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rallamajoop · 8 months

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An absurdly detailed analysis of That One Soldat Photo

Hang around wintersberg fandom long enough, and you'll likely run into a popular crack-theory that, since Heisenberg obviously thinks that building a set of huge, yellow-painted signposts is a good way to point Ethan to the Stronghold, maybe it's Heisenberg who's been leaving all those handy, yellow-painted supply crates all over the place for Ethan to find! It's exactly the kind of fun nonsense I'd enjoy if it didn't feel folks are starting to take it a little too literally (by which I mean I have now read multiple fics in which it's played completely straight ‒ and, like, people do get that it's just a crack theory, right? Like, why would Heisenberg have left so many yellow crates around his own damn factory? Look, you don't have to explain every last game mechanic, not everything is lore!)

But as anyone reading my own fic would know, I'm guilty of echoing the idea that Heisenberg-was-leaving-stuff-for-Ethan myself ‒ just not because of any yellow-striped crates. No, I'm way more interested in this one weird soldat-photo you can find in the village ‒ long hours before you'll ever see your first Soldat in the flesh...

Very creepy. And if you turn it over, you'll find a clue to a puzzle you'll have to solve in order to progress.

(And of course, when you do look out the window, odds are you'll get jump-scared by a lycan just when you're focused on the numbers, because RE8 loves that sort of misdirection ‒ but I digress.)

Anyway, the code you can see out the window will open a safe containing a jack handle you'll need to move a vehicle in the village, as well as the M1911 pistol (which will very likely be your go-to handgun for the rest of the game). The game is full of conveniently-helpful clues like that (heck, most games are), often with no obvious Watsonian justification. And there are other photos around the village ‒ Luiza has a whole photo album ‒ but photos of experiments created by Miranda and her lords don't generally turn up outside their own territory.

For a player exploring the village for the first time, that photo is a lovely little bit of foreshadowing, hinting at monsters and factory stages to come. But on replaying with full knowledge of Heisenberg's later attempts to get Ethan on his side, that Soldat photo is just enough to make you go, huh... did Heisenberg leave that for Ethan? Like, on purpose?

You can find another copy of that photo later, in Heisenberg's factory, along with his notes on his early series Soldat experiments. Which doesn't really prove anything beyond the fact that assets exist to be reused... but it does at least make it pretty canon that Heisenberg has photos of his Soldats sitting around.

Possibly also significant: both the clue photo and the factory documents are tagged 'geekmemo' in the game files. Most everything related to Heisenberg in the files is labeled 'geek'-something ‒ it seems to be an early nickname for his character that lasted well into production. Everything in the factory is geek-something, even the model for the passageway from the altar to the bridge is labeled 'pathtogeek'. Considering that so many soldat-related assets are already labeled 'geek', maybe that 'geekmemo' tag doesn't really tell us anything we don't already know ‒ but it certainly doesn't work against the idea that Heisenberg wrote that 'memo' himself.

Besides, it's not like there isn't precedent for this kind of thing. RE7 had a whole mechanic where you'd have to find 'treasure photos' pointing out the location of a few rare and useful items, all with "I hid something here" written on the back. We're never explicitly told who left those photos lying around, but it's obviously Lucas: he loves playing games, he loves taunting prisoners with the possibility of escape, and who else would it be? The complete population of the Baker mansion is like 6 people and a bunch of semi-sentient mould.

Over in RE8, there are a lot more village resident who might have left that clue lying around. Like it or not though, Heisenberg is very much RE8's equivalent of Lucas: the family's wildcard show-boater who loves making Ethan jump through hoops for his amusement. So how does the game let us know it was Heisenberg who left this particular clue? Well, who else would leave a message on the back of a Soldat photo?

There's may be additional supporting evidence Heisenberg could be involved ‒ most notably the location, being a locked-off cul-de-sac labeled 'Workshop' on signs and maps. The area is full of metal junk very much like you'll later see lying around the factory.

The workshop location does have other relevance ‒ it makes sense that you'd find the jack handle in the village workshop, whether Heisenberg was involved or not. But it also stands to reason that if there's anywhere in the village proper where Heisenberg might hang around and leave clues for Ethan, the workshop is it. And you have to admit that leaving Ethan useful stuff in a safe along with an easy clue that will likely get him jumped by a lycan is 100% more in-character for the guy than just leaving useful stuff out in the open, even if it doesn't really prove anything either.

There's one more weird-little does-this-mean-anything detail: there are three dead crows near the safe too.

It's not the first time in the game you've seen dead crows (there were a bunch outside the village, and I've talked about what that might mean in the context of Miranda's cult before). But I don't remember finding any others around the village itself, other than in this one spot. And instead of being hung from trees like a ritual sacrifice, these ones are just dead ‒ messily, and with blood everywhere.

Now, maybe it doesn't mean anything, but is there anyone in the village more likely to vent his frustrations by violently killing a few of Mother Miranda's avian avatars than Heisenberg? I'd think not.

In conclusion: I still don't think all those yellow crates have anything to do with Heisenberg. And I still don't know for sure whether the RE8 development team wanted me to assume that Heisenberg left Ethan that photo, jack handle and gun. I don't know if we're supposed to read that Heisenberg keeps a workshop in the village and sometimes kills crows out of spite. But the evidence sure does point that way ‒ and it's as valid an interpretation as anything else you might take from this game.

#wintersberg #Karl Heisenberg #Ethan Winters #Resident Evil Village #Resident Evil #meta

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actionsurges · 6 months

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Curiosity question if you don't mind from a newbie dm. How do you deal with tpk as a dm ? Where you super stressed as it was happening or was it ok cause you could communicate with the players ?

this is the first time i've ever had a tpk happen. several things happened and several things contributed to the way i ran things and why i think my players are okay with the outcome and i'll talk about them now. some of these i think are tips that can be applicable to dming, some of them are just personality things, and some of them speak to group synergy.

i know this party well. i know the PLAYERS at this table that i was doing this campaign with well and we know how to communicate, 3/4 of us dm for each other and we are all typically good at knowing what each other will enjoy

we communicate well, even if it takes a minute out of session. for example, in another game we play where i'm a player some of the decisions i was making as my pc were bringing down another player, and while we all agreed at the start that it was okay, things changed, and so i changed the way i was playing my character and they're swapping out their pc for awhile to play a different character.

i think it's important to note with the two examples above, your mileage really will vary when it comes to communication with other people because one's capacity for interpersonal communication has nothing to do with their enjoyment of the game. likewise, you might have great friends but realize you don't enjoy playing d&d with each other. things happen.

i think something any ttrpg player can keep in mind is that just because you like someone doesn't mean you like playing a 4 hour board game with them once every two weeks and viceversa. just because you get along to play a game doesn't mean you need to be best friends with someone you don't feel that close to outside the game.

some actual thoughts of mine regarding tpks and what happened in session that i feel like made it a successful session instead of something that felt horrible and unfair

i did not make the encounter with the goal to kill my entire party or even to kill one of them. i wanted a hard fight, cr is hard to balance, usually you have to punch way above your party's weight class to have a fight feel scary and challenging. that is what i was doing. the fight was very winnable. it just came down to roll of the dice. i think they could've taken them down but that's just not the way it turned out. the encounter itself did not feel hopeless, that is important. the alternate to this is i am not against, as a dm, flagging that a fight IS hopeless and that the party should flee. that is run very differently than how i ran this encounter, i was not signposting for them to run, i thought they would win.

when the first player dropped and then rolled a nat1 i asked them this: by raw this is failing two death saves, however, if you want this to be an automatic death you can choose that. i do not want to choose for you, i want you to make the choice that is fun for you. pc death is not fun unless you have fun with it. and then to keep a bit of mystery, i direct message'd them where i thought we could take their pc's story if they died / what the 'resurrection quest' could be. the player ended up deciding that auto death could be fun.

at this point, i did not know that i would successfully knock the other two players. and when it became clear that i could and was on the cusp of it, i asked them both something similar. do you both want to roll death saves and fight to the last breath or do you want to die. here's what will happen. they were excited by the death option.

my players chose to tpk. their characters did not, narratively they did not, the challenge was fair but hard and they failed narratively. failure should never be the end and should not be a punishment. the story moves forward. i presented an idea for where the story could go from the failure and they were enthusiastic about it.

after session i also checked in with the group and said, hey if you get second thoughts about this let me know and we can retcon that fight. i do not want to play a game that is not fun for you. as it stands now, they're all really excited about the idea of clawing their way back from the grave whenever we pick up a new story arc with those characters again.

and that's really what it boils down to for me as a dm whose spent a lot of time as a player in the game. pc death is not fun unless the player is excited about it. if they aren't okay with it, it will not be fun for anyone involved.

the game is about roll of the dice, the game is about story, the game is about mechanics and challenges and puzzles, but most of all it is about having fun. so if something is not fun, you don't have to do it.

i could talk forever about how i feel like there are some dms who take so so much pride in their intricate plots and ideas that they keep secret to their last breath without actually collaborating with their players which i think is actually a detriment.

#dm advice #i can talk more about my opinions on PC death in general and what i call 'resurrection quests' if you'd like and this is sort of a mismash #of my opinions on party synergy and above board communicaiton as well as improv from the dm chair.

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utilitycaster · 1 year

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Hi there! Thanks for writing so much great commentary on CR; I always look forwards to reading your takes and seeing your arguments. If you're ok with doing so, would you mind going into what overbalanced encounters you think weren't signalled well in the game and why? Just curious, no pressure though!

Hey anon! Thank you, and absolutely.

Honestly, there are only two that really stand out. Everything else is either too speculative on my part, or ended up okay in the end.

They are the fight in 2x26 where Molly dies, and the fight against Otohan in 3x33, and while they do both have character death, that's really a symptom, not the problem; assume character death or even a TPK is fine by me.

The things these fights share:

really low-level or drained party with no healing/very little healing left

Intended BBEG about whom the party knows very little

Enemy who will deliberately take death saves

Most of the signals are either subtle or directed towards a specific party member and are in the thick of combat when people aren't focusing on interpretation, especially when it's not a death spiral

Not a super clear "out" for the party nor the BBEG.

Like, it's very normal to set up an unwinnable or at least incredibly difficult encounter with an intended BBEG that does go well and is read accurately by the party but still isn't really a win. Some good examples are the initial Chroma Conclave attacks (fend off the dragons long enough, but the "19 MISSES?" line is truly all you need, they pick up on the need to run right away), the initial Briarwoods fight, the initial Vecna fight (which is, canonically, lethal), and the Tombtakers fight on the same day the Nein had fought Gelidon.

In all those cases, the situation is really clearly outlined, the party is either powerful enough to have tons of tricks up their sleeve or the enemy genuinely doesn't care enough to go for the kill shot, and there's no special tricks or traps.

The issue with the Iron Shepherds fight is that the signals that the Nein didn't have complete information were fairly subtle and relied on remembering pretty fine details from Keg's intel; by the time they realized how truly inaccurate it was, it was too late.

The issue with the Otohan fight is that honestly, it's...still not entirely clear how Otohan goading Imogen ties into the mechanics of the fight (larger plot, sure, kinda, although I still think Otohan is perhaps one of the least successful villains CR has ever had in terms of "do I give a shit"; it's just that Ludinus and Liliana are fantastic villains so it's fine; but it really wasn't clear what she wanted Imogen to do or why that mattered), and the switch in strategy mid-way through to taking death saves also threw people off, and all the party really knew going in was "head of organization we're infiltrating, kind of a badass, has a weird backpack". They really had no reason to understand how powerful she was; all the dream lore relating to Ruidusborn showed up later.

With both of these, also, the party were following like...pretty heavily dropped hints and signaled signposts and a general ambience of "here be The Plot/MacGuffin" and then it was a huge trap.

With something like, say, the Chroma Conclave, the party knew absolutely nothing - they just showed up to a political speech and dragons attacked. That matters! They knew in and out of game that it was a complete surprise and could act accordingly. Which I think brings me to the point: there is a metagaming element here, not in the sense of specific knowledge your character wouldn't know, but in terms of vibes your character could not technically pick up on. A non-combat example is Allura showing up in C2. Allura showing up says "this is the right path" to the players, even if the Mighty Nein do not know Allura. Beau and Caleb being kind of wary about what's going on? That's a huge sign that this is really fucking dangerous, and so Bells Hells was able to make smart choices and infiltrate slowly, which also gave them less high-pressure moments in which to, for example, notice how deeply entrenched Liliana was, or how brutal and unforgiving the Call and Vanguard are (all those bodies).

I think on the most basic level? If the party only realizes through extended combat how fucked they are, you have failed - and that's fine, DM's are human and fallible, but it should really be like, a 19 MISSES! moment if you need the reveal to be during combat, not something that happens a full initiative round in or requires any deeper analysis.

Also: a lot of these bets are off once parties hit like...L11 or so because at that point you should have enough resources to deal. Like, if you want to spring a nasty trap on a L17 party, do it. They should be able to deal.

#answered #Anonymous #cr tag

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znarikia · 2 months

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What's your favourite soulsborne and what lessons do you think similar games should take from it?

Either the original Dark Souls or Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. I'll start with the latter.

