#restarted a pathfinder campaign

[mcmissileproof]

jesus fucking christ the past two months have been insane. if the Things Happening would slow down just slightly that might be cool

[historia-gloria]

Hellou! I just saw in your latest ask game you also play dnd (or write dnd characters? ). If you feel like it, I would love to hear about your characters! As in your favourite tidbits, favourite backstory detail or, if you play, funniest twist of story you didn't see coming... Anyway have a lovely day!

AAAAAHHH

Okay this is maybe one of the sweetest asks I've ever had, I love talking about my DND characters and will do so for forever Thank you So much for asking ❤️❤️

So I've been playing DnD for over 5 years now, started out as a DM (woof that learning curve!) and have since then both played and DMed a lot. I mostly play DnD 5e, but I've also played Pathfinder 2e, Shadow of the Demon Lord and Call of Cthulhu.

Currently, I have three active DnD characters and one Pathfinder character (and one retired who I will never not think about) so here's a bit about them!

Nym Silentshard, Drow Night Cleric: My beloved baby Nym is a cleric who never really meant to be a cleric? When I originally envisioned the character he was a warlock but then the party ended up without any healers or mages, so I switched him to a cleric. He's young, bright and full of anxiety. The DM for that campaign is so good and Nym's god is a voice in his head which is slowly developing into a proper god with his help. Poor Nym is somewhat doomed by the narrative and was sacrificed to bring his god into being, which means he's slowly becoming a Saint (a monstrous creature created when that person wishes a god into being) but he's trying his best and his god Osiris is so kind to him.

Pollux Azari, Kalashtar Oath of Hope Paladin/Shadow Soul Sorcerer/Barbarian: Oh Pollyyy. He's my Curse of Strahd PC and if you know anything about that game, it's that it really fucks up your characters. Pollux was originally a ray of sunshine type character, oath of hope paladin and CoS has just absolutely destroyed him, he's now full of rage! Genuinely a really fun character to play and my DM has been so good at helping him get worse ahaha

Nox Leukos, half elf Artillerist Artificer: Nox is a character I've had the great joy to be able to come back to, with the campaign restarting after a 3 year gap. He was originally an asshole, but ended up in a coma back when the campaign when on hiatus and woke up from that with a lot of realizations about maybe having a moral compass aha. The DM really pulled the rug out from under us and revealed that the fiance of another PC had cured Nox of his coma but also had published her research about that without telling him that he was the subject!!

Infernus Nyrin, Fire Genasi Lycanthrope Blood Hunter/Hearth Cleric: This is my retired PC (he is also my pfp aha), he was my first long term PC and we finished his four year long campaign last year and God that was such a fucking insane and incredible campaign. He was originally a blood hunter and mercenary who had a soft spot for the PCs and then he just never left. He was fiercely loyal but deeply untrusting and had an almost suicidal tendency to step in front of danger. He died twice and would go unconscious like at least once a combat honestly. The DM helped me multiclass into a hearth cleric, so he ended the campaign retiring with his husband to a small village where he was one of the most important clerics in his whole religion, a soft epilogue for a character who had spent his whole life fighting.

Magnus Zyryah, undine bard: Magnus is my pathfinder character! He's in a short campaign that takes a lot of inspiration from fairy tales, so I did too! He is basically the Little Mermaid. Magnus is a trans man with a curse that is slowly and painfully turning his body to seafoam, so he's an ambulatory wheelchair user with chronic pain (I also have chronic pain, so it was good to explore that myself) and he's trying to make the best of his life before it is cut short by the curse. My boyfriend is playing The Prince and his character and Magnus had a relationship before Magnus transitioned and the Prince is looking for Magnus, but doesn't know that he's now a man!! Also to add complications, that campaign is set in a timeloop so we're living the same day over and over.

Special shout out to Milosh Greywing my Shadow of the Demon Lord character who got lucky enough to be part of an insanely perfect party where accidentally every character was hiding something important about themselves from the others but also we needed each other to escape, that party was a special kind of magic with illegal mages and dhampirs and religious inquisitors who all couldn't trust each other but couldn't get out without the others!

This is waaaaay longer than I expected but I just love DnD so much and I love being able to talk about my characters so much

[itsracc]

The pathfinder campaign I'm a player in is taking a while to restart, I'm boutta start acting like my character irl soon. The withdrawals are hitting harder and harder as the days pass by.

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

Room for Shenanigans

So, there's this not-perfectly-solvable problem for game design, which is how to make room for players to Get Up to Some Shit.

You want players to experience the joy of crafting something busted. You also want them to experience something that feels challenging, for some portion of your game. And if you want to make money selling your game you probably want players who don't have the time or wherewithal to put together a Ridiculous Build® to still be able to get through it okay.

There have been all kinds of solutions to this. Roguelikes' popularity are owed largely to being one possible solution: You let the player design a build from scraps they don't control, allow them to revel in their build's bustedness for the remainder of One Run, and then the run ends and they restart. This stops players from declaring The Definitive Build online, stops the player from boring themself by making an engine that practically plays on its own, and allows plenty of space below that busted high point for The Regular Game Experience.

Slay the Spire does this, the Kobolds & Catacombs expansion of Hearthstone did this, even more abstract stuff like Loop Hero does it to an extent.

