trained in divination, learning basic systems for properly interpreting signs and omens.

The bright feather of a jay = StarClan is pleased with you

The dull feather of a jay = StarClan is disappointed in you

Hairstreak butterfly = Follow this

Snail shell, swirl-up = Yes

Snail shell, swirl-down = No

Trying to chat casually is AWFUL. Have you ever been asleep, and someone started trying to tell you something or command something of you? Sometimes you'll remember it, other times it just ends up warping whatever dream you were in, but most of the time you'll catch absolutely NOTHING. That's what it's like when gramma talks to you.

It's easier to connect to spirits you knew in life, or have a kinship with. Strong emotions make this more powerful. Rituals, like invocation (calling StarClan to connect the ancestor to you), channeling (directly contacting the spirit, usually via a sacrifical object), or prayer (catching the attention of a spirit) can strengthen the connection, but there will always be that veil.

Think of spirituality kind of like a stat. In life, having a huge number means you're really good at receiving messages and understanding intuitively if you're near something supernatural. In death, you're better at sending them and what exactly will get through.

Other assorted tidbits in closing;

More powerful spirits have a higher "stat" in spirituality, but they're also usually more disconnected from the mortal they once were.

Skystar, Patron of War, could pretty directly tell you what the confusing omen means...

But. He's very likely to angrily blast you with a lightning bolt for asking him to do something he sees as beneath him.

Thankfully this is why Invocation is helpful. If you tried to invoke someone who would get angry you're bugging them, the "call" won't go through.

Thanks to Clan cat ego and shifting popularity, good patrons often go uncontacted because they're less "cool" or unpopular. Pinestar actually got a lot of mileage out of his invocations of Bumble.

SPIRITS ARE INDIVIDUALS. Even when they've hit godly status and are distant from mortality, StarClan is not as united of an entity as it presents.

StarClan is not a fair or rational entity. It's the most powerful ancient spirits remembered over many decades, and a bunch of recent dead relatives a few generations behind the living.

Lizardstripe understands it best; the lower angels make a jury and a crowd and the patrons are the court staff.

The younger spirits are more connected to the living, but the older spirits have more functional power to pass on accurate signs

Ancient patrons, especially the founders, tend to not give a lot of "personal" attention to prayers, and when they do answer they tend to be cryptic. They are very disconnected from their mortal selves, more legend than life now.

Riverstar in particular is notorious for this. As the Patron of Water, he's essentially an abstract concept, on top of being a mysterious and wise person when he was alive.

Angels of all levels are perfectly capable of acting alone and messing things up, though. Birchface actually sent the sign that wound up getting Mapleshade’s kittens drowned, and he's just kept quiet about it out of fear this whole time.

Spottedleaf was UNRIVALED in her connection, both in life and in death.

Firestar doesn't know how she made it look so EASY... and he's also got a good connection, himself. He wishes he had more time to learn from her.

Shadowsight got his incredible connection by being tormented by Ashfur. He blasted him with lightning and turned him into a living radio tower.

If Ashfur and his accomplices hadn't blocked off StarClan, Shadowsight would have been more haunted and hounded than Goosefeather. They were the only "signals" he was picking up

(And then Ashfur ate all his accomplices anyway.)

SO those sorts of stunts are not pulled often. You need to be extremely powerful to alter the living like Ashfur did to Shadowsight

(In case you're about to ask; Goosefeather was likely either a mistake or an accident, unless I end up tweaking his story later)

The only time where you're guaranteed to be able to directly, perfectly talk to any cat is during a leadership ceremony. It's considered too sacred and personal to burden with commands, because the leader will only ever experience this once.

Going through the Moonplace is actually not a guarantee! They send very strong dreams to those who visit, more like TPB than later arcs.

As for why ghosts don't just reveal their murderer-- in addition to how hard it actually is to speak directly, most murderers simply take precautions.

It's known StarClan can be watching, but there are also demons to channel. There are rituals to ward watchful eyes.

Can't reveal your murderer if you don't know who killed you.

If you're Redtail in particular and your incredible sister breaks the law to summon you directly for answers, you actually waste the entirety of the time you got to yell at her about using the wrong method <3

But in a nutshell; no more zoom calls. You will STRUGGLE for your divine revelations and only end up receiving them when you've royally pissed them off the way God INTENDED

(also i think in the wind excerpt it said that splashtail rejected them outright, but I haven't read the whole book yet)

#Spirituality overhauls #Better bones au #BB!StarClan #Asc Spoilers

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brf-rumortrackinganon · 1 month

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"Which is an uncomfortable notion because we’re used to a royalty that “has to be seen to be believed.”"

This is not an uncomfortable notion. It's been tested over centuries.

Every royal since the notion began has done the 'has to be seen to be believed' parades, and stats always come back that support is higher after the Monarch has made themselves visible especially to the ordinary public, but it works both ways because public investment gives the monarchy power against the establishment.

