#or they're otherwise unequipped)

[alighted-willow]

Question for my fellow Adderall takers,

What's the most effective way to get your medicine to absorb? Below are some examples.

• Taking it on a full stomach (what my nurse suggested)

• Taking it an hour before eating at the start of the day (what some scholarly articles suggested)

• Taking it two hours after eating (the other thing some article suggested)

• Taking it one hour after eating (What I'm trying now)

I ask because my Long-Covid hit me hard last week and I'm trying to figure out what works best.

[thefirstknife]

Getting real sick of a certain subset of Destiny players complaining that it’s a baby game and crying to Bungie to nerf exotics and abilities when their ENTIRE POINT IS TO BE STRONG in specific ways as if they are being locked into using them.

IF YOU WANT AN EXTRA CHALLENGE STOP BEING SUCH A DPS GOBLIN AND JUST EQUIP SOMETHING THATS NOT TOP TIER META AND STOP COMPLAINING JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

MOOD. Go off.

It's incredibly annoying to me. They always use the argument of "the game should FORCE me to do things, I should not SELF-IMPOSE challenges." And like. ? I'm sorry but what? It's a video game for a big audience, it's here to be playable and accessible to the widest possible playerbase. There are plenty of ways to make the game difficult for yourself, so knock yourself out if that's your thing, but don't force others into it.

Like, I enjoy hard content, I regularly at least attempt day 1 raids, I do master raids, GMs, solo and solo flawless content and all that. But only when I want to. Sometimes I don't and I don't want to suffer in a patrol zone or struggle in a seasonal activity I'm doing for the story. The majority of the players don't want that. Designing games for the professional gamers only has NEVER been a good idea and never will be. Fifty streamers can't sustain a video game. It needs casual players who will want to come back to the game instead of feeling defeated.

One of the reasons I really enjoy helping others is because I know that casual players tend to struggle in stuff that's basic activity for me. I've seen people unable to get through a strike. I've sat for 10 minutes rezing someone who couldn't do the jump in a seasonal activity. I want those people to be able to play basic content without feeling frustrated and I want them to know that there are people out there who will help them out.

And this doesn't apply just to basic content, although it should start with that. I think all dungeons and raids and everything should be things that all players can complete. Fine, doing a master raid with all challenges should be tough, but it should be achievable with time and practice, not impossible. What a lot of these "pros" want is just completely divorced from reality.

It takes days and days of practice every time a new master raid is out for me and my team (all with thousands of hours of playtime) to get comfortable to finally finish it. We're far from casual players and it still takes a lot of time to be able to finish hard content. Making it even harder is insane to me. Like, if something is so hard that my team full of people, each with 5000+ hours of playtime and a coordinated team that's been raiding together for years now can't finish it, that means it's absolutely impossible for probably 90% of the playerbase. That's wild to me. Raids and GMs should have more people playing them. If master raids are too easy for you, Mr. I-Play-Destiny-For-A-Living, that's on you buddy. Unequip the super god tier god roll meta guns and loadouts or play something else.

And ofc, another excuse they make is "if I don't use meta, I am not going to win a raid race!" Then don't. Idk. Let me play you the tiniest violin. This affects literally nobody except a grand total of 50 people. Run your meta in day 1, and play with random shit otherwise. Play raids with all white weapons. Play without mods. Play without a HUD. Do things solo only. I don't know, make up a way to spice things up for yourself. I'm not interested in that and neither are 99% of the players out there. The game is genuinely hard enough for the majority of the players. On top of that, I am here to feel like a powerful space fantasy superhero. I am NOT here to die to dregs in patrol zones. If there's ONE thing that I know for a fact that put people off from Lightfall (as in this year of Destiny), it's the difficulty changes. They're annoying, frustrating and for some a barrier to entry more than anything else.

[flownwrong]

Shipping bingo: rayk/fraser let's see if we can get bingo baby

okay I admit I cheated a little just to get a bingo but LET ME EXPLAIN

- comfort ship: self-explanatory

- criminally underrated: as of 2023, haha. I'm on a mission to convince more people to get into due south regardless of shipping anyway

- I could write essays: but I would prefer to write fic. and here's to me getting more confident about it

- fanon gets them so wrong: I don't know the current fanon, and what I can intuit from heaps of good fic left from The Times is a lot of varying but good fanon. however, in my imaginary discussions with an active fandom I am pretty sure I would find things to be ornery about because they're really easy to distort into stereotypes

- from what I know about Freud, he'd have a field day with just about anything. so I think I can safely include this one (also, I do have ray asking thatcher about not knowing who you are without another person playing on loop in my head)

- no one gets them like I get them: see above. there are many glorious and precise takes immortalised in fic but I can always find something I would tweak just a little to make it that much closer to my vision (which, oh well, I need to git gud at writing to keep my dignity while nitpicking the superior writing of others)

- facebook status: they would absolutely both think it's complicated. which it is, wonderfully so, canon timeline especially, but on fundamental level they're always just careening towards fitting together like puzzle pieces, so THEY'D THINK SO, BUT WE KNOW BETTER. also, watching ray, a shitty facebook user, make fraser a facebook account would be hysterical (because let's face it, fraser would never otherwise)

- it would never work in canon: here's my ultimate bingo cheat. because boy, does it ever work in canon. I can only explain it like so: in my perfect imaginary timeline they would never actually form a stable romantic bond without some serious soul-searching post-cotw. which is catnip to me because they really DO the puzzle pieces thing, but man, are they a ways away from communicating that to each other or even themselves, canonically (ffs ray's still waiting for the other shoe to drop AND not exactly serene re:Stella and fraser is so much reeling from the avalanche of finale happenings he can't see that and still hasn't fully learned the lesson about not being an island and I bet you my left hand they would be extremely unequipped for deciding where to go from there, so they'll definitely need the shiny quest liminality and then some to get it)

- I have so many questions: but mostly why are you both so blind arghh (and thank god for that, it's the driving force of my adoration and an endless exploration ground)

- they should go to therapy together: you know what, I really wouldn't mind. it'd be hilarious. but also didn't someone (speranza??) write a whole fic that takes it seriously that you recced and I keep putting off because I know it'll destroy me in ways both good and bad? because I can roll with that too

- I don't think THEY know what they have going on: again, thank god for that. they really don't. it's heartbreaking and adorable in equal measure.

- literally perfect, no notes: I say, after writing many notes. but now's the moment when I publicly admit they have a stronger grip on my mind than sam and dean do—at least currently, we'll see about the long run. because I'm mushy af even with my angst and miscommunication enjoyment and they're a dream come true for my sappy sappy heart.

- also, they could never do friends with benefits. they'd think they can, but no, they can't. it's a rock fact.

here, come, look at my embarrassing admissions!!! thanks for asking, I'm fucking dying to talk about them at all hours of the day.