What made Sekiro feel so good is that it took the combat system and honed it to perfection, stripping away the chaff. (Almost) everything fed into the way deflection worked, rewarding high skill players with a very high skill ceiling. Kusabimaru's name tells you its value, it is the lynchpin of how you interact with enemies, be it offensively or defensively, not that there's a true difference. Even as an enemy like Owl or Isshin bears down on you, if you're good, if you're perfect, you cut into them, inverting their strength into an opening. You only need to attack offensively a handful of times in such fights, for they will have broken themselves upon you. Movement was a means to an end, to either deal with what couldn't be deflected or to get into range. Shinobi tools were limited in how many times they could be used in a fight, best serving as a way to augment Kusabimaru's shortcomings. The first time the fight against Genichiro Ashina clicked for me, it was a high that I've experienced in very few games. It only took me four attempts to beat Isshin the first time, because by that point in the game I understood and felt Kusabimaru as an extension of Wolf.

In short, I think what games should learn from Sekiro is to do one thing and do it well. As for Dark Souls? Hmm. That's a tougher question to articulate.

In a lot of ways, what makes DaS1 charming for me is its lack of polish, or maybe its faith in the player, though those are hard to distinguish. It's coarser than later entries, largely lacking signposts. The lack of fast travel until the midpoint, the amount of interconnectedness, and the density of it all gives the world a grounded, weighty feeling. Very little space goes to waste in DaS1, and when you're confronted with an open area there's stuff there, items and enemies. If you're not careful, you can aggro a whole mob of enemies while trying to grasp the flickering lights of distant items, making even an open area feel unbearably claustrophobic. It's not just the physical world, either, there's the way that the story of the world isn't really explained, only mentioned in passing or hinted at, lending so much more gravitas to what you do get. Some of this is intentional, some is the result of the game's troubled development. Then there's the esoteric mechanics it has. The game was so experimental. Some of it worked and worked as intended. Some of it didn't work, despite working as intended. Some of it didn't work because it didn't work as intended. Some of it worked, but not as intended.

Now, the problem with all that is that it's vibes-based and hard to recreate.

DaS3 got close, but that's a direct consequence of it fellating DaS1, and even then it's hampered by FromSoft being more experienced at their jobs and being more knowable on account of being DaS1 again. DaS2 got close in world feel, despite its world being weaker, but fumbled it in how it felt to play, but that's another post entirely. Unfortunately, I have never played Bloodborne so I can't compare it. Elden Ring was too big, showed too much. It was too complete. Sure, it left questions, but for the most part these questions aren't the result of questions. Usually, when you ask a question of Elden Ring, you find an answer if you look. Elden Ring solemnly nods and launches into a prepared spiel, because new Tarnished unfamiliar with the Lands Between turn up all the time so half the characters have an FAQ ready to go. DaS1 cocks its head at you like you're weird for not knowing already before tutting about the effects of hollowing on memory.

Do I think other games should be taken out of the oven before they're done? No. Would I have been less enchanted with DaS1 if it had been cooked all the way through? Yes. But I think I can articulate what I like about DaS1 better than that, having typed up a whole bunch of shit and deleted it.

The world in DaS1 makes you feel small. It doesn't exist for you, you're a tourist without a guidebook asked to kill a couple gods and take their place, please and thank you. The same pitch had been given to an unknowable amount of undead before you. It's the same for Sekiro, you're just trying to do your job while everything falls apart around you. You don't feel small in DaS2 once you realize it hates you. The whole wide world itself hates the Bearer of the Curse. DaS3 is coy about it. You're just dregs, but the world itself acknowledges that sometimes even Ash is special, because, well, the fucking Chosen Undead did it way back when, and who ever thought that would happen? In Elden Ring, the gods themselves are small, pawns for gods greater than themselves, but reality will still bend around them, a Lord is a Demigod, and you inevitably become a Lord.

I guess, in essence, sometimes it's fine to be small.

#dark souls #sekiro #sekiro: shadows die twice #I feel like I STILL poorly articulated why DaS1 feels different from the rest

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larphacks · 3 years

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Process Hack: Welfare

Hi all! After a long hiatus, ya boy is back with more unsolicited advice!

What are we talking about this week? It’s LARP welfare!

Common at medium and large games, the role of welfare officer, sometimes called “site parent”, and sometimes divided into crew welfare and player welfare, is very important. It’s also something which can go really smoothly if you do some decent prep before the event. I’ve been discussing the role with some LARPer friends recently, and I’ve put together some advice for good ways to tackle this role.

Some of the below advice falls into the category of sensible prep that everyone can do before a game too, so feel free to read even if you don’t hold (or want to hold) a position like this!

Some of the jobs I outline below might not fall into every welfare officer’s purview - mix and match as you choose. (If you’ve been asked to look after player or crew welfare and don’t know which of the below are your responsibilities, that means you need to have a chat with the chief organisers and find out!)

1. Positive Energy

This can be a surprisingly high-energy role. Particularly in the crew room, one of the most important things a welfare officer can do is be positive and energetic when everyone is feeling a bit tired and down. This is hard! But a bit of jollying-along goes a huge way to changing the dynamic. This is even harder when YOU'RE the one feeling tired and cold and sad. But if you are visibly struggling, nobody will approach you when they need help! A "brave face" is your best weapon.

2. Shut Up!

Sometimes you need to be the "voice of reason" - getting people to concentrate, or quiet down, when it's important that something needs to be done quickly. One good way to do this is to be cheerful enough most of the time that people LISTEN on the rare occasions that you raise your voice and ask them to please shut up for a minute.

3. Early Start, Late Finish

The two above points are ESPECIALLY important during set-up and take-down. You need to be "on the ball"/on duty during periods where other people are transiting into and out of the game. During set-up, your keen crew and players will all be busy frothing and sniffing each other's butts because they haven't seen each other for a year, they want to show off their new kit, and their adrenaline is through the roof. But - it's 30 minutes to time-in and nobody's in kit and the IC areas aren't set-dressed. You need to get them moving!

During take-down, everyone is exhausted, a bit overwhelmed, and wants to sleep (including the refs). But the site needs to be taken down, cleaned and tidied up, lost property needs to be organised, and there are always last-minute disasters involved in the logistics of getting people off site. You can't collapse now - your job isn't done. You might not be in charge of take-down, but you ARE the right person to gently corral and rally tired people towards the plan.

4. Who does what?

If you're the first point of call for someone who's having an issue, being able to confidently signpost to other crew is really important. So firstly, you should know exactly what the other other staff members do and where they're likely to be (in both time and space). If a player comes to you and says "I'm really struggling with the Sorcery rules and I feel very stupid", then sure, you can (and should!) offer them some immediate comfort and consolation. But in order to help them with the root of the problem, you need to know several bits of information:

a) What are the different staff members' responsibilities/expertises? Who does what? (Mike is the person who handles Sorcery rules.) b) Where in space are the other staff located? (Mike is currently refereeing the Clawed Fiend encounter on top of the hill.) c) When in time are the other staff available? (The Clawed Fiend encounter can't be interrupted. It is scheduled to end at 2100hrs. Mike should come back to the crew room after that.)

I'd also recommend you have a good "ticket-tracking" system to make sure your incoming queries are handled and nobody falls through the cracks. You could devolve this onto players ("Come back at 2110hrs and ask to speak to Mike") but it will help things flow smoothly if you are also logging things yourself. I'd recommend carrying a small notebook and pen so you can note things down and tick things off. You can also help things along by being an active communicator and setting the emotional context for solutions. If Mike comes back at 2100 and immediately gets jumped by an emotional player, he might be tired and confused and not give the best answer. But if he comes back and you tell him "There's a player who is having a bad time with the Sorcery rules, they seem quite distressed, I think you can help, they'll be around in 10 minutes" then he won't be surprised and will have the right bit of his brain switched on.

5. It’s all in the Filofax

There is admin information about players/crew which will really help you if something goes wrong too. I'd suggest having the following on-hand, glued into your notebook, on a tablet, or otherwise kept secure on your person (since some of it's sensitive personal data):

a) A list of everyone's allergies and medical conditions. b) A list of qualified first-aiders, and the locations of first-aid kits. c) A list of every vehicle on site, registration number against player/crew name, in case you need a car moved in a hurry. d) A rough understanding of who arrived from where, with whom. It doesn't need to be exhaustive, but if the vehicle which brought 6 people from London breaks down irrecoverably, then being able to help sketch out solutions to get those people and their kit home will be massively easier if you know roughly where people came from.

6. The Outside World

You are likely to also need to be able to signpost to help *outside* the game. If a player comes to you with a problem that can't be fixed with on-site resources, what are you going to do about it? You can't predict every scenario, but at a minimum I'd suggest having the following prepared:

a) A breakdown service for the vehicle that won't start (in the UK the most common is the AA). b) A mental health or emotional support helpline, like the Samaritans (116123). c) The emergency number for injured wildlife - in the UK, the RSPCA (0300 1234 999). d) The emergency and non-emergency medical numbers (in the UK: 999 emergency, 111 non-emergency) and police numbers (UK: 999 emergency, 101 non-emergency). e) A clear understanding of where on site you can get mobile phone signal. f) A plan for how you would get an ambulance onto site if you needed one: run through the whole thing (where on site can I get enough signal to call the ambulance? What is the postcode of the site, and do I have a set of clear directions to give the dispatcher in my notebook? Who am I sending to the site entrance to walk the ambulance on? Is their most likely route of approach clear for a large vehicle?). If you've never called an ambulance in this country, then ask someone who *has* to practice with you, so you understand what questions they'll ask and in what order.

7. Kit & kaboodle

The following are things which LARPers reliably fail to provide for themselves, and which you will benefit greatly if you have on hand. Find out from the organisers what your budget is, and buy accordingly:

a) Salty snacks (crisps/nuts) and quick energy (sweets/fruit). Keep a small separate store aside from the usual 'crew food' to help someone who is struggling. b) The ability to make a hot sweet drink in a hurry. c) Hydration solution (Dioralyte, Powerade, or the cheap alternative, which is six teaspoons of sugar and half a teaspoon of salt per litre of clean water). d) Paper and pens. e) High-powered torch (for searching for lost objects). f) Your own phone on an in-country network, plus at least one charged mobile phone powerbank with multiple charger ends. g) Ice packs - ideally the "squeeze to activate" sort so you aren't relying on the site freezer. (Most common item left out of first aid kids - and immediate relief/comfort for the most common LARP injuries.) h) Warm blankets. i) An idea of how you'd provide a simple hot meal in a hurry. (This could be a packet of rice you can chuck in the microwave, a cup-soup and kettle, a ration pack and a Jetboil, or a good understanding of what the caterers' plan is for an emergency meal.)

If someone is in a lot of distress, going through the process of dealing with their physical needs (food/water/temperature/etc.) can often help them become better able to communicate their psychological/emotional needs. Often a LARPer who is dehydrated or low on blood sugar doesn't KNOW that's the problem, they just know they feel awful and are crashing hard.

8. Know the Ground

KNOW YOUR SITE - I can't stress this enough. If someone has a costume disaster and needs somewhere private to change, where can they do that? If someone is overwhelmed and needs a quiet, safe, cool (or warm) room or tent to lie down in for an hour, where can they do that? If a shy new player shows up and asks "Where do I put my kit?", then being able to answer them quickly and competently with a smile on your face will immediately endear you (and mean that they WILL come to you later, when they're suffering, instead of sitting alone on their bed being sad about it).

9. Late Bloomers

What is the late arrivals plan? If you went IC at 1900 and the traffic means some of your players don't arrive till 2200, then most of your key refs/crew will be busy running the game. You're the most likely person to escort the late arrivals onto site, get them set up, and get them integrated into the game. You'll need to reassure, but you'll also need to understand a lot of admin details to make sure they don't feel any more overwhelmed and embarrassed than they already do. This might involve giving a second safety briefing, pointing out any last-minute changes that weren't included in the game pack, and pointing them to the right ref to get their characters timed in. You can be as nice and friendly as you like - but some people will be even more reassured by practical, reliable and clear directions when they’re feeling rushed and panicky.

10. Herd those Cats

What is the crew plan? Depending on role, you may or may not be involved in "crew wrangling" - this is often a separate role, and deserves its own post. But even if you aren't "crew boss", you need to understand and be able to help balance crew energy and engagement. If there are long periods where crew are likely to be sitting around bored, where are the "pick-up-and-play" roles they can briefly read, digest, and go out to engage in? If crew are doing three hours of back-to-back combat roles, where is the plan for ensuring that they're all fed, watered, rested and properly kitted before their next high-energy role? The best refs will have considered this and have a clear plan for managing crew in small teams to maintain their energy levels - but as a welfare officer you are likely to be the advocate/interface if it doesn't seem to be working well, so make sure you understand where the weak spots and frictions in the plan might be so you can deal with them in advance.

What happens if a crew member comes to you and says they're really struggling with their NPC role and aren't enjoying it? (If you're the approachable face, they'll likely come to you first before a busier ref!) Do you understand the crew matrix well enough to think about solutions, alternative roles they could do, or how the timetable could be re-worked to end their role early? Wherever possible, you should strive to go to the refs with a solution rather than a problem: "Harry is struggling and I think if we brought the poisoning forward an hour, then let him play a gremlin for the rest of the night, that would fix it" is better than "Harry is struggling". They may not accept your solution, but the conversation is already moving onto alternative ways to fix the problem.