It's particularly hard in campaign game settings, like D&D, Diablo, Pathfinder, Path of Exile, and so on. PoE has a LOT of creativity possible, but likewise has trouble with a) having players comprehend the possibilities and how to get to them and b) upon reaching a solution, having that design game basically be over? It's a game that lets you pick how you play, but unlike some other games like M:tG I don't have the same itch to keep fiddling with the machine once I feel like I've got something decent. This may be a case of people's mileage varying WILDLY depending on their preference or dislike for certain kinds of analysis, though. That is: Maybe it's just me?

I do think there's something messy and foolish about the largely non-refundable passive skill tree. Like. Just let people refund at will. All you do by saying no to that is force a bunch of your community to theorycraft out their whole build from level 1, and then clumsily cross-reference it. The tree wouldn't be so intimidating and such a turn-off for players if it weren't full of Permanent Consequences on TOP of the difficulty of comprehension.

[carionto]

Ooh, there's an idea - future civilization discovers a trove of ancient data centers, countless entries on everything imaginable (they imagine), but it's all in this indecipherable code.

Even if they manage to get some basic emulator-like thing going, their hopes are dashed when something called a .dll is missing somewhere, the text is all in garbled cyrillic, and worst of all - Clippy offers to help. And they trust it!

For months the alien researchers struggle to recreate a functional Windows 2000 OS, but then the drive doesn't even appear when connected because they used Ubuntu as the basis for reverse engineering it.

Finally, a heavenly angel descends in the form of a retro-themed space truck and some guy named Buck who sells them a PC with Windows 17 his grandad inherited from his dad's failed restoration business.

All seems good, the classic tune plays, it tells them to 'Please wait, we're getfing everything ready for you'. So they wait. To this day they are waiting. Even if they knew the secret of force restarting a computer that crashed in the background, what awaited them in the files was a lifetime's worth of Pathfinder 4e character sheets, DM notes, custom enemy stat blocks, planned campaign outlines, and innumerable attempts to get a session going, all doomed to fail as one has college, another got a boyfriend, a third joined a grunge band, and a fourth just kinda doesn't feel like it but is too awkward to outright leave so they make up excuses half the time while still being active in the group chat.

We fail alone, we excel together

Formations are a staple of effective drills, training, and practice in every military across the Galaxy. They are a showcase of unity, leadership, trust, and loyalty. And fancy outfits. Gotta go for a style victory when actual wars are quite uncommon.

Humans are pretty good at this sort of thing. Not the best, as there is always some inconsistency, somebody doing their own thing, or improvising a solution to a fumble. Honestly, theirs are one of the more interesting to watch. It takes a lot of effort for some to conform to a herd style behavior, and it shows.

One time, a soldier tripped and was about to drop their knife, but thinking quickly, they began to juggle it, along with an ammo magazine and a sidearm they quickly pulled out. Aside from surprising everyone with their juggling skills, the surrounding soldiers noticed immediately, and, without a word, began to juggle with the same items as well.

But it wasn't chaotic - first, once the first loop was done, the soldiers in front, behind and to the sides of the first one started juggling in sync, and with each completed loop it spread the same way, creating this beautiful expanding diamond effect.

Not everyone was equally skilled, of course, and some ripples started to appear. However, since they all knew how long until the current parade music ended, the soldier in the center of the formation, not the original one, stopped juggling, and with each loop the inner layers also stopped. When the final corner soldiers put all the items in their place, the song also came to an end and a new one took its place.

Afterwards, we heard the colonel of that battalion issued an official reprimand for not following the rehearsed performance. Unofficially he praised them, as he himself had been approached by a general about this "surprise addition" and admired his "unorthodox thinking" and "proactive decision making". The colonel obviously lied and gleefully (well, as gleeful as a gritty military veteran with lofty ambitions can get) accepted the praise and promised to deliver other surprises in the future when they would prove most effective.

Big nonsense exchange of words that simply meant the soldiers doing all the actual doings would now have to actually prepare some kind of new and impressive feat. If there is one thing you can rely on, is higher ups turning everything you do into more work...

[pyrot3ch-nick]

Me when players ask me if they can reroll stats at character creation because negatives.

[thedungeonofbaddecisions]

Edge of Ecirah is back! Sort of.

We’re trying to reboot the online Pathfinder campaign that fell apart a while back, but this time in Pathfinder Second Edition. We have some new players, a lot of conflicting schedules, and only two definite characters. The campaign itself is essentially doing a soft restart, with our old characters having nebulously existed and done their shit, but being currently unavailable due to plot reasons.

So, without further ado, this is the cast list so far:

Michaela, the DM

Me, as Rusalka, dwarf fighter

Taylor, as Thea Kaitwen Stonesorrow, dwarf paladin, in love with the moon, self-described as “thique”

Other players are Devon, Alice, and new guy, Michael, who’s character may or may not be named Declan, who knows. Devon is probably playing a goblin sorcerer, no name as of yet. G0d only knows what Alice is up to.

The campaign tag remains #edge of ecirah. The following quotes are from the first attempt at a session zero/group character creation, as we struggle to learn Pf2, and mostly consist of me and Devon being assholes at each other and the world.