[illogarithmil]

Warning: some unmarked spoilers for most official 5e campaigns below. Also, long post written over several days with resultant tonal shifts.

If, like me, you find yourself terminally dissatisfied by D&D 5e (and horrified by OneD&D or whatever they're calling it now) but still wanting to run its major published adventures because otherwise what did you *buy them all for*, here are some suggestions! I'm going to steer away from stuff that's too straightforwardly a retroclone or "D&D but with X rule changed," because that's boring. For each adventure, I will explain what I think a good adaptation needs, provide a "played-straight option" which is a system to pretty much directly port the adventure into, only requiring some rules conversion and maybe minor setting flavour, and an "offbeat option," which is going to require major narrative changes and often shift the entire genre. With two exceptions I'm going to recommend games I've played or at least read many times over; if you know of other things that would work then feel free to comment or reblog with them!

So, in chronological order of the adventures I own...

Lost Mines of Phandelver

The important thing about LMoP is that it's a starter adventure, taking characters who start off as basically nobodies but who have either personal connections or moral ties that draw them into a pretty morally straightforward conflict with several groups of bad people working on behalf of a single villain. In the process, it shows off a bit of travel and exploration, a bit of social activity in phandelver itself (mainly of the obtain-quest-hooks variety) and a lot of combat, easing people into the game.

Played-Straight: 24BLUE

A solid but simple old-school fantasy-oriented but setting-agnostic hack of 2400 with light, intuitive but flavourful rules for creating characters and monsters and good guidance on how to convert over from other systems. It's also cheap as chips ($3) and 4 pages long, meaning it puts very little work on a new gm. Frankly, I think flexible and rules-lite systems are the best way to get people into rpgs, so this is ideal. Also, it has something of a tendency to depower more powerful monsters in conversion which might be an issue with larger-scale games but really isn't with the 1-5 scale of Phandelver. Just maybe fudge a bit to preserve the sense of threat with the dragon.

https://deep-light-games.itch.io/24blue

Offbeat: All that I Am

So Phandelver's a game about good-hearted nobodies rising to defeat evil, right? But they're good-hearted nobodies with magic and sword-skills. What if they kept the drive but lost the power? What terrible price might ordinary folks pay to defeat an evil which they are unequipped to face? Also cheap (PWYW, $11.36 recommended) and also simple (albeit less so,) All That I Am is a game about people who have made a pact with a demon and slowly realize that this was Probably A Mistake. It has a really cool basic mechanic based on tossing coins into a magic circle - not one for online play! - and a very flavourful list of demons to mess about with. It's naturally darker in tone than D&D, which is going to affect your story through play, but the setting could honestly probably go unchanged and the only plot alteration you might want to make is reshuffling the adventure so that it starts in Phandalin and goes 1. Get bothered by Redbrands; 2. MAKE PACT TO DEFEAT THEM (going into wilderness to conduct the ritual in secret); 3. Get ambushed by Goblins on way back from wilderness; 4. Return to phandalin and go from there, rather than the standard goblin lead-in. If you wanted to change the setting to the more Renaissance Europe default assumption of ATIA, you could easily enough make the Goblins into bandits or wicked faeries and Nezznar into a human schemer.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/271265

Honourable Mentions: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Burning Wheel if that's your thing

Princes of the Apocalypse

I know a lot of people don't like PotA. Cards on the table: it's my favourite 5e adventure, and I've run it once already. It is, to me, the archetypal D&D story, which made it really hard to pick alternatives which aren't just branches of D&D. It's got a fairly balanced mix of combat, social and exploration/investigation elements through which the characters uncover the works of four tactically diverse elemental cults which are often remarkably subversive of typical expectations of their element, led by well-realized and psychologically interesting villains, all of which both tie together into a single core and branch out into loads of loosely related side quests and plot threads.

Played-Straight: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Four divine cults tied to a single powerful evil force, you say? Warhammer's Moorcockian forces of Chaos fit pretty much perfectly. You could keep the elemental theming, even, with the cults venerating the Four Gods in elemental aspect, or switch elementals for daemons and just retain the front organisations. I recommend associating Tzeentch (god of change and magic) with the fire druids, Khorne (god of honour and violence) with the earth monks, Slaanesh (god of pride and excess) with the air knights and Nurgle (god of health and sickness, who already has a substantial maritime followinh) with the water bandits. True, the game might be a bit more gory and lethal thanks to random injury tables and lower power levels, but if you're playing the 4th edition by the book it probably won't be enough to shift the tone of the adventure especially if you're generous with the Fate and Resilience points. It supports social play, particularly player character psychology, very well, and has some simple but workable exploration rules on a similar level to D&D's (but with a better, more narrative-focussed random encounter table!) Additionally, the adventure doesn't have any major "pay X gold to get some benefit" moments, meaning that warhammer characters (who might well start play as a poor refuse collector or peasant farmer due to random character generation) won't find they're gated out of elements by different expectations of character wealth compared to D&D.

https://cubicle7games.com/our-games/warhammer-fantasy-roleplay

Offbeat: Avatar Legends

OK, so this is one of the ones I haven't played, though I hear good things. I'm recommending it on the strength of the setting, because get this: elements.

More seriously, a major theme in the original AtLA (haven't watched Korra) is "the gang show up somewhere where people have some cool powers/tech/fighting style but there's also Something Creepy and Bad Going On. You could bring the elemental powers of the cults more into the foreground, making them organisations of highly trained benders dominating an isolated region and connected - this being the element that remains a secret - via their mutual corruption by a powerful, trapped dark spirit (replacing the Elder Elemental Eye). The fact that there's an air cult means you'd probably need to set it before the Air Nomad Genocide unless the air knights being a special unique school of different airbenders was a plot point.

https://magpiegames.com/pages/avatarrpg

Honourable Mentions: Worlds Without Number, Burning Wheel, Pendragon, Rennaissance

Out of the Abyss

My favourite adventure that I've never run, Out of the Abyss' key feature is survival and exploration, followed by power scaling. The characters are going to start off nearly naked in an alien environment and end up killing several demon lords, if they don't starve or go mad first, and it's important that a game be able to capture that.

