#losing is fun sometimes

[bat-in-the-machine]

Tharsis (2016, I told you most of the games I play are older) is basically a single player dice & card game, except everything is managed by your computer instead of with actual dice and cards.

Time for another rambling game rec!

A bizarre transmission, not from any known source, originating from the Tharsis crater on Mars, instigates the first manned mission to Mars. The Iktomi, enroute to the red planet, encounters a micrometeor shower that severely damages the ship. One of the crew is killed, the ship's pantry is destroyed, and the remaining crew have to survive the trip to Mars as systems continually fail.

Each week, new systems failures occur in one of the seven remaining modules of the ship. Your crew each have a certain number of dice, up to five, to resolve the issue by adding values together to meet a specific "repair" target goal. Dice can also be assigned to crew member ablities, which have an immediate effect, ship module abilities, which affect stats that carry over from one turn to the next, or research, which can be spent on randomly drawn projects for an immediate effect ranging from regaining dice to massive repairs to a module or the ship's hull.

After assigning your remaining crew to repair these modules, the week ends and any remaining emergencies have their effects applied (damaging the hull, reducing everyone's dice pool, injuring everyone) unless the effect is to disable the pod itself, which is an ongoing effect until it's repaired.

After damage is assessed, it's time to prepare for the next week.

Your crew is divided on how to prepare for the next week, and you have to choose what plan to follow. Every plan has a positive effect and, depending on the stress level of the crew proposing it, a negative effect that gets applied to the other option. You'll see here that if I pick the first option, I get one food, but those two crewmembers become more stressed. If I pick the second plan, everyone's stress reduces, but ship's hull takes damage.

The things you have to track from turn to turn:

HULL: If the ship's hull reaches zero, everyone gets to experience the joy and wonder of the cosmos close-up! Game over.

ASSIST: You can hold up to three ASSISTs. At the end of every week, you gain one, up to that maximum. Every time you roll a penalized result (Stasis, Damage, or Void) when repairing a module, it removes one ASSIST instead of doing that effect, until you're out of ASSISTs. You don't get to choose which effects get canceled by an assist.

FOOD: At the end of each turn, crew lose a single die from their dice pool, to a minimum of one. A single unit of food can be spent to restore three dice to a single crewmember's pool, to a maximum of three.

MEAT: You start the game with three meat. This meat can be substituted for food, HOWEVER - the meat is sourced from dead crewmembers. Committing cannibalism permanently lowers a crewmember's max HP by one. Crewmembers who have committed cannibalism have their dice permanently bloodstained to represent this. Once you run out of meat, you can choose to sacrifice a crew member in order to get three more meat at the cost of some stress and OH YEAH A DEAD CREWMATE.

HP: Each crewmember has 1-6 HP. Leaving a damaged module costs 1HP. Some damaged modules do HP damage to all crew at the end of the week. Rolling a DAMAGE result on a die does 1HP. If there are two damage dice in a module with the same number, rolling that number does 2HP damage. Found that out the hard way.

DICE: Every crewmember has 1-5 dice to roll to resolve an emergency, use their or a module's effect, or commit to research

STRESS: Every crewmember has a stress level. The more stressed they are, the worse their ideas at the end of the week are, the higher the penalty for not choosing their choice is. Managing stress is important to avoid cumulative penalties as you go.

RESEARCH: You can store up to 6 dice in research. Each must have a different roll on it, so you can allot a 1 to the 1 slot in research but as long as that's there, you can't allot any more 1s. There are three research projects at any time, with costs anywhere from 1 to 6 levels of research. These have immediate effects and can be huge game changers. Selecting one removes X number of dice from the research pool starting from the lowest value up (from left to right, essentially), or you can burn one level of research to reshuffle your choices.

That's it.

Keep the crew alive and the ship intact until they reach Mars and you win the game! In the main story scenario, you have 10 weeks until you reach mars. Other scenarios, under "Missions" have different objectives. At the end, win or lose, you're scored based on what actions you've taken, how many events are left unmanaged, whether or not you've committed cannibalism (and how many times), etc.

The story, parsed out before each week of gameplay in the main story mode, is easy to predict, but it's not the reason I play. I don't play to find out what's on Tharsis, I already know that. I play to find out how badly screwed I can be and whether or not I can come back from it.

oh shit

please please please please please

oh, I am SO screwed now

It's very highly chance-based, but there's a fair amount of strategy to it, as well. Just... don't get attached to the concept of victory.

Really.

just don't

just...

...don't.

*sigh*

welp.

This is fun.

[morethanwonderful]

Sweeping away his competition with a constant lead and a final victory by 22%, Shen (Yuan) Qingqiu has officially beaten Qi Rong and been crowned the MXTX character that was/would be most insufferable if given access to the internet!

In the end, it turns out that this whole elaborate tournament was for naught. Even Qi Rong, the man voted more annoying that 63 other characters, cannot hold a candle to the sheer degree of insufferable that we know our dear Peerless Cucumber was and would be. Absolutely nobody can compare to Shen Yuan's canon keyboard warrior antics.

Thank you all for joining me on this journey! I hope everyone had fun voting in this tournament, as I know I had a lot of fun running things and watching everyone's hot takes. Shen Yuan may have rendered all but the very final round of voting moot with his sheer loveable obnoxiousness, but maybe the real most insufferable people online are the friends we made along the way :).