11. Easy In, Easy Out

How do players enter/leave the game if they're fatigued or unwell? Your game may not have a clear system for this, and it may be players' own responsibility to manage their fatigue. However, some will struggle to cross the IC/OC divide here: if the character is fighting for their life, how do they resolve that with the player needing to have a lie-down for an hour so they're safe to drive the next day? One of the best games I've run had a clear, signposted system where players who needed a break could "vanish" IC (with a clear IC logic for their disappearance) and take as much time as they wanted. When they were rested, they could go see a ref for a special briefing which told them what had happened while they were away (and explained how they reappeared). You won't find this in every game, but think about ways to make taking an OC break feel like a positive and productive experience, which leaves the character with plenty to talk about when they return, rather than a potentially embarrassing one which leaves the player out-of-the-loop and feeling like they've missed out on the fun.

12. Look After Number One!

Practice active self-care, both to facilitate all of the above and as a good example to others. Going back to the first point, most people can't project positive energy if they're sad, wet, cold, tired and hungry. Have a routine worked out to look after yourself. Understand what you can and can't do and work to your limitations. If you have lots of physical energy but are struggling to deal with six emotional crises in a row, get up and walk around site. If moving exhausts you, pick a central location to base yourself and make sure all the things you need to do your job are in easy reach.

Feel free to reblog with your own additions, checklist items or hacks for looking after your fellow LARPers’ welfare. Suggestions gratefully accepted!

#process hack #LARP #accessibility #larp accessibility #larphacks

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booksandwords · 3 years

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The Librarian's Vampire Assistant 2 by Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

Series: The Librarian's Vampire Assistant #2 Read time: 2 Days Rating: 4.5/5

The quote: “Please. Try to stop squirming. This is supposed to be a family-friendly mystery novel.” “What?” “Never mind. We all knew it would turn R-rated at some point.” — Michael Vanderhorst & Miriam Murphy

This is a book with a hell of an ending. It concludes the storylines started in 2, lines up 3 with a bang. It definitely encourages people to keep going. I should have guessed at least some of the endgame but didn't, it's set up well. The players were al there, the signpost are there to be seen but will only make sense when everything comes together. There are some moments of serious darkness including Michael attempting suicide (look it makes perfect sense in context). That is a spoiler, I will not hide it because I need it where it can be seen.

This is a book for two kinds of people. Those who like supernatural fiction and booklovers. Both the main characters Miriam and Michael are booklovers, Miriam is an almost stereotypical librarian intelligent, shy, clumsy and with a hoard of books. This book adds to what is already known of their characters. Michael is a dichotomy. He is deadly, old and always put together but he as a streak of loyalty to those who show loyalty to him and a strong set of principles. All wrapped up in a mess of humour and slightly confused feelings about his librarian. As the pov for the reader, we get an idea of his personality he's slightly sarcastic and highly amusing. But the way he describes himself is funny... "The deed of a four-century-old vampire with the face of a twenty-year-old. And the body of an underwear model."; "athletic build, six feet one, thick dark hair, and charmer of a smile."; "crossing my muscled arms over my very muscled chest. I was a university student who enjoyed exercise and boxing on the side for money before Clive saved my life from the flu. To this day, I still enjoy working out.". I always forget how young he presents as and I can't get over that. Michaels coding feels at least initially like it is sitting somewhere on in the aroace spectrum. But it's not that simple and it is even more complicated by the end. Michael's confusion over the bond he has with Miriam is still unexplained it's something I guess we will find out at some point. I see Miriam as a booklovers protagonist, as a librarian she has what so many consider a dream job (which is mine), she has a house full of rare books and first editions. One of the best exchanges in this book is “Which was your favorite?” “That’s like asking a musician to tell you his or her favorite note. A true booklover doesn’t have one.”. That is such a booklover response and I'm pretty sure I've made a similar answer at some point. She is stronger and more perceptive than she appears. Her love and trust in people is fantastic.

Lula is just a straight-up badass woman. Smart and more than able to hold her own against the men. Viviana is far behind Lula in the badass stakes but where Lula is physical and very obvious, Viviana is the brilliant assistant/ lawyer to Michael, loyal and efficient. "While I cannot argue with Viviana’s rage, I am shocked by it. I have never seen her claws and teeth. Of course, Aspen had forced Viviana to become a vampire and then used her child as leverage." She may have been blackmailed into her vampiric state but she is determined to make the most of it. I never want to see her truly in anger.

It must be said that while The Librarian's Vampire Assistant books stand alone or at least Mimi Jean claims they do and she does reiterates the characters, circumstances and some of the lore. These are all built on through the books as necessary. I like Mimi Jean's lore, especially this quote about sunlight. "We simply hate the hell out of it, similar to how cats hate baths, children hate bedtime, and men hate listening. Vampires. Hate. Sunshine.". Book 2 does build heavily on book 1 even if the circumstances are explained it definitely makes more sense if you know what is going on coming in.

I'm finding this with an annotated quote dump.

“Oh really? How about story time, huh? I see that glint in your brown eyes when you think you’re about to scare the children. Of course, you end up boring them to sleep, which is why the moms all love you. I think they’ve started a fan club.” — I love this line. Michael and kids is one of the cutest things

"I am a man. On the rare occasion I do not know something, I wing it. Hasn’t failed me yet." — No comment I just need it in this review

"“Didn’t your parents leave cash reserves?” She shakes her head no. “They spent their money on books. Every last dime.” She shakes her head no. “They spent their money on books. Every last dime.” My kind of people." — I mean yeah mine too. But damn Miriam got a bit screwed on getting the ability to care for her amazeballs collection and her library.

"Mr. Nice is a giant ball of crazy wrapped in an impenetrable blanket of crazy and dipped in dazzling crazy sprinkles. — I mean this is a fair point. He is A LOT.

"As a collector of literature myself, I have never seen anything like the items in her home. It gives me a solid book-boner merely thinking about it. First. Editions. Mmmm…” — Michael... Micahel I love it.

"She is right. She never will be ready. This beautiful, delicate little flower would wither in my world. She is meant to live a human life filled with books, story times, and love." — This is so soft and pretty and loving. I like how Michael talks about Miriam.

#the librarian's vampire assistant #mimi jean pamfiloff #book review #read 2021 #ktreviews #tw torture #i really do relate a bit to both michael and miriam it's the book thing and the librarian thing

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cateringisalie · 3 years

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Village: Resident Evil ramblings

(Some spoilers)

Ethan Winters is a goddamn idiot.

I say this without a shred of nostalgia; I first encountered him in RE7 and feel less than nostalgic towards the guy. RE7 without the benefit of the former entrants was a FPS horror and pretty good. Though you couldn’t escape that the characters you remembered were the Baker family and Mia; Ethan was a walking camera with a gun and some very simplistic emotional responses (fear, rescue wife, escape, swear occasionally). Having now run through the whole sequence of games, Ethan stands out starkly as the blandest and least interesting protagonist the series ever produced. He is possibly worse than Piers. Village updates Ethan’s personality. A bit. Well. Not really. Still got that fear, still got the swearing. Still got a mind to escape. But rather than rescue his wife, it’s about rescuing his daughter. I mean; Mia was gunned down and shot a further 9000 times by infuriating series stalwart Chris Redfield a little under ten minutes into the game proper. Not that Ethan really comes to terms with the trauma. By minute fifteen of the game the van you’ve been shoved in by Chris (who doesn’t shoot you for no reason he feels like explaining) has crashed and Ethan’s daughter is missing. Mourning Mia doesn’t actually enter into Ethan’s thought process. Goddamn idiot. Not to say that life with Mia was exactly picturesque; a few years after RE7 the couple are now somewhere nebulous in Eastern Europe in a very lovely house with a distressing number of empty wine bottles in the kitchen. A happy marriage this does not seem to be given Mia doesn’t want to get into the events of RE7 anymore, but Ethan does – but also failing to understand that the cover-up of the incident might be why no one is talking much about the whole mess in Louisiana and that bringing it up both distresses and angers Mia. But; the inciting incident has occurred and we’re propelled into our new scenario. Ethan; once again fish out of water, and its not like we have a choice. This is not to say Village does not repeat the same narrative trick of changing POV character, but there is both less of that, and the Half-Life-style regimented first person view jarringly completely goes out the window in the last quarter. It was less than consistent at points, but sparingly when occasionally and jarringly camera angles shifted to depict an introduction. But the game is also perfectly happy to render whole FPS sequences with gun visible and everything as it plays out a story beat, so... I don’t know? Fortunately Ethan’s environment and the setting are much more interesting. The unnamed Village is a satisfying knot of tangled streets, locked doors and environmental obstacles. Enemies don’t respawn per se, but additional enemies are added on subsequent visits to the effective hub of the game. There’s livestock to kill and give the Duke – the merchant playing a similar role to the pirate-like guy from RE4. Duke’s an entertaining character (some have objected to his physical and hugely overweight depiction); chatty and far more knowing than he will let on. He has a dangling thread come the end so perhaps will reappear elsewhere. He’ll sort the gun upgrades, supplies, let you sell treasure and point you towards your next destinations. Which is just as well as the human population of the village dies out somewhere between the first and second hour. No one left and any futile attempts to save people end in almost hilariously disastrous tragedies (no Ethan, don’t go higher in a building that is on fire). Leaving you with Lycans, zombies and gargoyles to fend off. Occasionally there’s some bigger foes on the level of the Executioner from RE5 but nothing on the level of the Tyrants. That kind of thing is left to the Village Lords. The villagers – before they all die – have a curiously unfamiliar religion and praise a figure known as Mother Miranda. She reportedly kept the village safe, but something has changed and now the Lycans run amok and without restraint. Not hard to pin that the reason for the change is Rose’s arrival (or could it be Ethan? COULD IT? No. Man is a goddamn idiot). The only door out of the village you can open is to Castle Dimitrescu and... It feels unnecessary to even get into what awaits. Given fandom have been so noisy about the tall lady and her vampiric daughters since the first trailer. She is so very, very tall. The castle is the first mode of Village. Possibly closest to RE7; Dimitrescu’s daughters are vulnerable based on certain environmental details (read the notes!) but otherwise should be fled from. Dimitrescu herself is invulnerable to everything bar one weapon and you need to work at getting that, so she needs to be fled from. Otherwise, explore the castle, find treasure. Sneak. Solve puzzles. It all looks suitably gorgeous and you get multiple chances to see if as you loop through the rooms and unlock more doors. The Village macro mechanics wrought as micro here. There’s a canny hint at a late reveal in the blunt utility of in-game mechanics to be had too. But – really should have been obvious given their prominence in the trailer – given Castle Dimitrescu is the first level, it means we must say goodbye to the very Tall Lady with knife hands and move onto someone else. In between levels, we get the first reinforcement of a tease from the trailer; the symbol of the Umbrella corporation. Its engraved into a location called the Ceremony Site. Its daubed on a cave wall as high as the Tall Lady. Its on the strange structure you insert the yellow flasks each Village Lord guards. And it means... almost nothing. RE's meta-plot has always been a mess and everyone’s favorite pharmaceutical company hasn’t been so active for a while, so the idea that we might be getting into some interesting weirdness with them again is oh so appealing. And yet – I was disappointed. Despite the repeated glimpses of the familiar white and red logo, the connection ultimately comes down to one letter I found at about 7/8s of the way through. Oswell Spencer – founder of the company – visited the Village years ago and saw the cave painting and adopted it as his logo. Oh. That’s... underwhelming. The same letter does at least prod at wiring Village’s latter reveals into the formation of the company along with tying in some parts of RE5 but if you thought this would be the company or the family dynasty origins or anything like that, you are in for a disappointment. It’s a tease and one that goes nowhere and does little. Oh we might now see how Spencer got into the whole inadvertent zombie making mess but its not a factor in the plot of this game nor does it really change the stakes of the previous. Perhaps I should be glad it’s so frivolous given other retcons in certain other franchises, but it feels so suspect to have drawn the attention and then shuffle the implications out the side-door. At least the other village lords have their own appeals. The second level is RE once again stealing PT (the PS4 demo to announce Silent Hills) given Konami outright don’t care about it anymore. Stripped of your guns and inventory, it’s a claustrophobic puzzle level requiring you to hide with mechanics familiar to both Evil Within and Alien Isolation. That same loop of rooms as you seek out puzzle solutions and hide from a staggeringly distressing malevolent entity. The third is combat light until the final confrontation; the fight staged in a flooded village – oh and Chris who still doesn’t shoot you but refuses to explain anything. And the fourth cheats. Heisenberg is thoroughly entertaining and grabs two levels for his own; an assault on a stronghold and his horrible cyborg factory outside of town. He has Magneto metal powers. Heisenberg is the camp villain to outdo the other camp villains. He’s having fun, he kinda likes Ethan and is oddly on his side. He found time to put together massive signposts to direct Ethan onto the last two levels (a good thing too given his lack of sense). But both levels are lacking. The Stronghold is a relentless firefight against hoards of mook enemies; the factory is overly long and maze-like. I am as tired as Ethan when he exclaims “What more?” And after Heisenberg is dealt with; the long, convoluted lurches to the ending. First person goes out the window. The game dabbles in characters toying with your understanding of what was going on but in a strangely limited way and completely ignoring the other implications of the reveal. Suddenly you mow down more and more enemies than ever before, bullets scarcely a concern. The final reveals of who/what/where/how come through. Not exactly explicable for what’s on-screen, but the effort’s been made to tie Village’s overt supernatural tendencies back into a world setup in RE. Its not magic and those are not truly werewolves. And the villain’s motivation is! Hugely disappointing. Connected as it is to the Umbrella letter, you might hope for something completely out there, but its unsatisfying and feels pretty sexist too. Or at least lacking in imagination to an astonishing degree and yet here we are. The game feels sloppiest as the final boss fight arrives flitting between characters without the shaky but workable character hand-offs RE7 deployed. Back in first person mode to talk to Duke one last time before engaging in.... a relatively simple boss fight. All the boss fights have been pretty easy – there’s nothing on the level of RE6’s sometimes horrendous contextual fights, or the annoying two-player RE5, nor the demanded accuracy of hitting specific weak-points as in RE7. And I don’t mind that. Unload all your weapons and keep your health up. And victory. There are fix-it fics already, but really, I don’t see the point in trying to fix the issue these people have. There’s an obvious setup for a game past this one with a strange throw-away reveal in the end-sequence (whither RE9, Revelations 3 or something else there are no clues as yet). There’s a spoiler for the sting given the end-credits lists a character who didn’t appear in the main game. The sting itself might wind up drawing on the sting from Revelations 2. Village is not RE at its best, but is at least more in the spirit of goofy, campy nonsense than 7. It at least is more at home with playing with the trappings of horror while not actually trying to be outright scary. As with 7, the villains are more interesting and more memorable than the good guys. And – as I found out after completing the game – we were robbed of Ada Wong dressed up like a Bloodborne character somewhere in the game. And that I think is the biggest shame of all this.

