#that's more technical talk to implement it in-game

[exn0bis]

So. Completed Veilguard. I have lots of thoughts.

Regardless, I don't think I'd be saying anything that hasn't already been said.

For my part, I went in with the expectation it was going to be bad. I was pleasantly surprised by some things, certainly by the technical aspects, but it fell about where I expected in most other ways.

But first, the good.

It was extremely refreshing to see a AAA game actually release so well optimized for once. I'm running an older system at this point, with a GTX 1080 TI. Even so, out of the box, I was able to run things on the Medium preset perfectly. After some troubleshooting the latest Nvidia driver, and updating the games native upscaling to FSR 3.x, I was running things on a mix of High & Ultra with minimal to no frame drops. This was way beyond what I expected, and made the play experience more enjoyable. While I do think that, like many games in the past few years, there is some over reliance on upscaling to make it look its best, Veilguard still maintains excellent visual fidelity without it.

On that note, the game is objectively gorgeous, regardless of how one feels about the art style (which I did personally like, too); I'm also extremely impressed how they adapted a simulated strand hair system into something playable in real-time without it being overly taxing. Would love to know the technical breakdown for that specifically, but either way, I would not be surprised if we start to see more games released with something similar going forwards.

Veilguard very much proved you can make something look gorgeous and still have it be playable on more than just the latest and greatest systems, and I hope it will encourage more studios to focus on how they optimize and implement their work.

I also found the general gameplay mechanics to be, overall, enjoyable. I was hesitant going in, as I'm 1) bad at games, and 2) from a CRPG background, so the real-time style of combat is not generally something I'm good at. I was also concerned about the stripping down of party mechanics, etc, that was a big part of the previous games. And while I do wish the party tactics had been a little more varied, I ultimately found combat fun and responsive, and that they struck a reasonable balance between simplicity with party, and overly tactical. It did have way too many buttons & combos for me, but that is definitely a me being bad at games thing and not a fault in the game.

I also was extremely impressed with how smoothly the game transitioned from gameplay to cutscenes, and I really liked the more open maps/elimination of excess loading screens.

Unfortunately, that is about all the praise I have for the game.

I'm not really going to talk too much about the complete disregard for the world state built by previous titles, because I think all that needs to be said about that has been. I agree that, from a development standpoint, they needed to find a way to simplify things. However, going so totally scorched earth that character creation literally states "you don't need to customize your previous choices if you don't want to because it doesn't really affect anything" only serves to insult and infuriate the very dedicated player base.

It's very clear that the goal of Veilguard is to wipe the slate clean for the purposes of rebranding and bringing in new players for future installments/capital. Considering the mass layoffs at Bioware, and EA's generally established business practices, this sort of tactic isn't really surprising, no, and was truthfully only a matter of time. But that doesn't stop it from feeling like a slap in the face.

That being established, the total disregard for existing lore, world state, impact of previous titles, glaring plot holes within Veilguard itself, etc, is unfortunately to be expected. No point in picking it apart individually, as it's all just a symptom of the goal of a clean slate reboot.

Which isn't to say I wasn't cursing at my screen by the end of it, but I digress.

I had hoped I could at least enjoy the game as something new, turn off the part of my brain that associated it with Dragon Age and just play it as a stand alone thing. This even worked for the first chapter or so, as I was really enjoying the exploration and gameplay. And then I started recruiting more people. And the main plot started to really get going. And turning my brain off suddenly stopped helping.

The writing is awful, full stop. It's all incredibly surface level and sanitized, and it treats the player with such ineptitude I started to feel like the game had actual disdain for me for trying to play and enjoy it. If I had a dollar for every time an NPC explicitly repeated a plot point or goal immediately after a cutscene that had already painfully spelled it out for me ended, I would have recouped the price of the game three times over. I get that reading comprehension is at an all time low, but holy shit. I paid for a sweeping fantasy narrative, not a degradation simulator that treats me like a moron.

If we manage to put that aside, we're left with a narrative that spends every spare second trying to convince you of how high the stakes are and how important your relationships will be to get through it... and then never actually manages to deliver on any of it. The game repeatedly shies away from showing you anything actually bad, or building anything actually meaningful.

Yes, we see the Blight being gross and a few choice deaths, but that's it. The mass devastation we're told is constantly happening all over Thedas? The staggering amounts of death taking place? The oh-so-vile practices and punishments of our main antagonists? Anything and everything that has to do with the extremely prevalent theme of slavery? That all happens off screen, if it happens at all. Somewhere nice and clean and safe for it to exist, sanitized of any tension or emotional impact. I cannot decide if the flagrant pacing issues in the narrative are a product of the missing tension, or their own problem.

And those important relationships we're told about follow the same pattern. Even if we ignore how everyone speaks to each other like they're reading the script of an HR Workplace Togetherness video, their personal stories are devoid of the stakes we are assured they have. I wanted so desperately to care about the things these character's cared about, but I left still unconvinced the character's themselves even gave a shit.

And with a shallow plot comes a shallow character; I felt no attachment to any of them, despite telling myself they'd grow on me as I progressed. Of course, I also didn't dislike any of them, either; I just didn't care, and I find that infinitely more damming.

I think what I find most frustrating is that the potential in the characters is there, at least. They're each interesting concepts with interesting themes, and every so often I'd get a cutscene that actually got me to feel something, to react, and I'd get excited thinking 'oh, this must be when it gets good.' But no, as soon as you're out of the cutscene, it's situation normal again. No more feelings, no more tension. That all happened off screen, again. Any emotional turmoil the character in question was in moments before is now gone in favor of Group Togetherness.

Rook is no exception to any of this, either; exactly as tepid as the rest, but coated with an even less polished illusion of substance. This is not helped by the fact that the game makes an active effort to remind you that Solas is the actual main character of this story. Rook, you as the player, are just sort of... there.

The headcanons I've seen from fans do more justice to this entire cast than the game ever does.

In summary, it's sad, I think. It's ultimately what I expected, but it's sad. Many of us have a very deep attachment to Dragon Age, the story and the community that built up around it. I literally met my wife through the Dragon Age fandom. I learned to explore some deeply personal things about myself through how I related to the story and characters because of how much depth and nuance there was to examine. To see all that reduced to what amounts to a very prettily polished turd is just... yeah. Sad.

I'm really happy that there are people who have enjoyed the game. Genuinely. I hope they'll continue to do so. Myself, I'll probably still go on a screenshot binge and enjoy how pretty it looks, too. But Veilguard is very much the end of Dragon Age, for me. And I'm sad about it.

[reginrokkr]

◟༺✧༻◞ Ruin Machines II: Ancient kingdom guardians.

As Dain said before in "We will be reunited", the Ruin Machines all hail from the fallen land of Khaenri'ah. And these machines are now known in Teyvat as Ruin Guards. By design, they are tools of war for Khaenri'ah. [...] The humans we face in-game, the Hilichurls and the Abyss monsters behave according to certain social dynamics and adapt their behavior according to their ecological environments as natural and elemental organisms would, while the Ruin Machines are automated tools designed and manufactured by the people of Khaenri'ah.

Although they are all classified as Ruin monsters due to different design purposes and functional differences within their respective divisions, Ruin monsters actually have different forms. For instance, for the relationship between the Ruin Guard and Ruin Grader we can think of their design basis as "machines of war built in man's image". By respecting this foundational idea, a distinction is then created when it comes to their form. If there are major differences in their shape, we can think of them as having different design purposes, respectively. Using military units as an example the Ruin Guards most resemble "infantry" whose job is to advance and hold territory while Ruin Hunters are much closer to skirmishers.

When we designed the Ruin monsters, we identified two set points at the Creative Concept and Writing level and the Ruin Machines must satisfy at least one of them. One is functionality "form determined by function" while the other is biomimesis. The combat, art design and presentation of the Ruin monsters basically revolve around these two set points.

—Form determined by function—

[...] The Ruin Serpent is from the underground kingdom of Khaenri'ah and is a piece of engineering machinery designed for civil construction and tunnel development. Similarly, as one of the Ruin monsters its body has also inherited a biomimetic form assembled from parts. Prehistoric giant creatures such as Tyrannosaurus Rex and Pterosaur were sources of inspiration for the Ruin Drake. This is also more in line with the theme of the Ruin machines being strange and ancient

—Biomimesis—

Aside from "Form determined by function" another major part of our design philosophy for the Ruin series is "biomimesis". That is, imitating a living creature in structure and behavior. Khaenri'ah is a nation located underground. In terms of ecological diversity, its nature is lacking compared to the surface. Therefore, among the mechanical engineers of Khaenri'ah, there are some people who are obsessed with the idea of mimesis... In other words, they wanted to create a mechanical ecosystem underground using human intelligence. As for the Ruin Sentinels, the engineers are people who have not seen life on the surface so they drew inspiration from bionic beings in their own imaginations to create war machines. The overall design of the Ruin monsters follows "biomimetic" principles. In addition to considering the mechanical structure, we also had to consider the ecological behavior of the animals they were inspired by.

[dravidious]

You're more amazing than cars

Popped open RPG Maker XP this morning and decided to make a game where you play as a kobold and fight humans to save your sibling from hunters who captured them, and the other party members are other monsters, and some enemy skills are effective against certain monster types, but you get an accessory called a "Human Glamour" that makes the party member ignore their species weakness but it also lowers the power of their species-based skills. XP is unfortunately an early entry in the series so it's harder to do unique mechanics, but I managed to get the glamour accessory working! Now I just have to Make The Game

[jennamoran]

The Far Roofs: Systems

Hi!

Today I’m going to talk a little bit more about my forthcoming RPG, the Far Roofs. More specifically, I want to give a general overview of its game mechanics!

So the idea that first started the Far Roofs on the road to being its own game came out of me thinking a lot about what large projects feel like.

I was in one of those moods where I felt like the important thing in an RPG system was the parallel between that system and real-world experience. Where I felt like the key to art was always thinking about the end goal, or at least a local goal, as one did the work; and, the key to design was symmetry between the goals and methods, the means and ends.

I don't always feel that way, but it's how I work when I'm feeling both ambitious and technical.

So what I wanted to do was come up with an RPG mechanic that was really like the thing it was simulating:

Finding answers. Solving problems. Doing big things.

And it struck me that what that felt like, really, was a bit like ...

You get pieces over time. You wiggle them around. You try to fit them together. Sometimes, they fit together into larger pieces and then eventually a whole. Sometimes you just collect them and wiggle them around until suddenly there's an insight, an oh!, and you now know everything works.

The ideal thing to do here would probably be having a bag of widgets that can fit together in different ways---not as universally as Legos or whatever, but, like, gears and connectors and springs and motors and whatever. If I were going to be building a computer game I would probably think along those lines, anyway. You'd go to your screen of bits and bobs and move them around with your mouse until it hooked together into something that you liked.

... that's not really feasible for a tabletop RPG, though, at least, not with my typical financial resources. I could probably swing making that kind of thing, finding a 3d printing or woodworking partner or something to make the pieces, for the final kickstarter, but I don't have the resources to make a bunch of different physical object sets over time while I'm playtesting.

So the way I decided that I could implement this was by drawing letter tiles.

That I could do a system where you'd draw letter tiles ... not constantly, not specifically when you were working, but over time; in the moments, most of all, that could give you insight or progress.

Then, at some point, you'd have enough of them.

You'd see a word.

That word'd be your answer.

... not necessarily the word itself, but, like, what the word means to you and what the answer means to you, those would be the same.

The word would be a symbol for the answer that you've found, as a player and a character.

(The leftover letters would then stick around in your hand, bits of thought and experience that didn't directly lead to a solution there, but might help with something else later on.)

Anyway, I figured that this basic idea was feasible because, like, lots of people own Scrabble sets. Even if you don't, they're easier to find than sets of dice!

