#or am i just mostly around solo players?

[ravenbreakswifi]

Would anyone be able to help with this quest? I've been waiting for hours and I'm kind of desperate. I'm not the type to have patience for things like candle runs but I like doing quests. Both of the ones I have are blocked in some way. This 4 person one I could do I just need help and nobody that has come over has been willing to stick it out to get enough people.

I'm on switch and not 100% sure how friending works so let me know I guess.

[inkskinned]

the thing about art is that it was always supposed to be about us, about the human-ness of us, the impossible and beautiful reality that we (for centuries) have stood still, transfixed by music. that we can close our eyes and cry about the same book passage; the events of which aren't real and never happened. theatre in shakespeare's time was as real as it is now; we all laugh at the same cue (pursued by bear), separated hundreds of years apart.

three years ago my housemates were jamming outdoors, just messing around with their instruments, mostly just making noise. our neighbors - shy, cautious, a little sheepish - sat down and started playing. i don't really know how it happened; i was somehow in charge of dancing, barefoot and laughing - but i looked up, and our yard was full of people. kids stacked on the shoulders of parents. old couples holding hands. someone had brought sidewalk chalk; our front walk became a riot of color. someone ran in with a flute and played the most astounding solo i've ever heard in my life, upright and wiggling, skipping as she did so. she only paused because the violin player was kicking his heels up and she was laughing too hard to continue.

two weeks ago my friend and i met in the basement of her apartment complex so she could work out a piece of choreography. we have a language barrier - i'm not as good at ASL as i'd like to be (i'm still learning!) so we communicate mostly through the notes app and this strange secret language of dancers - we have the same movement vocabulary. the two of us cracking jokes at each other, giggling. there were kids in the basement too, who had been playing soccer until we took up the far corner of the room. one by one they made their slow way over like feral cats - they laid down, belly-flat against the floor, just watching. my friend and i were not in tutus - we were in slouchy shirts and leggings and socks. nothing fancy. but when i asked the kids would you like to dance too? they were immediately on their feet and spinning. i love when people dance with abandon, the wild and leggy fervor of childhood. i think it is gorgeous.

their adults showed up eventually, and a few of them said hey, let's not bother the nice ladies. but they weren't bothering us, they were just having fun - so. a few of the adults started dancing awkwardly along, and then most of the adults. someone brought down a better sound system. someone opened a watermelon and started handing out slices. it was 8 PM on a tuesday and nothing about that day was particularly special; we might as well party.

one time i hosted a free "paint along party" and about 20 adults worked quietly while i taught them how to paint nessie. one time i taught community dance classes and so many people showed up we had to move the whole thing outside. we used chairs and coatracks to balance. one time i showed up to a random band playing in a random location, and the whole thing got packed so quickly we had to open every door and window in the place.

i don't think i can tell you how much people want to be making art and engaging with art. they want to, desperately. so many people would be stunning artists, but they are lied to and told from a very young age that art only matters if it is planned, purposeful, beautiful. that if you have an idea, you need to be able to express it perfectly. this is not true. you don't get only 1 chance to communicate. you can spend a lifetime trying to display exactly 1 thing you can never quite language. you can just express the "!!??!!!"-ing-ness of being alive; that is something none of us really have a full grasp on creating. and even when we can't make what we want - god, it feels fucking good to try. and even just enjoying other artists - art inherently rewards the act of participating.

i wasn't raised wealthy. whenever i make a post about art, someone inevitably says something along the lines of well some of us aren't that lucky. i am not lucky; i am dedicated. i have a chronic condition, my hands are constantly in pain. i am not neurotypical, nor was i raised safe. i worked 5-7 jobs while some of these memories happened. i chose art because it mattered to me more than anything on this fucking planet - i would work 80 hours a week just so i could afford to write in 3 of them.

and i am still telling you - if you are called to make art, you are called to the part of you that is human. you do not have to be good at it. you do not have to have enormous amounts of privilege. you can just... give yourself permission. you can just say i'm going to make something now and then - go out and make it. raquel it won't be good though that is okay, i don't make good things every time either. besides. who decides what good even is?

you weren't called to make something because you wanted it to be good, you were called to make something because it is a basic instinct. you were taught to judge its worth and over-value perfection. you are doing something impossible. a god's ability: from nothing springs creation.

a few months ago i found a piece of sidewalk chalk and started drawing. within an hour i had somehow collected a small classroom of young children. their adults often brought their own chalk. i looked up and about fifteen families had joined me from around the block. we drew scrangly unicorns and messed up flowers and one girl asked me to draw charizard. i am not good at drawing. i basically drew an orb with wings. you would have thought i drew her the mona lisa. she dragged her mother over and pointed and said look! look what she drew for me and, in the moment, i admit i flinched (sorry, i don't -). but the mother just grinned at me. he's beautiful. and then she sat down and started drawing.

someone took a picture of it. it was in the local newspaper. the summary underneath said joyful and spontaneous artwork from local artists springs up in public gallery. in the picture, a little girl covered in chalk dust has her head thrown back, delighted. laughing.

[shycoconutt]

high school sweetheart bokuto! who has only ever had crushes on celebrities before he met you. the day you got assigned to be partners for the semester in gym class (which he took even though he was exempt due to volleyball) was the day he went home and tore his bikini-clad posters off the wall and threw away his magazine stash under his bed. he doesn’t need to live in a boyish fantasy anymore, because you are real.

high school sweetheart bokuto! who loves to show off his athleticism. whether it’s tennis, frisbee golf, badminton, swimming, or baseball, he always comes out on top and drags you right there with him. you aren’t the most coordinated of the bunch, but you are competitive and he loves it. seeing you get fired up over a successful play mostly led by him had him reeling. on the train ride home, he finds himself replaying your small “woo”s and “yes bokuto!”s in his head with a stupid grin on his face.

high school sweetheart bokuto! who carries you to the nurse's office bridal-style after you fall and twist your ankle while running laps, cursing himself for not keeping a closer eye on you. while waiting for the nurse to come back with an ice pack, he notices the scrapes on your knees and takes it upon himself to take a warm, wet washcloth to clean off any dirt and debris that settles in the wounds. as you begin to sniffle as he kneels before you, he lifts your chin with a delicate finger, tilting his head in questioning. “i was on track to set a new personal record,” you manage to squeak out with a shy smile. after a pause in disbelief, bokuto’s howling laughter rings throughout the school halls.

high school sweetheart bokuto! who, for the week you are sitting out due to your injury, makes it his mission to make you laugh every single day. during dodgeball, he purposely lets himself get nailed in the face. during tennis, which he plays solo as he refuses to play with anyone else, he gives the loudest, most obnoxious grunts he can muster. during baseball, he hits an impressive triple but runs the bases in the opposite direction. every time he looks over to catch the way your shoulders shake and your eyes crinkle, he feels like a man without water finding a river in the desert.

high school sweetheart bokuto! who is absolutely awestruck to find you up in the stands at his latest volleyball match. going up to serve, right as he is about to start his routine, he hears your beautiful voice as you call out, “bokuto, nice serve!” from above. without skipping a beat, he tosses the ball up in the air, turns his head slightly to give you a wink, and slams the ball to the other side of the court. after hitting a serve that was more like a backcourt spike, he points to you on the sidelines, dedicating his service ace to you. little did he know then that every successful receive, set, spike, and serve from then on out would belong to you.

high school sweetheart bokuto! who finds you after the match and insists on walking you home, draping his jacket over your shoulders to shield you from the cool spring night. without saying anything, you pull out your old mp3 player from your bag and offer him an earbud which he takes eagerly. shoulder to shoulder, you walk the empty streets, bokuto humming along with the music. overtaken by the buzzing atmosphere, your proximity, and an old r&b song he thought he had forgotten about, he snakes his arm around your waist and intertwines his other hand with yours, lifting you off the ground and spinning you around. as you shriek in laughter while gripping onto him for dear life, bokuto vows to dedicate the rest of his days to chasing this feeling of pure joy with you.

a/n: i just had to write something for our sweet bokuto. i think i am going to continue this as a series because it's just soooo cute! this is dedicated to my high school sweetheart who i met in gym class sophomore year. we're celebrating 10 years this weekend! <3

[theresattrpgforthat]

How about any TTRPGs set underwater that aren't horror themed?

THEME: Underwater Games.

Hello friend! I am so sorry that your asks got eaten - I'm glad to have them back! (It looks like Tabletop Trick or Treat unearthed a few gems.)

Now, let's see what kind of underwater games I can fish up for you!

Deepwater Enclaves, by kiryas.

Just plain old air pollution? A failed weather control experiment? Or more sinister forces? Nobody will know for sure why earth cooled below a dark mantle of clouds in the 1980s. Agriculture could not adapt fast enough and when conventional battles for the few remaining natural resources close to the equatorial line erupted into full-scale nuclear war, humanity was on the brink of extinction. Less than five hundred thousand mostly malnourished, freezing humans were left, when the year 2000 began.

This game is about venturing from a safe Community into the unknown. At the core are taking risks for your loved ones; sometimes this is at odds with your individual motives.

Deepwater Enclaves is a Rooted in Trophy game that contains a number of roll tables with evocative choices, and a community creation that involves the entire table. As players, you play both your character and a member of the community who is important to someone else. You play through a series of scenes, structured in a similar way to the way you might set up a scene in a tv show.

