It is a week before Halloween as I’m writing this. I have two Halloween parties on my calendar (on separate days) and am struggling to come up with a costume idea. I have my old fallback, which I haven’t worn since 2019, but it’s incredibly warm and not super great if I’m going to be indoors for the whole party since it involves wearing my heavy winter jacket. The last couple years, I’ve gotten by with some simple things, but they all took a little bit of planning to execute and I barely have enough executive function left at the end of my work days to keep up with my blog posts. I’m not going to spend any of that on figuring out a costume that I will inevitably need to order online after doing some lengthy shopping around since finding anything for a person built like me (tall, heavy, barrel-chested, and broad-shouldered) is incredibly rare in the first place. I mean, I can barely find socks in stock that fit me outside of the incredibly basic plain white type. There’s no way I can buy any ready-made put-on-a-single-thing type costume and expect even the largest size to fit comfortably even if it is advertised as fitting someone with my general proportions. Well, at least the ones listed since few of those kinds of costumes include shoulder/chest measurements in their sizing charts, which is usually where things fall apart for me. So buying anything easy is out and most of the stuff I’ve accumulated over the years that I could slap together into some kind of closet costume just doesn’t fit anymore: a problem I encountered and partially solved last year, except that none of that clothing is good for anything other than actual casual wear. All the random odds and ends one accumulates through the years that can sometimes be compiled into some kind of rather mundane costume don’t fit my shoulders anymore and I don’t really feel like going as “the hulk after he has shrunk back to normal size.”
Continue readingMonth: October 2024
The Last Day Before Dragon Age: The Veilguard Comes Out
I’m writing this about a week ahead of time (I’m still slowly recovering my buffer) and I have no idea if I’ve gotten close enough to the end of Dragon Age: Inquisition that it might be a reasonable goal to finish it before the fourth game in the Dragon Age Franchise, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, comes out. That was my initial goal, months ago during the summer when I first made these plans, but so much has happened to derail that plan that what felt like a decent amount of buffer space has slowly slipped away from me. I mean, I even had a two-week period where I barely touched the franchise because I was so burned out from a mixture of sleep deprivation and work demands that I couldn’t over my dread at the thought of returning to Inquisition for the first time since 2017’s failed attempt to replay the game. I’ve overcome that, though, as I’m writing this (technically I overcame it weeks ago, but I’ve also overcome ALL my hesitancy to play the game), and am approaching the one-hundred hour mark (I’m in the mid-seventies right now). It actually feels like clearing the whole game and its DLCs might be achievable now, since I can absolutely melt every boss I encounter and I’ve made it through the biggest of the world maps in the base game. I don’t know how long the three DLC pieces are going to take me and I am saving them for a bit further down the plot line, but I think it might truly be possible if I can actually use my final weekend well. Still, all I’ve got is a pile of plans and the desire to feel hopeful about literally anything, so this might be wishful thinking on my part. I’m sure the version of me editing this the day before it goes up will have a better idea of how achievable that goal is [I don’t], but right now it feels like it might be within my grasp despite my fears of the week prior. Especially because I’m taking days off and can spend more time than usual playing video games in the last three days before the game releases since I won’t be doing any overtime.
Continue readingThe Mightiest Creatures Wandering Dragon Age: Inquisition Were No Match For My Blade
In the almost-week since my last Dragon Age: Inquisition post, I’ve put in a significant number of hours, made exactly one step forward in plot, gotten swamped by the newly available huge maps, chosen a mage specialization, and killed six dragons, two of them almost single-handedly. It’s been a wild few days of gaming and I have to say that, while I’m definitely still struggling to feel like I’m having fun with the world exploration stuff, I am absolutely loving combat as I’ve locked into a fun build that, as it turns out, is VERY popular on the internet due to its huge damage and nigh-invincibility. Sure, there’s a necromancer build that CAN do more damage, according to the forums and posts I’ve looked at, but playing a Knight-Enchanter Mage with gear that grants my character, Echo, guard on each hit means that I’m pretty much always invincible. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve taken actual HP damage (excluding the times I’ve jumped off of something I shouldn’t have because I was too impatient to walk around after fast-traveling) since I locked in my build on Sunday (nine days ago as you’re reading this), and I’ve beaten down two dragons that were three levels higher than my Inquisitor after the entire rest of my party stood in an AOE and instantly died. Sure, they were grueling and lengthy fights, especially the one against a dragon that had a huge amount of resistance to the damage type of Echo’s staff, but I was able to work my way through the entire dragon, including one that kept giving itself a full bar of guard, without ever one taking a hit to my Hit Points. It was exhilarating to discover that I could do this and then pretty boring to just keep up the same sequence of abilities for the next twenty minutes. The other four dragon fights, though, where most of my party survived or didn’t fall until the end of a grueling fight, were a lot more fun.