For a short indie game focused on just that this would probably have been enough of a mechanic all on its own. For a large release, though, the game needed more.

After thinking about it I decided that what it wanted was two more core resolution systems:

One, for stuff like, say ... kickstarter results ... where you're more interested in "how well did this do?" or "how good of an answer is this?" than in whether those results better fit AXLOTL or TEXTUAL. For this, I added cards, which you draw like letter tiles and combine into poker hands. A face card is probably enough for a baseline success, a pair of Kings would make the results rather exciting, and a royal flush result would smash records.

The other core system was for like ... everyday stuff. For starting a campfire or jumping a gap. That, by established RPG tradition, would use dice.

...

I guess technically it didn't have to; I mean, like, most of my games have been diceless, and in fact we've gotten to a point in the hobby where that's just "sort of unusual" instead of actually rare.

But, like, I like dice. I do. If I don't use them often, it's because I don't like the empty page of where to start in the first place building a bespoke diced system when I have so many good diceless systems right there.

... this time, though, I decided to just go for it.

--

The Dice System

So a long, long time ago I was working on a game called the Weapons of the Gods RPG. Eos Press had brought me in to do the setting, and somewhere in the middle of that endeavor, the game lost its system.

I only ever heard Eos' side of this, and these days I tend to take Eos' claims with a grain of salt ... but, my best guess is that all this stuff did happen, just, with a little more context that I don't and might not ever know?

Anyway, as best as I remember, the first writer they had doing their system quit midway through development. So they brought in a newer team to do the system, and halfway through that the team decided they'd have more fun using the system for their own game, and instead wrote up a quick alternate system for Weapons of the Gods to use.

This would have been fine if the alternate system were any good, but it was ... pretty obviously a quick kludge. It was ...

I think the best word for it would be "bad."

I don't even like the system they took away to be their own game, but at least I could believe that it was constructed with love. It was janky but like in a heartfelt way.

The replacement system was more the kind of thing where if you stepped in it you'd need a new pair of shoes.

It upset me.

It upset me, and so, full wroth, I decided to write a system to use for the game.

Now, I'd never done a diced system before at that point. My only solo game had been Nobilis. So I took a bunch of dice and started rolling them, to see ... like ... what the most fun way of reading them was.

Where I landed, ultimately, was looking for matches.

The core system for Weapons of the Gods was basically, roll some number of d10s, and if you got 3 4s, that was a 34. If you got 2 9s, that was a 29. If your best die was a 7 and you had no pairs at all, you got 1 7. 17.

It didn't have any really amazing statistical properties, but the act of rolling was fun. It was rhythmic, you know, you'd see 3 4s and putting them together into 34 was a tiny tiny dopamine shot at the cost of basically zero brain effort. It was pattern recognition, which the brain tends to enjoy.

I mean, obviously, it would pall in a few minutes if you just sat there rolling the dice for no reason ... but, as far as dice rolling goes, it was fun.

So when I went to do an optional diced system for the Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine RPG, years later, to post here on tumblr ... I already knew what would make that roll fun. That is, rolling a handful of dice and looking for matches.

What about making it even more fun?

... well, critical results are fun, so what about adding them and aiming to have a lot of them, though still like rare enough to surprise?

It made sense to me to call no matches at all a critical failure, and a triple a critical success. So I started fiddling with dice pool size to get the numbers where I wanted them.

I'm reconstructing a bit at this point, but I imagine that I hit 6d10 and was like: "these are roughly the right odds, but this is one too many dice to look at quickly on the table, and I don't like that critical failure would be a bit more common than crit success."

So after some wrestling with things I wound up with a dice pool of 5d6, which is the dice pool I'm still using today.

If you roll 5d6, you'll probably get a pair. But now and then, you'll get a triple (or more!) My combinatorics is rusty, so I might have missed a case, but, like ... 17% of the time, triples, quadruples, or quintuples? And around 9% chance, for no matches at all?

I think I was probably looking for 15% and 10%, that those were likely my optimum, but ... well, 5d6 comes pretty close. Roughly 25% total was about as far as I thought I could push critical results while still having them feel kind or rare. Like ...

If I'm rolling a d20 in a D&D-like system, and if I'm going to succeed on an 18+, that's around when success is exciting, right? Maybe 17+, though that's pushing it? So we want to fall in the 15-20% range for a "special good roll." And people have been playing for a very long time now with the 5% chance of a "1" as a "special bad roll," and that seemed fine, so, like, 20-25% chance total is good.

And like ...

People talk a lot about Rolemaster crit fail tables in my vicinity, and complain about the whiff fests you see in some games where you keep rolling and rolling and nothing good or bad actually happens, and so I was naturally drawn to pushing crit failure odds a bit higher than you see in a d20-type game.

Now, one way people in indie circles tend to address "whiff fests" is by rethinking the whole dice-rolling ... paradigm ... so you never whiff; setting things up, in short, so that every roll means something, and every success and failure mean something too.

It's a leaner, richer way of doing things than you see in, say, D&D.

... I just didn't feel like it, here, because the whole point of things was to make dice rolling fun. I wanted people coming out of traditional games to be able to just pick up the dice and say "I'm rolling for this!" because the roll would be fun. Because consulting the dice oracle here, would be fun.

So in the end, that was the heart of it:

A 5d6 roll, focusing on the ease of counting matches and the high but not exorbitant frequency of special results.

But at the same time ...

I'm indie enough that I do really like rolls where, you know, every outcome is meaningful. Where you roll, and there's never a "whiff," just a set of possible meaningful outcomes.

A lot of the time, where I'm leaning into "rolls are fun, go ahead and roll," what it means to succeed, to fail, to crit, all that's up to the group, and sometimes it'll be unsatisfying. Other times, you'll crit succeed or crit fail and the GM will give you basically the exact same result as you'd have gotten on a regular success or failure, just, you know, jazzing up the description a bit with more narrative weight.

But I did manage to pull out about a third of the rolls you'll wind up actually making and assign strong mechanical and narrative weight to each outcome. Where what you were doing was well enough defined in the system that I could add some real meat to those crits, and even regular success and regular failure.

... though that's a story, I think, to be told some other time. ^_^

[yuurei20]

Continuing from a previous ask: what are easier / harder / Malleus-level magics? (easier / vague magics listed here) Part 2/4

Harder Magics: Barriers/Deflection, Complex Construction, Cleaning, Clothing, Light

Barriers/deflection:

Leona says that second-year students should know how to insta-cast barriers.

The only characters who have mentioned casting barriers thus far have been the second- and -third-year students of Malleus, Riddle, Azul, Jamil, Trey and Rook.

Concealment

In his third birthday vignette Vil says that, "Nowadays, of course, (he) could simply conceal (himself) with magic," but back when he first enrolled at NRC his "skills just weren't on that level," so it is possible that concealing oneself is too complex for first-year students.

Complex Construction:

When Idia sees Savanaclaw's Halloween set his first question is if Leona used his magic for it. Leona is well known for being extremely powerful, so this may be insinuating that constructing something of that scale and quality can only be done by a particularly adept mage.

Floyd, Riddle and Stitch build an entire cottage together out of magic (with Stitch's engineering skills) during the Stitch event, impressing Ace, Azul and even Lilia.

Cleaning:

Lilia says that Sebek has yet to learn cleaning magic, so it is possibly a form of magic reserved for older students. Jamil talks about using magic for cleaning in his third birthday interview.

Cater struggles with "autocleaning via implement magic infusion" in a vignette, but his issue seems to be less so with cleaning itself and moreso with "the spell formula structure" of setting up the "auto" part of the spell. Riddle says that, as a 2nd-year student, he has yet to learn it in class.

Clothing:

Crewel modifies the Halloween costumes for the students in Spectral Soiree, saying that "it's quicker to modify something that's already made than whip up a whole new outfit," so creating an outfit from scratch may be more difficult (we see Malleus do so for Lilia).

Cater uses magic to change both his own clothes and clothes for Ace and Deuce (and Grim's ribbon), and Leona mentions a spell for button repair (that he might not have actually used, but it seems that such a thing exists).

Leona also changes his own clothes with magic in a vignette, while Rook changes the prefect's clothes with magic in Book 6.

In Tamashina-Mina Jack's outfit is magically resized to fit Kalim, but in Firelit Sky Jamil explains that he "couldn't just conjure an outfit in (Grim's) size with only a day's notice," so it is possible that outfit resizing is fairly high-level magic.

Light:

Jamil, Riddle and Vil may be the only characters we have seen magically conjure lights.

Other magic types of magic we have seen in the game include: ・Water magic (unnamed students) ・Crowley's vaguely defined "tough love" (might require a magic item) ・Electricity-based magic is insinuated in Book 3 but not technically specified (Azul) ・Magic that brings stuffed animals to life (Epel, Sebek, Jade, Idia) ・Magic for braiding hair (Jamil) ・A "bubble colossus" spell (Grim) ・Lighting Magic (Sebek--thank you so much @sorrygotthesesacks !!) ・Magic to silence noises like doors closing and footsteps (Ace) ・Magic that paralyzes with a poke/slap (Eliza) ・Magic that grows pea shoots to full size (Lilia)

[calder]

 Fallout 3 was originally in development at Black Isle Studios, codenamed Van Buren, but it was cancelled when Bethesda bought the IP.

 At one point, designer John Deiley was creating an area called the Nursery, a Noah's Ark-like location which housed pre-war fauna.

 He planned to have Pagans and Wiccans take up residence here, but Chris Avellone allegedly said no, banning them outright.

scream

not to dwell on the dev tension of this too much -- it's very exciting to find such a strong link between V29 and occultism

would really love to pick this guys brain

edit oh my god. yeah cool we can "disprove" the headline of this anecdote by identifying the cult in the van buren design doc. i can also read the top of the article. wanna unpack this?

"He said, 'You are not to bring Paganism or Wiccanism or anything into the game,'" Deiley recounts. "I said, 'Well, Chris, what do you think happened to these people when the bombs went off? Did every one of them just vanish from the face of the Earth? When you consider the whole purpose of the Nursery, wouldn't they make the perfect tenants and tenders?' [He said,] 'I've made my decision' and just turned around and walked off."

@ChrisAvellone: There was a faction you could join, do quests for, and potentially lead in Van Buren that was a pagan faction (Daughters of Hecate). Might have bad info from source?

Deiley said 'he pointedly told me i wasn't allowed to develop this faction descending from pre-war pagans' avellone defended himself by saying 'but i made my own faction which could be called post war pagans'

deiley is describing a thing that happened. the oral history of fallout is richer for this detail & the impulse to entirely deny the reality of his account by calling another van buren faction pagan is an unflattering defensive technicality

these two men worked on eight video games together. they stood in a room together and one of them shit on the other one's creativity repeatedly. his defense is 'he described it imperfectly; i proceeded to do that idea myself'

i just wanted to learn more about the creativity of this furtive fallout vet.

the accusation that someone 'banned paganism from a fallout game' is not remarkable or meaningful enough on its own to be worth negating. we know for a fact deiley was responsible for talking deathclaws and chris avellone killed them and publicly made hostile jokes about it. he complained about deiley's idea (which he already killed) for being hippie shit for a quarter of a century.

WOULD THIS MAN SHIT ON AN IDEA????????

"I’ve always hated aliens in Fallout, for example, and as I’ve often told Tim Cain, I was pretty fucking pissed off he thought including ghosts in Fallout was a good idea. It’s like you’re opening the goddamn door to the spirit world in a post-apoc game, and that’s a whole separate aesthetic detour in a franchise that’s already been placed in danger of losing its direction by being given to a bunch of newbs.” -Avellone, recounting the first time he worked on a fallout game

one of avellone's co-workers revealed that he stomped on their idea and his rebuttal is that he implemented a similar one elsewhere

it is embarrassing that he responded this way

[feroluce]

While he doesn't quite confirm it in canon (he could technically still just be kidding about BOTH parts and his right eye is fine), I love the thought that Boothill actually did lose his right eye based on his "Knowledge" voiceline.