To participate in a scene, if you are not one of the original characters set to play a role, other players must spend a token. These tokens are also used to affect outcomes from when you roll, as well as reduce risks that may pop up as you play. You need two different colours or shades of d6’s for this: one colour will represent regular dice, while the other will represent “dark” dice, which raise the stakes whenever you roll with them.

Overall, I think this game is about exploration and survival. I think it has the potential to be a horror game if you want it to be, but you can also alter the tone to redirect the story towards something more dramatic, perhaps centring the game more on your community, and awarding the players with enough tokens to give them the ability to pull themselves out of danger.

Carcinauts!, by Hessan Yongdi.

Carcinauts! is inspired by a famous British children's animated TV show that takes place in and around the sea. You play animal explorers, scientists, and rescuers. Joined by your many friends and helpers, you seek to learn more about our fascinating oceans. Make the world a better place for the animals who live in and around the Great Blue Sea!

Based on the prolific Dominus system created by members of the Brazilian RPG community, Carcinauts! is designed to allow for quick play without a game master. This makes it idea for a solo session in the Sea or a team adventure, using the tables to build out your story. Its simple rules based around d6s and largely non-violent topic materials also make this game child-friendly.

Carcinauts is a two-page game that feels a little bit like a kid’s show; you are all underwater animal explorers, going on missions and solving problems. The resolution of the game is called the Dilemma oracle, and is fairly simple. You must determine two possible outcomes or answers, and then roll 1d6. On a 1-3 the first option is true, on a 4-6 a second option is true. These outcomes need not necessarily be “success” and “failure” either. They could be “left” and :right”, “up” and “down”, or “true” and “false”. This resolution system also makes the game friendly to solo gamers or GM-less tables.

If you want a light-hearted game about underwater explorers, which generates a lot of story ideas for you, maybe check out Carcinauts.

Deep Love, by Bully Pulpit Games.

You’ve come to this paradise to drop a two-and-a-half ton iron ball off the side of a ship and lower it almost a kilometer into the abyss. 

You’ve come to crawl inside that iron ball and go down with it, to see what there is to see down there. 

You’ve come with three other brilliant adventurers, friends, and lovers, and you’ll all get a chance to descend and risk your lives in exchange for seeing things no human being has ever seen.  And maybe, in the inky darkness and cold silence, you’ll find a measure of happiness and fulfillment.

Deep Love has a fond appreciation for old naturalist drawings of various fish, and uses those drawings as the art for the game. You play four characters, possibly pre-generated, on an expedition to the deep waters of an island for a geographic expedition. You all have feelings for each-other, and you’ll have to spend some extended time in a bathysphere to sort this out.

This game looks like it’s equal parts emotional conversation & role play, and, on the other hand, discovering the wonder of the ocean. According to the designer, it looks like you can modify how much you want to experience the former, and how much you want to experience the latter. If you want a game that gives you the tools to explore both your character’s internal emotional landscape as well as the strange underwater world around them, you might like Deep Love.

Submerged, by Arcane Atlas Games.

SUBMERGED is a solo journalling game of undersea exploration.

In this game, you take on the role of a daring explorer aboard a submersible. You have been charged with venturing into the depths of the ocean, to find something wondrous and undiscovered, hidden deep below the waves.

This one is for the solo gamers! It’s based on Carta, which uses a deck of cards to explore a map or series of locations. The player draws a number of cards and lays them face-down in a grid. Each turn, you move to a new card, flip it over, and come up with a journal entry based on the prompt the card gives you. The four suits represent four elements of the game: the Lost City, The Creature, the Wreckage, and the Signal. All of these elements play into the themes of mystery and exploration that this game seems to be about, but I don’t think any of it is necessarily horror-focused.

24XX The Deep, by Chaosmeister.

ONE DAY THE OCEANS DROWNED THE WORLD. Humanity survived below the waves. The sea birthed leviathans. Your crew owns a dingy old sub. Odd jobs, salvage, leviathan hunting and a few merc gigs keep you afloat and breathing.

24XX The Deep is a game about underwater survival and it’s also a drama. As a 24XX game, it’s only a few pages, but those pages distill the necessary parts of the game into a few things: customization for your submarine (aesthetic and mechanic), character options, and roll tables for pieces of the world, such as the factions that your crew might have to work with or work against.

The designer for this game says that 24XX The Deep isn’t necessarily meant to be a horror game, but it can still be a little creepy in tone when you consider the ways the natural underwater environment can raise the stakes for your players.

Aqua Squad, by Em.

A Tunnel Goons hack of aquatic and aquatic-adjacent adventure, created for the Saturday Morning Cartoon Jam. 

I think this might be a fairly safe bet considering it was submitted to something called the Saturday Morning Cartoon Jam! As a Tunnel Goons hack, this game is fairly simple. You follow the Submarine crew of the Cuttlefish, as they go for adventures underwater. Players pick character types, which kind of act like characters on a tv show, and fill in a few pieces of information to make those characters fit their play style.

The resolution mechanic involves rolling 2d6 and adding a relevant ability, and adding +1 for any relevant item you might have with you. You must meet or beat the difficulty score to succeed. You start with 3 items, and 10 HP. There isn��t much in terms of GM tools for adventure generation however, other than what appears to be episode title names. These titles can be evocative: you roll two words and put them together, so the GM may have an interesting time designing a “ghostly volcano” for the squad to investigate, or trying to figure out what the title “Vacation Megalodon” might mean.

Signals From The Deep, by Aaron Goss.

SIGNALS FROM THE DEEP is a tense, ocean-floor setting and scenario made using a no dice, no masters roleplaying game system Tiny Tokens.

This scenario takes you and the rest of your old, sentient, deep sea research robot team SEA-4 on a shared voyage, exploring deep sea wonders as you seek out the source of a anomalous signal detected way down at the bottom of the ocean. What awaits you in the depths?

Signals in the Deep is a mystery game, but it’s not necessarily a horror one. The game is small, meant to fit on two double-sized poker-card-sized cards. It’s easy to pick up and carry, and doesn’t have too many rules. Your core goal is to figure out the source of the signal; but what exactly that source is will be up to the GM, at least from what I can see.

Also Check Out…

Octopus Shipwreck Explorer, by SassWrites.

Bones Deep, by Technical Grimoire Games.

Odyssey Aquatica, by Old Dog Games.

My Mermaids TTRPG Recommendations.

The Sea Calls Recommendation Post.

My Coral Recommendation Post from last week.

[aninventoryofthepossible]

Inspirations for VOID 1680 AM

Earlier this year, I released a new solo TTRPG: VOID 1680 AM. In it, you use a deck of cards, a six-sided die, your music collection and a voice recorder to create your own late-night radio show.

The cards help you dig deep into your collection to reconnect with music you love; they and the die also help you create anonymous Callers and the concerns, hopes and obsessions that drove them to reach out to you, a fellow lone voice in the darkness.

I also included steps for joining the library of Callers for other players to use, and even to submit your full show for broadcast on the "real" VOID 1680 AM. You can see some of those Affiliate broadcasts here. They're genuinely very cool.

You can check out the game here, and I'm proud to say VOID 1680 AM is now a Judges' Spotlight Winner in this year's ENNIES.

Okay, enough table-setting. Let's get into it.

VOID was the culmination of a lifelong obsession with commercial radio; both the technology (which feels retro despite scarcely being over a century old) and the melancholy romance of lonesome voices baring themselves to an audience they'll never know the scope of.

This, to me, is an apt metaphor for the act of making something - anything at all. Speak into the Void, the back cover copy says. You never know who is listening. So it is with putting something you love into the world.

So what inspired VOID? I cite both Anamnesis by Sam Leigh and The Wretched by Chris Bissette in the book itself, two solo RPGs whose tones and methods did much to help me find my own.

But if I'm being truthful, VOID's inspirations mostly reside outside of games. Here are a few things that haunted me profoundly enough to drive me to respond.

The first is Talk Radio, specifically Oliver Stone's adaptation of Eric Bogosian's play. The movie's tagline is "the last neighborhood in America," which to me frames radio's persistent relevance and puts social media - often called a "town square" itself - in proper context as one piece of the many ways people find connection with others, for better or worse.

Contra the VOID DJ, Barry in Talk Radio is very, very aware of how his audience receives him (hint: not well). Barry must be heard, and so must the similarly damaged souls who call in to dump the poison in their brain into his... and everyone who's listening in, besides. It's a host of people who want to connect but don't know how, spiraling in decaying orbit around each other until something awful happens.

VOID 1680 AM was originally much darker before I decided to pull back and let players pick their own tone, and Talk Radio is why.

Oxenfree is a narrative video game about a small group of teens stuck on an island haunted by hungry ghosts who can be tuned in and out of reality with handheld radios. There's more to it than that, but I'll leave you to discover what on your own - because I would recommend this game to just about anyone.

Insofar as VOID 1680 AM can have a "soundtrack," it is this one by scntfc, created using WWII-era radio equipment.

The Vast of Night is a quietly alarming lo-fi/sci-fi set in a small town in New Mexico in the late '50s. A radio DJ and a switchboard operator pick up strange signals, and then... things happen.

This specific radio station (stylized in the poster above) is what I picture for "my" VOID 1680 AM.