Continue readingPlaying The Adults In A Campaign About Teens In The Magical Millennium
For the first time in maybe the whole campaign, we had an extended roleplaying scene between one of the player characters, the party’s Artificer, and one of the teachers at the magical high school (Adak’s Academy Of Magic). This happened a couple hours into the lock-in, as the rest of the party sifted through the aftermath of their previous encounter with the brother of one of the other player characters (the party’s Bard) and then moved to join the screening of Shrek. Rather than join them in doing something they felt was pointless, the Artificer snuck off to work on a personal project in one of the magic item fabrication labs and was found out by a teacher who proved to be more sympathetic and understanding than maybe the Artificer had expected. Once the two of them had talked it out, the Artificer rejoined the rest of the players in the gym since the party had left the Shrek-themed movie room when Shrek had finished to playing volleyball against some of their classmates in the open gym. They played another game of volleyball and we wrapped up our session with a bit of chitchat afterwards. Other notable events include a quick but momentous B-plot during the “catch the Artificer up on what had happened during the previous session and then talk about the revelation that the Bard’s brother had been part of the group that had accidentally started the growing anti-magic movement” segment, a quick hack of volleyball rules that wound up taking much longer than expected, and a long post-game discussion of whether or not the Group B party was there to play the part of character-opposites that the party (Group A) would need to eventually kill. It was a pretty great game and the first time I felt like I was absolutely at the top of my game since early August. In short, it was another great session with this group.
Continue readingTaking A Day Off: The Ups And Downs
You might think that, given how much I’ve been struggling to sleep and how I’m still fairly recently returned to the land of full consciousness and awareness after more than a month of forgetfulness and grey fog, I would take it easier on myself at work or even make use of my ample time off to cut myself some slack at work rather than continue to push myself to do as many fifty-hour work weeks as I can physically handle. You would be wrong, unfortunately, since my whole fifty-hour schedule exists for a multitude of reasons, only some of which have to do with the demands of my job. Sure, there’s tons of work to do and I currently need a bit more time every day to do the same amount of work that I used to do in shorter weeks, but I also need to cover my rent, buy groceries, and pay my bills as a single adult living alone. It’s expensive to do that in my city and in this modern era. I can’t tell you how many times my coworkers have expressed shock at how my monthly rent payments are higher than their mortgages because I stopped counting years ago when it became spiritually exhausting to hear that common refrain. So, in order to have any kind of comfort and to live in a space that won’t make me feel trapped and miserable constantly, I work longer weeks and have to carefully ration the weeks when I don’t get my ten hours of overtime since they inevitably result in a significant drop in income. It’s usually better to take full weeks off than partial ones since I won’t be getting overtime anyway, unless the day(s) off in question is a holiday, so I can actually get an extended rest. After all, if I’m not going to be able to get overtime for the rest of my days (I’d merely avoid the need to spend paid time off for taking a day away from work), what does it matter to me, financially, if I’ve worked some or all of the days in that week?
Continue readingPolitic Advertisements Are Like Intrusive Thoughts I Can’t Silence
I have not gone more than six hours without getting some kind of text, email, or mail advertisement about the upcoming presidential election. If we throw in general online advertisements, then I haven’t even gone an hour (and I know I should start spending less time online. It’s a difficult habit to break, but I’m getting there). Sure, both of these numbers exclude time I’m asleep, though even that time doesn’t change much if I include my dreams since I still get political advertisements invading those as well. Which is a wild thing to be happening considering I’ve still never once dreamed of being on the computer or using my cell phone. It’s mostly billboards in my dreams, but I also still get mail and hear people talking about the upcoming election, so I really can’t escape it except when I’m sleeping dreamlessly and you don’t really experience that passage of time so I refuse to count it. I probably wouldn’t mind as much if every single one of them didn’t assign absolutely dire and earth-shattering consequences to voting for whatever person the advertisement doesn’t want me to vote for. I already know that this election will have dire consequences and it’s abundantly clear that both results will probably have dire consequences because this is the US I’m talking about and we haven’t had an election that wasn’t choosing the shiniest of two turds (to quote an Epic Rap Battle of History that gets stuck in my head every election cycle) in longer than my living memory. I mean, I still remember when it was controversial to run attack ads at all and when people began to comment on how often attack ads showed up, but now that seems to be all there is. Endless, direly worded attack ads that are also attacking me.