[tharannas]

belobog trailblazing

[millidew]

i think he deserves the therapy dinosaur

ft. lyra’s own ominous ass chikorita

[thesorrowoflizards]

taskmaster is such a funny concept though they really said "okay we force five comedians do increasingly pointless, humiliating, and hilarious tasks, while the host bullies them all mercilessly. also the host's assistant is in a slightly concerning psychosexual dom/sub relationship with him, and gets off on the humiliation. and despite all of this it somehow feels wholesome and not Actually Mean. sometimes a swedish man is there"

[professorjirt]

I’ve discovered my favorite genre of Bagginshield art is where Thorin is a lovesick idiot who is Losing It and Bilbo is unbothered or oblivious to Thorin’s suffering LMAO

[jeeaark]

my mind has gone FERAL for GG's glorious future. BUT, I must know... What convinced Lae'zel to try an extra serving of calamari?! did Emps have to plane shift to save GG and just *Destroy* a bunch of enemies or something??

Oh man, That question brought out the big muse-a-lot hammer. But for like. Different answers. The Bad News: I have NO idea! Absolute zilch what specific moment would make Lae'zel go "Open-Minded-flayer Take #2". Maybe it's not even an exact moment. Maybe it's more like a very long and arduous slow-burning process. A very enemies to rivals to mutual allies to friends-who-won't-admit-they're-friends to I'll-think-about-it to count-me-in. A very 3-4 character developing campaign arc. The Good news: I know what starts them down that path.

Oh the shenanigans. Oh the things that can exist in the Far Realms where time doesn't exist and endless AUs do.

So what if Greygold accidentally meets their evil ending self and gets in an unfortunate predicament where Babe and Squid bud have no choice but to...Partner up to rescue them?

More shenanigans below:

Stakes are set. Maybe Greygold escapes, but can't return home without Grey following and is in hiding. Maybe they're bait and traps are set. Maybe they're dead (temporarily???). Maybe they're both having an intense therapy debate about redemption arcs until they're rescuers arrive. Greygold Mind Games Go.

The long story explanation: Greygold had never invested more into the marketing strategist business mindset than to turn their favorite romance novel, Tusk Love, (comic inside joke) into a pop culture hit. Emps lost a bet that they could succeed and now is following through with their not-so-innocent deal to use Greyg's trusted "adventurer" as their official public disguise.

Since the romance novel Tusk Love is now a popular theater play, Emps' public disguise keeps getting mistaken for that " one pretty tusked fellow on the bestseller novel (which recently updated their book cover with an anonymously commissioned illustration which looks suspiciously identical)" and never fails to receive an abundance of compliments. Emps has reserved the right to remain silent about the whole matter, but is pretty sure Greygold pulled a 'get praised, squiddiot' prank.

Lae'zel is gonna catch up on a lot of Squid Bud facts on this trip. Much to Squid Bud's dismay.

The irony is if Emps asked Minsc for help first, this adventure would have been solved within a day tops.

[iamespecter]

He came out to his parent company (they did not accept him)

[dreamdripdistance]

heres a scribble of these guys again smiles grins

[hedgehog-moss]

These days Poldine gets to go out for a little walk every day at apéritif time, because she's a good llama who doesn't bother my guests (too much) (she does ask for baby carrots and kisses) and she always returns to her pasture without a fuss. It's become a nice little summer evening ritual.

And it happened several times that Pampérigouste didn't see me open the gate for her daughter, and, when she realised Poldine was out, became genuinely puzzled as to how her prim and proper kid found a way out that she hadn't.

Pampelune would be allowed to go out too, but most of the time she's content to stay in the pasture with Pirlouit; it's only Pampe who (once she realises her daughter can't possibly have escaped on her own and I must have facilitated it) is like

[dayurno]

honestly you can say anything about the ravens (and you'd be right to) but you can't say the concept of them isn't delicious. a group of collegiate athletes in their intimidating raven motifs and their black uniforms who are basically bred to become the best of the best in a bloodsport. the adrenaline rush of every game being a competition between yourself and your teammates. knowing you're not just gearing up towards court but following in the footsteps of the alumni before you. the parties and the victories and the mindless sex and the way everyone around you somehow seems to always be thinking the same thing as you are. you are never alone and you will never be again if you just do as we say. who knows the kind of relationships that can happen in a place like that?

[raynavan]

O h…

He always did seem to encourage us to keep going in PLA…

[casualavocados]

*colors your kiseki part 2: rainbow edition*

me when i see literally any kiseki scene: you are not immune to being color corrected. and given skintones. while Maintaining Pretty. 💝 (pt 1)

...i love working with this show ngl. & to the people who leave kind words on my sets: i love you too. 🫂❤️🥰🥰🥰

[anonymouscheeses]

I'm gonna be shitting and screaming and starting fights if Sera becomes a villain. I can't take sibling angst, Sera loves Emily I swear guys believe meeee.

[au-hemeanssomething]

Hi guys heres the first edit i have made ever, also fun fact this idea has been in my head for *checks calendar* a month and seventeen days and only have i just gotten around to making it two days ago 🥳

[nekrosmos]

As promised, there it is ! 17k words lighthearted NikPrice fic <3 These two have been circling around each other for twenty years and are finally doing something about it.

Summary: Things have been different between John Price and Nikolai as of late. The two men have always been close, but something changed. Now, Price is forced to go on medical leave after a disaster of a mission. Nikolai offers a fishing trip, something he knows his favorite captain enjoys, a nice way to relax, and maybe let their relationship evolve.