Then there's Stevie in The Fog, played by Adrienne Barbeau. She's the bridge between VOID 1680 AM and my earlier solo game, Lighthouse at the End of the World.

She is, yes: a late night DJ. And her radio station is, yes: in a lighthouse. She's living my dream, at least until the ghost pirates show up.

Spoilers, I guess?

But the most important influence? VOID 1680 AM cover artist Jordan Witt's fan art for the podcast King Falls AM years ago. This image took up residence in my head, so much so that I still use it as phone wallpaper despite never having listened to the show it's for.

When it came time to partner with a cover artist, who that cover artist would be was never in question. Entirely unknowingly, Jordan took all these loose ideas in my head and gave them something to cohere to. A beacon, if you will.

They spoke something into the Void, and I listened.

Fun fact: Jordan even jazzed up the original logo I made for VOID 1680 AM when that title only applied to the AM transmitter in my garage. Here's my original - you can plainly see the influence of Jordan's art on that O. It all really came full circle.

Those are the biggest ingredients in the stew that made VOID 1680 AM. It's fun to talk about stuff I like, but also I hope it might nudge someone - anyone - to get going on something they're after.

(That's you. I'm talking about you.)

A project finding its voice is a wonderful thing, but there's no real miracle to it, no outside influence that will tell you what to do. It's just things in your head magnetizing to each other until they got a shape that - with coaxing - can stand on its own.

See you on the dial.

[a-driftamongopenstars]

Heyoo! I saw you've reblogged stuff for Palia and I was wondering if you'd recommend playing it? Ngl I'm interested in a game to play to take my mind off things and Palia looks to be really fun, but when I looked into it to find out more, I found that people will get mad if you don't call out certain resources in the server(?) chat apparently, which kind of scares me as a potential player cause I want to play solo due to being shy/anxious if that makes sense x'D I hope you're having a wonderful day! ^W^

Hey anon :) Thank you for asking!

So, I absolutely 100% recommend Palia, especially as a place to hang out to get your mind off things! I know it can be a little scary with the social part of it, but Palia provides a wonderful environment to play either solo or with others!

It's so cute, you can decorate your home, talk to different villagers and even romance a lot of them (or all of them, no consequences :D), you can garden and mine and build and cook. The story is interesting and the characters are all complex and well developed. It's also a beautiful game :)

As for the social part, I found Palia community incredibly kind and helpful. I ran into a mildly weird situation only once. Otherwise, people in the chat are so helpful if you have questions, they tell you anything you need to know, where to find resources and such. There are indeed callouts for materials, but you don't need to respond to them if you don't want to or do them yourself. It took me a while to figure out what all those call outs mean and I also started doing them, mostly to give back the support I got in my first steps :) You can also just ignore server chat, I know a lot of people do that, there's no penalty to being quiet and doing your own thing :)

I've read some 'horror stories' on reddit about it haha, but honestly, those don't happen as often and you can literally ignore anyone being mean and report/block them. There's very few bad eggs around Palia, I found.

Give it a try, I am very sure you'll enjoy it. Palia also doesn't have any FOMO (except for maybe once a month market but it comes back every month for a week and you can visit it then), you can drop it and come back any time! And it really is completely free!

I'm taking my time playing it, not rushing anywhere, just doing what I feel is comfortable for me to do.

If you have any more questions about it, I'm also happy to answer!

[hypotheticalprose]

The Benefits of Narrative Jazz

CAUTION: I am not a jazz musician, I have no real skill in music, and I am generally always talking out of my ass on this blog. Great, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I will now attempt to use jazz as a metaphor for storytelling.

I love TTRPGs, watch my fair share of actual-plays, and have a handful of hypothetical game systems rattling around in my head that I’ll definitely get around to at some point. However, I was a latecomer to the art form. Unlike many of my friends, I didn’t play DnD until my senior year of high school. I originally only got into it because my little brother was getting into it, and I wanted to be supportive.

Because of this, I have a clear moment in my life where my creative writing work was irrevocably contaminated by my ongoing love affair with random tables and collaborative storytelling. Comparing my mindset before and after that point, the best thing I can compare it to is the difference between classical composing and performing a jazz piece.

When I was younger, I had far more experience with building LEGOs and drawing maps as creative outlets, and I took a similar structural approach to my writing. My work was focused on putting pieces in the right place, making sure everything fit, and killing any narrative dissonance I found with extreme prejudice. In my mind, there was a thing called The Story, and The Story was essentially a window into a realistic, internally consistent alternate World that I constructed myself. It’s the mindset of a guy who obsessively read Wookipedia all throughout middle school to make sure that his homemade Star Wars faction was exactly as cool as the canon allowed.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I started running games of DnD in my speech and debate class (why weren’t we doing, you know, speech and debate? What are you, a narc?) and I discovered the joys of riffing. I approached each session with my meticulously crafted notes, and my grimdark villains, and my Map, and despite my best efforts my players transformed the game into Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Luckily, I am only sometimes an utter killjoy, so I found myself really enjoying the game despite the fact that it wasn’t a perfect Story in a perfect World.

Today, I mostly play rather than DM, but I’ve definitely DM’d more games than I have played in em. I also write professionally and personally. As it turns out, the skills that make for good improvisational, collaborative storytelling are just as useful when sitting down and writing a screenplay or narrative.

This is where the jazz comparison comes in. In jazz, a performance typically begins with the bassist playing a pedal point, a single note that the rest of the band builds the song around. There’s also usually a basic melody that they riff off of for their solos. Oftentimes, the performers only have a vague idea of what they will improvise during their solos. Sometimes, the best of the best would completely wing it. But of course, they have that foundation they’re building off of. And even the wildest performers are tethered to that pedal point.

For writers, the pedal point is the thing that makes the story worth writing. I’m aiming abstract here, because it could be a lot of things. A theme they find compelling, a neat character, a specific emotion, whatever. It can even be practical like “I need to write a story that I can use to pay the bills.” No judgement here, we’ve all done it.

The melody is essentially the story’s starting premise. This is the “idea” in its most basic, barebones form. A chord progression and time signature become setting, premise, etc.

It’s the riffing that makes things interesting. None of the players in a jazz band are going to know what the final song will sound like. That means they have to adjust on the fly. They have to connect with what the other players are doing. If inspiration strikes, they use the fundamentals as the tether that prevents them from going too far from the basic premise. When you record a jazz performance, you do slightly kill this magic, right? But here’s the thing: if no one recorded jazz, we’d all have a lot less jazz in our day to day lives.

Every story that exists today is essentially an example of this process. No story remains unchanged. For a younger me, that was a challenging thing to accept. I clung to every idea I had. Every new idea had to fit into my existing framework. It was, essentially, creative constipation. I was writing orchestral pieces where instead of getting rid of my older, amateur work, I was layering more parts over it.

The irony of treating every part of a story as sacred is, after a certain point, you might have a hard time remembering what the original idea that propelled you was. At that point, you’re kinda screwed.

I have found that in my own work, the method that I try to use for everything I do is this:

Follow your story’s guiding light with religious fervor. If you find yourself losing sight of it, your story is in jeopardy. if you have an idea that doesn’t fit the guiding light, consider an alternative home for that story. Alternatively, if you find that you need to change your pedal point out of necessity, recognize that you’re gonna have to retool everything built on it to avoid dissonance.

Be open to inspiration when it strikes, even if it means changing the planned meat and bones of your story quite a bit. If your guiding light is strengthened by the new idea, you will be glad you did it.

In situations where you are releasing episodic content (comics, fanfiction, ttrpg campaign, tv shows, whatever) and retooling past work is not ideal, aim for lean, mean storytelling. Don’t establish things “just because;” it can close you off to better ideas down the line, when it really matters. Don’t write the beginning as though you have a finished story already. Focus on your basic melody, then elaborate as needed.

Writing is output, and existence is input. The latter is the fuel that drives the former. You won’t have a new, better idea if you haven’t experienced anything new. Read something, go for a walk, whatever. Greedily swallow novel concepts and sensations, see what that does to your story. Watch how other people riff on similar melodies, get inspired. A closed system is a system that will put nothing out. If this advice happens to be life affirming, it’s purely tangential to my monomaniacal desire to write stories and shit.

You don’t have to be improvising stories on the spot for a live audience to find these things useful. It is fundamentally a matter of mindset, allowing you to build more effective stories at a high speed. Also, my general need for structure is still totally a thing, don’t get it twisted. I just have a more well-rounded tool kit. But I’ll still make a good fuckin map. With rivers and shit.