[viridiandnd]

Zorag (orc barbarian I had played in various forms for several years) didn’t have an official name until I had to use a premise half orc barbarian in a pathfinder campaign at a church camp. Ironically though, that would also be the last game where I played Zorag as a half orc barbarian, which is interesting because everyone I had played with still now thinks of it as ‘Zorag’

You played d&d at a church camp??? Thats crazy to me 😂

My half-orc character was named after my skyrim character, Ravis.

Though she was named Vashvir but I accidentally deleted her (cried for a few days in mourning) and when I restarted I had forgotten her name 😫! But even though I now remember the name, I've ended up liking Ravis more so I stuck with that.

[indigodice]

START AT THE VERY BEGINNING, A VERY GOOD PLACE TO START

i’ll probably edit this gradually out of this being too much to read in one sitting maybe that means this should be more than one post what a mistake i’ve made its time to iron out some kinks in this blogging thing

For us the beginning was probably in high school. On and off games of Traveller and Shadowrun which weren’t overtly terrible, just unmemorable. I can only remember a handful of moments but they largely weren’t tied to a particular narrative. They were very singular drops in an ocean of wasted time. Maybe they were terrible after all. From early on there was a sense that combat was taking up hours while actual role playing was taking up minutes.

The most memorable thing in Shadowrun was the infiltration of a mansion by circulating rumors of a rave and party supplements. The plan had two parts, a coordinated dispatching of the mansion’s guard and relocation of the guards that hadn’t arrived yet. It was a largely successful, noisy, but bloodless smash-and-grab. We had time for another module which the GM then randomly generated using the random generation rules. We tried to replicate this plan with moderate failure, destroying a wyvern’s eggs then turning in look-alikes.

This form of random generation was most of what we did in Shadowrun, and probably the reason the experiences were unmemorable. We gathered to role play, and ended up wargaming. As things go on we have particular problems separating role playing from wargaming and expression becomes narrowed down to mechanics decisions on our character sheets. Compounding this problem is the lack of even binary choice in the narrative. When Mr. Shadowrun says we have a mission, it’s a single mission instead of a selection, so the extent of our choices are constricted within that predetermination. We’re our character sheets. And that means players rebel. Given our not-a-choice my character convinces another character that its suspicious a Mr. Johnson found our HQ so quickly, so we explode our HQ and have to find work elsewhere.

When Mr. Traveller is pushing us through events, we’re only given what he comes up with to work with, the narrative didn’t care about what our characters cared about. Eventually those games wound down as that groups’ GMs disappeared. We met someone willing to GM consistently, only we weren’t aware of his mental instability. And when we became aware of it, most of us recognized we weren’t equipped to handle such a someone. I didn’t share that thought because I was naive, but luckly I went with the group decision to cut him out and maybe we’re the better for it.

I might have brushed that aside, but that mentally unstable GM hosted an AdvancedDND module, Caverns of Chaos, which was meant to be an introductory look at ADND. During which we added players which the GM accepted in word, then rejected through gameplay. The game was a party and everyone was invited. Our complaints of the game moving slowly were responded to by accelerating rewards through a sentient reward room that responded to our whims. As my whim was suspicion it became a curse room. Our complains of the slow momotonous wargaming became an accelerated wargame where they were revealed by a wizard to be the machinations of a mind flayer. Then the wizard to transported us to another place where our skills were arbitrarily needed. Maybe a day had gone by in the game. But outside, months had gone by.

Then a combination of player drama resulted in the GM’s mental instability reaching a breaking point through rather violent expression. And so the group was reformed. Following that we had a few attempts to salvage that now lost campaign. Each player was given a chance to GM to salvage the game, and eventually we decided on restarting, scrapping the old characters for new ones. We picked up a new system called Pathfinder. Before our first moments role playing we’d looked at 3.5 books and heard Pathfinder was supposed to be better supported. So we began.

This worked for a while, as the new GM brought us though the Crypt of the Everflame. We reached the next town after a few months out of game. Crypt of the Everflame was intended to be a few sessions. The GM was experiencing burnout and never told anyone. From a personal standpoint I resent how that was handled, since it resulted in the group meeting, playing maybe an hour of combat, then everyone splitting off to do something else. Sometimes we wouldn’t be informed until arrival that nothing had been prepared, or that the GM wasn’t feeling up to it. Due to circumstances, this GM reached his own breaking point and was going through a kind of personal transformation, and dropped out of the group.

Those that remained tried to continue on. We hosted more one-shots trying to continue from those Pathfinder characters. After reaching the next town SEPIADICE creates one of my most memorable moments. The town had reached a breaking point because one of the partymembers was hellbent on creating mischief. Another decided the problems within the town were because of their systems of governance and took to trying to rally them against their leadership. The de facto town leader didn’t have the strength of his knights that usually kept the peace. We’d been sent here to retrieve them. He’d been trying to maintain the peace with martial law. And so he banished our party fearing more mischief. My character was infuriated that the de facto leader transgressed a rule of hospitality as he’d been on the road because of his own town’s leadership, and so my character confronts this town’s leader. He was steadfast in his decision since we were outsiders to him. We’d gained entrance because of a squire’s word. The fight first in words comes to blows. Another party member supported me with her magic, and the squire comes to the leadership’s aid. At that moment the fighting stops, and we make our escape.

