cdipierr

I started with just one, and was buying digital games. I quickly found as each child gets to 6-7, they need their own switch. So I’m sitting at 4 right now, and agree hard on physical games.

I think the big problem wasn’t just the quantity, but the content. Every conversation felt like a character was just narrating their wiki bio to me, and not actually talking about anything current.

For a while streamers were doing this thing where they would renew a show for Season 2 before the Season 1 pilot even released. I guess it was a way to project confidence to the audience?? Or maybe just to get the production pipeline moving so there wouldn’t be 2+ years in between season releases.

Anyway, they did that with Halo…

Not sure about this guys - not even Overwatch wants to be Overwatch right now…

From what I understand, it does not get kernel access on Linux. That’s why the game wouldn’t run the first couple of days. After they patched it, it just makes a web call and lets you play the game.

Oh yeah, making it an FPS was a weird choice. But that wasn’t a dig at the 1999 game, but at Red Eagle Entertainment, the group that announced and never made several video games over the years. Also responsible for the lousy attempt at adapting WoT as comics (which took 5 years to release 8 comics)… oh, AND the Winter Dragon TV pilot.

Never mind, my comment was almost entirely aimed at Red Eagle.

The Wheel of Time and licensing their IP rights to hack-frauds, name a more iconic duo.

Music, video games, comics, the Canadian TV pilot… I don’t like the Amazon show, but at least it was actually you know, produced.

After the Helldivers 2 release Sony started talking about getting more aggressive with PC releases, so I think we’re going to see a lot less console only releases.

“Listen Rafael, I don’t do deals with Devils. But… if you put the Mass Effect party select screen in here on a Hotkey… I’ll be your bitch for life.”

I heard about that, and then you get to do a collaborative art project. This game truly is amazing.

Alfira is such a big one. I know it’s an easy choice because of her Weeping Dawn scene early on, but this girl has “Get in the Party” written all over her. Tragic backstory! Thirst for Adventure! She’s a Bard; I need a Bard!

I’m only to Moonrise Towers so far; there may be more I’ve yet to encounter. Wulbren was a big letdown, I’ve been looking for him since I accidentally flung his friend off a windmill. I was hoping to find a fun gnome inventor, instead, he’s just kind of a prick who doesn’t even care I helped all his friends in the Underdark!

I think it’s just all a bit antithetical to how I run my games. I’ve really only used random encounters one time, and that was when I wanted to make a “classic dungeon crawl” and created an encounter chart to roll on when the PCs backtracked. That way, it would feel like the dungeon denizens were looking for them more the longer they were in the dungeon.

If they’re picking a path to get to an objective, then I want to reflect the flavor of that choice. If they’ve decided to cross a swamp, then I might have them run into another boat being attacked by a strange tentacle monster. Or, if they’ve decided to trek through the forest, a group of fey who are sick of the mortals encroaching on their land. Preferably, this ties back into the central story: the other boat in the swamp is carrying a rival adventuring party after the same treasure as them. The fey have been enlisted by the big bad who stole the treasure in the first place.

And if they miss either of these, they’ll run into them inside the dungeon eventually. These encounters are just a chance to foreshadow those things and don’t feel ‘wasted’ to me.

My only problem with the quantum ogre is that if you’re determined to have your players face a certain encounter, why even bother with the illusion of choice? Why have the left door and the right door? Why not just have a straight hallway?

Players already tend towards analysis paralysis for any choice you present, so if you’re going to give them a decision, then you can at least have that decision have an impact or clear consequences. No one wants to do a bunch of prep for content the players will never touch, but part of the magic of TTRPGs is having a world that feels alive and that you can influence.

One of my favorite GMing terms I learned about recently is “showing the barrel of the gun.” If you don’t want to come up with two encounters - one that the players will never see and one that they will - then a much more manageable alternative is to have one option that reveals the imminent threat to the players and one that does not. And if they then bypass your planned encounter? Well, great, you showed them the threat, and they got around it.

Yeah, the amount of “it’s supposed to be that way” I see is crazy. It’s fine if it’s supposed to be like that, but it doesn’t mean people are wrong for not liking it.

According to that news article where it got lost for 2.5 hours, the CEO said he wasn’t going to try again until summer '23. So I’m reasonably certain the sub’s two attempts at diving resulted in one temporary and one permanent loss. The reporter who went on that successful dive and didn’t die must feel like he dodged a bullet.

Not unreasonable, but getting out of bed and going to the most dangerous part of our planet don’t really equate, you know? And when your own engineers are telling you you’ve made something unsafe, but you just keep going?? Well…

I can confirm that after a week of people posting links, I - a real user - finally took the plunge to sign up today.

-Sincerely, cdipierr-bot