I want to write about interesting stuff. Fun games I’ve played, cool D&D moments, problems I’ve overcome, things I’m working through, etc. The problem is, my life is kinda stagnating right now (or at least it sure feels like it!) since the only thing I’m really doing is listening through all of Friends At The Table and playing video games. Few of my D&D games have actually occurred lately and not much major has happened in any of them. The only interesting parts of them I could mention are things that I shouldn’t mention because some of my players might read this blog. I can’t reveal too many details here until after they’re no longer relevant. And all I have to say about Friends At The Table right now is that it is absolutely lovely, some of the best storytelling I’ve ever heard, and y’all should be listening to it if you like Actual Play experiences.

I could, of course, enthuse endlessly and pointless about Satisfactory, though. I just unlocked the hover pack, which uses wireless electricity to give you slow but stable flight anywhere near powerlines you’ve put up. Which means now I can easily (and safely) explore everything just by creating paths of powerlines and I don’t have to worry about autosave frameskips sending me flying off the wire I’m gliding alone with my zipline device. If the hover pack gets no input, it just stays hovering. I used it to go down a pit, find some magical slug creatures I can turn into battery-like devices I can use to overclock my production capabilities, and stab some horrible spiders with my stun-sword, all without risking my precious life!

Never mind, of course, that the spiders were probably just trying to defend their friends. Or maybe the slug uses its eltro-magic to control the brains of these other creatures and they’re just being called to protect the critter that reduced them to mindless drones. It’s not like the spiders or rhino-dogs do anything other than stand there until I get within a certain distance. They kinda wander around a bit, like they’re patrolling the area, but they don’t sleep or engage in any other behavior aside from this kind of warding wandering.

Now, I know that’s because this game is in Beta (still never gonna write up a bug report) and that they’re focused on the assembly portions of the game in order to keep providing their players with what we all want, but it’s fun to imagine a reason why this works the way it does. Sorta explains the different colors of the slug critters and why they have different levels of protection based on their coloration. I found a green one sitting in the middle of a bunch of uranium clumps, completely content to sit there and accumulate magic green motes while bathed in enough radiation to kill me from twenty paces away.

Maybe that’s where they’re born, a sentient, organic accumulation of radiation, and then they leave to seek out other creatures whose brainwaves they can feed on in order to change colors. It fits, since the creatures protecting the slugs are typically larger, more aggressive, and more dangerous versions of the critters you run into just wandering the world. Maybe these slugs are the apex predators of this world. And now I, a humanoid capitalist, have arrived, and these once-peak predators are now just a resource I can collected to make this machine turn iron ingots into iron rods just a little bit faster.

I think that’s enough fan fiction for now. I have other stuff to do, none of which includes playing Satisfactory. I’ve played it too much. I keep staying up way too late to play it and messing up my sleep schedule. Even if I’m so close to nuclear power that all I need is fifty super computers (and easy task once I figure out where all my stuff is and iron out the kinks in my plastic production line) to begin collecting the radioactive goop it’ll produce, I think I need to stop. It’s not healthy for me to play right now, what with all the stress of my life. My brain immediately clicks into “escapism and control” mode and I have a difficult time stepping away until exhaustion forces my eyes closed, and that’s a textbook example of an unhealthy gaming experience.

So this is the end for now. Not even with friends. No more Satisfactory for me until I get in a better place and I will fess up here if I slip up. This public declaration will keep me honest. Hopefully. Addiction is not an easy thing to battle. And while this hasn’t reached that stage yet, I can see it slowly getting there.