[reshiram]

You mentioned that Seofon means a lot to you and I just felt the need to say that, yeah, same

I used to be a pretty casual Granblue player who was mostly around for Belial and about a year ago I developed a strange fascination with Seofon, to a point that I got a bunch of my friends into him as well (including Shades, it's my fault). I was apprehensive about recruiting an Eternal, so I got Seofon from the freebie I got after Seeds of Redemption in early February

...I then recruited the other nine Eternals over the course of the next seven months

Just yesterday I transcended Seofon for the third time

Which meant clawing my way to victory against Ewiyar in a grueling solo battle, but I pushed through. For. For him

I used to be so casual and I've been getting nonstop Platinum every month since March. I've gotten so much stronger, especially in Wind. Can you guess why? It's all his fault

First perpetuity ring and everything

I used the free revans weapon we got from the anni event to get a Sette di Spade because I can't do revans raids yet and I've been using it ever since too -

He just gives me a lot of feelings

The friend group keeps making jokes that ever since he noticed my interest, we've been getting a lot of content for him as well, Heart of the Sun and Last Sumo Warrior and Relink and the Grandcypher Kitchen and his art for the orchestra concert and who knows what else

I also had to grind like crazy in Relink to unlock him immediately when I hadn't unlocked Proud quests yet so I spent hours farming Ahrimans, so I'm used to suffering for him at least

I just wanted to get that off my chest as I am the resident Most Normal Seofon Anon

Anyway, he's pretty great I guess (understatement of the century)

OH. YOU... So you're finally in my inbox hmm?~ heheh... yes i have seen you around, what a lovely pleasure it is to answer an ask from the fabled Most Normal Seofon Anon...

anyway... this is a beautiful story. like actually... seofon really is contagious 97% of the time... i really understand where you're coming from, because most of my seofon insanity is posted on Other Sites and such, which means Tumblr is Spared from half the things i say... but it made me... really happy? to see that people found out who seofon is because of me on those sites! like i ran a poll on twitter and a huge chunk of people said they found out about him because of me... so you anon, are my kindred, truly. i get you. you get me. 🌟

like people even call me an authority on him and send me posts with him and it makes me go Woah. I've had an impact on the people. they see this freak and think of me... let's spread the illness together...

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME, LET ME JUST. SAY. GOOD JOB WITH ALL OF THAT!!!!! CONGRATS ON STAGE 3 TRANSCENDENCE!!! YAY!!!!!! 💓 let's work on stages 4 + 5 together... ^__^ i'll think of you from now on when i work on 5*'ing the other eternals~

i get going crazy over him and doing crazy grinds over him. i actually logged my progress on his first stage last year, where you can see i went pretty insane in a short period of time. 😳 unfortunately due to my health i have this tendency of going Wild for a bit and then taking breaks. but hey. if it works...? (do not get me started on the evoker grind pre-rank 200. i fought 1300 six dragon raids in three days to get 3 sands... >_< but that's offtopic so---)

i'm over rank 200, so i get to visit seofon whenever i want (i also have my siero academy permanently stuck on the v2 battle with seofon)

BUT YEAAAAAAH THANKS FOR DROPPING BY SEOFON ANON!!!!! feel free to keep me updated on how you're doing~ maybe to inspire you i'll drop a silly picture of my seofon mochi kororin in a Situation next time you're in my inbox. for now i'll leave you with this video. which i think will really resonate with you.

lore about this video is that i just got out of the ER and just felt the need to make it. the hospital drugs told me to.

[heretichromia]

Unit Evaluation - Gladiia

(And also the Abyssal Hunters as a whole.)

Gladiia became available once again today, this time permanently (through Record Restoration). There's a lot of buzz happening around her right now, so I feel like I should throw my hat in the ring.

Mostly because...I disagree with most of the takes I'm seeing.

Gladiia is a very good unit, if used in the right scenarios. I'm certainly biased, but I would encourage anyone who's interested in using her to build her. However, I need to stress that the hype surrounding her is overblown.

Compared to the premier units in this game, she is not by any stretch of the imagination broken. This is not a Młynar or Texas the Omertosa-level unit who'll instantly warp the way you play the game with her awesome might. Don't build her thinking you'll get an obscene powerhouse, especially if you don't have her best partner, Specter the Unchained.

Beneath the cut, I'll break down her strengths and weaknesses, and give you some tips on how to play with her. It gets a little long-winded, so I'll give you a TL;DR:

As a standalone unit, Gladiia's module elevated her from "incredibly mediocre outside of niche use cases" to "decent, but inferior to other 6* options for most players." As the lynchpin of the Abyssal Hunter squad, Gladiia offers you the opportunity to play with some reasonably powerful generalist units whose power largely lies in their mixture of solid damage and self-sufficient durability (with one noteworthy exception). Their power, however, is often overstated; they don't excel in either category, and in many cases are sidegrades or downgrades to other options.

I've also included small TL;DRs for each subsection, if you're just interested in my conclusions.

I don't have a ludicrous Risk 27 Abyssal Hunter CC clear to show to prove that I know what I'm talking about, but mid-risk CC (18-24ish, unsure with the new CC system since I wasn't a fan of Pinch Out and so didn't bother doing above 600) is generally the area of difficulty I like playing around with. Keep that in mind when I'm talking about these operators, so you can take my words with a grain of salt if your personal goals for using them are different!

—

Solo, Without Module

TL;DR: Gladiia has shift power that can't be replicated by any other unit, but without her module is a fragile, low-damage pseudo-Guard that isn't worth using for general content unless you're as stubborn as I am.

Before we talk about her ludicrously-hyped module, it's probably helpful to recall what Gladiia was like before her module came out.

Without her module, Gladiia is a fairly unimpressive unit outside of a very narrow set of use cases. Her power is largely concentrated in her pulling strength, and in those cases, she's completely invaluable:

Her S2's wide range and good shifting power (strength 2, the same as other shifters' S1 at M3) makes it a very flexible skill for things like shifter stalls. Her S3, as well, has some good niche shifting utility that can't be replicated by other operators (though note that the actual max risk clear used S2). Her S1 is also worth using in some situations, as it can store multiple charges, but it's by far the most niche skill in her arsenal.

The issue is that, if you're the average player, you'll almost never be taking advantage of that power. She's like Weedy: Queen in Contingency Contract, but most players will never be doing hard enough content to need to take advantage of the power she has at her disposal.

In terms of general use, she's...not very good by the standards of 6* lane-holders or crowd control units. She'll be a valuable roster addition for new players, acting as a pseudo-Guard. As she's cheap (13 DP), she might be good to shore up holes in struggling rosters.

She doesn't do a whole lot of damage. She's not particularly durable—in fact, she's only slightly less squishy than Pioneer Vanguards, and less durable than Bagpipe. Her cooldowns are relatively short, but her power on-skill isn't very impressive.

She's not useless. I, stubbornly, brought her to almost every map anyways. Her regen passive means she'll be able to handle waves of weak enemies by herself without the need to babysit her with a Medic. Her S3 provides some decent crowd control in terms of a single-target Bind and an AoE pull, though you'll need to get used to how it works to make good use of it. The issue is that she doesn't really do a lot compared to other 6* units, which is...what you'd generally expect from a welfare unit, unfortunately. If you lack lane-holders or cannot use more powerful sources of crowd control (e.g. Gnosis' Freeze), you'll still likely get good use out of her.

—

Solo, With Module

TL;DR: Gladiia's module fixes her fragility and helps her low damage output, but is not itself a magic bullet that'll make her a unit on-par with the stronger 6*s. She becomes a reasonably defensive crowd control-focused unit that can help hold weaker lanes.

Gladiia experienced the single most phenomenal upgrade a unit's ever gotten from a module. That much is undeniably true. Her module gave her pretty much everything she needed to become a solid generalist, and...she is!

The damage reduction and enhanced regen makes her reasonably bulky, but keep in mind that without it she's squishier than off-skill Bagpipe. Putting 30% damage reduction onto that fairly fragile frame isn't going to make her a tank, but while she won't be replacing your Defenders anytime soon, you don't need to worry much about her dying. Her damage increase is nice, too. If you don't have or want to use the other Abyssal Hunters, Gladiia with her module is perfectly fine on her own. She's still not a unit that I'd recommend over a dedicated 6* lane-holder for that role, but can be used to very good effect in conjunction with other units.

I personally prefer using her S3 for general content. It's a solid mixture of crowd control and pretty considerable arts damage on a short cooldown. Others tend to favor her S2 for lane-holding, and I've seen a few recommend putting Mastery points into that first. I've personally...never really been impressed with her S2's performance in these general cases, and only switch to it if I'm using her for pulling, or in specific scenarios where it'd be good in a particular map.

—

With Specter the Unchained

TL;DR: Gladiia is a great unit to support the already quite good Specter the Unchained, and both make each other a good deal more effective. There's a cute synergy between the timings of Gladiia's S3 and Specter's S2, as well.

Here's where I should talk about the unit I effectively always pair her with in some capacity. These two are a match made in heaven, and complement each other very well. If you don't have Specter Alter, then Gladiia is still a perfectly fine unit, but if you do, you'll notice a significant boost to their performance when you use them together.

First, Specter's own Abyssal Hunter faction buff helps considerably with Gladiia's survivability. At max level, even without Specter's Mod-Y, it'll get her to slightly over 3,000 HP. Coupled with her damage reduction and regen, this means she can withstand a good amount of punishment. The only thing holding her bulkiness back is her relatively low DEF, which does sometimes mean she melts faster than you'd think.

Second, Gladiia's module makes Specter Mod-Y (S3)...legitimately decent. She turns from an S2 machine into a more than competent lane-holder capable of tanking and dealing respectable damage to elites and bosses. Nearly 4,000 HP off-skill translates to over 10,000 on-skill, and her middling DEF is offset pretty heavily by Gladiia's staggering 30% damage reduction and over 350/s HP (on-skill) regen. As a bonus, with Specter's Mod-Y, Gladiia's skills have even shorter cooldowns, letting you spam whirlpools.