Because after this line, I actually did go back to rewatch his trailer, and yeah. Even when Boothill is literally flipped upside-down, his bangs stay in place. We never see the right side of his face to confirm it one way or the other.

EDIT: So it turns out you CAN see juuuust enough of his right eye under his hair in-game to confirm it's there and looks the same as his left. I am going to promptly file this under canon things I choose to ignore because hc is more fun, but wanted to add this in because I don't like spreading misinformation. Thank @ultigoblin for the info everyone!

And obviously being a Galaxy Ranger comes with a lot of opportunities to lose body parts. Especially given the people he's after, I would not be surprised at all to find out Boothill lost it in some bounty hunting gone wrong haha

But my personal favorite thought is that he lost it during the rebellion on Aeragan-Epharshel.

Boothill brushes aside what happened to his home, he'll openly say it's gone now but after that he just kinda moves on. He doesn't say what happened to it, and I'm sure he would gloss over the loss of his body and his eye the same way. And combined with how he always talks about himself as a Galaxy Ranger, always about the here and now, I feel like it's kinda easy to forget sometimes that oh, right.

This guy fought in warfare.

His character stories don't go into detail either, but it IS described as guerilla warfare. And it makes it clear there was a large technology gap between the IPC and Aeragan-Epharshel. It's possible they didn't have the means for things like cybernetic prosthetics- or if they did, it would have become harder to implement them during a rebellion, with the IPC breathing down their necks.

And I feel like in order to have a cybernetic prosthetic put in, the wound probably has to be healed a certain way. Like it takes medical intervention. There's a whole plan and procedure for it. And especially if Aeragan-Epharshel didn't have that technology in the first place, Boothill wouldn't have had the chance to heal it that way. Like it healed fine, just not in a way that allowed a cybernetic replacement.

So when one of the IPC shot out his right eye (with a "warning shot" of all things), it was pretty much already a given that he was going to be blind on that side from then on.

When he forced the procedure to change his body, there was nothing they could do for that empty right socket. To this day, it's still sealed over with a patch...probably with something rude drawn on it smzjmsmsks

And even though Hoyo is always giving really cool unrealistic designs for eyes, I do like to think his left eye is a cybernetic- that's what the crosshair is there for. It's to make sure Boothill's aim stays consistent and as good as it is when he's in top shape, even through pain or hindered vision. Like it's an aide, yes, but the skill is all his from years of hard work.

But even with all the replacements, all of the upgrades.

Behind that crosshair, he made sure to keep the natural color of his own eyes.

[asaraviapt]

[EN] Video Game Writing Resources!

Hello! My name is Andrea--I have been writing for games since 2018, and even worked as a writer at Firaxis Games from 2022 until April of 2023. So, I knew a few things about narrative design--but what the fuck is it? Recently, I gave a talk about the fundamentals and history of the field of narrative design. In Spanish. So, let's talk about it in English--the "what," "why," "how," "when," and "who," of narrative design! What is narrative design? Narrative design is not just writing--it's a huge part of it, but designing a narrative system involves implementing narrative content into the build of the game. So there is a technical learning curve to it. Personally, I watched and obtained certifications in Unreal Engine 5 and Unity in order to be aware of the limitations of each engine. I used the free trial of LinkedIn Learning, but courses about this engine are available in these websites: - https://platzi.com/ - https://www.arkde.com/ - https://www.domestika.org/?query=unity - https://www.coursera.org/ Why do we need narrative design? In order to create an interactive story that the player feels a part of, narrative designers are mandatory. It's not a responsibility that can be placed on other designers (then we would be entering crunch territory) rather someone who specifically specializes in both creative writing and game design is needed to explain within the context of the game's story why the mechanics work in a certain way. Imagine if a Telltale game did not have dialogue, for example--what would we be left with? Or if The Last Of Us did not convey a narrative through its environments.

Narrative designers are needed so that all of the departments are in sync and understand the story that they are trying to tell. For example, if a game takes place in a haunted house that was abandoned, we need all hands on deck. The narrative designer can explain to the environment artists why there are so many holes in the living room--perhaps the last tenants of the house were a rowdy bunch. Or, they can tell the sound designers which planks of wood are the most rotten and need a loud sound effect to highlight how it has been abandoned. How do I become a narrative designer? There is no one way to become a narrative designer. Some people start in QA and transition into the field, I have also witnessed engineers and doctors wanting to get into narrative design. I do recommend having the following (at least): - A passion for storytelling. - Deep understanding of the mechanics of the game and the player experience. - Communication skills are incredibly important--can you describe your story in a concise way to your peers in a Confluence page?

Documentation skills are also a massive plus.

Very basic understanding of game engines and limitations. You don't have to be a computer science major, but know what your requests will entail. If you have an idea of a cutscene, can the engine handle it? Will the animators have enough time? Is it within scope?

If you can, attend game jams! They are an amazing way to network with amazing people and get a feel of what the game production pipeline is like.

Additionally, I highly recommend the following resources: First, the free resources! ~It's free real estate~

Look up Twinery tutorials. (https://twinery.org/) Not only is it free, but you can use it on your browser. More importantly, you will learn about branching narratives and can create your own games within a few minutes--the interface, though it requires a bit of coding, is incredibly easy to use and there are a lot of tutorials available online.

Download Ren'Py (https://www.renpy.org/) and watch tutorials. It's free, and there is a huge community of visual novel developers who may need help with narrative designers, writers, editors and even translators. An amazing resource that a colleague shared was this Discord with visual novel developers--if you have an idea, feel free to connect with artists and voice actors here! https://discord.gg/nW5yn4FE

Network, network, network! Follow narrative design and game writer groups on Discord, Facebook and even LinkedIn. -- An amazing convention that is online, free and accessible regarding narrative design is LudoNarraCon.

If you go to itch.io you will see a list of game jams that you can attend to for free! Some game jams that I have attended and had a positive experience are the following: - Woman Game Jam. I encourage folks from marginalized genders to attend this game jam, as we have a large pool of mentors willing to help in every single discipline at any time due to the global nature of it. It is a safe and inclusive space for women and nonbinary folx who want to get into the gaming industry! - Global Game Jam. Self explanatory, it has some in-person opportunities but you can also attend remotely. - Greenlight Jam. Do you have an idea that can not be done in only 48 hours? The Greenlight Jam is amazing, as it lasts four weeks--which allows narrative designers to develop complex narrative systems and even record voice lines for a more complex project. Side Note: Even though most game jams have a time limit, I do encourage narrative designers to develop and polish the prototypes and levels created during game jams to have portfolios and writing samples that stand out!

Work With Indies is a job site that publishes job opportunities--including ones in writing and narrative design. Additionally, their Discord has some networking events with writers so you can connect with them.

Other websites that not only publish jobs but include networking events are Hitmarker.net (this is their Discord), IndieGameAcademy (link to Discord),

Newsletters! A lot of experienced game writers have newsletters dedicated to the craft, to name a few that I highly recommend: -- Greg Buchanan's newsletter. Rounds up game writing news every Tuesday, and includes job opportunities. -- Bright Whitney's newsletter. A studio founder with amazing insights regarding game design and thoughtful narrative, Whitney's threads are extremely insightful. -- Susan O'Connor's blog on The Narrative Department. In addition to providing free knowledge regarding world building, narrative design, game writing and other specifics of the craft Susan interviews industry professionals and alumni who offer testimonials that have amazing advice. -- GDC talks about narrative design. Though I recommend the GDC vault as well in the next section, I highly recommend the GDC talks regarding not only narrative design but the development of your favorite titles!

Now, for resources that may not be free--but I highly recommend, as someone who used them first hand. - The Narrative Department. This post is not sponsored by them at all, however it is rare to find an instructor as kind and hard-working as Susan O'Connor who has been a narrative designer in historic AAA, AA and independent titles. Known for her contributions in Tomb Raider, Batman: The Enemy Within, and BioShock to name a few (imdb is: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1897248/) her Game Writing Masterclass offers a certification in everything related to game writing. A few subjects she touches on are: -- Characters and how to make them compelling. -- Barks and ambience writing. -- Dialogue, backstories and scripts. -- How to work with other departments. And more! Additionally, you would obtain access to a huge alumni network full of game writing professionals working in independent, AA and AAA studios! Not to mention that all of the assignments completed in the class will look amazing in a portfolio as game writing samples. - GDC Vault. Though I have an opinion on the price tag of GDC tickets and the vault, I would definitely include it as it has resources from several studios, writers, narrative designers and more! When was narrative design formed? When can I become a narrative designer?

That's a wonderful question. Narrative design, as a term, was first used around the 90s but became more established between the 2000s and 2010s. So, although the field is relatively new, and there are not a lot educational resources available, consider yourself part of an innovative field that is exponentially growing! Recently, a game developer asked when was the best time to keep an eye out for job openings. And a harsh truth about the gaming industry is that it is extremely volatile--layoffs, downsizings and startups rise and fall. This is not meant to deter anyone from pursuing a career in narrative design, but rather I am including it for the sake of transparency. We cannot predict when a studio is going to layoff their employees, or when they cancel unannounced projects. Unlike most industries where we know for a fact that recruiters keep a sharp eye for candidates in Q1 and Q3, a piece of advice I received from a mentor of mine was to try to predict when projects are going to need more stories. There's the release of a game, and then there is the addition of additional narrative content--and for this, they will more than likely need associate/entry/junior level narrative designers, writers and quest designers. But--this is related to searching for a job as a narrative designer, and I can write a novel about that (and will edit this article to redirect folx into it.) So, keep an eye out for huge game announcements. Then, cater your resume to what the studio is looking for in a narrative designer. Now, to finish off this article: Who is a narrative designer? If you have a passion for storytelling and games, and have participated in game jams, congratulations you are a wonderful narrative designer! Make sure you always include that you are a narrative designer, and not an aspiring narrative designer--it makes you stand out amongst applicants. That's all I have for now--feel free to interact, comment and share! Let me know if I missed something and I will be sure to add it.

[saltypearl712]

Y’all BB+ 0.8 is gonna be

HECTIC

Here’s a breakdown of what’s to come!

!! Minor spoilers below !!

(All info from and on Kickstarter, where everyone can view it.)

So for starters, there will be different ways to play Hide and Seek!

There will be three different modes: Normal, Arcade and Strict.

Normal is just the regular game of Hide and Seek that BB+ has implemented since the beginning, as in you get 3 lives per level.

Arcade mode will be similar, but rather than 3 lives per level, you only get 3 lives for the entire game! So if you loose a life on a level, you won’t get it back on the next one!

Strict mode will be the most difficult, only giving you ONE life for the entire game! Get caught once and it’s game over!

I think this’ll be a great addition for more diverse gameplay and for those who like a challenge and think the regular mode is too easy.

Now the next big change he talked about is much more game changing!!

Not long ago, Micah asked on Twitter how long it takes on average to beat a BB+ level, and now we know why!

Each level in Hide and Seek will now have a TIME LIMIT on how long before school closes! Class is only in session for so long!

There will still be plenty of time to explore the level, but not much time for dilly-dallying!

Once you enter a level, there will a timer on the wall telling you how time time you have left before school closes. Micah has also stated you will be able to view this from your map, similar to Mrs. Pomp’s mechanic. Baldi will also occasionally let you know how much time is left when he comes down on his TV screen.

The timer on the wall when entering a level. Also it looks like exit signs are back!

But what exactly happens when the timer runs out?

