Author: Wren

Victories in Hallow Knight are Anything but Empty

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As you know, I am a big fan of the Nintendo Switch. I like to find games I can play on it and, as it happens, most of the highly rated games on the Switch are platformers. As I’ve said before, I love platformers and metroidvanias in particular, which means I’ve had my eye on Hallow Knight since before it came out. I’ve had it on my Steam wishlist for well over a year and, when it looked like the internet was going to be out for a while, I downloaded it during the brief periods when the internet was working. That was the best decision I’ve made this month.

Hallow Knight is basically just another metroidvania. You start out in a basic world with a jump, an attack, and the ability to heal yourself. After that, you slowly unlock abilities that let you progress through the game until you reach an end determined by a couple of factors. You move about in a two-dimensional plane, avoid stage hazards, and fight off enemies using a combination of your basic attacks and unlocked abilities to get around the special qualities of the enemies. When it comes to gameplay, its nothing super special. It’s fun, but there are better examples of gameplay innovation and quality. While it is fairly standard in those terms, it makes it’s mark because every other quality of the game is extraordinary.

The plot is fairly simple, you’re a knight who was called to complete some kind of quest. You don’t really know what, but you find yourself drawn to the ancient, ruined city of Hallownest. There, you find a cadre of characters, all of whom adhere to the “bug” theme your character starts, who make their lives supporting the numerous people who feel called to explore the dungeon or call it their home. One of the first I met was a map-maker who quickly set the tone for there being something a little off about the world and the people in it. As you defeat enemies and rescue these little worm guys, you start to notice blobs coming out of some of the enemies you defeated and then encounter enemies who had giant sacks of the stuff which they fire at you like little orange bombs. While exploring, you meet a few more characters who subtly work in references to a wonderful world lost and the eventual corruption of everyone who stays in the city for too long or who goes too deep. There’s more to the plot, of course, all of which is revealed through little hints or statements by the more peaceful denizens of the dungeon. I don’t want to spoil it, since I was more interested in digging up little nuggets of the plot, themes, and history as I played than I’ve felt while playing any game since Celeste.

While you’re working through the world, you’re making your way through a world of black, white, and grey tones that manage to brightly portray a world of gloom in a way I’d never thought possible. Occasionally, a splash of color shows up as some enemies explode into orange blobs or shoot little orange spheres at you. Occasionally other color shows up in the environment, like when you find a giant blue crystal that, when shattered, gives you temporary hit points. Other times, it’s something like a mine with light purple crystals scattered throughout or the worm creatures you rescue. Each time you see color, your eyes and attention are instantly drawn to it as it shatters the beautiful gloom of the greyscale environment you get used to between blooms of color. Setting color aside, every visual in Hallow Knight is absolutely incredible. The characters feel so alive and even the background stands out in its incredible variety as you try to find your way through the various rooms. Even though everything is notable enough that you never really feel lost or like you’ve just walked through the same room twice, it still all blends together incredibly so you know that the mine and the courtyard with the small palace in it are definitely a part of the same place. The game also makes incredible use of the foreground, having your character walk behind a whole range of things as you move from one place to another, but never in a way that you lose sight of your character.

Despite the fact they fit into the grey-scale, gloomy environment so well, none of the enemies are hard to spot or difficult to figure out. Occasionally a boss throws a new move into the mix as you chip their health down or their attacks start having secondary effects, but they mostly have pretty clear modes of attack and methods of movement that are nevertheless a challenge to work through without injury. Because of the way your character gets bounced back when it attacks an enemy, it can be difficult to avoid falling in the pit full of spikes and avoid running into the enemy as it is charging toward you. You have to push forward, toward the enemy, just enough that your bounce doesn’t send you off the ledge to your death but not so much that you run into them and get hurt. Throw in the variety of enemies and the way they mix them up, it gets to be a challenge to make sure you’re fighting each enemy the right way.

While you’re fighting them, the somber music in the background doesn’t change, though it somewhat fades to silence. When it comes in, it starts slowly, changing from simple environmental sounds accompanied by the wind to a rather simple but sad music that does an amazing job of representing the area you’re currently in. As time goes on, the music adds more, interjecting small sections of brighter notes to contrast with the quieter, more morose ones. It never changes abruptly and, even when I went to listen specifically to the music for this section, it was so subtly and perfect that I almost didn’t notice the change.