I could give you over 50 examples where the Monarch's visibility increased allegiance to the Crown, but we'd be here all day, so i'll narrow it down to just 3 examples in 3 reigns.

When Queen victoria was merely princess Alexandrine, heir to the throne, her mother ensured that the public would support her by taking her on tours of the country. This gave both her mother and the princess power at court and ensured a smooth transition to Queen when the time came.

However, after Albert died and Victoria refused to be seen in public for 40yrs, the monarch suffered to the point of constitutional crisis and is the highest point of republican movement where the public called for the end of it as they didn't see why they should support an invisible institution.

The funny thing is that Victoria was using the social media of her day - frequently releasing portraits and photos of her and her family, encouraging the govt to create endless monuments and dedications to her beloved Albert, and the govt encouraged industrialised to use the image of the Queen to advertise their goods throughout the Empire, but it didn't work to stem the tide of republicanism especially in an era that had so many social problems.

That's not to say that she wasn't working behind the scenes - she was, but her invisibility was a huge problem that nearly ended the monarchy.

Her son, as scandalous as he was, mingled with the public at large and when he became King, he reinstated the visibility to great success. Most, if not all, the public ceremonies that the royals do now are down to him. Everything from Trooping the colour to State opening of Parliament. Those ceremonies had been taking place in private already, but he added the royal family to them, and turned them into a public spectacle showcasing the monarchy. And he taught his children well on that point.

George 5 especially understood that lesson because he used it to cement public investment in the monarchy and that way fortify it against being toppled by the establishment or republicans. He did it by building on the public ceremonies of his father by making charity/ meet and greets with the public a feature of royal life. He also created the system of awarding ordinary citizens honours and making sure there is a public investiture which is still beloved to this day.

George 6 and The Queen added their own versions of meet and greets eg The Queen added the walkabout which proved extremely popular.

The issue for William more than KC3 might be of personality as William seems shy just like Kate which is why they are not entirely comfortable with the public showing of themselves, so they need to figure out a way to do it that allows them to maintain public investment in the royals.

They might want to scale back or figure out different ways of being visible, but remote media doesn't work, and it would be foolish to throw away a method tested and proven over 1000yrs.

Anecdotally, they might dislike local bread-and-butter, meet-and-great the public engagements because they don't understand the power of them, but let me tell you about The Queen visiting my village in 2012 as the first stop on her Jubilee tour on the country - we've grown little, but in reality, still a village.

She didn't do much. She met some school children and many villagers, looked at some assembled stalls in the village square, patted afew dogs, looked over our tiny Abbey and left. Entire thing probably lasted 2hrs or less.

She never returned, but you'll be hard pressed to find a republican in the village following that visit. Growing up there, I would never have thought people enjoyed the royals except for Charles - our village is in the Duchy of Cornwall so we have more contact with Charles and everyone has opinions about him - good and bad, but The Queen's visit was a shot in the arm that people still talk about today.

*****

Anon, you really missed the point I was making. You missed it so badly that you made it for me.

I didn’t say “royalty has to be seen to be believed” was uncomfortable. I said the idea of modern, scaled-back monarchy favoring quality over quantity where the royals may not be as often seen was uncomfortable.

Yes, physical access and “being seen” is a powerful tool in the monarchy but it’s no longer the *only* tool they have. What’s different about today than Queen Victoria’s time is the 24/7 news cycle, social media, the capability to do in-real-time virtual events, the ability to record both video and audio, television, internet, and phones. Today’s society is more connected than the Victorians may have ever thought possible. Royalty does not need to only be physically present to make an impact any more and that makes people uncomfortable because — as you proved — it upturns 120+ years of tradition. It’s a huge change, a paradigm shift.

Now, should royalty still be physically present and seen? Yes. How are William and Kate going to do that? No idea, but it’s probably going to be different than what everyone’s used to and there’s already grumbling about it because it’s a change from what they’re used to.

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pradnyesh1008 · 7 months

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Embark on a journey to the heart of Veridonia, an empire shrouded in tradition and mystique. The Golden Throne stands as the symbol of power, yet beneath its gilded exterior lies a realm of political intricacies and hidden secrets, waiting to be unveiled. In a world where politics, intrigue, and war are the norm, you must navigate your way through the complex web of alliances and enemies that surround you. This game is for those who love adventure, drama, and intrigue. It is a game where every decision matters and every outcome are different. It is a game where you can shape the fate of an empire and make history.

“Dive into the epic world of ‘The Golden Throne’ with its first book, ‘Crown of Conquest’. A journey you won’t forget!”

In the vast continent of Veridonia, a great empire stands on the brink of uncertainty. Emperor Varian III, the revered ruler who has led his empire with wisdom and strength for decades, finds himself facing a devastating reality.

As his health deteriorates, the absence of a suitable heir threatens to plunge the entire continent into chaos and ignite a destructive war between the kingdoms. Now, facing his own mortality, the emperor grapples with the realization that his thriving nation could crumble without a clear successor.