School closes! When the timer runs out, class is dismissed and the game will get much more intense. First of all, Baldi will slowly start speeding up, similar to how how he does in Endless Mode.

Second of all, Principal of the Thing will now be able to catch you at any time for being in school after hours! Similar to the Stealthy Challenge.

He’ll slowly go around the school turning off every light as he does, entering the school in dark mode! You will actually be able to use this to your advantage at certain times, being able to hide in the pitch dark spots, similar to how you’d hide with the Chalk Eraser, and nobody will be able to catch you!

The Principal of the Thing searching the school, turning off all the lights as he goes. Don’t get caught!

Baldi’s Super Schoolhouse in Dark mode after Principal of the Thing has turned off all the lights. Final look in-game is subject to change!

Micah said this is a change he’s planned for a long time, and again I think it’s a great one! Not only will it make the game a bit more challenging but also much more interesting! This is exactly the kind of stuff that positively increases game experience, showing how different Baldi’s Basics Plus is from the original. I can really tell he’s pouring his heart and soul into this game and I’m so excited for this update!

One more change worth mentioning is Micah also plans on adding new structures! Something that hasn’t been added to the game in a while. Something that will also help diversify new levels.

And lastly, the update is expected to be delayed about a month since he’s being doing so much technical work on the game, it’ll take a bit longer. But I think it will definitely be worth the wait! (Estimated release time currently is early December)

Hope y’all enjoyed this breakdown of what’s to come in BB+ 0.8! Thought it’d be a fun type of post to try.

💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚

[luigiblood]

Something is going on with Retro NSO

I figured this stuff should be part of a post because I think it's an interesting thing to talk about.

As of the last few updates, I started to notice some changes to the NES and SNES emulators specifically, particularly related to emulation of accessories.

NES Four Score

If you don't know what the NES Four Score is, it's an accessory that allows you to play the NES up to 4 players.

I had actually never really datamined the NES emulator that much but at one point I randomly decided to give it a real shot for the July 2024 update (version 6.9.0).

Then I got actually surprised to notice code for playing using the Four Score, so I eventually went versions back, and found out it was a recent addition of 6.6.0, back in September 2023.

However, it is a little weird, it doesn't seem to be really accurate (to be more exact it only implements one ID for the second controller port, if you know, you know), but it seems functional. In fact in the 6.5.0 update (June 2023), it seemed to have been actually forced on all games, for some reason.

I couldn't notice any code regarding the NES Zapper or any other accessories however, but something that kind of gets me is that I don't notice any code for the Hori 4 Players Adaptor, which is like the Four Score but for the japanese Famicom, and it has some differences on a technical level.

My suspicion is that this was worked on when they were looking into Rare Studio titles, and R.C. Pro Am 2 is definitely a game that uses it. That said, there is one game on NES NSO already that supports the Four Score, but you cannot use it: It's Downtown Nekketsu March Super-Awesome Field Day!, which is kind of a sports games with various sports. (For some reason Nintendo is not using the newly localized ROM and that's a shame.)

SNES Super MultiTap

This is not new, this was part of the SNES emulator's code the entire time since launch, but considering we just talked about the Four Score for NES, I figured it it would also be a good time to talk a little bit about it, and bring you up to speed.

On SNES, there is the Super MultiTap that can let you play up to 5 players on the same system (it plugs into the second controller port, where you can plug 4 controllers on that, plus the first controller on the first controller port on the system).

There are actually 6 games that can use the Super MultiTap on SNES NSO as of right now, but you cannot play more than 2 players currently, BUT I confirm that it actually does emulate the accessory regardless, just that the application does not let you go past 2 players, but the games do recognize that the device is plugged.

Those games are Super Puyo Puyo 2 (actually available since SNES NSO launch!), Natsume Championship Wrestling, Amazing Hebereke, Kunio-kun no Dodgeball da yo Zen'in Shūgō!, Smash Tennis, and The Peace Keepers.

I figured it would be worth mentioning, because I don't think the addition of Four Score to the NES emulator is just an experiment, it might be possible that SNES NSO might get a major update too regarding the ability to play up to 4 or 5 players for a limited amount of games in the future... especially because of...

SNES Mouse

Like the Super Multitap, the SNES NSO emulator actually contained code to emulate the SNES Mouse the entire time since launch. However, there has been a new development as of today.

I already talked about this in one of my posts, but I'll just do a roundup of what we datamined in the past: Initially, the SNES emulator checked for specific game identification to enable the SNES Mouse emulation, and looked for 3 specific games.

We don't know what those games are, but considering the limited amount of games, I believe it is reasonable to assume they were limited to games on SNES that only worked with the SNES Mouse and nothing else, in which case, we can assume the following games:

Mario Paint

Mario & Wario

The problem however... those are the only SNES games that released that requires the SNES Mouse to play. You'd wonder what could be the 3rd game that could be best played with a Mouse, but I have a list of what could be it:

Mario Paint (PAL version)

Sound Fantasy

For a few reasons however, I don't believe the PAL version of Mario Paint would be likely, and it leaves the unreleased Nintendo game Sound Fantasy as the other option, we know it was actually completed, and it required the SNES Mouse to play. I won't delve too much on that game, but think of it as a mix of Mario Paint and Electroplankton on DS together, but back in 1994.

In later updates, they removed code that refers to the game identification and relied on game metadata instead. That was done fairly quickly in its life even.

That would have been the end of it if it wasn't for today's SNES NSO update (3.10.0), where a major rework of SNES Mouse emulation was done:

They added the ability to emulate the SNES Mouse on both controller ports, it used to be only on the first controller port.

Internally they can now do input replays of SNES Mouse devices.

There's code for configuring the behavior of the SNES Mouse between either Original, or something else.

This is actually rather interesting, this was added in the emulator between February and August 2024, so this is a legit recent development.

The mention of the SNES Mouse behavior configuration is also interesting, because it means they're looking into ways to support the SNES Mouse in different, possibly more accessible ways than using a USB Mouse.

The fact that they can also emulate the SNES Mouse on both controller ports is also potential evidence that they're looking further into other games than just SNES Mouse only titles, as some games did use the mouse on the second port instead, while leaving the first SNES controller plugged.

To this day, I haven't seen any code for the Super Scope just yet, or the Satellaview for that matter, unfortunately.

Conclusion

Just as a bit of a tl;dr for people who don't like reading:

They secretly added support last year for the NES Four Score to allow 4 player multiplayer, but isn't used yet.

They secretly had SNES Super Multitap support since day one to allow 5 player multiplayer, but isn't used yet.

They secretly had SNES Mouse support since day one, but today (18 September 2024) they released an update that reworked it significantly.

The developers seems to be busy adding or reworking accessories as of the last year. I gotta be honest, I find this a little suspect. We might be going onto something major soon that reworks the NES and SNES applications for multiplayer and more.

I hope so much that would be sooner rather than later.

...also, please, add localized ROMs to NES and SNES NSO. There's no reason not to have them.

[annievrse]

boyfriend!eren headcanons pt. 4 *･｡ﾟ

—ᡣ𐭩 headcanons a/n: you asked, i delivered <3 c/w: mentions of reader being a mother, mentions of sex (mdni) part 1 part 2 part 3 part 5

bf!eren takes you to a carnival and wins ALL the prizes because he is competitive (this man is winning against literal 10-year-olds). he even won you a goldfish! in a bag!

bf!eren is now *technically* a dilf :/ & you are the mother of a fish (or the milf to eren's dilf (gag))

bf!eren taps the bag (and eventually the glass of the fish tank) like the girl from finding nemo

how bf!eren managed to secure a pet is beyond you (at least he can't throw a fish like a basketball 🥲)

bf!eren gets heated when he plays video games :/ poor jean gets the brunt of it most of the time, but it's not his fault he's bad at cod :( (it's the controller!! it's shit!!)

bf!eren wears a chain with a charm of your initial (RAHH)

bf!eren holds the charm between his teeth in concentration, when he's anxious, during sex (if you're not tugging on it to bring him closer—which drives him insane)

bf!eren wears cologne and NOT body spray because he is not 14 (although he only started wearing the more expensive stuff because you gave it to him as a birthday present <3)

bf!eren has these slippers ok. you got matching ones. they're bear slippers and they are giant and he looks so cute in them (but he wears the dilf ones connie got him MORE)

bf!eren LOVES peppermint hot chocolate and ignores the hate he gets from mikasa because he feels ~fresh~ after he drinks it

bf!eren holds your hand every single chance he gets, and if your hands are full, his arm is over your shoulders

bf!eren will pull your hoodie strings together if your hood is up to stop you from talking so he can kiss you

bf!eren once left a hickey on your forehead because he 'forgot' he was kissing you there and not on your neck?????

bf!eren has the back to the future trilogy on DVD, and they play on a loop on his TV every weekend (so megatron, the goldfish, doesn't get lonely.......)

bf!eren goes for runs and will take his shirt off halfway and tuck it in the back of his running shorts (i'm talking like 20km runs twice a week because he's insane like that), so he gets back to your apartment (not his own) all sweaty and red, and his chest (😳) someone get YOU some water........

bf!eren is allowed to get absolutely plastered at only one! party a month (his own rule because of basketball season)

at these parties, bf!eren is known for getting on top of tables (with connie (see their unhinged activities from summer bf!eren) & from that point on, they run the show)

bf!eren hosts boys nights with connie, jean, and armin, but you, sasha, and mikasa come too because you're a part of the boys

expect mario kart on these nights where bf!eren sabotages jean (who is suspiciously good at the game considering his cod reputation) so you can win <3

if it's a 'no tv' game night (which armin implemented because he sucks at mario kart), poker is a hit along with uno, which both included real-life money because it was 'more fun' (mikasa introduced the idea), which the boys loved, until it was later removed because the boys are sore losers!!!!!!!! (turns out mikasa cleans up in poker)

ok, back to bf!eren

bf!eren sings to you serenades you in the car (loser <3)

bf!eren has bon jovi on vinyl ☝️☝️

you wear bf!eren's spare jersey to his basketball games

bf!eren points at you when he gets the game-winning goal (which is surprisingly almost every game??)

bf!eren's chain under his basketball jersey with his hair tied back and a thin headband, tape on his dodgy shoulder......... oh lordy

bf!eren makes you wear his jersey while he's fucking you dumb after a win 😋

bf!eren gifts you a necklace with his initial on it on your anniversary (matchy matchy 🥲 (i'm going insane))

[ifbench]

Pokemon Soulsilver Retrospective, from the perspective of someone who had it as their first Pokemon game but never finished it (until now)

To preface this, this is not my first time playing Pokemon Soulsilver. I played some of it back in 2012 or so, but didn't get very far. And my memories of that playthrough are almost nonexistant, so this is essentially still a first playthrough.

If you'd like to read my other mainline Pokemon retrospectives, you can read Emerald here, X here, Firered here, and Black here.

Pokemon Soulsilver has a strange sort of anti-nostalgia to it to me.

It was technically my very first Pokemon game, yet I have more memories of the 25 minutes I played of Explorers of Time back in 2012, than I do of the several hours I played of Soulsilver in that year.

I don't even remember how far I truly got. It might have only been up to the first gym, it might have been up to Pryce, I don't know.

What I do know, though, is that like with Black, people keep bringing up Soulsilver and Heartgold to be the "golden age" of Pokemon. That it was when the series was good. (Though I personally disagree. I love Violet, and I also love what I've played of Shield so far.)

Nonetheless, the idea of trying Soulsilver again kept popping up in my head after I got into PMD. I briefly entertained the idea of playing it again in 2021, then again in 2022, but I never went through with it until I started this marathon.