#village spoilers #resident evil village spoilers

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paperanddice · 4 years

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Tears of the Crocodile God Part 1

Tears of the Crocodile God is a 4th Edition adventure from Dungeon Magazine issue 209. It’s a paragon tier adventure for 15th-17th level characters, right about in the middle of the system, and is meant to be a relatively dangerous adventure, pushing a party to their limits with few risk-free ways to recover. It contains 10 combat encounters and 4 major puzzles, though two of those puzzles can be used to avoid an encounter and a few of the encounters could be considered optional, depending on how clever players are in avoiding them or choosing which to engage with. Theoretically, an incredibly fast and picky party could avoid nearly every encounter, though doing so would be nearly impossible without foreknowledge or exceptional luck, and would likely result in one of the poor endings for the adventure. These encounters are not trivial ones either, ranging from level 15-20. Normal 4th Edition encounter building isn’t designed for this many fights in a single day, and so the adventure has a mechanism for how to get around it that I’ll discuss as part of the conversion factor.

For the conversions, I’ll put them right around the mid point of the systems as it is in 4E. That means around 10th level for 5e, and 5th level for 13th Age. Both of these are fairly advanced and powerful heroes, and so the threat against them can be similarly advanced and fit within the original story and design. This does require some discussion on the length of the adventure and the number of encounters included within it. 5th Edition is technically meant to have 6-8 encounters per long rest, and so the adventure only slightly exceeds that expectation, though many of the games I’ve run rarely hit such numbers. 13th Age on the other hand is very specifically intended to do 4 regular encounters per full heal-up, so pushing it to more than double that number is far beyond the capacity of the characters.

One aspect I’d like to discuss at the front here as well is the way Icons could interact with the adventure in a 13th Age game. Nephalot and the Crocodile God are not Icons in and of themselves, and they don’t necessarily line up too much with the default Icons in the setting. The closest alignments as I see them are the Crusader (power at all costs, a ritual to sacrifice a few weaker lives to create one more powerful immortal creature could be useful), the High Druid (the Crocodile God itself represents a powerful animal spirit that could be useful to her) or maybe the Three (lean more into the reptile imagery, or give the Crocodile God some draconic features as it absorbs the energy). Standing against the actions of Nephalot and the Crocodile God could be the Archmage (perhaps the evil ritual Nephalot has been using is something an earlier Archmage came up with and the current one wishes to see its use stopped), the Emperor (the Crocodile Cult represents a potential threat to the stability of the Empire), the Great Gold Wyrm (evil must be vanquished), or the Priestess (the Crocodile is not a god, and even if it were it’s a threat to the people with its constant human sacrifices).

Crocodile Fonts

Now we must discuss the mechanism the adventure uses to extend the characters’ capacity. Drinking from the crocodile fonts scattered around the dungeon can refresh characters, healing them, giving back healing surges, and recharging one expended daily power. Each font has 2 free uses and 3 more gated behind a dangerous trap and a skill check. Converting the intention of these fonts into the other systems requires a decision on the best way to do so.

For 5th Edition, my method was to allow each font to grant a short rest (as short rests are far longer in this system than either of the others and some classes rely on them quite a bit), as well as replenishing two spent Hit Dice. They could recharge some spell slots or other features as well, but the mechanism for that was complicated and upon more review not entirely necessary. The resources characters have are intended to be able to last many encounters, so merely granting access to short rests and additional hit dice should theoretically give enough endurance to push through. In a spellcaster heavy party or one that’s less experienced or equipped with little magical gear, allowing a use of the font to recharge half the character’s level in expended spell slots (as the wizard’s arcane recovery feature), or one third for partial casters like paladins and rangers, or a choice of recharging half the maximum amount of another per day limited feature such as Lay on Hands or Sorcery Points. This is more powerful with once per long rest features, so take that into consideration.

13th Age has a few other options however. Full heal-ups aren’t exactly tied to taking a specific long rest the way they would be in D&D. Depending on the story, full heal-ups could be scattered days apart, or could happen in the middle of a dungeon as characters push forward. They are simply intended to come every 4 standard encounters, regardless of the in story time between those encounters. That gives us a choice of simply allowing a full heal-up once the party finishes roughly half the combats, allowing the party a full heal-up at one point during the adventure of their choice, allowing drinking from a font to grant a full heal-up but limiting the fonts so that the total uses available in the dungeon are 1/character, or letting each font allow a similar refreshment as the 4E version of the adventure and disallowing a proper full heal-up while within the dungeon.

My personal preference would probably be to the last of those, as part of the tone of the adventure is pushing through where recovery isn’t really easy. In this case, I’d probably keep the fonts to 5 maximum uses and allow drinking from one to have effectively the exact same effect as 4E. Return to full hp, regain 2 expended recoveries, and recharge one daily use power. Granting recharge rolls for all or even a single expended ability or spell could be good as well, especially for classes like the barbarian who might want more than a single rage use across 10 potential fights. As I have far less experience with 13th Age I can’t be 100% certain on the best option for this, so I’ll leave some of the specifics to your own discretion. If you feel that simply granting a full heal-up fits better with your group’s capabilities and the story, go for that, though I’d still tie it to the crocodile fonts in some capacity. Having them be a key resource and forcing the players to make tough decisions as to when to make use of them is a major point.

As traps, the crocodile fonts are mostly out of combat mechanics and force players to take a risk if they want to push their recovery beyond the freely granted uses.

5th Edition:

Crocodile Font Trap Mechanical and magic trap This trap uses a magical sensor to recognize when to slam the jaws of the statue shut, trying to catch a creature within them. Attempting to drink from the crocodile font after the first two uses forces the character to succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw or take 22 (4d10) piercing damage and become restrained. While restrained, the creature takes 11 (2d10) piercing damage at the end of each of its turns and its face is held underwater, forcing it to hold its breath if it can’t breath water. The target or a creature that can reach the font can take a standard action to attempt a DC 15 Strength check, freeing the creature on a success. The font can be jammed open by making a Dexterity check using thieves’ tools or a Strength (Athletics) check against DC 18, allowing the additional drinks without danger. The font can also be destroyed (AC 15; 30 hp; immune to cold, necrotic, poison, and psychic damage). Destroying the font releases a restrained creature, but also neutralizes the font’s magic.

13th Age: These kinds of traps may go a little against some of the themes of the system, but they aren’t a hidden surprise that screws a character over with no warning. They’re clearly signposted, and a character that triggers it has done so having accepted the risks.

Champion-tier crocodile font trap: DC 20 skill check using Dexterity or Strength to hold open so a creature can take a drink from a font after the first two uses without risking getting hit by it; +10 vs. PD (the creature drinking from the font) - 4d6 damage, 5 ongoing damage, and the target is stuck and hampered and the target must start making last gasp saves. Making a last gasp save ends all effects. On a fourth failure, the target’s head or upper body is severed by the font. Multiple use. Make the skill check as the character drinks, rather than ahead of time.

River Crocodiles

The smaller crocodiles that occupy all running water within the labyrinth are generally pretty calm, though characters that bother the crocodiles or get into a combat close to the water may have to contend with them acting up and a few attacking. Given their relative weakness in comparison to the characters, they’ll quickly flee if confronted.

5th Edition River Crocodile Medium beast, unaligned Armor Class 13 (natural armor) Hit Points 16 (3d8 + 3) Speed 20 ft., swim 40 ft. Str 13 (+1) Dex 14 (+1) Con 13 (+1) Int 2 (-4) Wis 10 (+0) Cha 5 (-3) Skills Stealth +4 Senses passive Perception 10 Languages - Challenge 1/4 (50 XP) Hold Breath. The crocodile can hold its breath for 15 minutes. Actions Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 5 (1d8+1) piercing damage and the target is grappled (escape DC 11). Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained, and the crocodile can't bite another target.

13th Age:

River Crocodile 3rd level mook [beast] Initiative: +5

Bite +8 vs. AC - 4 damage Natural even hit: The target is stuck and takes 2 ongoing damage (save ends both). The crocodile can’t use its bite on another creature until the target saves.

AC 19 PD 17 MD 13 HP 11 (mook) Mook: Kill one river crocodile for every 11 damage you deal to the mob.

Secret Doors

Finding the secret doors in the labyrinth should be moderately difficult. A DC 20 Wisdom (Perception) check to notice them works for 5th Edition, and a DC 25 Wisdom based skill check should work for 13th Age.

The other common features of the labyrinth, such as the biting insects, runewheels, and the dreams of the crocodile god aren’t as concerning to me. The biting insects are the only one with a real mechanical effect, and it’s not one that I particularly care to keep track of. The first 5th Edition conversion I made included it, and it was just something people regularly forgot and didn’t care too much for and the long rest penalties really shouldn’t come up. I consider taking a long rest within the Labyrinth an automatic fail state for the adventure, as the trial lasts far too long for those outside to wait and the labyrinth will be invaded with dozens of crocodile cult warriors and priests if the time extends that long. Characters are forced to either flee or rush through as fast as possible if they try to take a long rest.

Next update I’ll start exploring the specific encounter and puzzle areas of the dungeon, as well as discuss the four sacrifices that the party may encounter and what could be done with them.

#D&D #DnD #Dungeons and Dragons #5th Edition #13th Age #Adventure #Tears of the Crocodile God #my homebrew #long post

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radramblog · 3 years

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Cube Philosophy- Multicolour

For those unaware, cube is a way of playing Magic where you essentially build your own draft environment. Rather than drafting sealed booster packs, you make a set of cards- the Cube, as it were- and draft that, letting you sculpt a particular and typically more powerful draft environment that can be replayed over and over. I’d argue cube is the most personalized and enjoyable part of magic, as it lets you both put your game designer hat on for a bit and lets you express your own ideas for fun magic and drag other people into playing cards you personally love.

When it comes to designing a cube, a question that always comes up is how many multicoloured cards do I run? It can be attractive to put a huge number in- multicoloured cards are often more powerful, they’re often lots of fun, with splashy or unique effects. The problem is that you end up with diminishing returns (not the card, the concept)- more multicoloured cards will attract someone into a set of colours, sure, but it comes with the downside of an increased number of unplayable cards sitting in those sets of colours that no-one is playing. As well, people can feel like their draft is a little on rails if the best option every time is the multi in their section. A lesson I learned from my first cube is that you need to support every card in the cube- I had a cycle of 3-colour cards in it, which almost never got played because the manabase options in the cube didn’t support 3 colour decks well enough.

The way I prefer to handle multicolour cards in cube actually looks a lot like how multicoloured uncommons are handled in most standard draft sets- they effectively serve two purposes, signposts and reasons to be in the pair. There is a third type of card I have deliberately excluded from this section- efficient staples like Terminate are at a minimum as while they are a reward for playing their particular colours they are not enough value in the slot, especially as they aren’t often significantly better than another random spell in monocolour- Terminate isn’t a high pick when its next to Cast Down and Dismember. There are a few cards like this in my cube, but they’re mostly there because I didn’t know what else to throw in, and they’re on my mental chopping block if I get something better going.