News of the Emperor’s failing health spreads like wildfire, reigniting ancient rivalries. The various kingdoms, each vying for power and control, sense an opportunity to assert their authority. Fear murmurs within the hearts of the people, and trepidation blankets the land.

Whispers of an impending civil war pervade the corridors of power, and tension begins to mount as rival factions strategize and secretly forge alliances in anticipation of the emperor’s demise. Drawing upon an elite advisory council, composed of trusted ministers, scholars, and military strategists, the emperor endeavours to explore all possible avenues to secure a peaceful transition of power.

Noble houses assert their claims to the throne, while whispers of treachery and deceit echo through the corridors of the imperial palace. A sense of urgency fills the air, as the emperor’s condition deteriorates, and time becomes the most precious commodity.

As the final days of the asserting claims and authority draw near, a solution begins to emerge from the chaos. King Aric, the king in the north, your/MC’s father, emerged victorious, chosen as the heir to the Golden Throne. In this epic tale of power, loyalty, and betrayal, will you succeed in helping your father preserving the legacy of his predecessor, or will Veridonia descend into a dark age of war and destruction? Are you ready to claim your destiny? Will you follow your father’s footsteps and become a worthy successor to the throne? Or will you carve your own path and challenge the established order? The fate of a continent hangs in the balance, and only time will tell. This is the thrilling saga of “Crown of Conquest”.

 A rich and immersive setting inspired by real medieval history, culture, and geography.

 A branching storyline with multiple endings and consequences based on your choices and actions.

 A customizable character with four different personality options and various traits that define your skills and abilities.

 A dynamic stat system that reflects your character’s growth and development throughout the game.

 A diverse cast of characters with their own backgrounds, motivations, and agendas.

 You can befriend, romance, or antagonize them depending on your choices.

 Violence and Gore: The game frequently depicts gory, brutal battles and graphic acts of violence.

 Frightening/Intense Scenes: There are many intense scenes that can be frightening for some readers.

 Graphic Deaths: Characters often meet violent, graphic ends.

 Torture Scenes: There are scenes depicting torture.

 Sexual Content: There will be many scenes with sexual acts.

 Dark Humor: The game contains dark humor, which may be unsettling or offensive to some viewers.

 Sadistic Behavior: Some characters exhibit sadistic behavior which can be disturbing.

 Substance Abuse: Characters are shown consuming alcohol excessively.

Demo:

Forum:

https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/wip-the-golden-throne-60k-words/142838/59

RO's

Male RO's

Female RO's

#if: the golden throne #if wip #if game #choice of games #interactive fiction #wip #interactive novel #demo #choice script #hosted games

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olomaya · 2 years

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Voidcritters (Afterschool Activities+)

18 August: This mod has been updated. Please refer to this post for more information before downloading.

6 May Update:

This is just a small update. Apparently the Store Tablet (which the Simtendo Twitch is cloned from) gets routinely purged from inactive Sims' inventory. So I updated it to stop it from happening. You just need to redownload the MAIN file to get this fix.

19 March Mod Fixes/Tweaks:

Mod should now run for players without Script Utility (thanks to the Anon for bringing this to my attention!)

Included a fix where Sims without cards asking others about their favorite voidcritters produced an error

Fixed an issue where the "Ask to Join Voidcritters Club" option was still available even after the target joins the club

Sims can now sit while playing Voidcritters Go! on their phone

Please also note that you need CCLoader in order for the custom comic books to show up.

This is a TS3 version of Voidcritters which came in one of the TS4 packs and the second in my Afterschool Activities+ series of mods. I haven’t actually played with Voidcritters in TS4 but I really liked the concept and the worldbuilding and effort they put into it. Technically anyone can play but I made it for children and teens in mind. Sims can collect, trade, train and battle Voidcritters cards and play with their friends at the Voidcritters club. I didn’t want to go through the trouble of converting that bulky battle station and was planning to put it on the computer but then saw ATS3 had created a Nintendo Switch system based off the Store tablet and that was perfect.

For more information about the Voidcritters, you can read the handy guide here.

The card and packs are by me converted from TS4. The Switch is from Around the Sims 3 and is based on the Store tablet so you will need the tablet for the animations. Thanks as always to Sandy at https://aroundthesims.tumblr.com/ for her amazing cc and her generous use policy! Unfortunately I couldn’t figure out how to edit the video effect for gaming so it’s off completely and I just added some gaming sound to it. If anyone knows, please give me some tips!

I'm pretty happy with how this turned out except for the Read Stats interaction on the card. The card sticks through the Sim's hand. I tried for hours to fix it but alas, animation is not my forte. I was going to just remove it but it's the only place where I included the cute little descriptions for each Voidcritter so I'm leaving it in. Aside from the descriptions, all the information on each of your cards can be found either in the skill journal or by hovering over each card.

You need NRaas Career for the custom afterschool club, the Store tablet for the Twitch and Generations and University for other gameplay or animations.