But in September of 2023, I decided to do it. I deleted my old save file, and started anew. While I had chosen a Cyndaquil during my first playthrough, this time, I chose a Chikorita as my starter. I named him Acacia, after my PMD Rescue Team DX partner.

However, soon after entering Cherrygrove City, I very quickly got sidetracked with Emerald and put Soulsilver on hold. I didn't get back to it until July of 2024, after I had finished Emerald, X, Firered, and Black.

And after I figured out how to implement the infinite rare candy cheat, since I remember a lot of people talking about how grindy the Johto games are.

But after all that, my second playthrough of Soulsilver had truly begun.

I went to go meet Professor Oak, and as I was on my way to return to New Bark Town, I had my first encounter with this game's rival, Silver.

I very nearly lost that first battle, but through sheer luck, Acacia managed to win.

After meeting with Professor Elm again and hearing about the theft, I caught a Sentret, and named him Niko, after the Sentret on my friend's blog @fated-furret.

I continued on the way to Violet City, collecting a few apricorns along the way. It was cool seeing them again after Legends Arceus, even if they did originate here. I also briefly peeked into Dark Cave.

Violet City was neat to see! I enjoyed how the Pokemon Center and Pokemart had different colors than normal.

I decided to head to the Sprout Tower first, with Niko at the front of my party.

Side note, I love how your Pokemon follow you around in this game, and you can interact with them! Reminds me of the "Let's go together" feature from Violet.

The Sprout Tower was...not very fun. It was a bunch of extremely samey trainer battles, all the way up to the top floor. Though seeing the central pillar shake and wobble was pretty neat.

I also caught a Ratatta here, who would be my HM buddy. I named her Jifa, after my HM buddy from my Firered playthrough.

But with Niko leveled up quite a bit, I decided to take on Falkner. He was pretty tough, but Acacia felled his Pidgey, and Niko felled his Pidgeotto (after 5 Roosts).

Then I decided to take a short detour to explore the Ruins of Alph. It was cool to look around for what possible secrets the ruins held, and the sliding puzzle was fun, though I didn't spend much time there.

As I was traveling down Route 32, I caught a Mareep that I named Marla, and subsequently found someone trying to sell me a Slowpoke tail for an obscene amount of money. I knew from fandom osmosis that there was something related to Slowpoke tails coming up soon.

But before that, I had to traverse Union Cave. It was a bit tricky due to all the firebreather trainers around, but I made it out the other side, into Azalea Town, where Team Rocket awaited me.

After talking to Kurt, I went into the Slowpoke well, and had my first encounter with one of the Team Rocket executives, Proton. Thanks to Marla, he wasn't very difficult to defeat.

Apparently, in the original Johto games, GSC, the Rocket executives are all nameless? I guess that makes sense with how different they were in the GSC arc of the Adventures manga, but I'm glad they were given names and personalities in the remakes.

But after defeating Proton, it was time to face my second Johto gym leader, Bugsy. He was quite tricky, especially with how powerful that Scyther of his was. But he had a Metapod with only Tackle, allowing me to have Niko spam Defense Curls to maximize his defense. After that, taking care of the Scyther was easy, and I won.

My next task was to look for Farfetch'd in the Ilex Forest. I enjoyed the little puzzle here on how to sneak up on them, it was pretty neat!

Then, with Cut taught to Jifa, I pressed onwards, and helped out one of the Kimono Girls along the way.

Soon, I made it to Goldenrod City, the hometown of my character Gen.

It was one thing to research Goldenrod City, but another thing entirely to experience it myself. It was massive and sprawling, and took me quite a while to explore it fully.

I feel like now's a good time to talk about nostalgia.

See, I remember nothing of Goldenrod City from my 2012 playthrough. I'm not sure I even ever got there. Yet you might be wondering, why choose it to be Gen's hometown? Why not Saffron City, or Castelia City, or another city from the mainline Pokemon games?

It has less to do with Goldenrod City itself, and more with Johto as a region. My memories of Soulsilver from 2012, foggy and faint as they may be, did influence me to have Gen be from a Johto town. From there, I just chose what looked like the biggest city, and made that his hometown.

Johto does hold some nostalgia for me, and so I cannot truly say that this retrospective is untainted by nostalgia. I do, however, believe that nostalgia to be faint enough to be negligible. I hope that is satisfactory.

Back to Goldenrod City, I completed the quiz to get a radio card, and went to the gym to challenge Whitney.

The rumors weren't lying, that Miltank was tough. I had to have Acacia use stall strats in order to pull off a win.

Next up, I headed towards Ecruteak City, and was starting to understand the jokes about Youngster Joey, after receiving my 11th call about his "top percentage Ratatta".

Speaking of the Pokegear, it's really neat! It has so many little functions, such as the radio and calling people you've met along your journey. Though I do wish the map was a key item instead of being inside the Pokegear. I always assigned the town map to the quickselect button.

But soon, I made it to Ecruteak City, after catching a Pidgey and naming him Bagoli. After fending off a Rocket grunt inside the Dance Theater, I went inside the Burned Tower, to find Morty, Eusine, and Silver.

Eusine is definitely an odd character. All I knew of him before this playthrough was from Pokespe, and that he was a prominent character in Crystal. I think he's neat, though.

After a battle with Silver, I went downstairs, causing Entei, Raikou, and Suicune to flee. Though I'm not sure why they only fled then, and not during the commotion upstairs.

For the gym battle against Morty, I actually only used my Furret, Niko. I had kept Foresight on him, and this allowed him to sweep through the ghosts with Headbutt, while being immune to all the ghost moves.

Afterwards, I headed east, and got the Strength HM. But not wanting to go through a cave at the moment, I headed west towards Olivine...and immediately encountered Entei.

I had no idea what to do here. Entei was far beyond the levels of any of my Pokemon, and I had no idea what triggered the encounter.

So, since Niko was still in the front of my party, I used his Run Away ability to flee the battle.

It wasn't until I told my friends about this that I learned about Roaming Pokemon.

Apparently, Entei and Raikou randomly teleport around the map, and if you end up on a route with one of them, you have a chance of encountering them. You only have a single turn to do anything against them, but damage stays between battles with them.

I don't understand the reason for all this in the slightest.

I was rather baffled by this, but I continued onwards, to Olivine City. I caught a Pidgey somewhere around

I like the Olivine lighthouse's music. It reminds me a bit of Pokemon Tower from Firered. Somber, but catchy.

Eventually, I made it to the top of the lighthouse, and was told to go to Cianwood to get medicine for Amphy.

Side note, I love how the lighthouse Ampharos has a nickname.

Surfing to Cianwood was simple, and so was getting the medicine. And there was also Suicune, in plain sight. I was expecting Suicune to be a Roaming Pokemon like Entei and Raikou, but here they were.

Of course, they fled shortly afterwards, but it was nice seeing Eusine again afterwards, and getting to battle him!

The gym battle with Chuck was actually easier than his gym trainers. After winning, and with the medicine and Fly HM in hand, I flew back to the Olivine lighthouse, to give the medicine to Amphy.

Jasmine was a rather difficult battle, as I had nothing super-effective against Steel. It took several tries, and me mixing up my strategy a bit, but I managed to win.

I flew back to Ecruteak City, surfed around Mount Mortar, encountered Suicune and Eusine again, and arrived in Mahogany Town.

The gym was blocked off, I couldn't go further west, and the strange souvenir shop didn't hold much interest for now. So my only path forward was north, towards the Lake of Rage.

And I got mugged by Team Rocket along the way.

But I managed to catch the red Gyarados, my first shiny I've encountered during my entire mainline Pokemon marathon. I named them Splind.

After arriving back on shore, I encountered Lance for the first time since my Firered playthrough. It was cool seeing him outside the Pokemon League.

And after making my way back to Mahogany Town, I got to see the oft-memed scene of Lance having his Dragonite Hyper Beam someone. Then, it was time for the Johto Rocket Hideout.

I'll be honest, it kinda felt like a disjointed mess.

They had something cool starting out, with the Persian security statues. But after the first one, you can immediately turn them off, and they don't appear on any other floors. I'd have liked to see some stuff about remaining out of their lines of sight. There was also the explosive floor, which I still have no idea what was up with.

Then there was the two passwords, for which I had to battle Rocket grunts willy-nilly until I found both of the ones with passwords. I feel like a hint as to which grunts had the passwords would make this better.

The battle with Petrel wasn't much to speak of, though it was funny seeing him speaking the password aloud backfiring on him, thanks to his Murkrow.

Then there was a battle with another Rocket executive, Ariana. I feel like she and Petrel deserved their own separate encounters, instead of being immediately one after another.

And even after defeating her, it still wasn't over. I still had to defeat the Electrodes powering the radio transmission.

The entire hideout was all over the place, and I felt like it's a bit indicative of one of my main problems with this game.

But before that, it was time to take on Pryce.

He wasn't too tricky, but he was no pushover either. It was also interesting to see how he differed from his Pokespe incarnation.

But I won, and immediately afterwards, Team Rocket sends their second radio transmission.

I feel like now is the best time for me to talk about the pacing with Team Rocket in this game.

In short, I really feel like it'd have benefited from another major encounter with them before Mahogany Town. Maybe around Olivine or Cianwood.

Because before Mahognay Town, there was only two noteworthy encounters with them. The Slowpoke Well, and the single grunt in the Ecruteak Dance Theater. That's it.

Petrel and Ariana should have had their own bases, instead of being shoved into one together. I also feel like it'd help make Team Rocket feel like more of a threat, rather than something that happens almost entirely just before and just after the gym battle with Pryce.

Sorry for the negativity there, but I needed to get that off my chest.

Anyways, I flew back to Goldenrod City, to take on Team Rocket one final time...at least until Ultra Moon and Let's Go Eevee.

It was neat seeing the Rocket disguise from the first visit to Goldenrod coming into play here...at least until Silver unmasked me immediately after I entered the Radio Tower.

Still, it was fun fighting all the Rocket executives again. Petrel, Proton, and Ariana. It was a Rocket marathon, and I was having far more fun here than in the Rocket Hideout. Helped that the door puzzle in the underground storage area was pretty fun!

But soon enough, I was at the observation deck of the Radio Tower, ready to face off against Archer.

Like with Petrel and Ariana, I wish we had gotten to see more of Archer. But his battle didn't disappoint. It was quite tricky! But I won, and defeated this iteration of Team Rocket for good.

Again, though, mainline Pokemon games don't end when the plot ends. I still had quite a ways to go before the credits.

Next up was the Ice Path. It felt like sorta an extension of the Mahogany Town gym, with more ice puzzles. This time with an added echo of the Seafoam Islands puzzle, of using Strength to push boulders down holes. It was a fun challenge!

Soon, though, I made it through, to Blackthorn City, ready to face the final Johto gym leader, Clair. She was a tough opponent, but I won the battle.

Not the badge, though, not yet. For the second time this game, a gym leader refused to hand me the badge after I won the battle. But unlike Whitney, Clair wasn't content to just give me it anyways after a few seconds.

No, I had to go into the Dragon's Den, and pass one more test in order to prove myself worthy of the Rising Badge.

I really like this part of Soulsilver! It's so interesting to see some of the gym badges have a bit more to them than usual.

I passed the test, and received my final Johto badge, only to receive a call from Professor Elm, telling me to meet him at his lab.

I decided to go the long way, instead of simply flying there. So I set foot onto Route 45, and immediately encountered the last of the Legendary Beasts, Raikou.

Sure enough, after a single Petal Dance from Acacia, it fled. But I had now seen Entei, Raikou, and Suicune all at least once, and so I was satisfied.

After receiving the master ball from Professor Elm, it was now time for me to face the toughest trainers yet, the Kimono Girls.

Silver wasn't kidding, they were very tricky opponents. They may only have had one Pokemon each, but as I couldn't heal between, it was essentially like fighting one trainer with five Eeveelutions.

