guessing there is a correlation with MAGA.

Stupid, selfish, people.

Reminds me of a long road trip I took in my youth. After a couple days we were basically speaking in in-jokes

This joke is why I will say to DMs getting railroad-y, “are you sure you wouldn’t rather write a book?”

Interesting. The inability to pan and walk around makes it very different. I liked “walking” around in geoguesser until I found a landmark or something, but I never played competitively or obsessively.

I’m ready for that style of language to be passé. But probably the next slang will also be unpleasant.

No disagreement here.

I realized when reading one of the other comments that my similarly sized complaint is it creates a lot of potential for problems at the game level as well as narrative when people make their characters in isolation. I kind of assumed that comes packaged with “and you all meet in a tavern”.

Like, everyone makes a fighter and shows up to session 1. The dm’s going to have a head scratcher thinking about balance, and some players might be annoyed they don’t really have a niche of their own. A weird party like that can work, but it’ll be a happier experience if folks talk about it ahead of time.

It can work, as clearly shown by your rather wholesome example and many people’s games. But it’s also leaving a very large surface area for problems. Unlike real life, you can just avoid that by making your characters together.

Maybe I should have said in my previous thread that while the “you all meet for the first time” is kind of cliché, there are more serious problems at the game level. And like it can work if everyone makes a fighter, but you can also make everyone’s lives easier if you discuss up front.

So as a senior, you could abstain. But then your junior colleagues will eventually code circles around you, because they’re wearing bazooka-powered jetpacks and you’re still riding around on a fixie bike

Lol this works in a way the author probably didn’t intend. They are wearing extremely dangerous tools that were never really a great idea. They’ll code some circles, set their legs on fire, and crash into a wall.

Who’s playing in the tournament?

I’m off to a strong start with two wins.

Minotaur berserker was mostly cruise control. Even got the gem from elf, 3 runes.

Did a Revenant of Ru. That was a less smooth run. Almost no amulets in the whole game. The only rF remotely usable was a shield with Slay -5 until like the end of depths. But I got it. Four runes.

Not sure if I’ll do more or just retire with a good run.

I think the best game I’ve done started as “it’s a DND world and you’re a band on tour”.

It started with a simple “the bridge is out on the way to your next show”, then there was a battle of the bands, a sketchy record label, and then the players organized a recall of the mayor that was in bed with the capitalists. That game went great places.

Yeah I don’t think I would happily play another “and then you all meet for the first time and work together” game unless it was like intentionally subverting the trope. It adds so many problems and suspension of disbelief problems.

Yeah I think DND 3e had some wacky stuff with templates. Big effective level penalties if I recall for most of them

Bg1 and 2, Dragon age, and mass effect famously had save imports, so “the only way” doesn’t check out.

The dark souls games are so far removed in time that the previous game is legend, so that’s an option.

For the tv show they also could have, as I said, just set it somewhere and somewhen else. They can have rumors about what’s happening in Vegas, but it’s 20 years ago and you’re in Chicago, so who knows what’s true.

So, yeah, they could’ve done something else and still made a TV show.

What made new Vegas interesting was that it’s not just another kitschy wasteland romp. It’s post-post-apocalypse, and it asks who rebuilds after.

My limited understanding is the TV show nuked the NCR so they could do more wasteland theme park, and not continue that train of thought. But also didn’t just set it somewhere else.

But admittedly I haven’t actually watched it.

But also, again, trying to make a TV show intersect with a video game with multiple endings is a foolish idea. You won’t make everyone happy, and it’s an entirely avoidable problem. They could’ve just set the show in a different part of the world that hasn’t had a game.

I found a pizza place near me that still has like 2010 prices. It’s like a large pie with 5 toppings for $20. Most places are more like $30 now, here (NYC)

I kind of refuse to watch Fallout. Partly because I read they fucked up the NCR. But also Amazon sucks , and Bethesda is kind of creatively bankrupt.

Spoiler for Shadowheart’s story

And for the main plot in act 3, with a certain bhaalspawn.

Annoying, but I get why they didn’t do like a save import from an ancient game.

Related, if they ever make another game in the franchise this show will probably be canon, so it’s not entirely ignorable.

Technically I don’t have to watch it. I don’t have to play any more games in the franchise either. But if I do want to play more games in the franchise, I’ll probably have to deal with the show.

Can we just not do this?

One, not every thing needs to be a whole franchise universe.

Two, the game had a lot of decisions players could make. Collapsing that into a single canon is going to be unsatisfying. It was annoying enough that bg3 made some big decisions about choices from bg2.

Related, if they ever make another game in the franchise this show will probably be canon, so it’s not entirely ignorable.

Three, it’s not even that interesting a setting. It’s pretty Standard Fantasy.

Yeah I don’t really like the model where it starts basic and hard, and each failure makes it a little easier.

Feels like it would be more interesting if you started with high stats, and each successful run you had to remove or lower something. Sure, you won with 200 health but can you win with 100? Hades kind of had this alongside the upgrades as you go.

I didn’t like dead cells or rogue legacy that much because it felt like I would’ve won if I had grinded more, and that’s not what I want.

I feel like games are usually a mix of execution challenges and numbers challenges. In a pure action game or other games without progression (eg: chess) you win or lose from your decisions and input. But in numbers games, you win or lose based on the stats. There’s really no way cloud from the start of the original ff7 can defeat disc 3 bosses. The numbers just aren’t there.

Some rogue-lites feel like they’re trying to be execution games but have a less clear numbers check on top. Doesn’t always work for me.

I do really like the traditional rogue like Crawl: Stone Soup, though. No meta game aside from the occasional player ghost.