The casters of the group splinter off, while those that remained travel presumably with the squire to retrieve the knights. The game ends and is never picked up again. We have a round of one-shots and eventually we decide we want a consistent game. We vote on the next GM. Notably I voted against SEPIADICE because the other would be GM was the more experienced, and I was hoping for something sustainable. So she wins four to three. It turns out her game has the same problems all the prior GMs had. Eventually SEPIADICE gets his turn to GM and does an adequate job. And I realize where I wanted to build on the other GM’s experience, she didn’t actually have the potential to change. While the muddle of one-shots never became anything particularly memorable. Sometimes we’d make decisions that felt meaningful, but then the one-shot would end and we wouldn’t get to witness the outcome of those decisions.

If SEPIADICE had continued I’m sure his game would have been enjoyable. As a GM he’d produced most of the memorable moments I enjoyed. But he’d become frustrated because I hadn’t managed to leave the headspace of the character I was playing, and consequently decided on playing that character in his setting. Causing two other players to also choose prior characters that had been there with him. So it became a cascade of insolence that I both didn’t see and didn’t dissuade by not seeing it. The difference was that I had asked and they hadn’t, but the result was the same. Old characters with old ties that didn’t fit the requirement he’d set down for character creation.

From the start of pathfinder up until the very end theres this looming question about what makes unable to role play, or why we’re bad as a group. There are answers ranging from “our group is too big” to “we’re probably just bad” to “its the ruleset we’re using.” Actually I’ve cherrypicked the ones I believe. I don’t remember the rest. From beginning to end our groups tended to be too large which muddled other problems. It was hard to role play because everyone needed some time in the spotlight and it was easy for us to get distracted either by the many bored players. Realistically the GMs shouldn’t have used combat as a crutch to stretch the time we were playing. It wasn’t fun. But it didn’t help that we were playing in a game that revolved around combat and the flow around actual role playing was snuffed out both by needing wait for long stretches of time for anything cohesive to happen. Things got gradually better after the Crypt of the Everflame because players started losing interest. But at the core we didn’t as a group understand what made role playing games good.

They certainly had potential, but most of what we did was wargame, and frankly video games were better for that. We couldn’t tap into what made role playing games good. Except for that moment where SEPIADICE banished our party. That was a damn good moment because that was a man with his back against the wall trying to give himself some more space, only he accidently makes things worse. The conflict they had against each other was not something they could resolve, it wasn’t either of their fault, and they both refused to bend. So they fight. And they fight because they refused to bend, and that’s how violence happens in reality. And so much of the violence in our role playing games has that weird circumstance of oh they show up while you’re travelling so you have to fight now. That’s not giving violence any respect. And any expression during that kind of violence falls flat when there’s nothing tangible at stake. Sure you could die, but you’re not really dying if you don’t have any connections to anything. Dying because you have too much pride feels better than the nothing of a random bear encounter. And to be honest SEPIADICE you should have died when you encountered that bear, instead you bit it and it ran away because the GM thought we would run, but adventurers aren’t reasonable people.

So maybe that’s one of our problems with role playing. Adventurers aren’t reasonable people, they encounter unreasonable things, and are expected to act unreasonably to resolve unreasonable things. Oh god there are so many paragraphs now and why is there only personality at the end who the heck is going to read all of this?

[astolenroad-blog]

[[So...it’s been a long time hasn’t it?]]

[So I don’t quite know how to explain my large gap of inactivity besides stating it rather plainly. Around the time of my absence I had gotten a job, that job took up a majority of my time and what free time I’ve spent has been put into a videogame I’ve come to enjoy as well as a pathfinder campaign with friends that I am now apart of. But....no matter how long I am away from my blogs, no matter how much I fulfill my urge for rp in other mediums. I always find my way back to Shin. This oc is truly near and dear to my heart and so. I can’t give him up. Within about a months time[post con] I intend to restart this blog with a fresh coat of paint. What’s to come? Where has Shin been this entire time?  Please do have patience, for your favorite shitlord is back at it again and I hope all who are reading this have a good day.]

[cheesedoodlesurprise]

Pathfinder Campaign take 2

So my group is finally trying to restart Pathfinder after a members finally had her kid and has gotten to a safe place to where we all can get back together and we are going to tackle the intro campaign again. This time though, the GM realized he was running a much more difficult game than a bunch of people who never played together were set up for, so he is starting us at 3rd level and opening up the expanded races. And since I have been wanting to play an Alchemist from jump, I rolled up a tiefling alchemists, 2nd level, with 1 level I'm rogue because I don't want to leave out squad utility for the GM to exploit.

Though the main reason I picked one was because I wanted to explode shit,I didn't realize I accidentally meta games the thing. See, while being known as the bomb class, alchemists also have access to mutagens, which can increase, at start, one physical stat by 4 at the cost of one mental stat by 2. You also get 4 natural armor. So, I am running around with a character who can down a flask, have an even sicker stealth score than I already have(tiefling get +2 stealth) but since I took finesse, my sneak attack will hit harder and I get some sturdy was resistance to damage for that whole hour at the cost of 2 fucking wisdom.