Third, Gladiia has very nice synergy with Specter's other skill—her most powerful and specialized one, which can't be replicated by Gavial Alter. There's the obvious synergy: Gladiia's damage reduction and regen means that Specter can survive more punishment between her skill cycles, keeping her cycling between periods of invulnerable onslaughts and AoE burn. The less obvious one comes in how well their skills are synced. Specter's skill timings are 20/20/20 at max investment. Twenty seconds off-skill, on-skill, and in her substitute. Gladiia's S3 lasts for 8 seconds, and then has a 35-second cooldown. This means that you can use Gladiia with Specter to consistently lock enemies in overlapping arts damage AoEs between cycles of Specter's blender. I like placing Gladiia 1-2 spaces behind Specter for these purposes.

—

Full Squad

TL;DR: The Abyssal Hunters as a full squad are fun, but do not necessarily or even often represent the strongest thing you can be doing with a selection of 4-5 units in your already limited squad.

...I don't think the Abyssal Hunters are that strong.

I feel a little crazy saying that, since the ubiquitous opinion that I always hear is that they're overpowered. It's everywhere on Twitter, on Tumblr, on Reddit. Even fucking Yii made a video calling them broken.

I really don't agree with that assessment. They're good. They're definitely very good. But in my playtime being stubborn about using the Abyssal Hunters as often as I can in the hardest content I can tackle, I've never really felt like they were the strongest thing I could be doing. When I'm stuck on a stage, I switch off of the Hunters so I can take it seriously. That's not the most objective analysis I can give, though, so...here goes.

The Abyssal Hunters kind of suck.

Individually. They kind of suck individually.

I don't think I need to convince anyone that Guard Skadi is a joke of a 6* by herself, and while Specter is great by 5* standards, she doesn't exactly hold a candle to the 6* lane-holder options when you're not abusing her invincibility. Andreana...

Andreana isn't real. I'm sorry. I wish she was. She's not.

The only one of them that's powerful—not just decent, but actually strong—as a standalone unit is Specter the Unchained.

It's not relevant to this analysis, but it is relevant to the general point of this post to point out that Specter the Unchained is a limited unit from a year ago that a majority of the people just newly picking up Gladiia won't ever have.

Gladiia, Specter the Unchained, and Specter can all be very specialized units who offer very strong roles in specific scenarios. But most of the time, if you're taking the full squad, they're not going to be used in those windows of power. At best, you usually just have Specter the Unchained using her blender optimally. They're just...Guards.

They all do the same thing. They're Guards. You place them in lanes, and they hit things. And none of them besides Specter the Unchained are even particularly good at that. Specter (5*) is great when you're using her to tank unsurvivable damage. She's not so great when you're just using her as a nun-flavored Mountain whose skill options are a reasonable DPS boost that stuns her for 10 seconds and fucking ATK Up γ.

And...yes. I get that stacking enough buffs onto a vanilla stick will eventually make the stick strong enough to break anything. The issue here is that the teamwide buffs are largely defensively-focused. There are some offensive parts of those buffs, but they're the ones with the strongest opportunity cost. They're—likely intentionally—found on the most individually mediocre members, Skadi and Andreana. Skadi feels great to bring when you're using her to 1v1 incredibly strong enemies, but when that's not a great option for the map you're bringing, she feels useless. The worst part is that if you're bringing her for the team buff, you have to choose between her modules, because the one that provides the strongest buff is her worse module by a considerable margin. Skadi Mod-X almost makes her feel like a worthwhile unit, by reducing her redeployment time to 40 seconds, making her (with S2) a decently tanky medium-redeploy unit who can square up against units that would make other helidrops falter.

Andreana gives 20 ASPD to the entire team, which is great—but you can only bring 12 Operators to your mission.

Is that really worth a slot in your team? What are you giving up by bringing someone who's weak enough that she's not even worth deploying?

Yes, with all of the buffs combined, Specter the Unchained does become a monster. But with all of the obscenely powerful units we have in the game, is it ever actually worth it to bring two to three dead weights to use her more effectively? Especially when the most potent buffs, the defensive buffs, will usually only be effective on her for a third of the time when she's equipped with her strongest skill?

Is that worth not bringing Texas? Yato? Surtr? Ines? Bagpipe? A real Defender? A secondary DPS? A plan B, in case something goes wrong?

...Maybe? Maybe that's been the experience for you, and these units actually have felt overpowered in your hands. But that hasn't been my experience. These units are clearly powerful. If this review has seemed largely negative, it's only because it exists in the face of endless praise or even complaints about how strong the Abyssal Hunters are.

The Hunters are tanky. They're really, really tanky. Not quite Hoshiguma or Nian tanky, but...well, nothing is. But we're in a metagame where people are (incorrectly, in my opinion) calling Hoshiguma a bad unit because she doesn't provide much utility other than her tankiness. Which is...almost exactly the same as what the Abyssal Hunters as a full squad bring to the table. They're big meatballs that are largely unimpressive in terms of damage or utility.

What content are the Abyssal Hunters optimal in, exactly? They're not meta in Contingency Contract; while Gladiia and Specter the Unchained are CC mainstays, the full squad is never brought, and Gladiia's "gamebreaking" module isn't utilized at all. They're not meta in Integrated Strategies. They're not even the strongest units in SSS, and that's a game mode that has a dedicated buff for them.

At best, they're optimal units for middling difficulty content—and I'd contest that, but we don't have leaderboards to look to for what units are best for clearing story stages. But even if that were true, to get them to that state, you need to invest large amounts of resources into getting full level 3 modules for each of them—and you inarguably need a year-old limited unit!

Stacking teamwide buffs is a great way to bring mediocre units up to playability, but you really need a critical mass of them in order to make them a serious metagame contender. And I...just don't think we're there. I don't think we're that close, honestly.

...

—

Conclusions?

In summary, build Gladiia!

...Look, she's neat. She's one of my favorite units and I use her all the time. And she is good, just...don't expect her to revolutionize the game for you.

And build the other Abyssal Hunters, too. Just...do it because they're a neat thematic squad that's decently powerful as a whole. They work fine without Specter the Unchained, too. They'll be weaker, of course, but they're still perfectly usable. All you're really missing on the other units is her HP buff, and they're still pretty strong without it.

Build them because you like them, and so Gladiia is surrounded by her family. Not because you think they'll crack the game in half, or something.

[sburbian-sage]

Hey so ive been watching your posts quite a bit and you seem pretty knowledgeable so i had a question

I was wondering what other species have been run into out in sburb?

I have a coplayer this session whos is a smith of heart who is some kind of plant creature? Shes made of vines or something

Tried finding info on the web and could find nothing but clearly made up rumors after a day or two of searching

Shes cool enough but has a habit of trying to pet my hair which like, no fuck off ive been through 4 sessions now thank you very much im not a child (although I am fine with her cooking because God damn I don't know how she does it but she makes that shit taste way better than it should)

Shes a fucking whizz with the alchemiter as well, making shit i can barely comprehend

Ive also never seen her kill an imp but according to grist torrent she has grist in the quadrillions which should be completely fucking impossible since we have only been in session for about 2 weeks

Currently shes building a 'ath based quantum code entangled communications array' which was about the only bit i understood other than the fact it somehow uses the furthest ring to send messages long distances? Which i dont understand the point of since we can communicate instantly anyway

Just wondering if anyone else has encountered them before, i asked for like a species name and she just rustled a bunch and changed the subject

Oh yeah, there are other guys out there. Humanity and Trollkind seem to be the most common (technically Trolls propogate more as a species across universes, but Humans tend to have more successful SBURB sessions and thus are over-represented among the Replayernet), but there are four other "well-known" species. Not to imply they're at all common, in fact I'd say all of them combined, there's probably less than 200 of them in the Replayernet. Less than 100, potentially.

Cherubs. Skull-faced, seemingly solitary, prone to doing solo sessions, and with a weird split personality thing going on. I recently got into drama with one of them. Technically one half of them. Keep up!

Hobs. Furry dinosaur things with prehensile tails (and sometimes arm-gliders). Evidently they frequently come into contact with Trolls (as in, they get conquered by them and tend to resent this). Known to be inordinately gregarious, making them pretty good networkers. Probably the "most common" of the rare species.

Birdbros. Big intelligent parrots with two-meter wingspans that tend to form technocratic societies. They have trouble walking on flat surfaces, but they can also fly so cry about it I guess. If you have a Birdbro coplayer, you can pretty much give up on navigating their houses unless you ask them to build accommodations, gain flight, or get really good at balancing on horizontal poles.

Hoofdogs. Technical bipeds, but they prefer four-legging it. Natural telepaths, but it's left their spoken and written language rather atrophied. If you want to hold a conversation, either get ready for a not-quadruped to get inside your brain, or get ready to start drawing pictures (and figuring out what they're drawing). In fact, they have a Pesterchum/Trollian equivalent called Expressfriend where you can only draw.

I can't say I have heard of a plant Player Species though. I tend not to think of them in general due to their rarity, but still, you may have actually come across an as-of-yet undocumented Playeroid. Assuming she isn't just a human who got heavily mutated, somehow. That might explain the evasiveness concerning her species.

Some notes, questions for you, and questions for her. Documentation appreciated, as always.