But I pulled through, and won, receiving the Tidal Bell. And then, it was time for me to go to the Whirl Islands.

Which were completely dark.

Oh no.

I was not looking forward to stumbling blindly in the dark again like I did with Rock Tunnel in Firered, and Emerald's Victory Road. And due to my single rule for this marathon, I could not look at a guide for help.

Not helping was that the only members of my team who could learn Flash already had four moves that I wanted to keep on them.

Luckily, I was still able to ask friends for advice, and one of them gave me a very useful tip. To go in the top-right island entrance, and not take any stairs.

And so, I navigated through the Whirl Islands with that advice in mind, eventually coming to Lugia's hiding place beneath the waves.

The scenee to summon Lugia was really cool! I love how the bells stated getting added to the track as each one began to ring.

And then, it was time to face off against the box legendary, Lugia.

I wanted to catch Lugia. Not only that, I wanted to catch Lugia in anything but the master ball. I wanted to prove that I was worthy of being Lugia's trainer.

They weren't kidding, the catch rate for Johto's legendaries is very small. Even after having Marla paralyze Lugia and then knock it down to a tiny sliver of health, I went through all my ultra balls and great balls without a catch.

I tried again, having Marla knock Lugia down to an even tinier sliver of health, plus paralysis. Still, it took nearly my entire ultra ball stock again to catch Lugia.

But I did catch Lugia. It was time to say goodbye for Jifa, at least for now, as I had Lugia take the sixth spot on my team. I needed every advantage I could get for what was to come.

My first steps as part of that, would be my first steps in this game into Kanto.

You see, I had thought that the entirety of Kanto was post-game only. That you wouldn't even step foot there until after the credits roll. So imagine my surprise when the first person I meet after surfing east from New Bark Town tells me that I'm in Kanto now!

It was so cool seeing the map be updated to show this section of Kanto, and it made me determined to keep going.

The trainer battles on Route 27 and Route 26 were some of the toughest yet, but I kept going, unstoppable on my way to the Pokemon League.

But before I got there, I had one final challenge, Victory Road.

It wasn't nearly as tricky as the other Victory Roads I had faced so far. The puzzles were pretty simple, and here weren't any trainers there.

Well, except for one, who had driven off all the other trainers on Victory Road.

The final fight here with Silver reminded me of the battle with Wally from Emerald. A final battle with one of your rivals, inside Victory Road. Only this time, it was at the end of Victory Road, rather than the start.

It was fun to see Silver realizing what he had to do to become a truly strong trainer: be better friends with his Pokemon.

Silver is probably my favorite of the "jerk rivals" (though what I've heard of Bede makes him a very close contender). He's a very interesting character, and this final battle with him was great!

After saying goodbye to Silver for the final time, it was time to enter the Pokemon League.

Healing up my team, and purchasing some final supplies, I headed beyond the doorway at the top, to start my Elite Four challenge.

Will was quite tough! But Psychic's weakness to Bug would be my key here, with Marla's Signal Beam decimating many of his Pokemon. While I won this battle handily, it would only get more difficult from here.

Koga was no joke. I had no counter to Poison, and his hyper-evasive Pokemon badly poisoned several members of my team. But Niko's Foresight would once again prove useful, and be key in taking down Koga's Pokemon.

Next was another familiar face, Bruno. Bagoli and Lugia were key here, but a tricky switch-out from Bruno during a Fly from Bagoli had him get taken out by a Rock Slide from Bruno's Onix. Thankfully, Acacia was able to take care of the Onix, and Lugia took care of the rest.

Finally, there was Karen. True to her advice, I was going to try to win with my favorites. I tried to have Niko pull the Foresight trick against her Gengar, but it surprised me with a Focus Blast, taking Niko out. But with the help of Marla, Acacia, and Splind, Karen's team was defeated.

All that remained now was Champion Lance.

I healed up my team, but forgot to use an Ether on Marla, whose Discharge was running low on PP. This would soon come back to bite me.

Lance was my toughest opponent in this game by far. Sure, Marla easily took out his Gyarados with a Discharge, and Splind took out his most powerful Dragonite with an Ice Fang, but then the tides turned in Lance's favor. Splind got knocked out by a Thunder, and Marla ran out of PP for Discharge. I had to scramble to figure out a strategy, and it took all of my remaining Hyper Potions.

But eventually, I won. I became champion of Johto, and finally finished Soulsilver. I had done what my 2012 self couldn't, and beaten this game for the very first time.

I had completed Pokemon Soulsilver, and that fact means so much to me.

I will be doing the postgame for Soulsilver eventually. But that'll probably be its own retrospective.

I had a lot of fun with Soulsilver! Sure, its pacing could have been a lot better, but it was a really nice experience overall! Though I feel like it'd have been a lot trickier and more frustrating without the infinite rare candy cheat.

I am so happy to have finally completed this game, 12 years later.

[melissa-titanium]

for character headcanons tome ^_^

I CANNOT FND THE POST YOU ARE REFERRING TO FOR THE ABSOLUTE LOVE OF ME BUT I SWEAR I KNOW WHAT UR TALKING ABOUT. TREMBLES. if i get this wron g i wil ;. cr.y

i like to imagine tome as a relatively tall person. like maybe a few inches shorter than me... 5'7 ? shes very lanky. i think she had a little bit of a growth spurt once she hit like. lets say 12 or 13 and just shot the fuck up. then stopped. shes still tall just not crazy tall.

i LOVE masc presenting nonbinary tome but i feel like. idont know i feel like shes more. androgynous leaning does that make sense. her gender is weird girl but not a "girl" do you get me. she likes 2 wear skirts & jewelry & goes by ms over mx or mr . her pronouns r weird as hell too shes got the motherfucking zleep/zlorp it/its zhe/her all the neos all the xenogenders you get me ?

also. lesbian. duh. but also . i want to talk about it because it very much interests me. i def think shes ace because i hit every character i like with the ace beam but iiii. dont see her as aro? as much as i love aroace hcs i feel like it doesn't fit tome . at most i could see her on the aro spectrum..... i could totally see greyromantic tho maybe. but also specifically i dont think i could see her using orientation-specific labels, only gender labels. like she would call herself gnc/andro & specify her pronouns & list her most prominent xenogenders but when you ask about her orientation shes like. Girls 👍

ok now that gender is out of the way. smiles

i lik 2 explore her dynamic with takenaka & i think alot of people do honestly LOL. initially of course takenaka feels like a little bit of bitterness towards her because he understands she'd probably see him as nothing more than a guinea pig for her obsessions. but post telepathy arc i think they get along more cause he understands her way of thinking and fears & she understands that he (and others) actually DO care. i like to think they hang out & he manages to read her really well after a while without even needing telepathy.

i think she plays mhfu. i think this because i'm autistic leave me alone. tri ultimate makes more sense considering it was the most recent game to come out at that time but also it's got the smallest monster roster of any of the games, so mhfu it is. i think she'd main insect glaive (having essentially a telepathic communication with a little insect friend is such a cool idea to her) and her favorite monster would be yama tsukami. yama is literally perfect. it's outlandish, has a completely unique skeleton from any other monster in the games (save for yama kurai who was technically not a canon monster because it only existed in frontier) and it is quite literally an UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT. she would think that's rad as hell, and be very sad that it's not a popular monster (only solidifying her concept of isolation/alienation from her peers, liking things that are unusual to enjoy)

a weird hc i always had for her. i think she plucks out her eyebrow hairs so they r a little patchy almost? i knew someone who used 2 do that when i was younger and i think its something she would have done . speaking of hair she definitely cuts her own hair. SOMETHING TELLS ME SHE HAS PROBABLY TRIED TO DYE IT BEFORE. it didnt go well. her hair has never been the same

i think she's a big fan of new sensory experiences. that is a stim toy bitch if i ever saw one. i think she likes the textures most people find uncomfortable, like sandpaper or scratchy textures . not a picky eater but has a general preference for crunchy/hard stuff over things that melt in her mouth does that make sense ... i think her least favorite food is cotton candy. idk what her fave food is because my food knowledge is limited to bangladeshi cuisine and white people food (save me) but if i think of anything ill edit this. i actually implemented this into my design for her but she has alien earrings and they r kinda squishy. i think she messes with them when shes bored

shes dexterous as fuck with her hands. she could totally learn to shuffle a deck of cards fast as hell or play the shell game (cup shuffle) if she had interest in physical games. i think once she started working at s&s and really getting along with the rest of the Gang she would start playing card games & they always ask her to shuffle. not even reigen does it as well. years of gaming has trained tomes hands to levels not even reigen could dream of reaching

i think she'd be some kind of translator/ambassador... a high standing position based on middle-man communication. a linguist maybe? i think her obsession with the supernatural would eventually leave her down the path of like, culture study, to learn more about different regions mythical creatures. i also really like the post-canon ideas where she works with mezato as an investigator, WHICH ACTUALLY ACTS AS A SEGUE INTO MY NEXT HC

i think her and mezato would get along so well. its such a shame we never get a proper interaction between them. obviously their only canon interactions are accompanied by shigeo in which both of them r trying to grab his attention in some way and theres a little bit of conflict in that (tome realizing shige is a little uncomfortable with mezato pestering him about the cult & swooping in to give him an out) but i think if they genuinely decided 2 meet up and hang out they'd be a force to behold . girls who are wildly enthusiastic about their particular craft who seem to be somewhat outcasted even from their peers who hold similar interests. mezato being the most interested member of the journaling club & tome being the only person in the telepathy club who actually gives a fuck about telepathy!!!!! the thing about mezato though is that i dont think she is self conscious in the way that tome is. tome's like. worried about taking up others' time with her own interests that she clearly is the only one interested in. she thinks she should be grateful that they're even listening to her (atleast thats what i gathered from takenaka's reading of her thoughts during telepathy arc) and that no one but her truly gives a shit about the things she's into. and i dont have a firm grasp on mezato's character, but i think shes something of an inverse of tome in that sense. mezato's more confident about her interests, as well as being more confident in parading it around maybe. so i think they'd get along by being inverses of eachother. im not confident in describing mezato so i hope you kind of get what im saying

ok wow i got off track. i think she's one of those kids who had like a crazy amount of allergies when they were younger but eventually they faded as they got older. shes totally allergic to cats.

she . in the best way that i could possibly muster. feels like a middle child. she feels like someone who has a shit ton of siblings/lives with a big family does this make sense. i think she'd have like two older brothers and a little brother. am i insane can anyone else sense this.

okay i ran out of shit to say theres probably more but . coughs and dies. tome i love you

[tatjana-fantasy]

Why I love House of Ashes’ choice system

House of Ashes is my favorite Dark Pictures game for many reasons, and one of them is its choice system. It makes the game very replayable for me, despite the plot armor it has. But what exactly do I mean by that?

Well, in HOA, the consequences of your actions are often decided by both your current and your previous choices. There is rarely a single choice that always happens and always dooms a character, because the game gives you multiple ways to save them. It’s honestly amazing, and I hope future Supermassive games will implement this choice system as well. Let’s talk about some examples!

The first one is technically not a choice, but a QTE: Eric cutting the rope or not. But since it’s presented as a choice, I’m fine with treating it as such. Here, by far the safer option for Eric is cutting the rope because it guarantees his survival (assuming Dar wasn’t alerted), but NOT cutting the rope doesn’t guarantee his death. Instead, Jason’s and Nick’s actions decide his fate, particularly how well they do in the QTEs and whether or not they save Merwin. If they save him, they won’t have enough time to save Eric and he dies if he doesn’t cut the rope. But if they kill Merwin – either by accident or by choice –, they prevent Eric from falling to his death, allowing him to hold on to the rope.