If you like metroidvanias and you haven’t played Hallow Knight, you’re missing out on incredible artistic masterpiece of a game. I recommend you pick it up and let yourself experience it at a comfortable pace. This game begs for a slow, methodical play-through and I recommend you play it in a dim room with little other noise so you can fully immerse yourself in the experience.

Coldheart and Iron: Part 28

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READ FROM THE BEGINNING

I got a few hours of rest before dawn. Since I needed our best shots well-rested, I took a double shift and even let Tiffany take one. It was pretty simple area to guard, anyway. One person on the roof listening for the telltale crunch of feet in the snow and one person patrolling the building in case the person on the roof missed anything. If we’d had more people, I’d have had two more Wayfinders on guard as a matter of principle, but we were a little short on Wayfinders so we made do with only two.

When I woke up, everyone was quietly getting ready to leave. The previous day’s excitement had been replaced with a grim determination that left the air feeling a little heavy after I’d told everyone that we were going to move out the next day instead of rest. The Nomads had taken it well, though it’d been a real feat to help them convince their children that they needed to leave again so soon. I wasn’t much help since most of them didn’t really have a frame of reference for the comforts an enclave could offer and what it meant to be able to use tons of electricity or computers again. I just backed up the Nomad adults and did my best to sound incredibly enthusiastic.

The Wayfinders were much easier to convince, since we were already planning to head that way. Generally, we preferred a much more secure location for our extended rests and to be in much sturdier buildings for the blizzards, so they all seemed relieved to know they wouldn’t need to worry about staying here for any length of time. Not that there was anything wrong with the Nomad’s old home, seeing as they lived in it for over a decade and it held up well enough during that time. It just had more exits, entrances, and avenues of approach than we were comfortable with. Even the trainees kept looking over their shoulders as we packed to leave.

As I went through my preparations, I took note that Camille was missing. A couple of hours later, when we were all packed up and waiting for Lucas to send a scout back to fetch us, Camille reappeared. She motioned for me to follow her and then vanished back down the hallway toward the stairs. Three flights down and around the corner, I found Tiffany sitting on a chair outside of the only closed door. She nodded to us as Camille opened the door and went through.

“You get enough rest, Tiffany?” I stopped at the door, looking down at the bandages on Tiffany’s stump to see if they needed changing.

“Of course, sir.” Tiffany threw a salute with her left hand. “Just trying to stay handy.”

I chuckled and stepped towards the doorway. “Glad to see you’re taking it in stride.”

“Of course.” She smiled and waved her right armed. “Though, I think I might have damaged my sense of humor as well. It took me a while to come up with that joke. I don’t know if I’m ready to feel so stumped when coming up with puns.”

I snorted with laughter and shook my head as I stepped into the room. “I think your sense of humor is fine. Though keep it up with puns like that one and I might just have you get your head checked out when we get to the enclave. I’d prefer to intervene before you get as bad as Lucas.”

Tiffany said something in reply, but I missed it as I moved deeper into the apartment, in search of Camille. A minute later, I found her in the bathroom, standing over the bathtub that held her unfortunate captive. “Looks like he’s a little worse for wear.”

“Well, he shouldn’t have spent most of the morning lying to me. Or have fought back yesterday.” Camille crossed her arms and looked down her nose at the pitiful man whimpering in the tub. “Or he shouldn’t have decided to prey on the weak as a bandit. I may have encouraged his willingness to answer, but his own choices brought him here.”

“Of course.” I nodded and squatted down next to the man, briefly looking him over for serious injury. “What’s he got for us?”

“Detailed plans to take the Enclave down. Everything from the terms of the agreement the various bandit groups made so they’d have the firepower to take down the enclave to a series of routes through the city they’ll take to avoid the monsters that are still clustered to the north.”

“All that?” I looked at the man who blinked fearfully at me, clutching the tattered remains of his insulated jacket to his shoulders.

“And more. He was apparently this group’s delegate. He’s got names, bases, resources, group sizes, and shared stockpile information.” Camille pulled out a notebook and tossed it to me. “Give that to Natalie. It’ll be good for gathering up ammunition or guns if the Enclave needs them, and it should help smooth over our arrival.”

“What do you need me for, then?” I slipped the notebook into my pocket and stood up. I didn’t look at the man in the bathtub again.