Played-Straight: 18XX Dreams

Sort of played straight. Another 2400 hack, this one works if you accept that the underdark of OotA was set up as a dreamlike space inspired by Alice in Wonderland, because it's a setting built entirely around the dreamworld. Who trapped the characters in the shadowy world of nightmare which is our underdark here? Drawing on Lovecraft's Dreamlands, maybe it was the slaving Men of Leng rather than the original module's drow, or maybe some wicked drowesque fairies will do. At any rate, from there you can pretty much run the thing straight from the module, just with a bit more creative license. The game's player powers might seem excessive at first, but they're really just exploration-oriented where D&D's are often combat-oriented; you'll quickly get used to working around them and if you don't it's an easy game and easily hacked. (Incidentally, Dreams requires a 'waking world character' as a bass for which I recommend you use the compatible 24BLUE system mentioned above. You could also pull advancement from that system, which you'll want to do if you aren't going to emphasise the final ritual as the only way to defeat the demons).

https://deep-light-games.itch.io/18xx-dreams

Offbeat: FIST

Kidnapped by esoteric Nazi explorers, our band of late-80s urban fantasy action hero mercs are now trapped in the Hollow Earth! Will their scavenged gear and hard-won skills be sufficient to allow them to escape and/or best both the pursuing fash and the terrible cthonic deities they have unleashed in their excavations?

FIST is a fast-paced near-modern setting game with one of the most enjoyable and simple combat systems I've seen, which should make the near-endless random encounters a bit more breezy. It's core ethos is that the characters are an overmatched A-team style force (often with surprisingly little gear) who are going to have to lie, cheat, steal and McGyver their way to survival let alone victory, which fits *perfectly* with early OOtA. The alternating zaniness and horror also mesh really well, though you might need to port madness mechanics over. And yes, it already has basic stats for demons of various degrees of power!

https://claymorerpgs.itch.io/fist

Honourable Mention: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Curse of Strahd

Curse of Strahd is a game that I've run twice,neither by the book, and my key takeaway is that it really feels like it should never have been made in 5e. A great, interesting horror story is just broken up by having to have a set-piece fight with a monster every half an hour. That said, what's important to adapt is clearly the sense of dread and the social webs between characters, as well as the power differential between heroes and villains that makes the latter scary.

Played-Straight: Thirsty Sword Lesbians

Strahd is an abusive, manipulative prick who wants to toy with the PCs' emotions more than kill them. Thirsty Sword Lesbians is a game where emotional breakdowns generally replace death (which makes it feel a lot less like the GM is just playing the genius villain as an idiot) and defeating abusive pricks is a big part of the power fantasy. Even if it doesn't initially sound like your thing - it didn't to me - I *seriously* recommend giving it a look. It's an awesome game. No setting or adventure change is really required, but the focus on having action and fights be less a constant than something that happens when and where it's emotionally impactful gives you permission to cut some of the needless violence in favour of more creeping gothic horror if you want to. Also, it has to be said that having rules around romance and relationships is probably a good thing for the game sometimes affectionately known as "5e's dating sim".

https://evilhat.com/product/thirsty-sword-lesbians/

Offbeat: Old World of Darkness (Hunters Hunted+Sorcerer+Ghost Hunters+Mage: Victorian Age)

This was the idea that made me write this post: a Victorian factory town in the hills outside Manchester where the characters become trapped, not by the physical bounds of mist (or not *only* by them) but by ties of class and social obligation, forcing them to remain in the twisted demesne of the local industrialist, a man who is more than he seems (a vampire? An utterly corrupt and evil mage called a Nephandus? World of Darkness has lots of options.) Barovia is shrunk in scale to the town of Barrowdale and its immediate rural environs, creating claustrophobia without breaching the lower-fantasy constraints by having the Strahd equivalent hop on his magic horse. World of Darkness has a modestly complex system, but it's a little lighter than D&D especially for the relatively normal mortals the characters will be playing. They might have a spiritualist medium, a Sorcerer or Psychic capable of a couple of tricks or perhaps somebody whose True Faith in God can protect against the unholy, but for the most part they'll be relying on mundane skills as they uncover the town's shadowier side. I love the idea of the Keepers of the Feather as a group of socialist agitators, the Baron's Vallaki as a disjointed and ineffectual trade union or Argynvostholt as the cellar network left behind by the families whose estates were cleared to build the new rows of red-brick tenements. Just one thing: please don't have Strahd be Eastern European in this set-up, the vampiric foreigner invading British soil is an unpleasant trope.

Rules for vampire powers so you don't have to buy a whole vampire book as well are to be found here:https://saligia.fandom.com/wiki/Saligia_Wikia - use the White Wolf Wiki for guidance on what you're looking for.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/401413

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/114261

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/368774

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/412531

Honourable Mentions: Dread, Dark Age Cthulhu

Storm King's Thunder

SKT is another story reliant on power scaling to make its premise work. It has a massive, almost sandbox-y setting in which the characters gradually pick up plot threads explaining why bad things are happening around them, fight their way through one of several dungeons and then use their trophy from that to unlock the finale in which they go head-to-head with giants, a kraken and a dragon in pretty short order. Honestly, I don't like it as an adventure, but if you're wanting to run it you're going to want at least some support for interesting travel and a solid power scale that will allow some pretty big fights at the high end.

Played-Straight: Worlds Without Number

It may only have 10 levels (sort of), but its lack of bounded accuracy means this fantasy game of wandering experts, mages, warriors and adventurers scales impressively into the higher of those. It's travel rules maintain the interesting elements of resource management whilst being more streamlined than 5e's. Also, and this is a side-note, characters are very customizable with everybody getting a couple of free feat-equivalents. It's very solid and entirely system-agnostic, meaning you can use the great big highly-detailed map and chapter of encounters which are without a doubt the best part of SKT.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/348809

Offbeat: Traveller

Of course if you *wanted* to adapt the map...

Traveller is a sci-fi game, known for extensive and random character generation but which also likes big hex grids! Seriously, look at this thing.

It is pretty setting-agnostic, meaning you can create your own sci-fi setting (and map!) that fits in equivalents to the adventure elements (some people have even made historical or fantasy hacks, for which check out Mercator or Halberts). It has extensive rules for travel, of course, and also modular rules for just about everything else so that whether your characters want to be merchants or mercenaries you can patch in more complex rules to serve that need. In what is essentially a massive sandbox with loose themes that coalesce into a plot at the end, that works really well, and you can still have the big threats that the adventure relies on in the form of enormous alien battleships. I think I'd be using the K'Kree, murderous centaur like vegetarian absolutists, as my giants if running in the official Traveller setting of the Third Imperium golden age, but honestly any of humaniti's alien neighbours could work if they turned hostile.

There are a lot of editions of traveller, but the 2nd edition book by Mongoose is a great modern entry point.

https://www.mongoosepublishing.com/collections/traveller-rpgs

Honourable Mention: Forbidden Lands

Tomb of Annihilation

ToA, the last of these I've run, is to my mind a much better hexcrawler than SKT and indeed 5e's best pure exploration adventure. The PCs have a goal, a timer, and an immense, confusing, murderous obstacle in the way in the form of the jungles of Chult. Once they beat that, it's time for a different sort of crawl as they explore massive puzzle dungeons. A game that works for this needs to be good at both map-scale and site-scale exploration, not just in the evocation of travel in the narrative but also the nitty-gritty survival details of whether you contracted throat leeches today. Oh, and it needs to be a setting that allows for big powerful mass-influence magic or something and for resurrection so the death curse plot point can be set up.