Also, with brew potion(and my goddamn +11 craft alchemy) I can easily create copies of all of my spells as long as I have the money for it because a 1st level spell has a dc of 7 and I would have to roll a -5 somehow to fail(his game doesn't work with 1s being auto fails) so I do not even have to roll. Just churn out potions for days.

God, I can't wait to see if I headshopped this sweet, sweet boy good.

[tipsandtraps]

How to start Pathfinder or Dungeons and Dragons

When I started I had myself and a handful of friends who wanted to play but none of us knew how. 2 of these friends are the smarter ones of the group and I know they would have made good DMs but they were too self conscious to start a game or write a campaign. So even though I wasn’t the ideal DM I took the initiative (haha) and started it myself and invited everyone over and did the research on how to make the character sheets but oh dang did we miss a lot.

When we started we didn’t understand saving throws, spells, hell we started at level one and only leveled up twice before restarting with a bigger group. You’re gonna be bad at the start. It’s taken me easily 30 sessions of both being a player and a DM to become a satisfactory player who knows enough of the rules to know how all the parts of character sheets work.

TL;DR If you wanna play dungeon and dragons or pathfinder start a game, get your friends to come over and start, and it’s gonna be bad for at least a year or two if you’re all noobs. But it gets so much better.

[starlightfae]

OH MAN I JUST REMEMBERED THIS REALLY AWESOME DETAILED AU I MADE PATHFINDERSTUCK the human kids are all playing pathfinder but most of the actual story is their actual campaign, with brief pauses for real life bickering between players i made character sheets and everything omg when i get home i should look for my stuff hope i can find it bc i worked really hard on that shit shit now i want to restart it omg

[terryblount]

Anno 1800 Update 4 releases on July 30th, will improve camera zoom out, will optimize performance

Ubisoft has announced that a brand new update for its latest strategy game, Anno 1800, will release on July 30th. According to the team, game update 4 will allow players to zoom the camera significantly further out, will bring performance optimizations and improvements, and will feature a new and improved minimum stock system to the Trading Post.

Ubisoft has also reworked and rebalanced Expedition rewards to make them feel more rewarding across all difficulty levels, and improved the usability of the trade routes menu by adding a text filter and a toggle for other ships displayed in the trade route menu strategy map. In addition, the team has reduced the notifications spam for low threat incidents.

It’s also worth noting that patch 4 will sport some balance tweaks. For instance, the quality of rewards granted by resident quests has been rebalanced, the rewards for a variety of activities has been improved, and the moral value for difficulty level three expeditions has been rebalanced.

UPLAY will download this update once it becomes available next week, and you can find below its complete changelog.

Anno 1800 Update 4 July 30th Release Notes

Highlights

You can now zoom the camera significantly further out, giving you a better overview of your majestic islands (which you can activate in the Gameplay options menu).

We have further improved and optimized game performance, leading to smoother gameplay across most graphics settings. As part of this, users will now also note an improved viewing range.

A new, improved minimum stock system has been added to the Trading Post. In order to replace the old system, we need to remove the old settings from all your existing trade routes.

We have reworked and rebalanced Expedition rewards to make them feel more rewarding across all difficulty levels. New expedition reward tiers per difficulty are now: Easy => only uncommon or rare rewards. Medium => Only rare or epic rewards. Hard => Only epic or legendary rewards.

We have improved the usability of the trade routes menu, adding a text filter and a toggle for other ships displayed in the trade route menu strategy map. You can also select these ships to add them to your trade routes from the strategy map. Hovering over a trade route entry will now immediately show the trade route on the map. Finally, trade routes are now sorted alphabetically to make them easier to keep track of.

We have reduced the notifications spam for low threat incidents. Incidents such as small fires which are no major threat will no longer trigger a notification.

After several bargaining rounds, we have convinced the workers responsible for loading and unloading oil onto your trains to work faster, resulting in these operations happening twice as fast.

Incoming trade ships will now make full use of all harbors on an island, trying to avoid lengthy traffic jams in front of one harbor while others remain unused.

Architectural expos in your world fair will now reward you with more than three ornaments at a time.

Previously defeated pirates will now bring a small fleet instead of a single ship upon their return to the game. It now takes them 30 minutes to rebuild.

The multiplayer chat has been completely reworked.

Balancing

Rebalanced the quality of rewards granted by resident quests.

Generally improved the generation of rewards for a variety of activities (quests, drops etc.). This can lead to some items appearing less often, while some previously very rare items will appear more frequently.

Rebalanced the moral value for difficulty level three expeditions. The morale bar should now fill up faster.

Bug Fixes

Quests:

Fixed an issue with missing objectives for “Open Book 2” voluntary quest provided by George Smith.

Fixed a missing icon in quest tracker/book for Princess Qing’s voluntary quest “Shadow Puppets: Part 3”.

Fixed the “jump to location” button for Princess Qing’s voluntary quest “Shadow Puppets: Part 3”.

Fixed the “Hostage Rescue” campaign quest where buyable frigates would fight Pyrphorian ships.

Items:

Fixed the specialist items “Actor” and “Sarah Bartok” which previously had an invalid effect for the Theatre building.

Fixed the “Poster of the Leader” item not having any effects (it now provides additional workforce and a bit extra happiness, but reduces taxes).

The “Footman” specialist item now provides more taxes.