Signposts therefore are indicators of what the colour pair is trying to do. Since a lot of my archetypes are a bit unusual, these can help to point newer players into the directions I intended. Staple cube archetypes- red aggro, green ramp, blue control etc- are of course still options, but my multicoloured section indicates a specific direction that is supported in both colours that may not be initially obvious. As an example, my Azorius section has both Pride of the Clouds and Skycat Sovereign- strong indicators that those colours want you to play Flying creatures. It’s important to me that each of these cards be basically fine on their own- sometimes building the X deck doesn’t work out, and you don’t want all of your X cards to be useless if they do, because that’s not a good or fun draft experience. Those two King Mufasas are fine since even if you aren’t playing a skies deck they are still solid evasive threats that shit tokens out if you have nothing better to do, but I wouldn’t play something like Empyrean Eagle, since without other Fliers that card doesn’t do anything. Even monocoloured flying payoffs such as Gravitational Shift can have other uses- Shift in particular can be brutal out of the sideboard against an aggressive deck without many fliers in it.

The other purpose multicoloured cards can serve is reasons to be in the pair, also known as payoffs. These are your powerful cards that are both rewards for drafting well as well as incentives to switch colours if one is running around late. This is your Fractured Identity, your Vraska, Relic Seeker, or your Archon of Valour’s Reach- splashable bombs that say “congratulations, you get to play this now”. However, this also includes more flexible cards than you would normally have access to in monocolour- cards like Knight of Autumn or Izzet Charm, that reward you in a different way. They might be glorified efficient staples but they have the advantage of doing more than one thing for you.

The other thing I have in my multi section is a loose Hybrid section. Hybrid cards are kind of the opposite of multicolour, in that they are actually less restrictive, but for convenience they go in the same section on the list. My idea for these is that they are more generically useful since they are more generically playable in more generic decks, but I’m not sure how well I hit that. It might take a while to clean this up, however, especially considering the only decent Orzhov one is a certain overpowered overpriced kitty (Lingering Souls will do for now).

I’ll go ahead and give a brief summary of my 2-colour archetypes before I go, but I think it is important to know that even if you are in these colours, you don’t have to do exactly that deck! Blue-White might support Skies, sure, but there are still counterspells and wraths aplenty for the ol’ Azorius no fun allowed deck.

Azorius (WU): Fliers, with a slight Blink subtheme. Damaging face and holding up protection is its own reward.

Dimir (UB): Evasion/Tempo with a bunch of Ninjas. Combat damage triggers are their own reward.

Rakdos (BR): Aggressive Aristocrats. Needs some more support. Pinging your opponent to death is its own reward.

Gruul (RG): Slower Midrange with a Wildfires subtheme. Blowing up everybody’s lands and creatures while still being able to play the game afterwards is its own reward.

Selesnya (GW): Faster Midrange with a Humans subtheme. Advent of the Wurm used to be my favourite card and therefore is its own reward.

Orzhov (WB): Doesn’t really have a specific theme outside of hand hate and being really grindy. Stripping your opponent’s hand of all its answers is its own reward.

Golgari (BG): Another less specific one but has graveyard stuff going on. Frankly, getting to play BG midrange is its own reward.

Simic (GU): Flash matters/Draw-Go. Being able to play mostly at instant speed is its own reward.

Izzet (UR): It’s spellslinger, of course it is. Being paid off to play your colours’ best cards is its own reward.

Boros (RW): Tokens/Go-wide. Being able to have a Boros deck with a lategame, or one that isn’t especially aggressive to begin with, is its own reward.

My personal cube list can be found here.

#ramble #mtg #cube

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years

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Pluralistic: 12 Mar 2020 (No health care for part-time TSA screeners, Akil Augustine on Radicalized, Wendell Potter rebuts Joe Biden, best Covid-19 explainer, Boeing's self-inflicted wounds, EU Right to Repair, virtual classrooms)

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Pluralistic: 12 Mar 2020

TSA boss doubles down on taking away health care from part-time screeners: They're touching your junk with diseased hands.

Akil Augustine on Radicalized: My book's Canada Reads champion lays out the case for Radicalized.

A former top Cigna exec rebuts Joe Biden's healthcare FUD: Wendell Potter is the prodigal corporate villain.

Ars Technica's Covid-19 explainer is the best resource on the pandemic: Beth Mole has outdone herself.

Boeing is even worse at financial engineering than they are at aircraft engineering: The $43B they incinerated through stock buybacks would sure come in handy about now.

Senate Republicans kill emergency sick leave during pandemic: Sick leave is cheaper than pandemics, but pandemics generate cost-plus contracts for the donor class.

The EU's new Right to Repair rules finally come for electronics: Snoods cocked at Apple and other US Big Tech monopolists.

How to run a virtual classroom: Masterclass from the 14-year-old Stanford Online High School.

This day in history: 2010, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

TSA boss doubles down on taking away health care from part-time screeners (permalink)

TSA agents handles the personal belongings and touch the bodies of millions of fliers. Part time agents don't get health-insurance. If they think they might have Covid-19, they might not be able to afford to seek care.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/11/politics/tsa-health-care-part-time/index.html

TSA chief David Pekoske told Congress that the Trump administration's decision to take away health-care from part time TSA employees was a good one: "I have no intention of restoring health care coverage for part-time workers. I think that was a good decision."

About 100 TSA agents have been sent home after it was believed they came into contact with Covid-19. The TSA will not try to track down passengers who also might have come into contact with sick people.

Akil Augustine on Radicalized (permalink)

My book Radicalized is a finalist for the Canada Reads national book prize. Each of the five finalists is defended by a Canadian celeb: my champion is the amazing and articulate Akil Augustine.

Akil just appeared on the @CBC's Canada Reads podcast to give us a preview of his defense, which he will field during several nights of nationally televised debates next week.

http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1708600899815/

He did an OUTSTANDING job! Here's the MP3:

https://cbc.mc.tritondigital.com/CBC_CNDAREADS_P/media/cndareads-3NLwEPaV-20200309.mp3

A former top Cigna exec rebuts Joe Biden's healthcare FUD (permalink)

In a recent and important essay, Maria Farrell wrote about the road-to-Damascus conversions that ex-techies are having in which they recant the damaging product design work they did and begin to campaign against their former employers.

https://conversationalist.org/2020/03/05/the-prodigal-techbro/

Farrell noted that these techies had missed an important step in their transformation from venal attention mercenaries to noble attention freedom-fighters: they had yet to hit bottom, to truly repent their earlier sins.

They skipped like stones over the waters of privilege, and never sank, unlike so many of their victims.

Contrast those journeys with that of Wendell Potter, the former Cigna exec turned whistleblower, who has devoted decades of his life to revealing dirty tricks and lies. Potter campaigns tirelessly – and shrewdly – for Medicare for All, and is always at pains to point out that the anti-M4A talking points his adversaries parrots were all developed by him, when he was on the wrong side of history.

Take this thread, rebutting Joe Biden's FUD about M4A, delivered in the midst of a pandemic that has been worsened by the 77 million un- and underinsured people who can't get care or screening and disproportionately work in food-service and cleaning.

https://twitter.com/wendellpotter/status/1237438497218105344

As Potter points out, Biden's assertion that M4A costs $35T is just a lie. Once you factor in the savings of not paying for private healthcare, M4A SAVES at least $450B/year.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)33019-3/fulltext

Biden's plan to cap premiums on a public option at 8.5% of your income is more than double what M4A would cost you. The corporate plans Biden lionizes shackle good workers to bad employers, and put millions at risk of having their care arbitrarily withdrawn or limited. And, of course, private care doesn't cover much. Surprise bills, deductibles, co-pays, out-of-pockets… Our plan – a blue-chip employer's top-of-the-line Cigna plan – costs us $24K/year.

We're rationing our family's health care because in addition to the $20K/year we're paying out of pocket, Cigna refused to cover a pain procedure that my doc – the most-cited pain doc working in California, who runs a major university pain clinic – says I would benefit from. That procedure might let me get a good night's sleep for the first time in 15 years and allow me to live a more normal, pain-free life. But because Cigna won't cover it, it would cost $55K, which we do not have. So I'm foregoing it.

Ars Technica's Covid-19 explainer is the best resource on the pandemic (permalink)

I've been reading Beth Mole's outstanding science journalism for many years and I've always admired it, but even by the high standards of a Beth Mole explainer, this soup-to-nuts Covid-19 explainer is just spectacularly good work.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/dont-panic-the-comprehensive-ars-technica-guide-to-the-coronavirus/

Mole's calm and comprehensive coverage relies on the most reliable sources and turns the results of our best evidence-based studies into a coherent narrative, from the disease's origins to its spread to its symptoms to its resolution.

Just this symptom-by-symptom breakdown was enormously informative and filled in a huge gap that I had previously mentally signposted as "flu-like".

According to data from nearly 56,000 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 patients in China, the rundown of common symptoms went as follows:

88 percent had a fever

68 percent had a dry cough

38 percent had fatigue

33 percent coughed up phlegm

19 percent had shortness of breath

15 percent had joint or muscle pain

14 percent had a sore throat

14 percent headache

11 percent had chills

5 percent had nausea or vomiting

5 percent had nasal congestion

4 percent had diarrhea

Less than one percent coughed up blood or blood-stained mucus

Less than one percent had watery eyes

The sections on transmission, self-protection, and care during a social distancing lockdown or quarantine are likewise levelheaded, clear and informative.

This is a tab you should just keep open in your browser, IOW. Mole's updating frequently, too.

Boeing is even worse at financial engineering than they are at aircraft engineering (permalink)

Boeing is experiencing a potentially terminal slump. Between losses due to its 737 Max scandal (a self-inflicted injury), and the dropoff in travel during the pandemic, it has had to draw down its entire line of credit and institute a hiring freeze.

https://wolfstreet.com/2020/03/11/boeing-crashes-as-43-billion-in-past-share-buybacks-turn-into-existential-threat

Obviously, Boeing can't be blamed for the pandemic.

But you know what is absolutely the company's fault? Its financial engineering.

Since 2013, Boeing squandered $43 billion on stock buybacks, whose sole purpose was to goose its share-price.

As Wolf Richter writes, Boeing, this "master of financial engineering – instead of aircraft engineering – blew, wasted, and incinerated $43.4 billion on buying back its own shares."

The company just had to borrow $13.825B. Its shares are down 46% since March 2019.

The entire company – a jewel of American industry – might not survive, because it focused on short-term enrichment of shareholders, rather than safe aircraft or financial prudence.

Reality has a well-known anti-capitalist bias, part MMMLVII.

Senate Republicans kill emergency sick leave during pandemic (permalink)

Senate Republicans have killed emergency sick leave legislation, a move that will force millions of low-waged cleaning and food-service workers to choose between homelessness and potentially spreading Covid-19.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/coronavirus-paid-sick-leave-us-republicans-block-senate-bill-new-york-washington-a9395821.htm

The GOP says that paid sick leave will endanger the fragile bottom lines of employers and also that the feds have no money to pay for such a thing – despite finding it easy to blow $2.3 trillion on tax-cuts for the super-rich.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/28/tax-cuts-trump-gop-analysis-430781

They also found $20 BILLION in the senate's sofa cushions to give to the Pentagon, an agency whose auditor found more than a trillion dollars in off-the-books transactions in its financial records.

https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/12/19/pentagon-finally-gets-its-2020-budget-from-congress/

Refusing to help poor Americans stay fed and sheltered isn't just cruel, it's lethally reckless, and it demonstrates the moral hazard of oligarchic capitalism. Subsidizing sick-leave would merely afford survival to millions of Americans, after all.

Whereas the crisis that this will produce – a pandemic that is made worse and longer – will cost billions more, but that money will go to the donor-class, the Beltway Bandits whose cost-plus, no-bid contracts will transfer even more money from the poor to the wealthy.

It's disaster capitalism at its worst. The Senate GOP is dooming you and everyone you love to the risk of disease and death because preventing that risk would help millions of poor people, whereas creating the risk helps a handful of ultrarich people.

The EU's new Right to Repair rules finally come for electronics (permalink)

The EU Commission's latest "Circular Economy Action Plan" has enormous significance for Right to Repair and electronics.

https://ec.europa.eu/environment/circular-economy/pdf/new_circular_economy_action_plan.pdf

In addition to a host of eminently sensible, long overdue measures (bans on single use items and the destruction of unsold goods), there's a renewed emphasis on electronics, through the "Circular Electronics Initiative".

https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/11/european-lawmakers-propose-a-right-to-repair-for-mobiles-and-laptops/

The initiative mandates that components be reusable, repairable, and upgradable, and requires long-term software support to keep IoT devices useful for longer. These mandates – also long overdue – show that the EU is finally willing to ignore the priorities of Apple and other US Big Tech companies in favour of Europeans' rights to the long-term enjoyment of their property and the right not to drown in e-waste).