Let me know if you have any issues! More details after the cut.

Download (8 files) here

How to Play

Voidcritter cards can be purchased in Entertainment/Hobbies&Skills or Kids Room/Toys. They come in packs: Starter Packs (§75) which have Common cards, Booster Packs (§90) which have Uncommon cards, and Battle Packs (§105) which have Rare cards. The cards you get are random each time you open a pack.

Common cards are §25 each, Uncommon are §45 each and Rare cards are §105. The values of the cards will depreciate over time but also can increase depending on their rarity and power level so you can sell them to make a some profit after training them up.

You train up your Voidcritters on the “Simtendo Twitch” handheld (Electronics/Misc; §500) and then battle them against other Sims that also have Voidcritters which will boost the power level of your Voidcritters and your Voidcritter skill.

Using the Twitch, you can battle with anyone who has a VC card online or anyone who has at least one card and a Twitch in person. Battles are decided based on the players’ VC skill, the power levels of the Voidcritters that are battling and if they have an elemental advantage (i.e. Water Voidcritters have an advantage over Fire ones).

You can also play a mobile version ("Voidcritters Go!") on your smartphone. However, this will only increase your VC skill. You can't battle with cards on it.

Voidcritter Skill

The Voidcritter Skill is for children and teens. There are 10 levels for this skill. Once you max out the skill, you will get a Limited Edition card.

There are two skill challenges: Battle Master and Top Trainer. A Battle Master is a Sim who has won 20 battles. They will earn extra battle points when in a battle. A Top Trainer is a Sim who has at least 5 Voidcritters with 100 power level each. (I know the photo above says different because I took it before I made the change after realizing how difficult that challenge would be.) After achieving this challenge, you will be able to train your Voidcritters much faster.

Uncommon, Rare and Limited Edition cards are skill-gated meaning that you have to reach certain skill levels (4, 8 and 10, respectively) in order to train or battle with them.

Gameplay Interactions

Aside from buying cards, you can also trade cards with other VC players to fill out your collection or get rid of duplicate cards. You can also give cards away. If other Sims have cards, there are specific interactions that will appear like asking about their favorite Voidcritter. Children and teens can also beg their parents or grandparents for a Simtendo Twitch. If you have a bad relationship with someone and they have cards, you can beat them up and steal a card from them.

Voidcritters Club

Voidcritter enthusiasts can join the Voidcritters Club afterschool activity where they will gain VC and video gaming skill and can battle with other club members. There’s also a chance they may find a card while at the club. Sims can invite their friends to join the club as well.

Other Nerd Actions

Sims can read one of the 8 Voidcritter Comics you can purchase at the bookstore. There’s a 25% chance that you find a card in the comic book.

Finally, what is a proper nerd without some fanfic? I added the option for Sims with Level 5+ Voidcritter Skill and Level 1+ writing skill to write Voidcritter fanfiction. You can also read fanfic if someone else has written it and if you are the writer, you can read reviews of your fic. Playing Voidcritters and everything VC related also builds the Nerd Influence skill.

#sims3cc #sims 3 mods #s3cc download #s3cc #sims 3 cc #download #voidcritters

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vexwerewolf · 6 months

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Hi Vex,

I had a mech idea/concept that I really want to flesh out but I'm not exactly sure how to best build it. The idea came from a conversation I had with my group about the Mecha genre vs the Sailor Moon/Magical Girl genre. And I thought, 'what if they kissed worked together?' So I decided to try and build a Magical Girl themed Mech.

So far, I am considering using Manticore as a base frame because I am really tempted to call it Sailor RA and do the whole "In the name of RA, I will CASTIGATE you!" thing. Other than that I'm thinking about maybe a Controller type build and/or maybe focusing on the really weird/paracausal abilities? Do you have any ideas for this kind of build?

Thank you!!!

Since we're doing Sailor Moon Magical Girl stuff, have you considered that instead of using the Manticore, you could use the Lycan, a Manticore altframe from the upcoming Operation Winter Scar module?

-- HORUS Lycan @ LL6 -- [ LICENSES ] HORUS Manticore 2, IPS-N Nelson 2, IPS-N Blackbeard 2 [ CORE BONUSES ] Overpower Caliber, Gyges Frame [ TALENTS ] Executioner 3, Nuclear Cavalier 3, Walking Armory 3 [ STATS ] HULL:4 AGI:2 SYS:0 ENGI:2 STRUCTURE:4 HP:21 ARMOR:2 STRESS:4 HEATCAP:8 REPAIR:5 TECH ATK:+1 LIMITED:+1 SPD:4 EVA:8 EDEF:10 SENSE:8 SAVE:13 [ WEAPONS ] Integrated: Shock Claws Integrated: Fuel Rod Gun FLEX MOUNT: Thermal Rifle HEAVY MOUNT: Nanocarbon Sword (Thermal Charge) // Overpower Caliber [ SYSTEMS ] Personalizations, Beckoner, Smite, Armament Redundancy

I call this one ECLIPSING BINARY SUPERGIANT PRISM POWER MAKEUP.