Fixed items increasing the maximum residents being inactive after loading a save file. The item effects are now also calculated slightly different than before. Affected items are “The Withdrawal Amendment”, “Contraception Regulation”, “Papal Paper of Prenatal Preservation”, “Jakob Sokow, The Charitable Banker”, “Louis P. Hecate, Arm-Puncturing Pioneer”, “Chief George Doughty, Smouldering Hero”, “Saint D’ Artois, Vision of the Valley”.

Multiplayer:

Fixed an issue where a player could not be re-invited to a saved multiplayer match if they were not on the Uplay friend list of the player loading the save file.

Fixed the cancel invitation button having no icon in the “Invited Friend” section of the multiplayer lobby.

Added an error message for the client if the host leaves the multiplayer lobby.

UI:

Fixed an issue with the electricity icon being shown in the World Fair’s Foundation menu before electricity is needed.

Fixed text input in the trade route menu being reset if the player didn’t press the ENTER key.

Fixed “session transfer” or “expedition assigned” text overlapping the cargo slots in ship menus.

Fixed truncated text in ship menus when transferring to another region.

Fixed debug text being shown in trade menu tooltips if the camera was moved to another island in the background.

Fixed an UI issue in the charter route setup that occurred when dragging the amount slider out of the box, which could accidentally close the goods selection window.

Steam ships and sailing ships now have different icons to make them more distinguishable in the trade route menu.

The edit screen of the newspaper now shows the currently available influence (previously the publish button would just be greyed out when the cost exceeded the available influence).

Fixed an issue with overlapping icons in the marketplace menu when only artisans, engineers and investors were present on an island.

Fixed the working conditions menu sometimes not remembering values if the player would change the productivity by typing in the text field instead of using the slider.

Fixed the construction menu not remembering the category sorting when loading a save file.

Graphics:

Fixed an issue with flickering dirt roads while zooming the camera.

Fixed firework effect persisting after loading a save file

Localization:

Fixed a typo in the German localization of “Die Amazonen” expedition screens.

Fixed a German localization issue with Margaret Hunt’s reaction to one of their buildings being destroyed.

Fixed a typo in the English localization of the “Iron Dragon” expedition event.

Fixed English text shown in the German localization of the ship object menu if the player would send a ship to another session.

Misc.:

Oil ships should now approach the correct coast when multiple oil ships are assigned to a trade route.

Improved visualization of ships traveling between sessions on the world map.

Fixed ships moving at their individual fastest speed even if the “grouped” option was selected.

Fixed an issue with defeated pirate ships still being shown on the mini map.

Improved display of highlighted buildings when using the demolish tool.

Added three new filters for notifications when ships set on a trade route encounter a problem.

Fixed buffs granted by animals in the Zoo staying active even after the main building of the Zoo was demolished.

Fixed an issue in the newspaper after a war declaration where the player’s name was shown instead of the name of the AI declaring war.

Fixed several misleading tooltips in the World Fair menu.

Fixed visitor pathfinding around the Bank building.

Fixed the “Load Game” entry in the main menu being visible without a save file being present.

Fixed an issue where the last playable game profile could not be deleted without restarting the game.

Anno 1800 Update 4 releases on July 30th, will improve camera zoom out, will optimize performance published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

[ciathyzareposts]

Rome: Pathway to Power – Final Rating

Written by TBD with Reiko

In a rare case for The Adventure Gamer, this game was actually played by two of us. Reiko introduced us to the game and started it, making the first gameplay post, and then I took over when Reiko was unable to complete it. As Reiko was fairly early in the game, I started it anew, quickly playing through the first chapter in order to catch up.

And as I played the game, it grew on me… grew on me like a malignant tumour. I started off finding it acceptably average, but it quickly became tedious as each chapter devolved into a game of trial-and-error, and sometimes the worst form of trial-and-error, where the randomisation had me continually try the same thing over and over until luck fell my way.

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is a definition of Rome: Pathway to Power – Albert Einstein

Puzzles and Solvability

This isn’t really a game with puzzles at all. I wouldn’t even classify it as an adventure game – it’s more of a cross-genre strategy/adventure game with more strategy than adventure.

But you could say each level is a puzzle of sorts. Each level has a goal, which can be considered the puzzle, and how we go about achieving that goal constitutes the solution. Let’s examine chapter 2…

Goal: Stop myself being made a scapegoat of the Emperor’s murder. Solution: Make enough money to bribe my way into the palace in order to warn the Emperor.

Interestingly, the solution to every Chapter apart from the two RTS Chapters starts with, “Make enough money to…” apart from Chapter 6 where the solution is “Have bought the dagger in Chapter 1”

Now, if I get technical, another potential solution to Chapter 6 would be, “Have ended Chapter 4 with at least 100 sesterces to spare” but seeing as it’s so hard to make money due to the strict time limit and the best way to make money involves having bought the dagger in Chapter 1 anyway, I’m sticking to first-chapter- dagger-purchase as the only realistic solution.

There are two ways to survive Chapter 1. After delivering the message you’re given in the opening cutscene, taking your reward of 3 sesterces and seeing Vesuvius erupt, you can use your 3 sesterces to…

Buy a boat ticket to Rome and safety

Buy a dagger

Now, this wasn’t given as a choice in the game. It was obvious to both me and Reiko that option 1 is the ‘correct’ option. But the only walkthrough I found online gives option 2 as the only option, not even entertaining option 1 as a viable strategy.