Played-Straight: Forbidden Lands

A game *about* exploring a hex map, with a die-based supply system that reduces bookkeeping to a minimum whilst keeping resource tracking central, detailed travel and camp actions and a slightly low-fantasy tone that fits well with how I conceive ToA. Nothing here would stop you using the official setting, though some of the assumptions about D&D magic it makes might need tweaking.

https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/games/forbidden-lands/

Offbeat: Eclipse Phase

In the mid-distance future, the shock of an AI uprising that decimated humanity has led us to flee earth, embrace transhumanism and conquer death through the practice of resleeving into new bodies. 10 years after "the Fall," sapients - humans, uplifted animals and limited AIs - live throughout the solar system and, via a series of weird teleport gates, beyond. But now (this plot proposes) something in the outer reaches of the solar system is broadcasting a rare strain of the ai-created Exsurgent Virus, which twists its sufferers into monsters - this one affecting not active sleeves, but backups. Whenever somebody resleeves- like, say, if they broadcast their mind into a new body on the edge of the solar system to find out what's going on - they have limited time left before they become an abomination. EP has pretty solid survival rules, greatly expedited by sci-fi technology, and a system of mental stress that'd fit ToA's horror elements well, but I won't pretend it wouldn't be a faff to convert. It doesn't have much support for something like hexcrawl, though it'd be easy enough to set up a map of outer system habs in a given area of space, and its characters tend to be hypercompetent in a way that could reduce the sense of threat. With the themes of death and resurrection, terrible elder entities and horror embedded in a way that not many sci-fi rpgs do, though, I think it'd be worth it if you're willing to deal with some crunch. All of the big books for it are also available for FREE from the publishers, though I recommend supporting them - they're awesome people doing good work.

https://robboyle.info/#eclipse-phase-pdfs

Honourable Mention: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Ghosts of Saltmarsh

Other than OotA, this is probably the adventure (I mean, anthology I guess but it's an anthology with some very strong connective tissue) that I'd most like to run some day. The thing Saltmarsh needs most is of course good sailing rules or the ability to adapt the ones in the book naturally, but a functioning mass combat system for the attack on the sahaguin lair would also be helpful, as would anything making it easier to run a horror game.

Played-Straight: Cthulhu Dark Ages+Corsairs of Cthulhu

One of them's set in the 1000s, the other in the 1700s, but between them that basically averages out to the medieval mishmash that is D&D and provides rules for anything you might want. The dark, gritty human-scale tone (well-suited to Greyhawk) can be made low fantasy by using some of the 'folk' - read non-sanity-blasting - magic found in Dark Ages and from there you can pretty much run the setting straight, either in the original setting (you'll need to homebrew some rules for nonhuman species) or in our own (removing non-monstrous nonhumans altogether). Call of Cthulhu's rules in general bring in a system for character sanity that's very well suited to the frequent horror of Saltmarsh - there's even an asylum already in one of the adventures should your character go mad! - whilst Dark Ages brings some detailed, brutal rules for combat with armour and swords and Corsairs, in addition to ships, adds the blackpowder weaponry that always felt it was missing from Saltmarsh. You should probably keep using the random ship events and Encounters in the 5e book, but if you just keep a comparative list of dice difficulties in the two games they won't be hard to convert even on the fly. Honestly, the big issue here is price, because you're going to need the core rules and two supplements to get started. If that's unfeasible, grab the quick-start or starter set rules and corsairs and then send me a message; I'll give you the relevant extracts from the dark ages rules that I think would help. You can find rules for converting between D20 and CoC's D100 systems online, but honestly the game's standard array of monsters should be fine for representing most stuff in Saltmarsh.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/388056

https://www.chaosium.com/cthulhu-dark-ages-3rd-edition-hardcover/

https://www.chaosium.com/call-of-cthulhu-keeper-rulebook-hardcover/

Offbeat: Exalted

OK, hear me out: exalted is a game (d10 system similar to world of darkness but, weirdly, much better social interaction rules) about being reborn, hunted godlings in an almost ridiculously high-fantasy setting, doing incredible things with an array of powers and skills that take competence porn to and beyond the levels of epic D&D 3.5. The world they live in, however, can be as dark and desperate as it is strange and wonderful, and does have a fair number of Normal People who would live in a place like Saltmarsh. That setting also makes the appearance of random island encounters and magical storms popping up out of nowhere feel a lot more natural than it does in Greyhawk. Most importantly, the core game has not only rules for mass combat and sailing, but specific powers to make specialist characters supernaturally good at those things - six pages of options for sailing alone. It might lose some of the classic Saltmarsh horror, and you might want to raise the crew of the first pirate ship to more reasonable levels because even starting exalted will punch through 13 minor enemies with ease, but trust me: it's worth it for how cool it will make your pcs feel and how many rich exploration opportunities will open up to them with increased resilience to harm.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/162759

Descent into Avernus

Most noted for a wide gap between character level and apparent threat, though that's really just illustrative of 5e's design philosophy, for me DiA's main 'deal' is tonal diversity, sometimes to the point of whiplash. You go from morally-ambiguous intrigue in a dark den of crime and iniquity to similar except now in hell and with cultists to Brütäl Mäd Mäx Räcës, aided by a flying golden elephant on a quest to redeem a fallen angel. At the same time, the story isn't really meant to be zany in the same way as something like OotA, so the key is probably finding a system that doesn't enforce any particular tone rather than one that enforces tonal dissonance within scenes like Dreams. Given the critical choices between fighting and negotiating the module presents at points, it's also important that the system chosen not make one of those dramatically better than the other.

Played-Straight: Between the Skies

Using a very loose, modular system - it literally lets you choose your dice system! - Between the Skies is basically a collection of systems for inspiration generation to service a plane- or world-hopping campaign. It makes characters varying from the mundane to the weird (should you want to run DiA as the planescape game it cries out to be) interesting through a lifepath generation system which is a bit more than the usual; how often do you find the option to die in character generation *but keep playing that character?* Then it provides guidance for travel, vessels (in a way that'd work quite neatly with the Infernal war machines) and adventure across the planes with a philosophy of maximising the role of the GM as opposed to the system. Its combat system works mostly narratively rather than relying on dice, but still allows a good deal of complexity where needed: you can zoom into or out of combat scenes according to how necessary they are to the plot, either resolving them quickly without losing danger, useful for many of Descent's random encounters, or running more detailed fights. It is ultimately a toolbox game, and will reward a gm who's also willing to be a bit of a designer.