So the Lycan's basic conceit is that it's a two state system. You start combat with your normal stats as listed above, and a dormant superheavy weapon called the Shock Claws that cannot be used.

It has Slag Carapace just like the Manticore, giving it resistance to Energy and Burn damage. However, it replaces the Manticore's Unstable System, Charged Exoskeleton and CASTIGATE THE ENEMIES OF THE GODHEAD traits with two new ones. Interference Field causes nearby enemies to take Difficulty on attacks that don't target the Lycan, and Power Flux, which causes enemies to potentially become Impaired and Slowed if you take heat.

Your mech plays mostly like a normal Manticore for the first part of the fight. However, at any time, you may activate your core power, GO LOUD, which as a full action causes your mech to violently shed its outer plating. You lose Slag Carapace and Interference Field, your base Armor becomes 0 and your base speed becomes 6. You may then immediately move your speed and attack an enemy with your Shock Claws.

That's not all, however: you can charge up your Shock Claws by watching your allies get hurt.

If your friends take Structure damage before you GO LOUD, it charges up your Shock Claws. They initially deal 3d6+6 AP Energy damage (Overkill) in Threat 1 (although Gyges Frame already bumps that up to Threat 2) and cause another nearby enemy to take 1d6 AP Energy damage. If you see an ally take Structure damage, that goes up to Threat 2 (Threat 3 with Gyges). If you see an ally take Structure damage a second time, the damage increases to 4d6+6 AP Energy (Overkill) and the number of enemies who get struck by secondary damage increases to 2.

If an ally is destroyed in your line of sight before you GO LOUD, your Shock Claws instantly charge to full power, no matter what state they were in before.

This is a little bit more Super Saiyan than Sailor Moon, but you do get to go through a whole transformation/power up sequence and smite your enemies because they were mean to your friends.

#lancer #lancer rpg #lancerrpg #lancer-rpg #mech #mecha #lancer builds #manticore #lycan

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drinkyourvillainjuice · 7 months

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Result from the Google Form (part 1/x)

'The Exile' by Pheo

Okay,, there is a lot of reasons why I ABSOLUTELY adore The Exile!! First of all, it is particularly long and since I am a fast reader, nothing really takes me more than a day to read, but The Exile is perfect for a long read! There are lots of stats and different scenarios to come across that, literally, make every playthrough unique. I also love how dark and gritty it is, I would just keep the content warnings in mind!!

Triaina Academy

i can be a tsundere, stoic or just sort of an asshole and still get the ro falling in love with me without having to act flirty or charming or being a very nice person, also the flavor text and the backgrounds of the MC, and that one yandere RO, plus the worldbuilding

In the cards

i liked where was the drama going, idk it just stick up

When Twilight strikes

The plot and whole mistery behind our boss kidnapping and that one RO suspected to be involved somehow, omg such a tsundere pookie bear, plus some of the action scenes are mesmerzing

Speaker

because it was the first IF i ever played and it opened a whole new world to me

Super System: Monster Evolution

first isekai IF i played and actually liked it

#thank you for the reponses #i see all of the rest of them! will be posted whenever!!!

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toadallytadpole · 5 months

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DCA Fallout AU - Stats and Perks

This is regarding my DCA Fallout AU!! I'm probably gonna call it something like "The Sun, The Moon, and The Mechanic" since it's simple enough!! Here are the Stats and Perks for all 3!!

Sunny's Stats

Strength: 9

Perception: 3

Endurance: 7

Charisma: 8

Intelligence: 6

Agility: 3

Luck: 4

Sunny's Perks

Bloody Mess: +5% overall damage; he goes a little overboard when he needs to protect you...

Strong Back: +50 carry weight; he regrettably acts as your pack mule companion...

Polar Powered: +2 Strength and +1HP per second outside between 6AM and 6PM; he gets a little sluggish and grumpy as it gets darker...

Moon's Stats

Strength: 5

Perception: 8

Endurance: 6

Charisma: 2

Intelligence: 9

Agility: 5

Luck: 5

Moon's Perks

Friend of the Night: eyes adapt quickly to low light conditions; he keeps a watchful eye on you during your well-needed rest...

Fortune Finder: considerably more bottle caps are found everywhere; he pays for all your meals and supplies...

Night Person: +2 Intelligence and +2 Perception between 6PM and 6AM; he's infamous for his midnight heists...

Mechanic's Stats

Strength: 4

Perception: 6

Endurance: 5

Charisma: 10

Intelligence: 8

Agility: 6

Luck: 1

Mechanic's Perks

Bisexual Menace: +10% damage to everyone and everyone is easier to persuade; your wild charms know no bounds...

Robotics Expert: +25% damage to all robots and can shut off robots by sneaking up behind them and deactivating their systems; you also fulfill all of the boys' repair needs...