“Permission, mostly.”

“For?”

Camille placed her hands on her hips and glared at me. “You know exactly what I want it for. Stop playing dumb.”

“You don’t need my permission, Camille.” I moved towards the door.

“Sure, sure. But this one is different. He has information on us. I can’t just let him go.”

“He won’t get far like that.”

“Yeah, but that’ll wind up being far enough to survive. There’s plenty of shelter around.”

“Camille, just do it.”

“Fine.” She hauled the man out of the tub, grabbed his arms, and frogmarched him out of the bathroom. “You’re to leave us, head directly northwest, don’t stop for anything, and never come back. If we see you again, you’re dead. And you best move quickly because we’re not going to give you the chance to see us a second time.”

The man protested weakly as Camille push him toward the front door and I went back into the bathroom to make sure nothing important had been left behind. Satisfied, I gathered up Tiffany and headed back toward the stairs. At the landing, Camille was already coming back up to our floor, wiping her hands on the walls as she went.

“You sure about this, Marshall?”

“Sure. There’s no need to kill him.”

“I suppose. Just seems like a bit of a loose end, to me.”

“Should she have killed him?” Tiffany leaned toward me a bit, dropping her voice like she didn’t want Camille to hear her.

I shrugged. “Normally, yeah. But if he heads any direction but away from where we’re going, he’s dead. East is monsters, south in all directions is Lucas and his scouts who’ll shoot him on sight, and west is nothing but open plains after a day’s travel. If he heads north, he can probably find people to take him in or at least enough supplies to survive.”

“Makes sense.” Tiffany nodded and grabbed her right arm with her left hand.

Camille rolled her eyes and ushered us up the stairs. “Enough moralizing. It’s done, he’s gone, and we’ll deal with it if we ever see him again. Now let’s go make sure we’re all set to go and downstairs when Lucas sends someone back for us.

Thankfully, everyone was still ready to go when we got upstairs and, an hour later, we were on our way toward the enclave. It took us three days to get there, but they were fairly uneventful. The closest we came to real danger was when Lucas’ scouts saw some monster activity in our planned path, but they managed to steer us safely around it. Otherwise, Lucas and his scouts cleared any bandit threats before we ran into them, and even those were surprisingly few and far-between.

We walked up to the enclave sometime mid-morning and, like every time before then, I found myself in awe of the towering metal walls that protected it. They were fifty feet tall, at least, and thick enough that you needed to bring a light when you went through the tunnels. I’d grown up around Chicago, so the towering walls that blotted out the skyline I used to know so well still felt jarring and out of place despite the fact that they’d been there for almost two decades. A lot of the time, it was easy to forget that the world hadn’t always been gripped in an endless winter filled with hidden monsters and killer blizzards since it took most of my energy to survive, but Chicago was always a constant reminder of how the world had changed since it was overshadowed by the ruins of what it had once been.

At about one hundred feet, most of the buildings stopped. There were a handful that still climbed past two hundred feet, but even those were heavily damaged. While Chicago had escaped the worst of the monster invasions, the blizzards had slowly ripped apart the taller buildings and only the most recent and strongest still stood. I’d heard that most tall cities fared the same, but I stuck to the Midwest and nowhere but Chicago had buildings tall enough to show the absolute devastation the winter had brought upon us.

After a few seconds of reverie, I brought myself back to the present and pushed away encroaching thoughts of the family I had known when I was growing up and the fruitless years of searching for them. I moved to the head of the group, keeping an eye on the walls for any guards that might challenge us as we approached. We made it all the way to the door before anyone stopped us, though. A few passwords later, were being welcomed inside.

We all had to surrender our guns and extra bags, but the Wayfinders had lockers and a barracks near all of the gates so I had the Nomads hand their guns to us and we just tucked them all away for later. Since the lockers were basically a supply warehouse as well, we picked an empty room to the side and dropped the rest of our stuff there as well. Immediately after that, the Nomads were ushered away, taken to get cleaned up and fed something a little more appetizing than what we’d had the time to prepare in what felt like months. We were left mostly to our own devices, with the sole exception that I and my lieutenants were to meet with the council in two hours.