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/08/ghost-flights/#eurighttorepair

How to run a virtual classroom (permalink)

For 14 years, Stanford Online High School has been running fully virtual classrooms, with continuous, ongoing improvements in their tech and methods. They've just published a new guide to "the essential steps for preparing to teach online in a short period of time." They're also conducting a series of webinars on the subject.

https://ohs.stanford.edu/how

(I just realized that I've got a decade-old mail rule that autodeletes anything containing the word "webinar" that I probably need to turn off now that the term is being used by people other than hustling spammy grifters)

This day in history (permalink)

#10yrsago Leaked UK record industry memo sets out plans for breaking copyright https://craphound.com/BPDigitalEconomyBillweeklyminutes.pdf

#5yrsago Portland cops charge homeless woman with theft for charging her phone https://news.streetroots.org/2015/03/06/homeless-phone-charging-thief-wanted-security

#5yrsago How Harper's "anti-terror" bill ends privacy in Canada http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2015/03/why-the-anti-terrorism-bill-is-really-an-anti-privacy-bill-bill-c-51s-evisceration-of-government-privacy/

#5yrsago RIP, Terry Pratchett https://web.archive.org/web/20150312202353/http://www.pjsmprints.com/

#1yrago Security researcher reveals grotesque vulnerabilities in "Yelp-for-MAGA" app and its snowflake owner calls in the FBI

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Museums and the Web: March 31-April 4 2020, Los Angeles. https://mw20.museweb.net/

Currently writing: I'm rewriting a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm also working on "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel afterwards.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330_-_A_Lever_Without_a_Fulcrum_Is_Just_a_Stick.mp3

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

#pluralistic

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imperfekti · 5 years

Text

Tenipuri Party: Fuji Shuusuke profile translation

TN:

In the absence of an official English version, this translation is intended to help those who can’t read the material in the original language. Please support Tenipuri by getting your own copy of this book - it is worth it! There are various ways of purchasing it even for those not living in or visiting Japan.

The pictures I have included in this post do not show full pages.

On the translation: I’m aiming for a more direct, “Japanese-sounding” translation to share the mood of the content more as it is. This will probably cause some sentences to appear weird in English.

On Fuji’s style of speech: he uses a lot of little additions that soften the tone, and most of them are pretty hard to include in English. In general his style of speech is a balance of casual but polite.

I’m still working on Japanese, so there might be mistakes. Please let me know if you spot any translation errors so I can fix them here!

Fuji Shuusuke

U-17 Japan representative player, middle schooler Seishun Gakuen Middle-school player

Towards the distant sky, reflected in the mind’s eye -- A noble youth, soaring like a refreshing breeze

Message

“This kind of wonderful placement… it’s rare to get to taste it. Everyone, thank you so much. I’ll have to meet those expectations. (*1) Following the guidepost that I have made myself… I swear I’ll advance to greater heights. I’ll definitely show a new scenery to you too.”

Extra prize: a surprise box decorated with memorable photos “There are even balloons attached to it. An exciting, heart-warming gift. The music box’s tune was to my liking, too.”

Profile

[DATA] Middle-school 3rd year / February 29 (Pisces) / Blood type B / 167 cm / 53 kg / Right-handed

Special techniques: Tsubame gaeshi, Higuma otoshi, Hakugei, Kagerou tsutsumi, Houou gaeshi, Kirin otoshi, Hakuryuu, Hecatoncheires no monban, Hoshi hanabi, Closed eye (*2), Aoi fubuki, Hikari kaze

Play style: Counter puncher

Family: Father, mother, older sister, younger brother

Father’s occupation: company employee (foreign company)

Hobbies: Collecting cacti, photography

Favourite saying: What is important is invisible to the eye

Favourite color: Beige

Favourite foods: All spicy foods, 100% apple juice

Favourite book: Travel journals, travel photo books

Favourite music: Celtic music

Preferred type of person: A person who smells like flowers

Preferred date spot: An observatory where you can see stars clearly

Most wanted thing right now: Stimulus (*3)

Weakness: Sour things

Elementary school: Seishun Dai Daisan Elementary School

Committee: Graduation album committee

Strong subjects: Classics

Weak subjects: Science

Often-visited place in school: Photography room

Uses allowance on: Taking care of cacti

Skills beyond tennis: Winter sports, recognising constellations

His routines during tournaments: Drinking coffee from all over the world, contacting his brother

Favourite anniversary: Birthday of the person he likes

Preferred travel destination: Salar de Uyuni on a night with shooting stars

Present for a special person: A ring made of flowers

Scenes

For Fuji-senshu, who had specialised in counter tennis, a certain incident at the U-17 camp became an impetus for an awakening. (*4) Making the Critical wind ‘Aoi fubuki’ his new weapon, he changed his style greatly into offensive tennis.

(Quotes on pictures:) “Tensai Fuji Shuusuke.” “Now, shall we go one more time…” “Was there this kind of an tensai sleeping in Seigaku?” “This team reaching the nationals championship, that’s my wish!” “Game and set… won by Fuji Shuusuke…” “Critical wind ‘Aoi fubuki’” “One of the Critical winds, ‘Hikari kaze’” “I’ve already stopped playing just defensive tennis.”

Sparked by a certain oath, I began to aim for my own guidepost

Currently, both among fans and people involved, Fuji-senshu’s change to offensive tennis has become a topic of discussion. Was there some impetus for this?

An impetus? Well… I exchanged private oaths with a certain person - is all I think I’ll say here. Fufu.

An oath...? Please give us at least a hint!

Well, just a little, then… Before, I used to draw out the opponent’s strongest skills, felt the thrill of defeating them with a counter, and enjoyed myself like that. But in the end, that depended on the opponent. The guideposts you need to traverse on mountains, you have to find by yourself - that is what I understood.

About Fuji-senshu’s new technique, “Hikari kaze”. How are you able to react like that?

By ascertaining the opponent’s muscle movements and breathing, the moment that information is intracerebrally linked as an image, it’s as if time stops and all noises and the scenery of your surroundings disappear - only the trajectory of the shot the opponent has hit emerges as an signpost of light. So, from now on too, I will follow the guidepost I’ve found by myself, and am aiming to go beyond my limits.

Then, to finish, your objective from here on out is… eh, you already talked about that just now, didn't you?

Yes. I determined the next question before it was asked, and responded to it.

As expected of the prodigy Fuji. You got me there.

Message for Fuji Shuusuke

I thought you seem like you’d be popular with the girls. Alles gute! (Bismarck)

Congratulatiooons! By the way, show me your homework for the report next week ☆ (Kikumaru)

I made a lot of wasabi sushi as congratulations, so please eat them. (Kawamura)

I need to update my data. Congratulations. (Inui)

As expected, Fuji. Next time, let’s play until we are satisfied. (Tezuka)

It’s not something anyone can do. My respects. (Kaidou)

Congratulations Fuji-senpai! I won’t lose next time! (Momoshiro)

Not bad. But, please be prepared that I’ll snatch that from you one of these days. (Echizen)

Hooray! Should we take a memorial photo with everyone! (Ooishi)

I’m amazed. I feel like I’ve caught a glimpse of your hidden inner strength. (Duke)

Congratulations, you are the pride of Japan. (Noa)

Party talk

Q: What was your family’s reaction to the placement this time? A: I think my sister said ‘as expected of my little brother’. Yuuta… He was here, so I’ll ask right now. Hey, Yuuta --!

Q: Th-that bright red food…? A: I wanted to taste even more wonderful, stimulating foods. What about you?

Q: The singing performance just now was lovely! A: Being the first to go on the stage… it was thrilling and fun. (*5)

Q: Who have you talked with, and what was the topic? A: Member of staff, Oliver-san taught me about places near the tournament venue where you can see the starry sky well.

Q: During the sideshow, you took a picture of the audience, didn’t you. A: Because it’s rare to see Tezuka making that kind of an expression.

Q: Is there anything that has piqued your interest in the venue? A: That flower stand with cacti, I wonder which country it’s from… Tube?

History

Age 0 February 29 Birth

Age 4 After napping with Yuuta, is frightened by Yuuta who saw a bad dream and tears up

Age 8 Goes out sea bathing with Yuuta and Saeki

Age 9 Gets a camera from grandfather, starts taking pictures Is deeply impressed by the form of a swallow (tsubame) found in an aquarium

Age 12 March Graduates from Seishun Dai Daisan Elementary School

April Enters Seishun Gakuen Middle School Division Plays against Tezuka, is not satisfied

August Goes to Kawamura's house for the first time, wasabi sushi is made for him

December After Yuuta ran away from home, searches for him all through the night in the snow

Age 13 March The extremely spicy food he makes at gratitude-party is unpopular

April Proceeds to second year in middle school

June During the athletic festival cavalry battle, has a showdown against Tezuka (unsettled)

July Is scouted at his older sister's commemorative publication autograph signing party

February Succeeds(?) in a triple spin jump at the neighbourhood skating rink

Age 14 April Proceeds to third year in middle school Kikumaru, now in the same class, comes over to play for one consecutive week

May Start of the Tokyo Prefectural District Preliminaries Plays against Gyokurin in the quarterfinals, wins against Nakano in S1 Advances to the Semi-Finals November Plays against Mizunofuchi in the semifinals, wins against Egawa, Yamanishi pair in D2 Plays against Fudomine in the finals, defeated by Ishida-Sakurai pair in D2 by forfeit Wins the Tokyo Prefectural District Preliminaries championship, has a celebration at "Kawamura Sushi"

June Start of the Tokyo Prefectural Tournament Plays against Kamata in the Third Round, wins against Ishizaki in S3 Plays against Akiyama Third in the Fourth Round, wins against Morishima-Nishikawa pair in D2 Plays against St. Rudolph in the quarterfinals, wins against Mizuki in S2 Plays games with Yuuta who came to stay at home, loses Plays against Yamabuki in the Finals, defeated by Nitobe-Kita pair in D2 Wins the Tokyo Prefectural Tournament championship

July Start of the Kantou Tournament Plays against Hyoutei in the first round, wins against Akutagawa in S2 Bowling tournament with the Regulars Plays against Rokkaku in the semifinals, wins against Saeki-Itsuki pair in D1

July 27 Plays against Rikkai in the finals, wins against Kirihara in S2 Wins the Kantou Tournament championship Beach volleyball tournament during the joint training camp with Rokkaku

August 11 During a practice match with Tachibana, his Triple Counters are broken

August 17 Start of the National Tournament Plays against Higa in the second round, wins against Hirakoba-Chinen pair in D2

August 19 Plays against Shitenhouji in the semifinals, defeated by Shiraishi in S3 Participates in the yakiniku battle, drinks Aozu and drops out

August 23 Plays against Rikkai in the finals, wins against Niou in S2 Wins the National Tournament championship Is inspired when visiting a hollyhock gallery with Kawamura

October Is invited to an amusement park by a student whom he saved from groping, but declines

November Participates in the U-17 training camp Wins against Yuuta in the “friendly fire” matches The restaurant’s tabasco runs out, a restriction for use is put in place Plays against Tezuka who is leaving Japan, swears three things

December On the overseas training camp right before the U-17 world cup, faints from eating Akuto meshi at the pick-up tournament In Australia, enjoys coffees from all countries with Jackal U-17 pre-world cup begins Plays against Germany in the first match, wins against Bismarck-Siegfried pair U-17 world cup begins Plays against Australia on the second round of the qualifying league, wins against Mac-Milky pair in D1 Japan is qualified to play in the championship tournament

What I most want to photograph now is Australia’s starry night sky

During the camp and on off days, what do you do for a change of pace?

I guess the main one would be taking pictures. Especially on an overseas trip like this, taking a lot of pictures of sights I don’t usually see arouses my creativity.

Since coming to Australia, what kind of pictures have you taken?

When you go a bit outwards, there’s a desert, so I’ve taken a lot of pictures of cacti. But though you may say “cacti” in one word, there are tall ones, types that have a form that is round like a tennis ball, and so on - there are many different kinds. Besides that, I took pictures of koalas. Tanegashima-san recommended a good place to me… I could even hold them in my arms, so I had fun. What I’m thinking I most want to photograph next is the starry sky. Since it’s the Southern hemisphere, the scenery of the night sky totally differs from the sky in Japan. The Southern Cross, or capturing the Milky Way - I’d really like to take such pictures.

Do you show the pictures you take to someone?

I often send them to family and friends. I sent a lot of pictures of the koalas to my brother Yuuta, fufufu. It seems my sister likes cacti of weird shapes.

I think the fans also really want to see Fuji-san’s pictures.

I brought many with me today, so sure. I’d be happy if people would like them.

Photo

In Australia When I find the time within the U-17 tournament, I take pictures little by little. Don’t you think this koala looks like Yuuta?

Cacti We often go for walks together. Even if it’s a familiar scenery, it becomes fun when cacti are around.

Family trip A camera is a magical tool that can cut out a scene that will not happen again. I can’t miss doing that when I’m traveling.

Fashion

Fuji really likes knits! Are you wearing the hat with ears that I gave you? (Kikumaru)

I’m not that interested, but protection against cold is important. It’s good to warm your body properly with a stole. (Ochi)

“I guess I wear a lot of clothes in white or beige. Especially in winter, I choose clothes that don’t clash with the snowy scenery.”

“After all, the feel when wearing something is important. Clothes with natural, smooth feeling materials are to my liking.”

Before, he used to wear things like shorts a lot, but it seems that’s not the case anymore. (Saeki)

Room

I’m aiming for a room with a Nordic taste Since around autumn, when I’ve had the time I’ve been changing the design little by little. I found an antique lamp, and I think I want to establish unity by using Nordic furniture. Next to my cacti, plants I got from Yukimura and Shiraishi have joined the group.

TN:

*1 Or “respond to those feelings.”

*2 Furigana says “closed eye”, but the kanji is actually for “kokoro no hitomi”, mind’s eye.