Offbeat: Dark Heresy

A story in which characters begin investigating corruption amongst mortal powers and then delve into literal hell might be an excellent fit for a mid-high level game of the classic Warhammer 40k game of inquisitorial agents rooting out heresy in the grim dark future. Baldur's gate can easily be a significant garrison world, Elturel its Daemon World neighbour from which the characters venture into the Eye of Terror or Great Rift in search of a rumoured way to "redeem" (read: bring back to the Imperium, itself a theofascist nightmare state) a Daemon Primarch, one of the lost children of the Emperor. Given this is 40k, and that Dark Heresy is full of rules for corruption and horrible death, it's likely to end less hopefully than DiA typically does, but you never know!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/65872

Honourable Mentions: Exalted, Thirsty Sword Lesbians

Rime of the Frostmaiden

It has been well-noted by now that RotF is quite a good horror story and quite a poor D&D adventure. Honestly, I think even as horror it's a bit of a tonal mess, but it definitely has some strong elements there which are weakened by the characters throwing around resurrection magic and fireballs as the solution to all of their problems. This isn't to say they aren't allowed fireballs - it's pretty solidly a fantasy story - but that the game needs to be about problem solving and fear first and foremost, with of course the ever-present threat of the elements.

Played-Straight: Dread

One for the confident improvisers, dread has a single mechanic: if a character does something they aren't confidently capable of, they pull from a Jenga tower. If they make the pull, they succeed or avoid a threat; if they chicken out, something bad happens; if the tower topples, something very bad happens. Normally this removes them from play; for a longer campaign I might have the first topple lead to the character's secret (a very fun part of RotF is that every character is hiding something, often something nightmarish like an alien parasite growing inside them) being revealed and the second killing them/driving them mad/leading them to flee Icewind Dale and return home. Other than this, the major adaptation would be working out how to narratively implement PC archetypes. I think you can be generous with this - for a barbarian PC, they might be able to crush obstacles or slaughter minor foes without a pull, for example, whilst a water wizard could melt large areas of ice or breathe below the surface of a frozen lake. In short, step away from 5e's highly-defined abilities, let PCs do anything that makes sense and focus on threatening them with the things they *can't* control, which is likely to be a lot. When fights, the weather, stress and magic all threaten a single, communal resource, you'll find the kind of tension and caution the module seems to expect much easier to evoke.

https://dreadthegame.wordpress.com/about-dread-the-game/

Offbeat: Doctor Who: Adventures in Space

This is the other game I've not played (though it's designed by Cubicle 7, whose work I trust implicitly). I'm recommending it mostly for the narrative, because it seems to lend itself so well: the doctor and companions find themselves drawn to an 18th-19th century Russian arctic Island/planetary colony where a powerful cosmic being has brought down eternal winter, the cybermen are building a new cyber-king and an ancient alien city lies frozen in ice. You probably need to think of an actual reason why Auril's frozen Ten Towns, possibly something to do with the fallen city, because your resolution is going to be a result of investigation and clever plans rather than fighting, so be willing to put in the work there. On the easier side, the time travel element that can appear at the end won't be as sudden and jarring in a setting predicated on it!

Quickfire Round of Books I Don't Own

Dragon Heist: Dusk City Outlaws/Fiasco/Royal Blood

Dungeon of the Mad Mage: Advanced Fighting Fantasy

Wild Beyond the Witchlight: Changeling the Dreaming

Tyranny of Dragons: HârnMaster/Pendragon

Candlekeep Mysteries: Amber Diceless/Rennaissance

Radiant Citaedel: Between the Skies/Mage: the Ascension

So there it is! My challenge to you is as follows: if you were considering starting a new 5e campaign with one of these campaigns, expose your group to something new and try one of these instead. Let's break WotC's near-monopoly on this hobby, because they sure as hell don't deserve it. If you do do anything with any of these (or, as I say, if you have better ideas) please let me know!

[wherefore-whinnies]

for my second playthrough I'm trying hard classic and it's so hard I've had to restart the maps so often bc people die and the time crystal can't fix it 😭 idk how you could do maddening!!

😱 good luck!!! actually I was joke-writing a post of Maddening Pro Tips™ last night but then I decided to go to bed instead. but perhaps this is a good place to put them.

don't separate your units and don't try to go too fast! later on even in hard difficulty your units will be able to solo things and you can play aggressively more easily, but at the start you will need to keep them together and have them work together to get kills.

memorize your units' personal skills and pay attention to positioning take advantage of them: Alear's personal (+3 damage per hit and -1 damage taken per hit from foes to adjacent units) is extremely useful throughout the game. Chloé does extra damage per hit when she's within 2 spaces of a male and female ally that are adjacent to one another. Louis takes less damage per hit when he's within 2 spaces of 2 adjacent female allies. every bit of damage or reduced damage counts!

Vander is most useful as a meat shield. he'll eat up kills while barely gaining xp if you let him so unequip his weapon if he's getting too many kills, but in early chapters you can absolutely shove him in front of more vulnerable units to block enemy attacks. (he also gives Alear a small crit bonus when adjacent to him.)

positioning continues to be key: take advantage of chain attacks from back-ups. in maddening they're actually my main source of damage to bosses, who regularly take 0 damage from my regular attacks, but my chain attackers gang up on them to hurt them anyway. I'm not sure exactly how chain damage is calculated but it is fixed (goes between 3-6 damage for me depending on some circumstances I don't understand yet) and always 80% accuracy (unless you have a dragon using All For One) and it really really adds up. relatedly, you can switch a unit's weapon without wasting their move, so you can use this to make sure your backup has like a spear or hand axe equipped so that they can join in on other attacks.

this is a tip for later game but Emblem Lyn's Call Doubles skill is the absolute best skill in the game imo. the game only says that the doubles participate in chain attacks but that is literally the LEAST important thing that they can do. I've used them to block hallways and create a choke point when the enemies would've demolished my running-away units otherwise. they also RETALIATE if the enemy attacks them and misses? which is amazing? and most importantly, the AI is incredibly dumb and it seems like bosses in particular will ALWAYS target a clone if one is available. most likely because they have 1 hp. and in particular this means bosses will absolutely waste their engage attacks on these poor clones so that you don't have to worry about one of your actually-killable units getting lodestar rushed. these doubles have saved my ass SO MANY TIMES. idk what they were thinking when they made this skill it seems so unassuming but is actually so broken.

if you have the extra money, tonics are helpful for difficult battles. I've always ignored them until this particular playthrough but I know people make heavy use of them in stuff like conquest lunatic. you can also use tonics on the world map before a battle (I just learned this after spending like half an hour in a battle having everyone cluster around Alear and shuffle items in their convoy in order to imbibe one of each tonic which took like 20 turns).

sometimes (or for me, literally all the time) you have to try a map multiple times to figure out how the enemy moves, what aggros certain enemies, etc. to figure out a playbook to go by so you can get to the hardest parts while using as few divine pulses as possible. e.g. for chapter 17 it took me like 4 failed tries but then I ended up with a strategy that could get me through the first 3-4 bosses with minimal divine pulse use.

you did not ask for this lol but if you read some of it I hope it helps!!