Finesse: +5% critical chance; your dexterity comes in handy even when holding a gun...

FOR CONTEXT!!

I specifically used the term "Bisexual Menace" for one of The Mechanic's perks as a reference to Fallout New Vegas!! In that game, you can choose to have both sexuality perks at the same time [Black Widow/Cherchez La Femme for female couriers and Lady Killer/Confirmed Bachelor for male couriers], and because both options have their individual +5% damage to their respective gender, bisexual couriers canonically do +10% to everyone [which has always been hilarious, especially to me as a bisexual]!!

However, all folks can enjoy this!! Not just bisexuals lol the perk was just for the silly reference to Fallout New Vegas!!

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theresattrpgforthat · 3 months

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Mint Plays Games: Rotted Capes (And the Lesson I Keep Learning This Year)

Last month I finally played a long-awaited one-shot of Rotted Capes, and I (once again) learned a lesson that’s been leaking into my brain over the course of the past year.

(tldr: you should play games you think you don't like)

The Context

Over the past 4 years, one of the settings my home group has returned to time and time again is our own personal superhero universe. We call it the Dover City Universe (The DCU for short), and we started building it in Spectaculars, by Scratchpad Publishing. Spectaculars is great for folks who like playing in person, and like building their own comics universe, and it comes with a lot of fantastic aids for new GMs who like a structured adventure that they can customize to fit the themes of their table.

Since then we’ve also run games in MASKS by Magpie Games, Henshin by Cave of Monsters, and i’m sorry did you say street magic, by Caro Ascersion. Each game has been an expansion from the original setting, placing a focus on a different location or time period.

Now, one of the players in my group has a really big love for media that turns a bit darker, including post-apocalyptic media, so when we were talking about possible future games, I suggested Rotted Capes, by Paradigm Concepts. He got very excited, and even offered to help me buy it. It then took me nearly 2 years to get it to the table.

The Rules

Rotted Capes is what I consider a crunchy game, far crunchier than what I’m usually willing to tackle. Character creation involves a point-buy system that makes stats and abilities more expensive the higher you push them, and there are many advantages or powers that require you to build your character in a specific way before you have access to them. The rank of your ability, skill or power determines how many dice (and what kind of dice) you roll for any given action, and the ranks also scale the passive modifiers you add to certain things in a very gradual way.

When it comes to the powers, your characters are b-list super-humans - all the A-listers died, disappeared, or turned undead when Z-Day hit, so you’re all that’s left to defend humanity. Not all of you were heroes either. Combat against regular zombies is meant to be reasonably easy (with the bigger threat being bit) while combat against super-Z’s is meant to be terrifying. Rotted Capes provides you with loose categories of superhero types to guide you towards a character build that is going to be useful/effective in combat, but the superhero abilities themselves are general, allowing you to interpret exactly what it means to “generate energy” for your character, or how you have the ability to “entangle” your foe.

When you play the game, your character will roll 2d10 for any given action, and try to beat a difficulty number set by the GM. You add extra dice based on your Attributes, Skills, Powers, and equipment, the dice ranging between d4’s and d12’s, depending on the rank of your skills. As you might see in the above chart, once you get high enough, you might even be adding 2 dice for a rank of something once you get it high enough. Beating a 5 is so trivial, it might not even require a roll. Beating a 40 is an astounding feat, and extremely unlikely.

In combat, players roll Xd10 (X=initiative) and look for the lowest result. This result determines their place on a 12-slice clock. Each player has their own personal clock, while the GM uses a GM clock, which they use to track what slice of initiative is currently happening, as well as where all the NPCs are. Every time the GM moves to a new slice of the clock, whoever is on that slice has a chance to do something, and depending on what kind of move they make, moves a number of slices forward on the clock. They will not be able to act again until the GM hits that slice of the clock. If you do something big and complicated, you can do it, but you’ll have to wait more than a few turns before you can do something else.

There’s also a player resource called Plot Dice, which are dice that you can spend or add to rolls to give yourself a chance of success, help out a friend, resist harm, and re-roll failures. Plot Dice is determined by your lowest Attribute, but they can be refreshed by playing to your character’s personality flaws (the zombie apocalypse changed everyone).

The character sheet for Nautica, the big bad of our session.

The Game

To make this only difficult once, I decided to put the entire table into a Google Sheet, so that I only had to worry about how many points I was spending, rather than continually referring back to the table to change things like passive modifiers or dice sizes.

I also took on the bulk of character creation, asking my friends to build half of a character (choosing archetype, highlighting favourite powers, and describing to me their background) and then doing the number crunching on my own, to make sure I knew how their character abilities worked. I did this because I was the only one who had reliable access to the rulebook, and I knew that asking a group of people to study how to play a game just for a single one-shot was not likely to work out.