*3 "Shigeki": stimulus, impetus, incentive, encouragement, motivation, provocation, excitement, thrill.

*4 Literally enlightenment, spiritual awakening, opening one’s eyes to the truth.

*5 It’s not clear whether he is talking about himself, and I haven’t read the overall story yet, so this is my assumption.

#my translation #fuji shuusuke #prince of tennis #new prince of tennis #tenipuri party #tezuka kunimitsu #fuji yuuta #saeki kojirou #otp #tezufuji

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amour-salvatore · 5 years

Text

faking it

Part 4

Harry not talking to you feels wrong, it’s like something is missing, he didn’t try to contact you nor did you and as for Trent you haven't seen him since you kissed and that was 2 weeks ago.

Today you're supposed to meet up and grab some coffee so it would look like you’re a cute couple conquering the normal course of life. You went to the café as agreed but the paparazzis were so intrustive, that you both couldn’t stand being there and escaped them.

You ran for what felt like an hour to a park nearby. Trent waits for you to catch up to him, he’s a freaking footballer, you can’t run that fast and the way Trent looks in your direction, grinning, you snap your head away knowing that if you continued to stare you would get lost in his brown eyes.

”You owe me, something.” he smiles when you reach up to him, both sitting down on a bench.

”I really do, but maybe next time we could find a closer spot to hide.” you look at him, trying to catch your breath.

It’s a very small bench so Trents sitting very close to you, legs spread his knees touching yours, resting his arm on the bench behind your shoulder. You feel your heart pounding hard in your chest.

But Trent can't keep his eyes off you either, constantly glancing your way, while your sitting, enjoying the silence and not thinking of Harry.

But that doesn't last for too long, after 10 minutes you spot the paparazzi coming up from a distance, quickly you take Trent's hand and pull him behind a big tree.

”What?” he asks a small smirk playing on his lips, coming closer to you. You roll your eyes, pushing him away, not wanting to know what he thought was coming.

”Calm down, T.” you shake your head, chuckling. “The paparazzi are looking for us.” Your back is pressed against the tree and Trent is hovering over you.

”Shit.” His eyes follow them “They're coming closer.” he massages his neck frustrated.

He looks between you and the paparazzi, biting his lip, coming closer.

”Y/N...” he whispers. ”Fuck it.”

Your breath hitches.

Before you can react he presses his lips against yours, you want to pull away but you can't seem to. His hand drifts to your waist pulling your body closer, until there is no space between you. Your lips part and your breaths mingle. Needing to catch air you pull away, looking at Trent, breathing heavy.

”You really take my breath away, Y/N.” he licks his lips gazing down at you.

The paparazzi left probably thinking you’re just some young teenagers making out.

His lips are puffy mixed with a red teint from your lipstick, making him look incredibly hot. You feel your knees go weak when leans in, your foreheads touching.

”I think they're coming again.” he grins before drawing back into your lips.

After 20 minutes of a hardcore make-out session outdoors, Trent suggested you should go to his place, ordering dinner, not caring about doing any PDA.

You're both eating Chinese take out, sitting on his couch, when you feel Trent's eyes on you.

”What?” you ask, swallowing your noodles.

He sits back on the couch both hands restings behind his neck making his bicep look even bigger than it is already.

“Who´s the other guy?” Trent asks observing you, waiting for your reaction.

You're caught off guard. ”There is no other guy” not anymore you wanted to add.

“Whatever, he´s an idiot for letting a girl like you slip off his fingers.” he continues to eat his noodles. If he only knew ,that he knows him, not to mention, they play for England together.

“He was never mine.�� you murmur, blowing out a breath. Sick of always hiding your emotions. “It´s okay though, I did some things that weren´t okay too, you know?”

He comes closer.

“I wouldn´t treat you like that.” he puts a finger under your chin making you look at him. “We would talk everything through, I wouldn´t give up without a fight.”

You look away, not able to hold his gaze. You don´t know what to tell him.

“I know we didn´t feel that big spark between us at our first date, but getting to know you now.” He pauses, “Ever since I met you nobody else was worth thinking about.”

You close your eyes, taking his hand and planting a kiss on the palm of his hand. ”Our first date was awful, I thought you were the biggest dick.” you chuckle interlocking your fingers.

”Well, the part about biggest d...” he nudges your elbow.

”Shut up Trent, don’t even continue.“ you break him off laughing.

He pulls you on his lap so your straddling him. “I have a match on Saturday, I would love to see you in the crowd.” He smiles sweetly, tucking your hair behind your ear.

And at that moment Trent is all you wanted. “I´d love to come.”

Saturday

You arrive at the stadium Trent told you to sit with his family which you agreed to, you're just extremely nervous, they probably know about the whole fake dating stuff. However, he asked you to come down to the player's area first, so he could see you before the game.

Passing through the entrance, you're busy on your phone, when you pause to look for directions on the signposts.

You freeze and stare with wide eyes, when you come face to face with, hundreds of people in Tottenham jerseys.

#dun duuun #what she doing now Harrys not going to be pleased #trent alexander arnold #Harry winks #harry winks fluff #harry winks blurb #harry winks imagine #trent imagine #trent fluff #football imagine #fanfiction #jesse lingard #dele alli #jadon sancho blurb #jadon sancho

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eclectia · 5 years

Text

Dead Space: Horror Through Design

Dead Space is a game that needs little introduction. A claustrophobic sci-fi horror set in space that manages to rise above its action horror roots to become something truly chilling at times. One of the main ways in which it achieves this is through the visual and environmental design of its levels; or rather level, because the game takes place all in one contained space – the USG Ishimura.

In this post we're going to be looking at how the game creates tension, how this permeates the entire game and how this game-feel effects the player. The main sources of horror in Dead Space is of course the Necromorphs, the flagship enemy of the franchise which can only be killed by what the designers termed “tactical dismemberment”; but these monsters quickly become a stale exercise in jump scares and enemy gauntlets. Well designed body horror will only get your horror design so far if you're only willing to engage with players through predictable gameplay beats and genre convention.

In my opinion the more tense sections of the game are the first few sections, where Necromorphs are few and far between and the suggestion of the monster is more than enough to send shivers down your spine. The game suggests monsters more than throws them at you and asks who are you and how are you, a mere engineer, to defeat these monstrosities? That question, that “what if?” is a prime source of tension through suggestion and demonstration. The game shows you how powerful these enemies are in an opening sequence that proffers you no option but run -and run fast- and then spends the next half an hour both teaching you how to defeat them in one-on-one encounters, and creating a distinct fear of “they could jump out at any time”. This is clever, allowing the player to face off against enemies in singulars, to practice the games dismemberment system before it really starts to throw hoards at you, but it also compounds upon the horror.

It achieves this in two ways. The first is of course through the narrative story bit of “here's the monster killing a bunch of people who surely [according to existing game convention] are more than well equipped enough to deal with it”; that initial splash of subversive jump-scare is a shock so early – not even 3 minutes – into the game and during a completely innocuous section to boot. It is a very good example of “show, don't tell”. Instead of having someone tell you something is aboard the ship, the main enemy bursts into play and makes its presence and danger to you, the player, known. And then of course, a fast fumble into gameplay where you could be assailed at any moment and which sets up a clear predator-prey dynamic for the rest of the game – you are being chased, you are not the chaser. It does all of this without telling you, without audio logs or “I'm being followed”, which would perhaps be ham-fisted. This of course erodes as the story goes on and you equip bigger and better weapons, begin to predict the jump-scares and find exactly those sorts of logs, but that first slice of horror is delicious.

The second way in which the game introduces tension to the player is by showing, repeatedly, Necromorphs climbing back into the walls and vents, ready to emerge again at any point, from anywhere, or so it seems – and to the player, feels- for one very important reason; the very vents, shafts and walls from which they jump out and retreat back into are littered all over the environment, all around you. In several scripted sections Necromorphs specifically watch you from them, making them feel omnipresent and constant but aside from these visual cues, you can hear their thunks and clicks as they climb about, unseen but very much felt. This reinforces the predator-prey dynamic and oppressive atmosphere. You are firmly within the spider's' web, a fly. They are all around you, sometimes making themselves known, sometimes not, but always there – audible, and palpable.

This horror is only as effective as its opening sections. In my opinion as the game goes on and you get stronger and more desensitised to the jump scares of the game, the shock of seeing an enemy climb out of an open vent or back into one, accompanied by a scare chord, is lessened slightly. After all, when they climb out, you'll be able to deal with it in all likelihood. To a lesser degree another way in which the game uses environmental design is less to do with the actual design of the ship so much as placement of objects throughout the game; the presence of bodies. The first time you pass one, it might lay prostrate and in your mind dead. But when you return, inevitably after having picked up an essential item, they may spring back to life with shocking certainty. The first few times this happens it is undoubtedly scary but when every [monster] body in the game bar one does this, it quickly loses its shock value and in my mind, is a good example of why jump scares stale so fast – through predictability and player anticipation. The best jump scare is sporadically used, not the very crux of the horror itself.

That constant, oppressive feeling of “they're everywhere, all around me” is compounded by the very nature of the USG Ishimura. It is a ship, drifting in the dark annals of space, that final frontier. You cannot leave because you have no escape option. The corridors are winding, gaping maws filled with environmental storytelling in the form of scrawled messages, crazed passengers and an intense feeling of claustrophobia. It is easy to get lost and disoriented on the ship, especially when many corridors lead to dead ends and you are constantly backtracking and crisscrossing over your previous paths, opening new ones and returning to prior areas through previously inaccessible doors. It can be very disorienting after 2 hours of exploring one section, to suddenly find yourself back in an area from 4 hours ago, emerging from a door you probably forgot existed until this moment. Clever changing of previous environments as things happen in game – bits of ship getting blasted off or reconnected to energy grids allowing for more exploration, the meaty growths spreading across the ship and new enemies appearing and bodies disappearing all help older areas to feel fresh, rather than stale retreads. All of this, also, done without words, without telling the player. It all contributes to a feeling of confusion and being truly lost in what is actually, a rather small gameplay area and this in itself is a really clever use of space and navigation to make a game feel larger than it is.

But this clever design is slightly watered down somewhat by one of the navigation mechanics in the game. You can press a button and a visual guide will pop up showing you the path to the next objective. Honestly, this feature feels entirely ancillary to me; there are signposts clearly telegraphing areas you need to go; there's a map on the tram that pops up at the beginning and end of every chapter-so why not incorporate that somehow-; and the rest of the game prides itself on having no user interface so why have something as clunky and immersion-breaking as this tool? It undermines the very horror of feeling lost, of encroaching deeper and deeper into the abyss, and it also undermines the clever design beats that include signposts and symbols that show you where to go. Your companion, Kendra, also gives you directions so your knowledge of the games' space and how it all connects together, is actually unnecessary and at no point is the player required to demonstrate their knowledge of the layout, or even allowed to get lost which could really have added to the fear and feeling of being trapped. That feeling is entirely undermined for the sake of convenience.

However, one way in which the claustrophobia of the level design is compounded is in the cameras, and tightness of the corridors. Taking cues from Resident Evil 4, Dead Space features an over-the-shoulder camera of almost cinematic proportions. We are following Isaac through the game, watching everything almost -almost- from his perspective, and we see exactly what he sees. Necromorph bodies and open vents, and text scrawled on walls, and all. This camera, twinned with the tight, narrow corridors, contributes also to a feeling of closeness, of the walls and very cameras closing in on you, everything so close together. You are being watched, by the camera and the Necromorphs both.

Another design choice, namely the light being twinned with the weapon you are using, adds to this. All outside of your narrow target is often too dark to see in certain areas where the game ups the tension using darkness. You could be focused entirely upon an enemy, torchlight glaring furiously in its face, but that will be all you can see; which forces you to confront the horror in front of you, and leaves you with a question. What if there's another outside of the light, outside of your view? This is another way in which the design of the game uses suggestion and “what ifs” to scare the player. Not only this but that most primal of fears, nyctophobia, is incurred. That light in darkness is a pinprick, barely allowing for you to see ahead of yourself, and making you feel, again, like everything is closing in on you. Darkness all around, the ships walls all around, Necromorphs all around.

Other areas of the game use the very colour of lighting – harsh oranges, reds and yellows – to signify danger, fear and that an area isn't yet safe. In enemy gauntlets, you will find an alarm blaring and an orange beam flickering, to show you that there are yet still enemies around that you must kill before you can progress. This is one thing that, I think, enemy gauntlets do well – you are trapped in a confined space [within an already confined space] and must get rid of all the enemies before you become their next victim and all aspects of design in this case are telling you “danger, get out” as well as allowing you breathing room once the danger is alleviated.

All of these design choices – the enemies established in the walls, limited lighting, winding corridors, the tight camera, the maze-like structure of levels and the disorienting feel of repeating back on yourself all contribute to a very precise feeling within the player. You are trapped, you are tracked, and this all creates tension, unease, and fear. Of course, this is just one of the ways in which Dead Space creates fear.