[bootlickerhawks]

7 and 16 for the hate ask game<3

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

... I'm gonna get sm hate for this ;w;

I will preface by saying that hate is a strong word for what I feel abt these characters and would prefer to describe it as "apathy" no I'm not saying this as a desperate measure to prevent myself from being stoned to death why would you say that

........ momo, tsuyu and kirishima...

You have to understand that I joined the fandom in 2017 and people were so fucking annoying abt these three. It was impossible to go into the tags back then and not run into posts like "You're a bad person if you dislike Tsuyu/Momo" or "It's possible to dislike Kirishima/Tsuyu" blablabla. And I'm the kind of person that if you try to shove something down my throat I will spit it back in your face just to prove a point.

I understand fans wanting to hype up their favs but I found Tsuyu and (especially) Momo to be extremely underwhelming so that behavior just turned me off. & Kirishima is bc the kiribaku fandom were a fucking menace back in the day.

Despite my feelings for them, they're all good characters that deserved better opportunities to shine (rip all the ex-naruto/class 1A fans that wanted to see the konoha 13 done right)

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

omg I have sm fanon gripes, I'll just list a few otherwise we'll be here all day 💀

also sorry if I offend anyone

I never understood the trend in dabihawks fics to write Hawks as the functional sane perfect emotional support bf. He is an emotionally constipated indoctrinated murder chicken with serious mommy & daddy issues, how tf does that translate to perfect bf?

*widely gesticulates at Miruko's entire character* Miruko is the perfect example of widespread fanon characterization being absolute garbage. I get the knee jerk reaction of wanting to save her from Horikoshi's questionable writing, but in the process the fandom sand down all her rough ("problematic") edges & just leave her an empty soulless sock-puppet wearing Miruko's skin. Canon Miruko doesn't have much going for her but somehow Fanon Miruko manages to be even more shallow. #sorrynotsorry

I'm gonna get flack for this but I don't like the way fandom tends to portray found family. It feels inauthentic to me, especially when dealing with dysfunctional self-destructive and emotionally constipated individuals like the LOV. Found Fam LOV used to be my jam but I've grown tired of it 😔

And speaking of the LOV.... I love Spinaraki but I don't like the way most of the fandom interprets and depicts their relationship. Spinner's fanatic devotion to Shigaraki isn't healthy. Idk if I've talked abt it on this blog before but I see a lot of parallels between Killugon (hxh) and Spinaraki.

(Incoming spoilers for hxh chimera ant arc) In both cases you have person A (Gon/Shigaraki) going down a self destructive path, fueled by self loathing and person B (Killua/Spinner) that is extremely devoted to person A but bc of their lack of self worth is unequipped to truly help them and in the process unintentionally enables them.

I'm all for witnessing unhealthy devotion in fiction, I eat that shit up. But it does make me uncomfortable when I see people interpreting it in a purely positive light.

[naranjapetrificada]

The timing of this poll popping up on my dash is really interesting because in our last session, my therapist asked if I would be okay sending him some of my ofmd fanfic.

For context, this isn't an entirely left-field request for him to make. First and foremost, he has every reason to delve into my relationship with media that effects me, and specifically about writing, because of my history.

I have an incredibly fraught relationship with creative writing thanks to the decades I spent convinced I "had" to do it because I had a "gift" (read: I was regularly told this in so many words and I have strong language skills).

I coasted my way through writing in undergrad and predictably hit a wall when I tried and failed to complete an MFA, after which I spent a few years barely able to read much less write.

More than once in my life when I've struggled to explain myself or something I was feeling, I've literally gone over to my bookshelf to show whoever I was talking to a highlighted passage that said the things I couldn't.

Since I started the show, we've been talking at length about the effects it and its fanworks have had on me, the questions that have come up, the useful examples it has provided, the role of narrative in our lives and how we live them, etc.

He has experience with creative therapy modalities, though that's not been what we've done in the years I've been seeing him.

I made a point to mention once that I've had conversations with other people who write fic (inside and outside this fandom) about how reading and writing it has been a useful way for them to process their emotions and trauma in ways they find engaging.

I can see how in his situation he would be curious, but because the question came up towards the end of the session we didn't really have time to get into it. Specifically why, although because we've also talked about struggling to identify concepts that are hard to name, I suspect he thinks it might reveal something useful for the work we're doing.

I'm not ashamed of the meager contributions I've made to this fandom. There's no plot to speak of in either because I'm allergic to plot. They're strings of images inspired by a specific image that popped into my head, with the absolute minimum amount of connective tissue required to prop them upright. And that's fine, because thankfully the genre conventions of fanfic allow these things to work because well-executed fan works don't require plot to draw readers in and have meaning for those readers. The very "I love _________ and want more of it" motivation to seek out fanworks gives us a space for creativity with different rules than we might be used to and allows people who otherwise wouldn't to enjoy and benefit from being creative.

A few months into my MFA program I finally admitted to myself that I should be writing poetry instead if trying to make fiction work, but at the time I didn't have the emotional fortitude to write good poetry, which would have required the years of therapy I didn't have at the time to face everything that would come up. Not that fiction isn't emotionally demanding of course, but as unequipped as I was to deal with the things fiction would require of me, I was even less interested then. But even with all this in mind I don't think my therapist will find what he's looking for in my writing for a lot of reasons.

First, I don't feel like I necessarily "put myself" into anything I write, at least not in that sort of simplistic psychoanalytic way that's assumed. While of course you still manage to tell on yourself in certain ways based on what you say (or don't say) in any context, I literally don't think my fics will help him much there. The first one was the world's mildest reunion smut born out of a specific image, with a first draft completed in one sitting. The second one is a "character study" I guess, born from another image that may have been especially inspiring because writing it (again in one go) allowed me to put off something else that I very much did not want to be doing that day. In both cases, revisions and getting them posted too less than 24 hours after the initial draft.

Let's also look at the animus behind writing fic. Like there are loads of reasons to do it, but with me the experience has always meant being struck by an image writing it down so I don't lose it, and following it down its desired path to see what else comes up. I wrote what I wanted, how I wanted, and experienced some creative satisfaction in doing so. It's been an outlet in some ways, but that's just as true of other things I do sometimes like streaming games or even like fucking exercising.

Were I to decide to share any of it it wouldn't be like linking my ao3 account or whatever, which to be clear isn't what he was even asking. He'll respect that I don't want to share them, and we'll discuss what he was hoping to learn when we meet again this week. I was definitely thrown by the initial request, but beyond all the privacy and ethics stuff, it just doesn't feel like it would be a good use of anyone's time?