And that’s so amazing, isn’t it? That the game makes it possible for him to survive either way, but requires certain choices to be made beforehand. There was even supposed to be a third way to save Eric, by A.I. Rachel cutting the rope herself, but because of an earlier scene getting cut, it’s unfortunately not possible to get this outcome anymore. A small part of me still hopes it will be edited in someday …

The second example is Nick’s and Salim’s truce. Once again, Eric’s life is at stake. There are multiple ways to kill him here, but there are also multiple ways to save him. I think the most common way to kill Eric is by shooting the shepherd, letting Eric accompany Nick and reassuring Salim to stay, so let’s go with that. (I know you can kill Eric slightly easier by simply exposing Salim’s location, but even then, it requires around three consecutive choices to cause Eric’s death, while just a single different one can guarantee his survival.) You don’t have to worry if you shot the shepherd, because just telling Eric to stay behind makes sure he doesn’t die. But you also don’t have to worry if he accompanies you, because you can just tell Salim to hide in order to save Eric’s life. It’s only if you shoot the shepherd, allow Eric to join Nick and reassure Salim that causes Eric’s death. I love that the game gives you so many ways to save him here!

Then there’s the Clarice situation. Once again, the game gives you multiple ways to avoid Eric’s death. In Bloodbath alone, there are three ways to leave Clarice behind (leaving her behind directly, picking the right dialogue options for her to stay behind by herself and failing the QTE to cross the chasm), but even if Rachel convinces her to follow her, Clarice can still die by saying the wrong thing to Jason (which is admittedly hard to screw up by accident) or by Eric deciding to abandon her later. Granted, all these choices lean more into causing Eric’s death rather than avoiding it, but I still applaud the game for giving you so many possibilities to save him!

Speaking off Bloodbath: I LOVE the scene variation during Eric’s parts of the chapter. Depending on whether Salim was captured and the vampire was killed, there are four different ways these scenes can play out, not counting the one that requires Eric to be dead. I think we need more of this – scenes that don’t only vary because you killed someone, but because you made some different choices. :)

Another example I want to mention is Rachel’s infection, but not because it’s forgiving, but because it has two solutions. Assuming you don’t avoid her getting infected, you have to pick some strict dialogue options in order to save her, with barely any variation. But if you do pick the right options, she can either survive by burning the infection out of her or by getting cocooned. I LOVE that depending on whether or not Eric knows about the effects of the UV wand (which in itself can be achieved in slightly different ways), Rachel’s fate changes, but is only truly doomed if there’s nobody to save her. Although I do wish that the dialogue options in order to get these scenes wouldn’t be as strict as they are, I’m glad the game doesn’t automatically doom Rachel without Eric’s UV wand.

Finally, we have the game’s greatest scene when it comes to possibilities: Nick advancing the motherlode. It’s outstanding in so many ways, because the game doesn’t only give you multiple ways to save him, but also one that automatically dooms him – while still being quite forgiving overall. Let’s go over the possibilities!

The first way to save Nick is by not having anyone else (besides him) injured. It’s quite easy to avoid Jason’s and Eric’s injury, but Salim’s is another story, since most players would want to save Rachel from her vampire instead of shooting the vampire that attacks Salim. So, saving Nick this way isn’t too likely – but House of Ashes wouldn’t be House of Ashes if it didn’t give you another chance to save him.

Here, Joey’s med-kit comes into place. It allows you to heal one injury, so if you end up with the likely scenario of only Salim (and Nick) being injured, finding the med-kit is enough to heal him – and to save Nick’s life in the process.

But let’s say you didn’t find the med-kit and/or have more than one person besides Nick injured. Maybe you shot the shepherd or screwed up some QTEs. In this case, there’s a third way to save him: By finding the stake in the Bloodbath chapter and giving it to Nick. Granted, the dialogue option isn’t as clear-cut as it could be, but it still provides another option for him to defend himself.

In the same chapter, Jason can also make two dialogue options that inspire Nick enough to “fight like they do”, which is one of the rare instances where a (technically “bad”) dialogue option can determinantly save a character’s life. Similar to the previous dialogue option, it’s not very obvious, but I still appreciate that it exists!

But of course, we can’t talk about this scene without mentioning the possibility of Eric leaving Nick to die. In this case, it doesn’t matter how many choices you’ve made that usually guarantee his survival, because a low relationship with Eric will render them all pointless. Thankfully, it’s easy enough to keep their relationship on a neutral level, but just like it’s possible to miss all chances to save Nick, it’s also possible to cause the one consequence that kills him.

Still: It’s outstanding that the game is so forgiving in its choices, and lets you save its characters in different ways. There is even more stuff I haven’t talked about (like Eric’s possible death in The Signal or some general second chances when it comes to saving vs leaving characters), but I think you get my point. Personally, I absolutely love House of Ashes’ choice system and hope to see it in future games <3

[itsdeathofabachelor]

Okay so I’ve recently got invited to a game of manhunt by the kids in my trailer park so I’ve decided to make this:

How the Stardust Crusaders would play man tracker!

(With some other headcannons sprinkled in)

Kid game rules:

- You have to say you’re ‘it’ if asked

- No climbing trees or drainpipes

- Can’t hide on property not every else is allowed on

- No ‘T’ (time out) while getting chased

Kid Jotaro

- pretty neutral at first and expects to get disinterested and leave early but never does

- He’s not the one who starts the game but is always the secondary recruiter for finding other kids to play

- The fastest runner

- Could easily leave everyone in the dust the moment they get ambushed

- But he doesn’t because he’s stubborn and thinks it’s sissy shit to leave everyone else and then run off by yourself

- The most fun he has all week

- The fastest and strongest but gets hungry and thirsty the most

- Will ignore it to keep playing

- Has gotten sunstroke at least ten times

- Holly starts implementing rules because of it (drink two bottles of water before lunch, granola bars in his shorts pocket that have to be wrappers by the time he comes back between games where she’ll give him two more, etc or else she’ll call him inside and not let him play the next week)

- Still doesn’t finish all the granola because Holly overestimates how much he can eat

- Will share his snacks

- Polneraff is the one who bugs him the most for them

Kid Kakyoin

- Blown away he’s being asked to play at all

- Like, nervous

- He’s excited at first, but then he gets so nervous it’s all a joke and everyone’s actually pranking him that he gets sick to his stomach and has to sit out for the first game

- So kid Jotaro sits out with him because he’s been playing all morning and needed to drink two bottles of water before lunch anyway

- Then he feels better and Jotaro does most of the talking for him back in the group (“No, take him out from getting picked. It’s his first time playing so it’s not fair if he has to be it”)

- Then after a couple games spanning the day he turns into the kid who does all the planning and strategy

- Then after a couple weeks of meeting up and hanging out, he becomes: “Guys guys guys shhhhh I saw them over there by that house. . . So that means they could come out from behind it or at its sides— or circle to the front— and cage us in! Guys guys are you listening to me? Come on! C’mon, c’mon!”

- Can be weirdly aggressive when it comes to the rules

- Him and Polneraff butt heads the most over rules, because Polneraff will come out with some ‘Well technically because you didn’t say you were it—’ ‘I did!! But I did!!’ ‘Well I didn’t hear you, so it doesn’t count’ and it will make Kakyoin genuinely upset

- Kakyoin has never been around kids his age enough to become genuinely upset, he doesn’t know how to process it or how to regulate himself

- He’s definitely the kid who gets overwhelmed and has to go home early

- Jotaro walks with him

- He doesn’t know what to say so he usually walks silently beside

- After around a month or two of summer break Kakyoin started holding his hand as they walked (he had seen his cousin and her friend do it all the time, and he hadn’t had a friend to understand what the difference between girl-friendships and boy-friendships were, so he assumed he could hold Jotaro’s hand)

- It helped him feel better

- After that, when they were hiding in the game and Kakyoin was whispering fun facts to Jotaro wherever they were hiding, Jotaro would seek out his hand and hold it

- Eventually Polneraff stopped overwhelming Kak on purpose because when he left Jotaro usually went home too and then the whole gang dispersed

- Kakyoin and Polneraff are usaully the ones with the most scratches and bruises because they take the game the most seriously, and therefore run the fastest and take the most risks in order not to get caught

- The rule ‘No climbing up drain pipes or trees’ was made because of Kakyoin

- Him and Jotaro stick together the most because Jotaro, after first introducing Kak and speaking up for him, now has Kak speaking for him

- Which is great and Kakyoin knows a lot of cool stuff so he just sort of listens as him and Kakyoin hide in some insane place like under Joseph’s truck in the driveway

- Whispering, “and the starfish too, I like those. There’s a lot of colors, too. There’s ones that change color because of camouflage. And the different var. . . Var-ee. . .” “Variants.” “Yeah. And the different variants—”

- Gets caught mostly because Polneraff learnt to listen for Kakyoin’s voice

- Polneraff told him to shut up once and Jotaro yelled at him

- Which scared him genuinely shitless because Jotaro had never raised his voice

- He did the little kid looking around and clearing throat thing like ‘don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry’

Kid Avdol

- really independent kid

- Took care of himself and his parents sometimes

- The oldest out of the group

- Polneraff scouted him first, and he’s known Polneraff the longest

- Got pulled in by Polneraff’s direct nature (“So you’re from India?” “Cairo, it’s in Egypt.” “So, like, is that near India? My dad says Indians are crooks. And lie a lot. Do you lie a lot?” “I don’t think so.” “Are you lying?” “Uh, no.” “Okay. I like your hair, why does it look like that?”)

- He’s not used to actual transparent curiosity when in a predominantly white neighborhood who toe around his race in conversation

- Polneraff also acted the same way towards Jotaro when he moved in a year or so after

- Kakyoin was the only one somewhat spared from it (“Another Jotaro? Why are you so short? Jotaro isn’t short. Are you sure you’re Japanese?” “Yeah, he is. He’s never played before.” “Oh okay. Are you gonna play with us? Can you run fast?”)

- Because he’s so independent from such a young age, he’s never really known how to be a kid

- So really, in the long run, Polneraff being so immature while being close to his own age was a real eye opener for him

- A refreshing one

- He’s queit, but not as quiet as Jotaro

- He’s more, ‘I’m thinking’ quiet

- But Polneraff is always searching for affirmation so he’s sort of come out of his silence in that way

- He came to realize it was actually really fun to just talk for the sake of talking

- His parents mention he’s been a bit of a blabber mouth since meeting that kid down the street with the dirty sneakers and perpetual sunburn, but his mother smiles behind her hand when Advol lights up and jogs over to meet him

- He’s mostly Polneraff’s support but he doesn’t really take any of it seriously

- He doesn’t tell Polneraff that though

- Him and Kakyoin get along too, but he compared him and Polneraff’s similarities together once so they both avoided him for a whole game until Polneraff finally said he was mad at him

- If he and Jotaro were left in a room together for two years they’d probably exchange two words (“Hey.” And “Bye.”)

- Schoolwork comes first, for everything

- Then chores

- But Polneraff is done his own school day by then

- And is sitting on the counter

- Soon, it became Polneraff sitting on the counter, Jotaro on the sofa, and Kakyoin hovering over Avdol’s shoulder, asking if he needs help with anything

- Years later in university, he wishes every instance with them all together would’ve lasted longer

Kid Polneraff

- the kid who started the game and asked everyone to join

- Thinks he’s the shit because it’s his street they’re playing on so he knows all the best hiding spots

- Is the most hard headed and thinks he knows best

- Him and Kakyoin butt heads the most

- He pulled his hair once but never did again after Kak bit him

- They barely tolerate eachother sometimes but for the most part make up instantly in that little kid way after a round of juice and cut up fruit from Jotaro’s mom

- They always go back to Holly after a game to fuel up because Avdol’s mom is out working late, Kakyoin’s wants him to get out the house to hang out with his friends more (she’s worried about him pushing away the only human connection he’s had since his cousin before they moved), and Polneraff’s needs a break between loud-ass kid Polneraff and his baby sister.