The fact that she can communicate seamlessly with you is quite notable. Some Player Species can communicate with each other mostly fine (Human English and whatever language the Trolls speak are kind of identical but with different alphabets and some goofy terminology, the Trolls get around like I mentioned earlier which may explain why Hobs and Cherubs can also communicate well), but the Birdbro language is mostly whistling and trilling, and the Hoofdogs barely even have a language. Either it's a hell of a coincidence (but not a conspicuous one), or the errant "she's actually a human" conspiracy theory I came up with on the cuff is holding up.

~ATH is a universal factor, nothing worth raising suspicion over.

SBURB's mythology and trappings vary wildly depending on the species making up the session. Alchemy is a universal, so it makes sense that she would have prior experience. But ask her what differences she notices between your (assumedly mostly-human) Session and her plant-based Session. In particular, if the Carapacians were physiologically/psychologically/culturally similar to her, if the Battlefield's chess metaphor was replaced with something else, if God Tier or other mechanics were different, stuff like that.

Related, while the game does have different "localizations", in a mixed-species Session it will actually partially localize itself in proportion to the different species present, and their proportion, in an attempt to create a maximally accessible Session. So you might be able to notice slight differences between this Session and a "Human Session" which clue you in to the more severe changes you'd see in her Session.

While you're at it, try to learn as much of her culture as you can. Do they have a fucked up romance thing going on? Was her attempts at tousling your hair a sort of mating ritual?

Extortion is a tool that must be used with discretion. If she can't provide a name for her species, you have free reign to make up something goofy like "Vineys" or "Verdancies" or "Seedrians" and make that the de-facto common terminology among the Replayernet.

This is your duty as a SBURB documentarian. It is also your duty to put to rest the "new species or a weird human" allegations. As well as, now that I am thinking about it, maybe keeping an eye on her. The phat Grist stockpile is pretty suspicious, and the communications array seems very odd. If it's actually a cover for her sending a signal to her home base so they can descend upon your Session and drain it of its resources, don't worry about it. Not only is any home base she had destroyed (SBURB Moment), but she ain't doing shit with the Furthest Ring unless she stakes her soul on it. But still, better to know than to not know.

[capillaryspice]

Unpopular opinion rant incoming:

I did not enjoy Baldurs Gate 3

Before anything else I will admit I am biased, as strategy turn based games aren't something I'm usually into to begin with. I mostly ended up playing it because my partners and a friend are SUPER into the game and wanted to do a 4 player run. I do have 30 hours on a solo run I tried to get used to the game with, so I have a decent bit of experience with how it's supposed to run as a single player but I'm not judging companion stories or anything because I haven't completed them.

I do understand why people like BG3, and I don't wanna rain on anyone's parade for a very critically acclaimed game, but I do have some thoughts that I just need to get out of my head, so if you like the game and don't wanna hear me complain about it just scroll on ahead. If you do want to hear me complain, I'd love to hear if anyone else has had the same thoughts, because genuinely I've not really had anyone to talk to that hasn't been head-over-heels for it. (Actual thoughts under the cut)

-----------------

With that out of the way, for starters BG3 is a very impressive game. From a technical perspective, from a voice acting quality perspective, the sheer amount of tiny tiny details, etc... it is IMPRESSIVE. Too impressive, I'd almost have to say. Because, despite being impressed by it, I did not have FUN playing the game. For all its details it doesn't draw me in. For all the technical marvel, it's just too janky. It's all of the rules of DND and none of the immersion or fun

I would love to have had a functioning camera position that didn't give me whiplash whenever a new character in the combat of 20+ NPCs decides to do so much as shuffle to the left. It feels like pulling teeth when trying to select/interact with anything, god forbid a reaction happens while you're trying to attack and you just completely lose the action bc the interruption to movement pauses everything and screws u up. I'd love to be able to jump without going through two menu screens and a map to just hop over a gap(I'm never complaining about the Dark Souls jump being too complicated ever again). Also everything moves so slow, I would kill for a fucking Sprint button.

I would have liked anything approaching a streamlined combat system that didn't take a long ass time to set up a move that takes six seconds to play out, and then wait for ten minutes literally doing nothing while the rest of the NPCs in initiative whip the viewpoint around and get it stuck in walls and corpses so I can't even see what's happening while I can't do anything for the rest of the round

A lesser gripe, but just a bizarre choice to not do: Id like to hear the character voice I chose in character creation for cutscenes, instead of just background ambient lines. Like, if the last dragon age game (from 2014 mind you) can have a voiced main character with multiple voice options, this new game that has unique voice lines for every goddamn squirrel on the map and ALREADY PAID VOICE ACTORS TO VOICE THE MAIN CHARACTER TO BEGIN WITH can probably afford to do so. Hell, I'd like some background music that isn't just the tenth rendition of Down By The River in a different key. The bard music is all gorgeous, why couldn't they have reused some of those compositions as ambient music for different locations?

This is a MASSIVE game, and what they've put into it is definitely admirable, but like. Not in the ways that make a game breathable or immersive? The choices in where they've decided to dedicate the anal level of detail seems misguided from a just general player standpoint; There's some gorgeous settings in the game, but I was distracted every time by getting frustrated that I couldn't even get a more-than-vague look at any of the scenery I actually enjoyed because the camera is so limited in its angles. So I can't take a good look around what should be a beautiful temple that I'd love to see closer, but I can individually inspect every moldy apple and tax form on a random dinner table instead. It's a vast open world, but the character models have very clearly defined paths they have to stay within. The amount of unique NPCs is insane, but the mechanics themselves TREAT them as NPCs(i.e., resurrection rules), and they don't react to PCs unless ur doing Violence or Crimes (even og skyrim had NPCs have comments on if u weren't like wearing clothes, for instance). Every shelf and bag and nook and cranny are searchable, but that gets overwhelming very quickly as you have to choose between taking like an hour of real time to clear a cluttered area and possibly find something important but more likely just end up with a bajillion rotten carrots, or move on but have the anxiety of knowing you've possibly missed something vital. There's a million options you can take at any moment with any object or character, but there's rarely anything indicating what will be vital later for general world stuff. But then with the main plot (the Emperor, Raphael, the crèche) it felt very railroaded in the sense that TECHNICALLY you could try and choose between outcomes, but your choices don't actually matter because you die if you choose The Wrong Option (or end up in effectively death sentence combat) and will end up where they want you to go regardless.

BG3 isn't a game I want to spend time playing; it's not a world I can wander around and appreciate the beauty of and get lost in the soundtrack or the environments. The whole combat system is incredibly frustrating to manage, and just feels like Hurry Up And Wait. I'm not gonna knock the romance parts of the game, I've heard good things and haven't gotten far enough in any of em to have an educated opinion on, so really the only thing the game has to offer in spades OTHER than romance is replayability. Which normally I would say is a good thing, but for how long of a game it is and how non immersive the gameplay and world feel, it really just ends up being a game of fucking around and seeing how many things you can get an alternate dialogue for or create new stats around. Like, this is great for completionist folks who love collecting achievements and making the most busted crunchy math-based builds possible, but Baldurs Gate 3 to me just isn't a game I can sit down and have Fun(TM) relaxing and playing.

It's a game that I feel absolutely missed the forest for the trees.

So anyways, essay complete. I've only slept like 6 hours total in the last three days so a lot of this may or may not even make sense. But on so much sleep deprivation finishing this game and realizing I was just frustrated with it instead of actually feeling accomplished for having finished it, it was the final straw and I just needed to get the thoughts down somewhere

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk

[inventors-fair]

Together Together: Partner winners!

Our winners this week are @hanavesinauttija, @izzet-always-r-versus-u, and @mudthing!

@hanavesinauttija — Sickly Patrician & Melodious Nightingale

Most people know me as a flavor guy around these parts, and if I had to judge this card based on the flavor text, I'd say that it's delving into the purple language a wee bit heavily and that you can tone down the poetic nature of the dialogue. The inspiration is quite interesting, though, and mechanically, I love the smoothness with which you created this union. The exchange of treasures and life is fine for the bodies and their utility, and if I am going to be down for the flavor, I like the usage of Noble as a type here and the fact that even though you don't have to, it makes sense for the owner of the Nightingale to repay the Patrician.

Really, what I like here is the targeting. 2HG isn't much of an online format as far as I'm aware, so there's no misclicks, and in commander/multiplayer games, the ability to heal someone as a political move is neat to me as well. 2HG seems to be the place where there's going to be the most application, but there's room for either card in casual artifact decks, lifegain decks, etc. without the burden of single-archetype cards. A little ramp on the black side helps the white decks later in the game, and overall, keeping the team alive and strong feels like it's asking a lot strategically without getting crazy complicated.

@izzet-always-r-versus-u — Towashi Casino Dealer & Kami of Reclaimed Coins

Weirdly enough, this one is a pair I'm enjoying MOSTLY for the flavor. A spirit-touched dealer is a crazy addition to the world of Kamigawa (but honestly, gambling is a universal touch I'm more down with than that effing DJ table from NEO) but what a flavorful win they are. Modifications and artifacts play mechanically into the feeling that Kamigawa limited was going for, and yeah, it's still one of the best draft formats period, with this card for sure fitting in. Everyone place your bets!