#dead space #video game #games design

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mrmallardsmobileposts · 5 years

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RE: the Easy Mode discourse with Sekiro

I don't mind a game having easy mode. RTS games have easy modes, fighting games have easy modes, all sorts of competitive video games have easy modes. I grew up playing most games on easy difficulties, before moving onto normal for most titles - I don't like being broken down again and again by a game continuously kicking me in the dick, because I don't find that fun. Because of that, I don't like playing FromSoft games.

And I wouldn't play a Dark Souls game, or Bloodborne, or Sekiro, even if they did have an easy mode. Because I realise that the games are difficult by design.

My thoughts on Easy Mode discourse go back to when Cuphead was being roasted for its difficulty. There's footage of a games journalist - a person being paid to cover the game that he's playing - getting stuck on the tutorial for like 3 minutes. He just makes the same mistake over and over again instead of trying something new, and it's a technique that even most kids can work out in about a minute tops - This isn't a kid, or a newcomer, getting their first taste of a run n' gun title, it's a grown man being paid to play and cover this game, and he can't pass a simple and basic tutorial.

This instance isn't a question of accessible game design, because the button inputs are along the bottom of the screen and the physics make sense. It's perfectly fine to fail a few times while you get the hang of it, that's what the tutorial is there for, but floundering on the tutorial for three minutes isn't a fault on the game's part.

The Driver tutorial? That's a pain in the ass. It's unintuitive, it requires knowledge of specific stunt-driving terms out of the box and the time limit is harsh. The Cuphead tutorial is a bit abstract, but the button combos make sense and the actions it wants you to take are pretty clearly signposted. This guy failing to grasp the fundamental controls of the game, free of any hazards or timers or whatever, is a personal problem on his behalf - but that got turned into a "gamer respect" issue regarding video game difficulty later down the line. To my understanding he took the game to task for being too difficult despite his issues with the controls being a personal, localised issue.

I'm bringing Cuphead up because that game's difficulty was lambasted by reviewers upon its release. We had this "developers need to respect gamers by adding an easy mode" discussion before, even with an easier difficulty modifier in Cuphead. Reviewers who were giving the game coverage were roasted for not knowing how to play the game, and rightfully so, and the reviewers shot back with "it's not user-friendly enough, it's a fault on the part of the game!".

Cuphead is designed to be challenging. It can be made easier, but there are aspects to the level design and the bullet patterns of the bosses that give the game its appeal in the first place. It wasn't just a slog through Kaizo-level pitfalls and restrictive controls, and the easier play mode cut boss HP and might have messed with projectile density and enemy placement for all I know - but it was still challenging in the way that the developers intended, with enough concessions to make the game more accessible to less skilled players. That established my distrust of mainstream games coverage in regards to video game difficulty.

FromSoft is known for their difficult games, with different mech combat games years before the Souls games as well as the popularity of their hard-as-nails Souls titles. These games haven't had easier difficulty settings before, with a noted appeal being the feeling of accomplishment that players feel when they wrangle with the controls long enough to be able to beat the game. For all intents and purposes, the Soulsborne titles from FromSoft are made with difficulty in mind. Difficulty is a feature, an obstacle to be overcome.

Of course, plenty of other games are made for challenging play but offer a cinematic mode. That's fine, and it's up to every developer to consider the audience that they want to court with their difficulty modes. But FromSoft games are renowned for their difficulty, and only those players who put up with the bullshit of each game get to experience how those games play out. It's no different to buying a game that you can't beat, or that seems unfairly stacked in the game's favor, or that you just don't like so you take it back - some crazy bastard is going to punish themselves for long enough to finish that game, whether they like it or not. Not everyone is going to find appeal in that experience, or get the most out of that game.

And sometimes games are unbalanced, and require patches to be considered playable by anyone outside of the handful of masochistic "hardcore" gamers who spend hours on end punishing themselves until they're good enough to persevere. Sometimes an easy mode is required due to developer oversight. Sometimes it's just nice having less stuff to stress over so you can enjoy a game's story beats and get a reasonable facsimile of the game's intended effect.

But the Soulsborne games are intentionally hard for skilled players to enjoy, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I find it really backwards for games journalists to call out From Software as "disrespecting their players", when they're offering incredible gameplay challenges to be overcome with skillful play. That sounds like they're respecting players well enough to learn the game's systems, become skilled at the game's combat and overcome these extreme challenges on their own. The satisfaction of overcoming the game's biggest challenges is the reward you get for playing, and that impact is lessened by hand-holding or watering down the experience.

I would never touch Sekiro with a ten foot pole because I don't like games that are overbearingly difficult like that, but I certainly respect it for what it tries to do. I think making a company go out of their way to change that intended balance of difficulty is rude - if their intention was to create an overwhelmingly difficult game, then that intent should be respected. If you can't overcome the game's challenges, then there's a whole slew of action RPGs with a range of different difficulty modes for you to play.

And despite that, I'm still on board with games having easy modes. Even a developer known for their hardcore game series aimed at enthusiasts can put an easy mode in their video games to appeal to a wider demographic, and that's fine. Like jeez, have you seen the Fire Emblem purists on GameFAQs who insisted an easy mode on Awakenings was the death of the series, despite selling record-breaking numbers of units? People who take a stand against easy modes in video games, calling it the death of gaming or something like that, are usually massive assholes.

My beef here is the social pressure to add an easier difficulty mode to a game built around challenge and skill. If they cave to pressure and add it, it won't be any skin off my back, but I think that games made for the sake of being challenging should be as difficult as they want to be - From Software should be able to make their games as easy or difficult as they like.

Even without touching on the subject of accessibility for different personal conditions, here are game experiences that are crafted specifically for enthusiasts of a certain genre that the average layman wouldn't enjoy playing, despite having the capacity to play with the pros given the right amount of practice and dedication. If folks found a Touhou bullet hell title too difficult, even on the easiest difficulty settings, are the developers responsible for modifying the game's difficulty settings even more to account for all types of players?

There is the accessibility issue of a game being too difficult for everyone to play. Anyone should have the tools to pick up whatever game they want to give it a go, and gaming is known for having issues with accessibility regarding different gaming peripherals - we're used to standardised layouts on a gaming controller, and anyone who can't fit into that paradigm is shit outta luck. Controllers like the Xbox One accessibility gamepad is making headway in that department, but it's still a prohibitedly expensive option. Custom button-mapping has been on the rise with this most recent gaming generation, but that doesn't mean much if you can't hold the controller due to your personal conditions. Different controllers for differently abled people to play games have always been ridiculously expensive. There's absolutely a case to be made for the video game scene not being the most accessible crowd around.

But given that a differently abled person has access to the equipment that they need to play video games, they should have access to whatever games they want to play. But not everyone is going to be able to beat every type of game, even with the know-how and the proper equipment and the desire to play.

And there will be differently abled people who do pull out all the stops to finish whatever video game they put their mind to. There's a quadriplegic man who's beaten Sekiro before. There are people who overcome difficult video games despite having limited mobility and different accessibility needs. Anyone who wants to try to beat a game should have the equipment to take a shot, and they should be able to play on whatever difficulty is comfortable for them to play on, but if a game is designed with a high skill ceiling in mind and only offers the one way to play it, I think those who are willing to challenge, learn and overcome the game on its terms should reap the rewards.

If a game has busted accessibility options, like improper color-blindness options or button mapping that makes the game even more difficult for differently abled people despite being billed as the "accessible" option - even if a game doesn't allow for custom key-binding - there's a case for a developer or company to change and fix things to make good on their promise of a more accessible gaming experience. If a game is improperly balanced on even the easiest difficulties, there's a case for the developers to alter the game on those grounds.

But I think a game that's been built from the ground up to be a significant challenge, with the intended goal to run the game's gauntlet of considerable difficulty, has the right to present its intended challenge as is - as the statement that the developers intended for the enthusiasts who flock to buy each new release. There will be people who are dedicated enough to finish it from all walks of life. But not everyone will be able to play it, or find it enjoyable, whether that person is differently abled or not.

I don't like Soulsborne games, or games that present themselves as hard-as-nails challenge fests. I don't mind a significant challenge from time to time, but From Software games aren't my scene because I know I'm not going to take to them. While I understand the accessibility argument, I'm pretty jaded from instances like Cuphead where even a difficult game with easier difficulty modes was judged as being fundamentally flawed for the level of challenge it presented.

I don't want to step on anyone's rights or desires, and I don't dislike easy modes in video games. But a game that's designed to be difficult should be able to present its difficulty on its own terms. If that means offering the single intended experience, then that's their prerogative.

#easy mode #sekiro #discourse #long post

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piratefjord · 6 years

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So I’m a person who loves character death. I’ve had heaps of characters die in my games, I’ve died plenty of times myself as a character, but even by my own slightly morbid standards tonight’s ep felt a little... cheap. I’m going to do the adult thing and try to analyse why, so I can avoid it with my players and maybe some of you can too idk. The usual disclaimer: DnD is hard, its improv, and choices made in the moment vs hindsight are always a bitch (for DM and players alike). I think you should be able to criticise things without hating on them, especially if it’s done for learning purposes other than to just blame people.

ANYWAY.

This encounter was way too hard for the party to cope with.

Which is fine, by itself. That fact is more obvious to anyone who DMs a lot (while all the players have DMed oneshots, I’m going to guess they didn’t dig too deeply into the meat of encounter difficulty calculation). The more enemies you add, the exponentially harder an encounter gets. One boss monster may many times be easier to defeat than three medium minions, for the simple rules of turn economy. Your big boss monster might miss every attack on your player characters, and even with multiple attacks it usually can’t occupy or split up multiple resources. Multiple enemies means more rolls (kinda like giving advantage), a higher degree of aggro control over the battlefield to split up firepower. This is why multi enemies usually have pretty low HP pools compared to their relative damage output - lots of glass cannons if you will.

So even on paper, fighting a party of 7 with only 5 members is a bad idea. It’s going to be a tough encounter. While there was some suggestion of the level of deadly, based on previous party experience they’d had with multi enemies, there wasn’t a great deal of foreshadowing or warning about the fact that this encounter potentially broke the cardinal rule of multi-encounters, which is where enemies usually have low hp high damage, or high hp and low damage per turn.

Which brings us to Lorenzo. It took me a while to work out what he was exactly. Ashly said he was a fighter to the party, which based on what he just pulled seems like a misleading description if Matt gave it to her. Cone of Cold is a level 5 spell, which is insanely powerful and could have TPKed the whole team. Let that sink in. It is also only available on sorcerer and wizard spell lists (and as a hexblade pact spell), however at no point is it ever available to an Eldritch Knight (fighter subclass). Even at level 20, they can only cast up to level four. I also thought it might have been a hexblade thing, however glaives are two handed heavy weapons and are therefore unavailable as a hexblade weapon. Add to this fact that Matt mentions that Lorenzo uses his action surge, which is a fighter trait, acquired at level 2. Cone of cold is available to wizards and sorcerers at 9th level.

So this dude is at least a level 11 fighter/caster build, possibly level 14 (I’d need to rewatch to check for other multi attacks). That’s putting him in the realm of CR8 territory, which by himself is a hard encounter for a party of five level five characters. Adding only one or two CR1 creatures to this moves it into deadly territory, and those are the sorts of enemies they were crushing several levels ago. Adding an additional six, presumably of CR 2-3 territory puts this into actually bonkers territory, without a lot of warning or viable escape routes for your players.

I think there may have been some degree of over-compensation for things like magical weapons, but no one would accuse the M9 of breezing through their previous encounters, which had party members close to death in them consistently. The difficulty curve increase comes left of field and was poorly telegraphed. ‘Making an example’ of players is something I only normally like to apply to players who are actively out of line, pushing the limits or generally trying to break the game. I’ve put dozens of ‘you will not win this with violence’ encounters in my games, most of which only end in death if players pursue them past the point of all warnings and by refusing to back out. While the same could be said of the M9, I don’t feel the warnings justify the outcome or the severity of the encounter.

Things you can use to avoid things like this:

Non-lethal punishments, where the PCs wake up captured or otherwise incapacitated, perhaps without resources, gold or other boons they’d previously acquired. Servitude to gods, curses, contracts etc are also good options. A good example here would be pressganging them into the slaver’s ring as well.

Gradual escalation of combat, and pointed descriptors early to help PCs know when it’s time to bail. This includes things like their attacks doing very little damage, or scaring them with initial outlay of damage.

Consistent signposting of encounters that shouldn’t be taken by force (if your players value their lives). Keg was an excellent way to help with this, but I feel Matt may have undersold the severity of the threat they were facing based on what Ashly said.

Providing exit routes: you should make it clear that running is always an option.

You can only do so much, and sometimes the dice will roll against your players in ways that feel unfair or left of field (especially if you’re like me and regularly roll poorly). The best you can do is prepare your players for it and make it feel more like a consequence of a choice, rather than of chance. If you think you’ve made a mistake (and Matt may have underestimated just how badly this would go) don’t ‘apologise’ in as many words, but use it as a storytelling opportunity and try to course correct. Personally I’d use this as a chance to bring back Lucien, but we’ll see how Matt and Taliesin choose to proceed.

#critical role spoilers #cr2 #critical meta #critical role campaign 2 #i have a lot of feelings and most of them are uneasy #it didn't feel good #or cathartic #or dramatic #it felt like there was no lead up #personally i don't like killing my PCs at lower levels #I feel it can happen by accident far too much

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