The players all made very different characters. We had an ex-military martial artist who showed no mercy, a former sidekick who was still learning how to use his fire-powers, and an ex-villain trash man who could talk to rats and mainly fought using sticky bombs and magnets. When we rolled up to game day, we passed around printed versions of the character spreadsheets, the initiative clocks, and a number of polyhedral dice. I set the scene for the culinary school the characters were looting, and ran the group through 2 easy combats and 1 terrifying confrontation with a villain (who was one of my old DCU characters, but in an older, grislier form). After the combat, we spent about half an hour talking about the hideout where our enclave was camping out in, and playing through ending scenes between the heroes and various NPCs.

The Takeaway

I bought Rotted Capes for two reasons, and neither of those reasons were because I was genuinely excited about the game. I suggested it because I knew my friend loved the genre and I knew about it in the first place because I had heard about it because I listened to Fandible’s actual play series and the group sounded like they were having a lot of fun. But zombie media isn’t usually my thing, and crunch makes me hesitate because as a GM, I know the bulk of the work is going to be on me.

However, once the initial hurdle of reading and prepping the game was cleared, we had so much fun. The actual rules for rolling were very easy compared to the amount of math that goes into building your character, and the biggest obstacle for the players was trying to navigate all the cells of our Google Sheets.

The two most exciting pieces of game-play for me were the moments where someone got to roll a whole fistful of dice, and when combat clicked. Moving on the initiative clock was so wonderfully intuitive, and having a visual aid made it so easy to keep track of who was going next, and how long you had until you could do something again. Tying your actions to moves on the clock ensures that no one person is doing a bunch of interesting and complex moves one after another - if you do something really complicated or impressive, you have a kind of cooldown before you can try something again. Meanwhile characters who do something small and simple will be able to act again before you know it, and might get to do something right before a villain gets a chance to respond.

This brings me to the big lesson I’ve been learning this year:

Play Games You Might Not Like.

Three of my most positive experiences over the past year were games that I played for reasons other than because I thought they were really cool. I picked up Last Fleet because I needed another space game to run (that I already owned) for our Galaxy Squad run, and it turned into a big dramatic story that was cathartic, satisfying, and truly jaw-dropping in its narrative twists and turns.

I played A Complicated Profession because my co-GM was really excited about it and wanted to use it to lead out from our Scum & Villainy arc. We ended up having the most hilarious time coming up with various customers (including a goat-man played by Danny Devito and his himbo boyfriend).

I played Rotted Capes because I like my friends, and I really love building a superhero universe with them. I ended up discovering an initiative clock that rocked my world, and had a blast throwing mitt-fulls of dice around with my friends.

There were also games that I was super hyped about to play that ended up not being as much of a fun experience as I was expecting. I think that since I had built up such a big idea in my head of what those games would feel like to play, that when the dice hit the table (or in our case, the Discord chat), the result couldn’t possibly live up to what I’d imagined.

So do it. Pick up the game your friend is asking you to play. Take a chance on that game that sounds like it might fit the genre you’re looking for. Read the rulebook for a system you’ve never tried. Not every game is going to be a hit, but in all of that mess you’re going to find real gems that you carry forward into future projects, and come away with moments beyond what you can dream up.

#mint speaks #rotted capes #indie ttrpgs #indie ttrpg #tabletop games #mint plays games

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frankiesmileshow · 1 year

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Crystal Project Review

Ive been having a lot of fun with Crystal Project, a well made FF5-inspired RPG. The combat is very tightly designed and the exploration aspect is top notch. The art style put me off a bit at first, but I think it grew on me over time.

The game does a great job of slowly uncovering its breadth and letting you break its sequence through curious exploring. Lots of fun to search every part of its gigantic map for secrets. This is a game that loves hiding secrets within secrets within secrets. You might even occasionally stumble into a late game area, and exploring carefully could lead to finding items meant for the end of the game, giving your party a significant early game boost.

Exploring will often lead to surprise optional boss battles that are completely out of your league - but dying has few consequences in the game (you just lose a bit of money) and dying from bosses has no consequences at all, so you rarely feel truly punished for having explored too far, and its always worth it to have a peek at a boss battle.

Don't expect too much of a story. There is one, but it keeps a very light touch, this is mainly a game about exploring and fighting monsters. It does have characters and some personality, but dont expect something dense story wise.

It manages to avoid feeling like an open world game - it feels more like a linear game that just lets you break out of the confines of its intended path if you explore enough. It strikes a very good balance between having direction and having freedom. The world map just keeps expanding as you play, leading to many little shocks about the games' scope, a feeling you might be familiar with if you played Elden Ring.

The games combat uses a very well balanced, strategic system. Battles give you a lot of information to let you choose your actions carefully - you can see any enemies' next action in advance, and you even know who the enemy will attack next (notice the dotted lines in the screenshot above). Manipulating the enemies' current target is actually one of the fundamentals of the game- enemies choose their next target based on a "Threat" system which is entirely open to you as you fight, and many classes have abilities to help you manipulate this. Some class abilities also depend on the current threat state of a character - for instance, the rogues' many powerful skills only work if they are considered an enemy's bottom threat, and will otherwise always miss, which requires careful actions on your part.