The one thing I'm wondering mechanically about the spirit is if you could justify having it remove a counter from any creature? Or, wait, it probably should also be artifacts or creatures—but that's small potatoes compared to that awesome flavor text. The image of coins gives me No Face vibes, if that counts or matters at all. But what's the relationship between them? It's fascinating, having this spirit that falls in between a representation of shunting greed and hoarding the tangible, asking what is offered of it, lunging at the opportunity. Luck has no bearing on debt. Man, that's cool. I just love the small spiritual worldbuilding that's also made for a great overall pair of cards.

@mudthing — Fangbound Prowler & Bonded Fangmother

Once more, we have a black and white pair that implies team-based building without explicitly saying it. There's nothing wrong with having cards that talk about the team, and I liked a lot of them that were here, but the bonding works especially well here because of how it forces you to stop and think about the relationship with your fellow player. Plus, in a commander game, you can use this card to stealthily kill someone you don't like. Just to touch on a mechanical portion with the Fangmother, I think you could have made this a 2/3 without too much trouble, but the card's still great.

Here's the awesome flavor portion: the cat is a solo wild predator. You attack, you get the cats. There's nothing team-based about it. But when you have the prowler and one summons the other, the prowler now has the impetus and responsibility to buff these wild creatures. Like, I get a sense of independence from the cats that the Prowler can use once they're bonded together to increase their overall power and gain the life back. Does that make any sense whatsoever? I might be a little loopy but damn if that doesn't hit in a neat place. I wish Ikoria evoked that more honestly.

Runners coming up soon! @abelzumi

[simon-newman]

Spirit Ashes

So. Getting into Elden Ring now I do look for content around the Internet.

What did get my attention is a lot of hatred for Spirit Ashes mechanic which is apparently new thing for Fromsoftware games.

To put is simply - Spirit Ashes are a summoning mechanic where you can call upon a specific AI controlled Spirit to be your ally in the fight.

Some Soulslike veterans insist that this is Fromsoft's method of giving casual players an "easy mode" in an otherwise difficult (or not*) game.

* - The other thing is that there isn't even a consensus if the game is easy or not - some claim it's unbalanced and Fromsoft jumped the shark/used cheap gimmicks to up the difficulty while others claim it's the easiest one and made for casuals even without Spirit Ashes.

Anyway.

Yeah - I have been using Spirit Ashes since I got a set of 3 puppies from Ranni. Then I switched to some stronger ones like Jellyfish and finally Banished Knight Oleg. Are they helpful? Well. Yes? They do provide another target for the boss to focus on. They also deal some damage on their own.

Are they an "easy mode"? Are they breaking the game? Do they win on their own?

Short answer. No - they are not.

First I need to make a disclaimer. The summons can't be used everywhere - only in specific locations. Additionally they can't be re-summoned. They can be upgraded up to +10 but nothing above that - meaning they'll continue to lose in value as the monsters get stronger. Especially when I tackle the NG+ which scales the enemies up 7 times up to NG7+.

Now as to how useful are they playing the game for the first time?

It depends on the boss really.

Beastman of Farum Azula in Limgrave? Yeah - the wolves helped me tear him apart.

I've tackled the Tree Sentinel at lvl 17 and they didn't survive long enough to get his hp down by 1/3.

Pictured above - both me and the wolves are dead already.

Margit? The wolves were lucky if 1 survived till phase 2 (50% hp). Calling them in phase 2 alone was useless as they'd get annihilated with about 2 hammer strikes.

I will say that I did feel kinda bad for some bosses once I switched to Oleg.

Admittedly - this guy is a lot tankier and deadlier than the pups and did save my skin several times.

But he's not an almighty "I win button".

Magma Wyrm just melted him in it's AoE. Same with double gargoyle fight. Even at +7 in a lot of fights he's only enough of a distraction to get in a few initial attacks.

In my ~10 attempts he has NEVER survived long enough to take down one of the gargoyles and I had to fight 2 vs 1 in every single iteration of that fight.

Even without AoE this is often the case against bosses that are an actual challenge.

This is way after Oleg got annihilated by the Crucible Knights. Mostly in 1v1 fight. He wouldn't last long enough for me to get one of them to 50%.

This means that I had to do 75% of the fight solo anyway.

And there are worse examples.

Astel the Naturalborn of the Void? Oleg was pretty much useless and would die almost instantly due to AoE gravity attacks that he also helped trigger more often.

Falligstar beast is outright easier to deal with if it focuses it's attacks on you because most of them is blockable and can be punished.

His contribution against Lansseax was next to none.

Malenia is known for healing from hitting enemies - meaning the summon whose AI is just going to tank blows might end up doing more harm than good.

And that's not mentioning bosses that you can't even use summons against.

In general if a summon is strong enough to make a major contribution to the fight the boss is usually weak enough to die in around 10 hits from me alone anyway.

Ultimately Spirit Ashes are just a mechanic to be used as you see fit. There are people who play without armor or even without leveling. It's their choice and a testament to their skills.

I am just wondering how many soulslike elitists who keep saying that "Spirit Ashes are for unskilled casuals" themselves followed precise meta build guides from the Internet to make sure their Tarnished is the most optimized boss killing machine possible so that they wouldn't struggle.

[okayto]

Mini-Reviews: Game Demos I Have Played Lately

Vampire Therapist

Guide vampires through centuries of emotional baggage, decades of delusions and the odd bout of self-loathing with real cognitive behavioral therapy concepts and become a Vampire Therapist! Even vampires need a shoulder to cry on when a neck to bite just won’t do.

This visual novel is fun, humorous, and also contains actual cognitive behavioral therapy concepts. Protagonist Sam, a vampire turned during the age of the Wild West, realized that vampires have a tendency to some defeatist or self-destructive thought patterns, and has reached out to an ancient compatriot to better learn how he can help other vampires. I'm no therapist, but the concepts portrayed in the game seem fairly basic—basic concepts that let the player and characters identify surface-level things and move the story along, without going deep enough to mess up or portray ~woo~ (beyond the inherent woo of, y'know, vampires). (I recommended it to my professional counselor sibling, so I'll be interested to find out if they agree with my impression.)

The demo lets you play through your first two clients. That, combined with the opening story that sees Sam getting to Germany to meet the ancient vampire who'll train him (and meeting some other characters along the way), gives you enough to decide if you'd like to try the full game. It doesn't end on a cliffhanger, but it definitely left me wanting more.

Demo Playtime: Took me about 1.5 hours

Release Date: July 2024 (demo still available as of post date)

Find It: Steam, GOG

Do Not Buy This Game

Are you really reading this to find out more? ...FINE! If you DO buy this game, expect me to narrate in your ear for around 2 hours about your poor life choices, all while I'll try to create something resembling a game for you to walk around in.

This seems like it would be incredibly appealing to people who like The Stanley Parable, a game that mostly involves walking around an eerily-empty building while a sarcastic narrator repeatedly breaks the fourth wall, because this game also involves walking around a mostly-empty space while a nervous narrator repeatedly breaks the fourth wall. I really, really liked the narrator, and found myself wishing there was a way to respond. Or make friends. (Talk to me, narrator! Tell me why you don't want me to proceed! Play a game with me!) The phrase "comedy walking sim" wouldn't have sounded interesting before, but now that I've played it, I'm eagerly awaiting more. The game has a solo developer, so it seems slow-going, but he did update just a few months ago confirming it's still being worked on.

Demo Playtime: About 20 minutes

Release Date: TBD/Unknown

Find It: Steam

The Rise of the Golden Idol

Uncover the truth behind 20 strange cases of crime, death and depravity in the 1970s. The world has changed dramatically - the sins of humanity have not.

This point-and-click detective game has you initially investigating two unrelated crime scenes, discovering clues and keywords to make deductions by correctly filling-in-the-blank, before a third scenario shows that the scenes are connected and there may be a deeper conspiracy.

I've never played another game that works this way: when you investigate a scene, you discovered keywords (such as names, locations, and actions) that are put into a word bank; to solve things you must put the correct words from that bank into the correct spots. Intriguing! I did need to check guides a couple times, but I am notably bad at deductive games (as noted in previous game reviews), so I can't say that means this is actually difficult.

This is listed as the sequel to The Case of the Golden Idol (demo also available; I haven't played it), but at least as far as the demo goes, there wasn't anything in this game that was confusing or seemed to lack context.

Demo Playtime: ~60-90 minutes

Release Date: November 2024 (demo still available as of post date)

Find It: Steam (demo and game); game without demo available available on PlayStation, Switch, Xbox, and iOS/Andriod mobile via Netflix.

Blue Prince

Welcome to Mt. Holly, where every dawn unveils a new mystery. Navigate through shifting corridors and ever-changing chambers in this genre-defying strategy puzzle adventure. But will your unpredictable path lead you to the rumored Room 46?

A strange, shifting house, and you're trying to get from one end to the other. You have a limited number of times you can pass through rooms, and you choose which rooms appear from a limited selection every time you open a new door. Within you limits, can you uncover secrets, collect items, and find a path to the final room?

This is fascinating, and it was easy to forget I was playing a demo as I spent hours trying to navigate through the house. You won't get lost—you have a map showing all current rooms—but trying to balance the limited number of rooms I could go through with options, like "should the next room be this bedroom that replenishes me, but has not other doors? Or this room that costs gold to create, but has two more doors I could leave through, potentially helping me avoid a dead-end? Part escape room, part mystery, part luck of the draw[ing room], this has a small but dedicated fanbase already, and it's easy to see why.