- Best paired with Advol because he knows it’s a game and doesn’t take it as seriously as Polneraff so he does whatever he says to do, even if it results in them both getting caught

- He’s also the kid who yells ‘T’ when about to get caught

- They had to make the rule of ‘no T while getting chased’ because of him

- Drove Kakyoin up a wall

Young Joseph

- First introduced to all Jotaro’s kid friends when at a family bbq at Holly’s

- Suzie Q was too busy talking with some girlfriends and Holly setting out the tables

- When all the kids come back from their third or fourth game for some fruit, he thinks ‘yeah sure why not’

- complains about his back while running around (mostly to get one of the girls attention so they could fawn over him, it will never work and has never worked. Suzie Q actually rolls her eyes at him)

- Lets Jotaro catch him when he’s it

- When he himself is it, he runs after Jotaro clutching his chest (“Damn, you’re fast Jotaro! Been practicing without me? That’s cheating you know!”)

- Does it because he thinks Jotaro trying to hide how happy his is that he’s faster than his Jiji who fought all these super cool monsters (from the stories he told him before bed when Holly told him not to because Jotaro would get too excited to sleep) is super precious

- Joseph totally notices and it nourishes his soul

- He thinks Polneraff is a little shit and pretends to lunge after him to make him scream

- Polneraff asks about his arm first, but Kakyoin is a close second after getting over his initial shyness

- He’s the one telling Joseph all these fun facts Joseph already knew, but is genuinely surprised this little kid did

- Tells him he’s smart, and to remember him when he’s a rocket scientist so he could hook him up with a private jet, and Kakyoin turns really red

- He’s not used to adults telling him he’s smart and not creepy

- Also not used to the casual touches, like Joseph reaching down to noogie his head a little, or pat him on the back

- Over the months of hanging out with everyone and playing he grows to trust and respect Joseph, and to look up to him as a parental figure

- Starts visiting Jotaro more often because of it

- Helps Joseph with his Japanese

Now what if they were the ages they were in part 3?

(Ignore everything I just said above, these guys are fucking around with man tracker for the first time)

Adult game rules:

- No stands

- No throwing rocks

- No fistfights

- No other weapons (Polneraff tried bringing a real sword because then technically it wasn’t his stand and Jotaro punched him)

- After Jotaro sees you, you have a fifteen second headstart (this only applies to Jotaro, and for good reason because otherwise the game would not last very long)

- No throwing other players (Joseph tossed Jotaro into a stream and Holly noticed the fatass bruise on his forearm)

- No cutting through backyards

- No mercy (or ‘pausing’ the game unless every agrees)

Jotaro

- “I’m not a fucking kid.”

- Gets physically defensive, arms crossed, isn’t having it

- Likely agrees only after Polneraff acts super cocky and it pisses him off (“Well, I’ll be the last one standing either way! Doesn’t matter who plays or who doesn’t.”

- Or Joseph makes a bet for a pack of cigs with him (“if you win Jotaro, next week’s beer is on me!” “I’ll make you put your money where your mouth is, old man.”)

- He sort of wanted to play anyways and if everyone had actually went on without him he’d be smoking by himself on the tailgate of Joseph’s truck feeling upset but not accepting the reason why

- still embodies that one kid who runs in circles around the slower kids

- Doesn’t take nearly as long to get used to the idea of playing as it does Kakyoin

- After one game he’s into it

- Like, fully charging

- He’s the fastest, and the rule ‘When Jotaro sees you you have a fifteen second headstart’ is a must when he’s it

- It’s terrifying

- just because Jotaro sees you, doesn’t nessisarily always mean you’ll see him

- Which adds an extra insanely terrifying layer to the game

- He’s the one everyone knows to look out for, and are constantly looking out for

- And if he’s it, everyone’s asking where he is or if anyone else in the group has seen him

- He’s like the grim reaper

- Goes for Kakyoin first because he likes being it with him the most

- Polneraff tried telling him he couldn’t just target Kakyoin but Kakyoin politely interjected saying it was fine

- He didn’t really like running around knowing Jotaro was Out There to Get Him

- When they do play, they’re likely around a street with kids already on it with their parents, and Jotaro running full speed after a bunch of other muscular guys squealing for their life ( it’s Polneraff doing all the squealing but no one mentions it) confuses the fuck out of them the first time they see it

- Then Joseph is jogging close behind laughing his ass off (“Jotaro give the guys some space to breathe will ya!”) and he lingers around talking to a family he knows (it’s his house they’re playing on the street of when Holly came to visit with Jotaro. Polneraff, Kakyoin, and Advol just happened to have nothing going on and as Joseph is cannonically fucking loaded everyone just sort of piled on a flight and came over too)

- Kakyoin is long jumping over a park fence, Polneraff is trying to clamber over it, and Avdol’s pants are caught on the chainlink all the while Jotaro is getting closer and closer and everyone is looking visibly more and more scared

- Joseph is recording and continuing his convo at the same time

Kakyoin

- took the longest to get used to playing

- The first game he felt silly, like, really embarrassed

- He never did this sort of thing as a kid, what if someone sees? A bunch of grown men running around chasing eachother? What was he doing? He should be at home cleaning or doing someone productive. Maybe he should say his stomach hurts and go home

- It’s not like he’s lying. He feels almost queasy

- He doesn’t know why

- He gets caught on purpose the first and second game so he could justify lingering behind the other person already it, but on the third he’s honestly surprised how Jotaro’s so into it

- Like, he looks up to Jotaro a little, he has a powerful stand and is the most levelheaded guy he knows

- He’s smart and quick thinking and does super cool badass shit all the time

- Kakyoin doesn’t think he’s ever seen him do anything ‘fun’ like this that wasn’t a substance before

- Looking around, he realizes everyone else is taking this seriously, and not only that, having fun

- So he does too

Avdol

- tried to sit out and watch from somewhere in the shade with a cold drink

- Joseph drags him in before he could make it to the truck cab and open the cooler

- Slips into the nostalgia pretty easily and while not taking it seriously, finds the atmosphere of youth and the company of people who aren’t aware of how stupid they all might look to onlookers refreshing

- He was the one to tell Polneraff not to throw rocks

- Then he was the one who looked despairingly at Joseph after Polneraff said he started throwing them first

- Then he didn’t really have to worry about it anymore because Jotaro picked up a treetrunk piece from the park tree line they ended up at and threw it at all of them

- He didn’t use star platinum, just raw strength

- Kakyoin is hot on their heels, and because of his insane ability to make strategies up on the fly, when Avdol is it and catches up to him and cages him in Advol genuinely has to act serious with it because Kak has the brains and the brawn to execute really amazing plans considering they’re playing a kids game

- He escaped Advol

- He nods along when Joseph pats his shoulder and thanks him for letting Kakyoin get away (“Best not to go too hard on him. Don’t want to scare the kid off.”)

- He didn’t

- He actually tried to catch him

- He’s going to talk to Kak about some more serious stand-arrow related missions he might be a good help on

Polneraff

- is so sure he’s going to crush these nerds

- Does not

- Is under constant harassment from Jotaro after his high claims of beating his ass in this ‘little kid game’

- He gets more and more serious about winning the more he loses

- Kakyoin actively avoids him, but by some twist of fate gets stuck with him more than he would’ve liked

- If not with Jotaro, he’s getting dragged around by Polneraff as he’s frantically trying to escape the earthshaking footsteps of Jotaro getting closer and closer

- Complains the most about the rules if they don’t let him cheat

- Advocates for the rules the most when they’re to his advantage

- Gets scolded by Avdol when Advol isn’t scolding Joseph for something he likely saw Polneraff do first and he decided to join in

Old Joseph

- Back does not hurt

- no faking any injuries because the second game he tried it to evade ‘it’ Kakyoin and Jotaro fully ditched him to run away

- Jotaro does not think ditching dumbasses is sissy of him, and Joseph is the dumbest of asses

- Goes full sprint all the time

- Probably has the best strategy if he actually took it seriously

- He doesn’t

- Instead he chases everyone around and just goes with the flow

- He will be the last one standing or at least the main two

- He’s the only one who can even remotely keep up with Jotaro, if just barely

- Loud, Jotaro finds him usually because of him talking to himself or the person he’s with (who is usaully shushing him because they know Jotaro’s going to hear him)

- But he’s very rarely out of breath when being chased by the other crusaders who are it

[the-letterbox-archives]

Hello the-letterbox-archives! 👋✨

From your tag games (Badly Summarized WIP and Ask Box), TITANSPINE caught my eye. Can you tell me a little more about it? Who are the main characters? How does the police and justice system play into this world? Or, anything you wish to share about it~ ✨

Thank you again for your posts! 💛💫✨

I FORGOT TO ANSWER THIS SORRY GOLDEN!!!

anyway, thank you for the ask! TITANSPINE sure is an interesting one, let's get into it!

the characters

this one is gonna be hard to navigate, because there aren't too many named characters so far (heck, there's only one!), so i'll talk about lance, whilst trying to be as spoiler free as possible!

lance dexter is the mc of TITANSPINE! he's 16, and has a habit of bouncing from place to place amongst the lower levels of the city (and by lower levels, i mean geographically and socioeconomically) due to his lack of familial ties. he has a family, but they're uh... not with him at this time of the story. he has other social ties in criminal contexts, however, so he's got more relationships (those will become more apparent very quickly). he does own a car, and when he isn't with one of the aforementioned people he knows, that's his house.

personality wise, lance is very confrontational of authority. he's incredibly worldly and understands how his world works - i like to believe he is a character who has more control than he's expected to have (however, being beaten to near-death in an alleyway doesn't create that feeling). i relate to him a lot, actually; a scared kid coming into his own, and while it isn't pretty, and he's still suffering quite a bit, he's growing! and i love him for it (sorry for nearly killing you buddy).

the police + the TITANSPINE

this one's pretty important. the police and the government have a chokehold on lunaris; the goal of these forces is to create a society they can control, without the rabble of poor, revolutionary streets. it's a very classist world, and the government uses the incredibly brutish and high profile police force to exercise that control, especially on 'lower class' citizens.

that bleeds well into the next topic. the TITANSPINE (the acronym, not the story title (blue colour indicates the title, blank indicates the in-world principle)) is a new police initiative that is currently trying to be implemented when the story begins. it is not introduced in the story just yet, and the details are largely obscured, since lunaris is full of misinformation, and since lance is technically the narrator of this story (except in certain situations, but i'm not sure of that yet haha), he has only heard remnants of the TITANSPINE policy, enough to know it is dangerous for him.

"but letters!" you say, "what is the TITANSPINE?" great question! simply put, the TITANSPINE is a 'vigilant policing' initiative that aims to target the lower class and other 'misfortunate' individuals. it is presented to those it will not affect as a way to 'cleanse' and 'protect' society by regulating the 'undesirables,' but those who the policy will target understand it for what it is - a violent approach to remove poor people from lunaris society to better control the masses and design a world without 'problems.' basically a fucked up and violent way to bring about a perceived utopia for the upper class. the TITANSPINE initially focuses on jail time, fines, and smaller warnings, wearing away the public's confidence of revolution until bigger punishments can be implemented.

(as i'm typing this, i'm likening it to the american war on drugs, mostly the approach taken by the government and police during the event, but i am not all that educated in it so take that with a grain of salt. one i can make a decent comparison to is hostile architecture, the kind used by cities to lessen homeless people's places to sleep outside. imagine that but with more jail and bigger scale. and less about architecture and more society.)

sorry for the big post, think of it as an apology for waiting so long to reply! thank you again for asking!!