Tbh if anything is gonna come from this request it will likely be a) talking in detail about the fics I've read that have profoundly effected me to identify the stuff it brings up or b) him urging me to try poetry. Which like, okay, the thing you don't want to do for the reasons I can feel in my gut that I don't want to write poetry can often be the very thing you absolutely need to do, but ugggggh. That's the hypothetical conversation I'm dreading more than anything else to do with this.

[the-far-bright-center]

#like the things is that the fact Anakin could love so deeply was one of his virtues!#not just love but his anger at injustice! I love thinking about Anakin swearing he'd free the slaves#and Anakin's love and his anger are traits Luke AND Leia both share! they're foundational to who they are!#the difference is both of them had the tools and environment to process and use those emotions properly#the Jedi were unequipped to deal with someone motivated by love and anger. Palpatine was also grooming Anakin and it's insane#that anyone would give some old man unsupervised access to a child in their care but maybe that's just more proof#of how fucked up the Senate is that that behaviour can go unremarked#but my point is that love and anger are both considered virtues in the Original Trilogy#I also wonder if maybe part of it is because most people focus on love as Anakin's love for Padme which is romantic?#like people get weirdly dismissive about the power of romantic love on tumblr sometimes#but while Padme is certainly the major one because she's the one he can express love freely with and have it reciprocated#Anakin also loved Obi-wan but they can only say it when fighting to the death#hell Anakin fucking adored his mother and he can only see her on her deathbed#the issue isn't that Anakin loves (or gets angry). it's that he's has an upbringing and is in an environment and has experiences#that make it incredibly difficult to love healthily#like the point is that Jedi can certainly feel love but you get the sense they're not supposed to express it towards each other#ANY kind of love. not just romantic#compassion yes. respect yes. but not love#but love is what keeps us grounded where compassion fails to I think#it's messy and not always right but it's very human and necessary where larger systems and ideals fail#you can't just remove fallible but powerful personal relationships from how society functions#not to mention if Anakin wasn't motivated by love... do you think that'd stop Sidious? I'm sorry but ideology can be just as#easily manipulated as love or anger#anyway this is a story with a Cosmically Correct Answer and the answer is Love#the Jedi were not evil. the Jedi were overall good. what happened to them was evil. but they were still wrong#the narrative SAYS THEY WERE WRONG#like the prequels are literally a tragedy the Jedi can be both wrong and have failed and still be good people#who didn't deserve what happened to them#this is a space fairy tale. a greek tragedy combined with the hero's journey. it doesn't have to make real world sense (via @in-fair-verona-we-set-our-scene)

Great tags! And yes, it’s important to note that it wasn't Love (romantic, platonic, or otherwise) that caused Anakin to fall, but rather his Fear of Loss. That oft-quoted line 'beware your heart' is not saying beware of loving people, it's saying beware of 'the dragon of that dead star', aka the fear and the doubt that creeps into Anakin's heart and mind, and which Sidious exploits. And yes, Anakin's ability to love deeply (and to feel righteous anger through that love!) is his STRENGTH. In another version of events, the Jedi would have realised that the fact their Chosen One had been born a slave and had experienced injustice personally actually made him the ideal person to free the galaxy from its chains. The fact that Anakin feels so deeply means he empathises with the plight of the downtrodden peoples of the galaxy in a way that the remote Jedi high in their ivory tower (who have removed personal connections from their lives) simply cannot. We're supposed to see that the Jedi failed to appreciate this aspect of him, because they didn't understand the true meaning of the Chosen One prophecy or HOW it had to be fulfilled (aka through an act of self-sacrifice performed out of love, the only way to break the cycle of retaliatory violence). They thought Anakin needed to be a 'perfect' Jedi in the Old Order's definition of one, when what Anakin needed was simply to be permitted to LOVE and BE LOVED, and to have the unconditional love of his family. Love and family are two things clearly forbidden to the Prequels-era Jedi, and yet these are what saves the galaxy.

I think there’s something rather strange going on with all the folks who insist that the Jedi Order in the PT was right and didn’t forbid love and Anakin should just have followed their teachings when the whole point of the prequels is that they are prequels. They come before the OT, and the OT proves the Jedi wrong. They literally do not make sense if they don’t do that.

Luke, in the original trilogy, gains his ultimate triumph, his ultimate victory, because he loved in defiance of the teachings of the old Order. He quite literally had the ghosts of the past telling him, explicitly and without ambiguity, that he has to put his love for his father aside and kill him, as is the duty of a Jedi. Luke has the weight of millennia of teachings weighing down on his shoulders, telling him they knew and know better than a young, inexperienced man barely out of his teenager years. That he should follow their teachings or be destroyed. That is an immense weight to carry, and many people would and explicitly have given in to it in-universe. What are your feelings and ideals in the face of such immense legacy, after all?

But Luke doesn’t give in.

He doesn’t bend.

He says “I may be young, and I may be new, but I believe to my heart and soul that love matters more than this legacy. Matters more than your teachings.” And he says this to the ghosts of his mentors. That is such a powerful moment and one I can’t believe George Lucas didn’t create it deliberately for even a second. This young man, being told he has to kill or die trying for a system that is dead or dying itself, that couldn’t survive itself, and refusing to do so. He is the living refusing to continue the violence of a dead generation. He is the young man refusing the draft into a war the old generation started, saying “peace and love matters more than you being right.” He is the embodiment of breaking the cycle.

And the movies vindicate him.

The main villain vindicates him with his last dying breath.

Darth Vader, dying, says “You were right.” and admits he and his were wrong. The main antagonist, Luke’s nemesis, in the face of his son’s immense, defiant love, gives way and does the impossible: he comes back to the light and dies a Jedi. The very thing the old Order says was impossible.

They were wrong. They have to be. The narrative demands it, the movies don’t make sense without it.

The solution was never to continue the cycle of the old Order, or Luke would have failed there, would have failed when he said “I am a Jedi, like my father before me.” And claimed that defiant, deviant, condemned definition of being a Jedi over the one presented to him by the Grandmaster of the old Order. If the old Order was right, Luke would have to be wrong. Be wrong about love, be wrong about laying down the sword, be wrong about refusing to fight. He would have to be wrong.

But the old Order is dead, explicitly killed by a monster, in some part, of their own making. It’s members only existing as bones in the ground or ghosts speaking from beyond the grave. They did not deserve it, it should not have been inflicted on them, but the narrative is clear on this: “The old way is dead, and was dying for a long time before that. Long live the new.”

Luke is that new. Luke is the breaking of the cycle, the reforging of swords into ploughs, the extended hand. Luke says “I don’t care how much I was hurt, I refuse to hurt you back, and you don’t need to hurt me either.”

“We can end this together and choose love instead.”

And Darth Vader, killer of the Jedi, End of the Order, lays down his arms as well, and reaches back as Anakin, saying “You were right.”