Demo Playtime: 6 hours and counting

Release Date: "Spring 2025" (demo still available as of post; online comments indicate it has bounced between available and unavailable in the past year)

Find It: Steam

If you’re interested in a game described above, it may also be available in other formats or platforms than what I played. If you liked this post, click my “reviews” or “video games” tags below or search on my blog to find more.

[pastel-tyranny]

Wanna be a Fashionista?: My opinions on Fashion Dreamer

Long post of my thoughts, follow my Fashion Dreamer showcase: Dyxyg5yr36

I’ll say it right here right now, this game has a chokehold on me as soon as I opened up the main menu. The gameplay loop is very addicting. But before I dive into my many praises I have to talk about some of my gripes with this game.

First of all the lack of clarity; it’s good that they have the button prompts on the screen because oh lord it’s very confusing when you first start out. It’s no wonder the first quarter of the game is a tutorial! I mean yes there are useful tips are there in the tip menu, but some things need to be written out directly. Especially when it comes down to Online Events such as the current (as of right now) Fantasy Butterfly Fairy event. I had to get help from a few other players and online video guides just to make heads or tails for some of the mission prompts. I have a few family and friends who either have the game or are in the process of wanting to get it, I think a consecutive written guide needs to be created so I don’t have to explain for the billionth time to ‘press plus then X’ and so on. (Pro tip: Once you reach platinum rank, the credits roll and take a very long time. Afterward you unlock the final cocoon.)

The next con is a bit of a personal one, the lack of fashion item variety and makeup limitations. The irony of this one I know, but items such as gloves, necklaces, leg warmers, bracelets, suspenders, and inners are relegated to specific shirts, one pieces and shoes. As of writing this there are no; jumpsuits with long pants, cat ears, traditional tiaras, and long mermaid / ball gowns. And ironically a lack of male fashion too. While yes, we get to play as a guy there is the fact some of the girls outfits don’t carry over to the guys. There’s a tee shirt from the Type A body that I really like and think would look perfect for the Type B body and vice versa with pairs of shoes or one pieces. Makeup isn’t as detailed to work with, they’re mostly relegated to prompts instead of picking blush, eye shadow, and eyeliner separately. The length of eyelashes are also regelated solely to the eye shape you picked and are only customized by color.

My final gripe is a smaller one in comparison is lag hiccups. When walking around the different cocoons with a gazillion downloaded items can cause gameplay optimization to stutter a snails pace both online and during Solo Mode. Even if it’s as short as 3 seconds or a “Loading Please Wait” prompt while running around can occur. It’s just a small issue so hopefully down the line, the devs will fix that with an update. I understand there are limitations to the game as a whole but that still doesn’t deter me from playing. Now for the major positives.

The fact you can walk around and play as a male avatar! I am beyond happy, it’s everything I’ve hoped for. Not only can you put lipstick prompts and different color eye shadow, but you can use some of the more feminine looking hair styles on the more masculine looking models is truly amazing! Same goes with facial hair on feminine models the option you can do that alone is spectacular! Both models can share hats, earrings, and glasses too! The clothing designs themselves are whimsical, fun, cute, and cool! And knowing that they could drop new online events in the future with new outfits are always something to look forward to. Another thing I have to praise is the amount of inclusivity we have at the start of the game with afro hair textures, facial features, and darker skin tones. It just goes to show how far we’ve come and I hope that the devs can push that further in future updates and installments.

The ability to have as many clothes as you want without storage limitations is always major plus! Currency being relegated to just creating clothes makes sense to me. Yes it’s gacha based when it comes to getting rare patterns, however simply pressing the ‘like’ button on someone’s avatar can give you the clothes they’re wearing is very helpful. Especially during online mode when other people and clothes on the pop up boards have rare items. And people online can send you cute outfits, even while your switch is in sleep mode! This also applies to the show rooms, it’s great to see new clothes and furniture people get. I also like that this is a game solely deticated to walking around instead of jumping through menus like some other fashion games I know. I am also in love with the fact you can take pictures anywhere, the scenery in some of these maps are a sight to behold! Taking pictures in the photo eggs are fun, especially since you have a nice variety of stickers, filters, and a line of focus to fiddle with along with poses and held items. And finally I think the best part about this game for me is the many muses to see and meet. Whether they are a player or NPC, there’s no shortage of possibilities when it comes to the many choices of fashion. It gives me so much inspiration, and since you can make multiple characters (4 total) you can relegate specific styles to each muse! (Or at least that’s what I did, lol)

Now to address the big elephant in the room, does this hold up as the spiritual successor to the Style Savvy / Style Boutique / Girls Mode games? In some ways, absolutely. If you want to collect / make clothes, design your own custom avatar, and see things other people make then you gotta get the game! However the core of Style Savvy is its lovable cast of NPCs and story set in the world of fashion. And while none of the NPCs you meet have a large narrative to tell, there are a few to me that stick out and I love dearly, even if they’re one dimensional. I let the headcanons fester and make the rules up as I go. The only major goal is to reach Master Rank and get your brand up to the highest level. I heard rumors through the grape vine that a fashion show mode could potentially be added? But that’s pure speculation as of writing this.

So my final overall thoughts; as I said in the beginning of this post, the game has a chokehold on me. It’s fun, entertaining, and full of passion for fashion from the dev team that brought us Style Savvy. It scratches an itch I’ve had since the last Style Savvy game. And while it has its ups and downs, I personally think this is a pretty solid game for the average fashion sim enjoyer outside of the gameplay troubles. Thanks for reading all the way through and if you want to follow my showcase, the code is on the top of this post! :3

(Just for making it this far, I made a promise post that I would make a fashion dreamer version of Dominic from Style Savvy so I’m reposting the pics here again.)

[michameinmicha]

Would you mind talking a bit about your most recent project zomboid game/character? Or maybe your favourite mod or some fun facts about how you play? I'm super interested in this game but i have to wait a little longer before i can get it but i like to see others online talk about it! (i wanna buy it for myself as a xmas present hehe)

Hi yes i love talking about PZ! :D

(sorry for taking a while for this answer... and this got long again, which was to be expected... hope you like reading a LOT about pz lol)

So my current character is called Killer Green. They're the third char i created in this sandbox game (starting location Louisville, with a mod). the first one was Baby Green, who lived a surprising 6 (i think?) months and then got killed by an unexpected group of zombies inside a building :( I made a second char (Angel Green) to avenge them but had to find out the hard way, that you can't throw molotow coctails out of a broken window, trying to will set you on fire and kill you. :(( Thus char 3, Killer was born, (i named them that because i was so angry lol) who has since retrieved Angel's corpse and burried them beside the safe house. We are still looking for Baby's Zombie (which must be somewhere in this fucking city but by now they could be pretty much anywhere ugh) I am determined to find and kill it and to bury Baby's body next to Angel's so they can be home and in peace.

So yeah, this is my story now. (Gotta say i do like having a goal!) In the meantime i've set up a second base in the middle of the city, close to where Baby died so i can stay there for a few days at a time. I'm also contonuing to work on my main base (a largeish House by the river on the West side of the city) and building up Killer's skills since they had to start from zero ofc after Baby died.

Deciding a favourite mod is hard, because like many. I'm gonna list a few that i think make the biggest impact on how i play:

Change Sandbox Options (by star) - Let's you access the sandbox options mid-game, so you can change things around without having to start a new game. very useful, especially while you start out and try out different things!

Louisville Spawn - Adds LV as a starting location (i would NOT advise you to start in LV if you're a beginner, it's really hard. but i like it, now that i got used to the game and stuff.)

Antibodies (v1.85) - makes the infection potentially less deadly (you can decide in the settings how likely you want the infection to turn you into a zombie. I like this especially because at the beginning i never lived long enough to even start learning skills and stuff before i got bit and had to start all over again.......)

Uhm i play solo and i guess i like find a safe house and use it as a base while going out to explore/loot stuff. I'm not much of a traveller for more than a few days at a time (kudos to the players who live out of their car, i could never, i just like to hoard stuff too much lol)

I like to set myself goals to achieve (like collecting things and such) to keep the later game interesting :3

Random fun fact: I love composting! I can not explain why but for some reason it is super satisfying to me to collect rotten food and putting it in the composter. I literally have 2 composters in my backyard, that are always full and several bags of garbage that i still need to put in as soon as they have some space again lol. By now i have more compost than i can use for fertilizing (it's winter rn) but i still collect rotten stuff wherever i go xD

Also not sure if this is a fun fact but in my experience i pretty much never get bitten/scratched on the legs so when the temperature allows it, i wear shorts/ a mini skirt and fishnets, which i think looks so good with the leather jacket and military boots! (very gender uwu) (Other than that i mostly chose clothes for protection rather than style, but the legs are ✨fashion✨)

If you want more rambling or tips or whatever, as you can see i really love to talk about it, so feel free to ask anything!!

i hope you have fun with the game, once you get it! It's a great christmas present in my opinion, you can have hundreds of hours of fun with it xD (and please don't get discouraged if it is too hard at first, just keep trying and you'll get into it, as long as you dont give up! (and i can give you some beginner tips of what helped me when i started out, if u want) If you have seen others play it and liked what you saw, then you'll like playing it too i'm sure!)