How does option 2 work out? Simple, after buying the dagger, threaten citizens until you have enough money for a boat ticket, then continue committing extortion so you also have enough extra cash to buy some loaded dice to cheat at gambling later, and if you have time and money also pay a priest to make a sacrifice in order to give you better luck later in the game.

If starting the first chapter like this is the only viable way to finish the game, perhaps the game should have told me I’m playing a murderous bastard from the get-go

So while it’s not technically a 1st Chapter dead-end, it’s only not a 1st Chapter dead-end in the way that pushing someone off the roof of the Daily Planet is not murder because Superman might fly past and save him. I’m charging this game with conspiracy to commit 1st Chapter dead-end. Case closed.

So barely any puzzles to start with and topping it off with a crippling dead-end..

Rating – 1

Interface and Inventory

Now, the interface in Rome is mostly functional. It’s not exactly intuitive at first but once you get used to it it’s okay.

This is the inventory screen. I currently own two humans.

There are some annoyances though. It took me a while to work out how to buy a slave (Press DO, then PAY) and even longer to work out how to enter my slave in the games (I have to USE them from my inventory.)

The map was actually quite good. It gave a whole map of the city and shows all the people as brown dots, that move, allowing you to see where people are going.

Everyone goes back to their daily business after congratulating me on my successful campaign in Egypt.

The inventory is close to useless. It’s where I keep my slaves, but they could easily have worked with the DO command instead. Other than slaves, the inventory contains a toga and a message for a few seconds each, an assassin if I’ve hired one and possibly a dagger if you happened to buy it in Herculaneum (grrrr!)

Items pillaged from the British villages are immediately turned into cash, and money is used with the DO – PAY command. So there’s nothing to be done with inventory management in this game.

Something else worth mentioning in this section is the horrific pathfinding. It’s only an occasional inconvenience in the city sections but in the Real Time Strategy chapters it really makes the army hard to manage. It’s probably the main reason I didn’t restart the game from the beginning in order to get the dagger and more cash early – I just couldn’t bear the thought of quelling the British rebellion again.

So, a nice map; functional menu on the left but everything else below par…

Rating – 3

Story and Setting

The story started off fine – I was a slave trusted to deliver a message who then managed to escape the eruption of a volcano and start a new life in Rome, ingratiating myself with the Emperor due to an act of patriotic heroism.

By the time it became obvious that Hector would accept nothing less than being the Emperor of Rome, the story became a bit unbelievable and Hector a much less sympathetic protagonist.

To top it all off is the timing. This didn’t become obvious to me until the final cutscene, as I thought the game must have taken place over a number of years and just skipped over the time Hector did a job he was assigned to. As it was, apart from being an unqualified General, Hector never got to do any of the jobs he was assigned to. He was a Senator for a day before becoming Consul, and he spent that day campaigning for office. He was Consul for a day before becoming Emperor and he spent that day plotting and organising the deaths of the two people who ranked above him. To make it somewhat realistic the game just needed to have some text each chapter saying something about the years in the job becoming mundane. Even the crew of Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer get more time on the job before being promoted over their incompetent superiors.

The epic story of the Slave who became a General… the General who became a Senator… the Senator who became a Consul… the Consul who became a … General, again?… the General/Consul who retired in shame because he didn’t pick up a dagger all the way back in Herculaneum.

As I mentioned in the Environment and Atmosphere section, the city of Rome worked well as a setting, but the rest of the locations were weak.

So, a solid Rome setting, less solid other locations and somewhat silly story…

Rating – another 3

Sound and Graphics

There wasn’t much sound – the game was mostly silent. There are a few sounds – sword clanks during the games or strategy chapters, a bit of music during the start of chapter cutscenes, the herald’s trumpet, but mostly there was no sound at all. The Amiga version has a few more environmental sounds based on the longplay I used to watch the ending.

Though the graphics weren’t great it’s hard to judge them too harshly as there are a lot more moving people in this game than most others. The graphics were serviceable – trees looked like trees, aqueducts looked like aqueducts, etc. The mostly still scenes between chapters looked a lot better but were just stills with perhaps a few moving parts with text.

The cardboard cutout looking pictures (like these ones of a God) could surely have been replaced with an increased viewable area instead, making people I want to talk to leave the screen less swiftly.

So, minimal unexceptional sound and average to disappointing graphics…

Rating – 4 (I was very close to a 3 here due partly to the lack of graphical variety, but ended up leaving it at 4 – the game is okay at drawing grey stone, at least)

Environment and Atmosphere

Now it’s time for me to say my second nice thing about the game. It did an excellent job of making Rome seem like a real bustling city where the people went about their daily business and I was merely another citizen.

On reflection, there’s probably less than 30 people in the city but it feels like a lot more. Making a city feel realistic in a game without being ridiculously overwhelming with realism is very hard, and this game made Rome feel real despite being much smaller than any real city would ever be. Round of applause, Rome AD92. Round of applause!

But because I can’t say too much nice about this game without tensing up, I’ll say something bad about it too. The strategy sections and cartoonishness detracts from the atmosphere. The strategy maps are too… ah… gamey, for want of a better word. They don’t have the scaled down realistic design of the city of Rome and just seem like randomised standard strategy maps.