It wasn’t Obi-Wan, Yoda, Mace, Qui-Gon, or even Ahsoka who achieved the ultimate victory in the end, following the tenants of the old Order. It was Luke. Young, inexperienced Luke, who saw that the age of legacy handed to him was only history, that the sword handed to him as his life was only a tool, and that the decrees of the dead were only advice. And he took it all, said “thank you for your experience, but I’ve got it from here,” and laid it all down to instead extend an open hand towards his enemy.

And his victory, his ultimate triumph, his vindication, was that he was proven right when his enemy reached back and became just another person. Just another person, just like him.

The Jedi did not deserve what happened to them, and they did not deserve to die. But the story is clear on this: the Jedi of old were wrong, and the Jedi of new, the Last Jedi, was right. No sword or death will ever end the rule of the sword or end the bloodshed. But love?

Love can ignite the stars.

[kryptoknight]

Part 2: Kal on the Watchtower

CW implied sexual assault/sex trafficking

The JL agree that, for now at least, the Watch Tower is the best place for Kal

The take him there and try to figure out how the in the holy Batcave do they go about this

They are so unequipped for this

But they gotta try. They want to

They quickly realise Kal doesn't (can't?) speak, but he understands several languages from different planets

This takes a while to figure out so they let him and themselves rest

While he's sleeping, J'onn takes a look inside his head to try to figure out wtf they're dealing with

Shit is Not looking good. Shit is, in fact, looking pretty horrific and J'onn has to lie down for a while before updating the others

Cue the conveniently set up exposition:

Clark was raised pretty isolated from everyone else on Planet, but otherwise fairly normal upbringing for the standards of Planet

It wasn't until he was in his teens and his powers started developing that shit started very rapidly going downhill

When his powers started to manifest, he was given Kryptonite injections to keep his powers at a manageable level

Some powers were desirable bc how else would Kal's caretakers prove to customers that he's the real deal?

Regarding his Kryptonian background:

It was always made clear to him that the reason all this was happening to him was bc he was Kryptonian

Why can't he go outside? You're Kryptonian. Why can't he play with other kids? You're Kryptonian. Why can he never have stuff to play with? You're Kryptonian

As a kid, it was patronising but pretty mild, stated the same as the sun is yellow and the sky is blue

Again, it's in his teens that it becomes a really malicious sentiment and then that Kal really starts to internalise his hatred for being Kryptonian

Also, he knows bits of Kryptonian culture and is semi fluent in the language. Both were used by when he was growing up bc is captors found the irony amusing

J'onn relays all this back to the JL, who sit there like *taxidermy fox .jpeg*

They all want to help, but of course Bruce, the obsessive, most nit picky, compassionate asshole, is the one who asks for all and any information on Krypton and Planet to be transferred to him and starts putting together a recovery program for Kal

Fic that I'll never write:

Krypton still implodes, but Kal-El doesn't end up on Earth or with a kind, loving family

His escape pod is still programmed to go to earth, but something happens so that it ends up on a different yellow sun planet

This planet had up until very recently had a long history of enslaving Kryptonians but in the time leading up to Krypton's destruction, Planet and Krypton had been working to improve relations although on Planet this was pretty contoversial

I think you can guess where I'm going with this

Anyway

Clark lands on Planet and does not get found by kind, loving Kryptonian sympathisers

The people (aliens I guess?) who find Kal basically treat him like the way a Kryptonian "should" be treated

They make sure he knows where he comes from though - that's the whole point after all isn't it?

And so this is Kal's life for... A long time

Until!

The Justice League, formed primarily by Bruce and Diana, arrives

Word eventually got around to the JL - maybe via the Lanterns - about a Kryptonian in captivity on Planet

(Kal's owners like to show him off)

This seems impossible

No one survived the destruction of Krypton and Earth has its radioactive remains scattered about its surface to prove it

But still, better safe than sorry. The JL go to check it out

Bruce goes undercover after a briefing from the Lanterns about how to recognise the Kryptonian if there is one

Much to Bruce's horror, there is

Cue some hand wavy action sequences where I dunno, maybe other JL members/the Lanterns bust in while Bruce guides Kal onto the waiting Bat Space Jet

And for the second time in his life, Kal flies away from a planet that has given him everything and nothing

But this time, he's not alone

[huggingtentacles]

@znarikia

Of course I don't hate it for the graphics, art direction always takes the crown. DS2 doesn't even look that bad.

I don't know if my reasons are "right" though, because I am Very Biased. I'm an invader, I look at the game from PvP and mechanics perspective, and it's just Not Fun.

The combat feels like you're fighting in jello. The character feels extremely unwieldy, your movements barely have any tracking. Your ability to rollcatch people is based on their stat investment. There are a couple weapons that just dominate the meta that you don't need any skill to use at all, even the mirror fights feel boring.

PvP build creation is a pain in the ass because of Soul Memory. Having to track every soul you acquire is just straight up torture. And if you don't wanna go over certain thresholds, you better get a friend who doesn't hate this game, because you can't upgrade multiple weapons without increasing your soul memory. The poise is either overpowered or useless depending on if they wear a ring. There's an item that just ADDS RANDOM FUCKING CRITS TO THE GAME LIKE TEAM FORTRESS 2 WHO THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD FUCKING IDEA 😭😭😭

The hollowing build is dogshit. Pyromancy Sucks Ass except for like 2 and a half spells. Some Dark sorceries consume souls on use, making them high soul memory only, unless you load your save after every fight. The game is really really slow, which engenders passivity. The optimal strategy is to reaction dodge everything and whiff punish. Ultra Greatswords are Dogshit against players that are any good (rip zweihander T-T)

Invasions disable your estus, which leaves you little to no room for mistakes, meanwhile the host has Literally Infinite Healing. So you're forced to use Warmth which also heals your enemies, or use a miracle build. Which means that if you're a sorcerer say bye bye to those spell slots.

Have you fought a host with duped healing items? I have. And let me tell you, I absolutely owned that guy like nothing, but I broke 2 weapons fighting him. Oh also have I mentioned durability? What, you wanna repair your weapon in battle? Lmao good luck finding repair powder without duping or increasing your soul memory, you wanna invade in that level bracket, remember?

Your rings, that you use to wear optimal armour break, make sure to have duplicates through multiple MG cycles or dupe them, because you'll have to unequip your armour otherwise. Also don't forget to wear a ring that makes it so you don't gain souls after killing the host, minus one ring slot unless you load your saves once you're out of your soul memory bracket.

The host can clear out the area from all the enemies and even if you kill them they're not coming back which means you can't reliably retreat to safety.

I haven't played in a while, feel free to add your reasons. If you give me more time I might remember a few more.

Tell me in reblogs what dogshit opinion(s) about From Software games you hold really sincerely.