Continue readingDragon Age: Inquisition Is Stressing Out My Completionist Heart
Originally, I started this post complaining about how my completionist nature felt more like a curse while playing Dragon Age: Inquisition than while I was playing any other game, but then I started making comparisons to and excuses about Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth and I had to admit that that game, actually, was the one that made me feel the most cursed by my compulsion to do things completely and perfectly. That said, my experience with Dragon Age: Inquisition is no walk in the park, as much as it feels like a walk in the park in comparison to FF7: Rebirth. Sure, I don’t feel constantly stuck and like the only interesting or fun parts of the game are trapped behind horrible, long, and boring stretches of open-world exploration whose only benefit is to provide you with the crafting supplies you need to use a crafting system that feels like it was built solely to justify the expansive, open, and empty maps of the game, but I definitely feel like there’s way to much junk to do in this game. I’m about forty hours into the game as I writing this and I’ve only just finished the first major plot (the first face-off with Corypheus and the destruction of Haven). All because I’ve spent so much time trying to do side quests, collecting resources, gathering influence, and trying to make sure I’m well-enough supplied to make all my own armor and weapons because the stuff you find usually pales in comparison to what you can make, all of which requires a pretty significant investment of resources and time. Time you have to spend pretty regularly if you want to keep everyone wearing top-notch armor. Which feels funny to do, considering most of my party members are wearing accessories that I got in the first ten to twenty hours of the game.
Continue readingEchoes Of Wisdom Echoing The Legends of Zelda
I’ve gotten a bit further in Echoes of Wisdom now, far enough that I’m no longer travelling in disguise (which also apparently means being able to unlock additional outfits, as well as the “special” clothes given to the “Priestess of Legend”). What strikes me is that the entire game feels like someone was told to make a Legend of Zelda game where Zelda is the protagonist but the only stuff they can reuse from previous games is the names of specific characters. We’ve got plenty of familiar faces (Zelda, Link, Impa, the King of Hyrule, and even the bipedal pig/moblin version of Ganon) and even a few less familiar and interestingly odd choices from past games (Such as Dampe being an inventor now, rather than a gravedigger, and Lord Jabu-Jabu who is just sort of there, eating people again), but the power left behind by the three goddesses, in three parts, is called the “Prime Energy” rather than the Triforce or sacred stones or medallions or whatever else has popped up as some kind of source of power in the Legend of Zelda games. Which is to say that it isn’t strange that there’s a new kind of power in these games, just that it feels so strange for them to basically describe the three pieces of the Triforce but never actually call it the Triforce. Really, the whole game feels like it’s a shade off from what I expected. Not in a negative way. In an “uncanny valley” way. It feels like a Legally Distinct Legend of Zelda game and I can’t understand why they might have made something like that.
Continue readingHelping My Players Create Some Real Characters For My New Campaign, “The Rotten”
After more missed than played sessions, we’ve finally moved into the preparation process for the full campaign I’m still tentatively calling “The Rotten.” Given that we wound up focusing the game on building and protecting a community rather than far-flung adventures or something like that, the name feels less apt than it would for pretty much any other campaign idea I had. This still takes place in the world I’m calling “The Rotten,” so I won’t change the name or tags until I come up with something better, in which case I’ll go back and fix all my other posts. Gotta keep your tags organized! Other than settling on a general idea, I rolled stats with the two players who were available, talked through character ideas, made some modifications and flavorful tweaks to existing classes, and then ran through the Heroic Chronicle with both players. If you don’t know, the Heroic Chronicle is a system included in the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount Dungeons and Dragons book that is designed to help settle characters into the world of Exandria, of Critical Role. I mostly use it to give my player characters a few built-in hooks in the homebrewed world we’re using, a few extra tidbits of power, and some interesting secrets since rolling on a table is a great way to prompt that kind of thinking in people who maybe aren’t as practiced at it as I am (and that absolutely helps even if they ARE as practiced as I am). I also do a lot of soliciting my players’ opinions, offering ideas, and tweaking the results until we’re all happy, rather than rely entirely on rolls because the players often have at least a concept that they want to stick with and some of those results have VERY specific implications for characters. At the end of the process, I get some built-in hooks, my players get some fun secrets to keep from each other in order to build drama, and everyone gets at least a few interesting little power-ups. Everybody wins.
Continue readingThe Sudden Fall Of Summer Weather
After months and months of summer, fall arrived in a single week. I had my AC on not that long ago and now I have to close my windows because it’s getting too cold in my apartment. And yet we’ve got temperatures in the seventies coming up next week [or in a day or two, as this post goes up]. It has been an absolutely wild Fall, so far, and I’m reminded of that Spring from a few years ago where we went from cold, wet, and snowy to hot and humid in a week and a half in May. We had exactly one week of Spring after a very long Winter and then went straight to Summer. Sure, we’ve had more Fall than that already, and it looks like we’re going to have plenty more as the temperatures change up and down (which is usually a sign that most of the heat it coming from the sun rather than from the weather and prevailing winds), but it was a rather drastic shift to go from weather routinely in the high seventies and eighties that rarely dropped into the fifties to weather dropping below freezing and barely breaking out of the fifties for a few days at a time. It looks like, finally, a couple weeks into October, Fall is here to stay.
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