The class system will be familiar if you played Final Fantasy 5 - you obtain new classes by exploring the world and finding large crystals, each unlocking a new one. The classes set a characters' stat growth on level-up, equippable items, main abilities and all have a unique "Innate passive" which are usually quite powerful (for instance, the base Cleric class receives a significant boost to all healing spells).

You can also add the abilities of a secondary class to your characters' moveset- like adding a clerics' healing spells to your Samurai. There is a lot of fun to be had mixing one class's abilities with anothers' passive boost - for instance, one class has an ability which makes the first action this character makes in a battle always target All enemies or All allies, allowing you to either massively boost your whole party or nuke the enemy party with a powerful spell usually meant for a single foe.

There are also passive abilities you can unlock from any class and assign regardless of a characters' current class, limited by a point cost system. These can range from a boost to max HP, to adding a poison effect to any weapon attacks, to allowing your character to equip a shield regardless of their class.

You can get very creative with the games' class system, there are countless ways to mix and match character abilities and classes to figure out some powerful strategy. The endgame has several challenges that might require you to make custom party setups just for them, turning the combat system into something resembling a kind of puzzle - though one with many possible solutions.

Boss battles have a way of feeling like a desperate struggle of improvising as your strategy falls apart - then winning by the skin of your teeth. This happens a lot. At least half of the boss battles for me ended with most of my party dead, and being one or two turns away from a full wipe-out.

I think the only real misstep is the games' analogue to chocobo breeding, introduced at the very end of the game. It feels tedious, I gave up on it after an hour of wasting my money on food for the creatures and not getting anywhere. Luckily it seems to be completely optional.

All in all I recommend it to anyone who likes FF5 and who likes RPGs that have a focus on exploring. Visually it might look a bit basic, but underneath that is an extremely robust game.

#game development #rpg #indie rpg #crystal project #final fantasy #final fantasy v #game review #video games

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fantasyfantasygames · 8 months

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We Were The First

We Were The First, Starfather Games, 2009

You know how some sci-fi settings have one particular alien species that is "the eldest", first in the universe to attain starflight, providing wise guidance to the newer species? No? Well, it's an older trope, it's not as in vogue any more, and it was already getting subverted by the time Babylon 5 came around. But this game puts an interesting twist on it.

You see, in this universe, humans are The First Ones. The game is set in the distant future, after humanity has made contact with dozens of other life forms. We also have a Great Disaster in our past, perhaps even the destruction of Earth itself. We Were The First (WWtF, not to be confused with W:tF) has your characters attempting to make peaceful contact with strange aliens and help them avoid the kinds of mistakes your people made in the past.

Violence is a failure state. The entire combat system goes like this: "You can shrug off any harm done to you. If you try to harm someone else or win a fight, you succeed. However, you lose something important that you have gained or could gain this session." The few weapons you bring with you are immensely more powerful than anything you're going to run into, so someone who attacks you just wastes their time. The moment you start striking back, you've lost. Negotiation, give-and-take, and empathy-building are the game's key subsystems.

Core stats are fairly simple, consisting of Professions (Diplomat, Trader, Spacer, etc.) and some Resistances (Tenacity, Wisdom, and Calm). The complex part is your relationships with others. Each relationship has a rating from 1-3, and a Sentiment (love, curiosity, deference, obsession, etc.). You have to have some positive-emotion Sentiments and some negative. You can even have multiple relationships with the same person - You might have Love 2 and Curiosity 1, or even Love 2 and Hate 3 and Obsession 2 all with the same person. It can be a fair amount to keep track of. Luckily it borrows the Exalted 3rd rule of "If it makes sense that you have a particular rating with this person, just write it down when you need it. It doesn't have to be on your character sheet beforehand." Really, the relationship system is very close to Exalted's "intimacies". Building and changing them is a core part of the system.

The random alien and planet tables are my favorite. They flow together such that one roll modifies percentages for other rolls. Certain types of aliens are more likely on certain types of planets, and certain planet types are more likely around certain star types. Communication type, sensorium, mobility, closest Earth equivalent for visual description purposes, linguistic compatibility, emotional spectrum differences... they cover a lot. You roll up how many governments there are, what types they are, who they send as their first-contact teams, what their religions are like, and more. For some people this would be overkill, but they're really well-designed and I like them.

The biggest place where WWtF fails is that it doesn't explain why the ship is entirely humans. Why don't any of the other alien species in the Galactic Unity come along? A few half-assed rationales are given, the best of which is that they have their own ships with different life-support systems, but even that doesn't hold much water for me. It feels like a plot hole. If you can get past that, this game gets a strong recommend from me.

WWtF is distributed as a file package is compatible with Obsidian, Zim, TiddlyWiki, and other desktop wiki things. You can theoretically also just open it with a web browser.

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