And as for cartoonishness, the final chapter in particular is the opposite of atmospheric. The Emperor, who was perhaps not portrayed as a genius earlier, became batshit insane in the final chapter (which is only days after the previous chapter, remember.) In all of fiction there has never been and never will be a change from competent leader to murderous insanity as abrupt and unbelievable as this one.

Emperor Gluteus at the end of Chapter 4

Two days later…

Emperor Gluteus at the start of Chapter 6

So, approximately equal parts good and bad here.

Rating – 5

Dialogue and Acting

There were no dialogue options – when Hector clicked ENQUIRE on people he’d ask them a chapter specific question, such as “What is this I hear about the Emperor going mad?” or “I am standing for election to Consul. Can I rely on your vote?” Other characters’ responses are largely hints for achieving the current chapter’s objective.

HINT: Give me money and I’ll vote for you.

HINT: Kill the Emperor and take his job.

HINT: Give me money and I’ll vote for you… okay, that one was less hint and more spoiler!

There is no voice acting at all in this game.

Rating – 3 again. I’m feeling a lot of 3s in this rating.

Final Rating

=1+3+3+4+5+3 /.6, which equals… 32

I want to take a point off because I feel the whole is truly less than the sum of its parts in this case when viewed as an adventure game. Though I don’t think the RTS sections would fare any better in a strategy gaming blog either. So I’ll end up with a 31.

Charles’ guess of XXXII was the closest, so he gets the prize of X CAPs.

Reiko’s conclusion:

TBD has done a great job slogging through this game and examining exactly what makes it so poor. I can’t thank him enough for taking over for me, and I fully agree with his assessment. I want to comment a bit about the content before we leave you all with CAPs.

I gave up on the game partly because I was having a lot of trouble with making progress in chapter 2, and I didn’t have time at that point in the year to keep poking at it. But another reason was because of how despicable the main character is. It starts with petty theft (and extortion, if you take that route) in chapter one, but by chapter two you’re already up to buying and using slaves. By the end, you claw your way to the top using murder and assassins.

I simply don’t have any desire to play a game that forces you to do things like that. Given the title (and not too much else, as I didn’t want to be too spoiled before playing it), I thought it would be more of a historical scenario, but, as we’ve both discussed in various posts, it’s not realistic in the least. And it doesn’t give you any choices for how to accomplish what you need to do. Well, no palatable choices, anyway.

So now we can all be glad this one’s done and we can move on to something else.

CAP Distribution

50 CAPs to Reiko

50 CAPs – for starting (and concluding) the playthrough of Rome

50 CAPs to TBD

50 CAPs – For continuing the playthrough of Rome

20 CAPs to Laukku

Assistance Granted Award – 10 CAPs – for giving assistance when it was requested

Cheating Award – 5 CAPs – for showing me cheats for the Amiga version of the game that could’ve helped me win the game if I could get the Amiga version working properly

Uncommon Award – 5 CAPs – for letting me know that the rarity of the dagger is a bit of a trope in video games – which didn’t make me feel any better about it at all

15 CAPs to Michael

5 CAPs – For starting the score guessing in Roman numerals

5 CAPs – for noticing that the Us were all replaced with Vs in the game

5 CAPs – for first suggesting that the game could be renamed Grand Theft Toga – and being more correct than he thought

12 CAPS to Ilmari

Gone Babel Fishing Award –5 CAPs – for translating and working out where one of the game’s plays came from

Now You Tell Me Award – 7 CAPs – for giving coded hints that a dagger can only be bought in Chapter 1, but not quite knowing how important that dagger would end up being.

10 CAPs to Charles

Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs – for being the closest guesser to the score of Rome

8 CAPs to MisterKerr

A Voting Dozen Award – 5 CAPs – for pointing out that Rome has a very small amount of voting citizens, making me realise that the game had done a good job in making the city’s atmosphere

Cheaters Never Prosper Award – 3 CAPs – for attempting to help me cheat but with cheats that ultimately didn’t work

5 CAPs to ShaddamIVth

Catholic School Teacher Award – 5 CAPs – for correcting Michael’s Latin

5 CAPs to Kirinn

Punished from Up High Award – 5 CAPs – for letting us know that prayers were made to enact vengeance on real life Toga thieves like Hector. 

5 CAPs to Anonymous 

When Somebody Asks If You’re A God… Award – 5 CAPs – for angering the Celtic War God by pointing out that his name shouldn’t be the same name as the land he was in

5 CAPs to limbeck

Tea Time Award – 5 CAPs – for letting us know why the Celts were sitting down in the middle of a foreign invasion.

5 CAPs to Deano

Crikey Award – 5 CAPs – for telling us that Australians stole more than just loaves of bread from their parent country.

5 CAPs to Kus of the Valley

Crikey Award – 5 CAPs – for doubling down on pointing out that TBD doesn’t know where words come from

5 CAPs to Viila

Total BS Award – 5 CAPs – for being the only person to get the joke about British Standards.

5 CAPs to Biscuit

Looper Award – 5 CAPs – for noticing some time loop movie references thrown in to emphasise how repetitive the game was getting

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/rome-pathway-to-power-final-rating/