We’d just gotten ourselves washed up, changed, and fed when someone came to fetch us. It was a short walk from the front gates to the council chambers, but I couldn’t help but feel a little anxious at the nervous energy exuding from the guards. It was clear they were preparing for something, but none of them responded to my attempts to worm it out of them. When I finally gave up, we all just walked in silence until they left us at the front doors to the innermost council chamber. Two minutes, later, we were inside.

I gestured for Natalie, Lucas, and Camille to take a seat while I strode forward. “Good afternoon! I’m Captain Marshall, of the Wayfinders, and I’ve been hearing some interesting rumors about the Chicago enclave!”

“Ha, I bet.” the lead counselor, who sat at the peak of the curved table, snorted derisively and leaned forward on his elbows. “That wish-granting bullshit, again?”

“All that and more.” I smiled and shrugged. “I don’t really pay it much mind. I’ve got wishes aplenty, but little faith in easy solutions.” I cleared my throat and clasped my arms behind my back. “What I’m actually here for is to let you know you’ve got a bandit army forming in the suburbs and they seem rather focused on the idea of your new tech granting wishes.”

“I told you, we shouldn’t have let anyone know what was happening until we were ready to launch!” A brawny old man glared from the lead counselor to me. “Now we’ve got an army to fight and walls to upgrade all while we just hope the monsters don’t notice what we’re doing.”

“Be that as it may, we made the best decisions we could at the time, with the information we had.” A woman to the right of the lead counselor shook her head at the brawny old man. “Just shut up and let the less curmudgeonly folks talk it out, Louis.” The old man harrumphed and the woman turned her attention towards me. “We are well aware of the forming armies, Captain Marshall. Thank you for your warning.”

“You’re most welcome.” I smiled at them, looking from face to face. “However, that is not entirely why I’m here. I’ve got a number of people who might wish to settle here and, in exchange for allowing any or all of my people to settle, I’d like to offer my and my Wayfinders’ service as scouts and soldiers in defense of your enclave.”

“You needn’t go that far.” The lead counselor leaned back, but left his hands on the table. “I’m sure we’d love to have you join us. I wouldn’t mind if you joined our military force, but you needn’t do that much in exchange for the opportunity to settle here.”

“I insist. We’d love a chance to get set up as a group here since most of us will be here for several months and the rest might be here permanently. I’m sure we’d prefer more than just a bunch of scattered efficiencies or an extended stay in a Wayfinder barracks.”

“If you’re willing to fight and scout for us, you can have anything short of a presently occupied house and unlimited access to the greenhouses. When can you start?”

I looked over my shoulders at my friends and waved them forward. As I introduced them, I held my hand out towards them. “Natalie has information on bandit supply caches we can hit to cut down on their munitions. Lucas has accurate maps of the northern suburbs and the bandit patrols we saw on the way here. Camille is the best shot I’ve ever seen and the most capable strategist I’ve ever met. She’d be good at organizing strike forces or leading people on the attack. I’m an officer and I can be the liaison between Wayfinders and the Enclave’s standard forces in addition to providing logistics help and maintaining command structures. We can start today. We should start today. Though, we’d prefer to wait until after a short rest and some time to gather supplies or make our own plans.”

“Very well.” The lead counselor looked around the room and, seeing no one dissenting, ploughed on. “I’ll send some people to your Wayfinder barracks in a couple hours and you can all get to work on planning strategy, raids, or whatever it is you’re offering. Over the next couple days, by Thursday at the latest, someone will come to talk to you about housing requirements, numbers of people, and so on.” The lead counselor rose to his feet, joined immediately by the rest, and looked down at the sheaf of papers on his desk. “Is there anything else right now?”

“Do you mind outlining the technology you’ve developed, before you go?”

“It’s much simpler than you’re making it sound.” The brawny old man walked over to me and nodded his head. “It just took us a long time to gather the resources and perform the tests we needed to verify it works. Essentially, we’re creating a tightly woven metal net over most of the city to capture any signals escaping. It’ll catch the signals and strategically placed copper rods will ground it so they never leave. Additionally, we’re-”

“Wait.” Lucas pushed forward. “You mean to tell me that your way to avoid getting attacked by armies of monsters that are a tracking the signals you’re sending out is to catch them in a metal fishing net?”

“Yes, but the science behind-.”

“You’re going to risk all of our lives on it?”

“That’s not all we’re doing. We’ll have some emitters placed around the city and at the taller parts of the remaining skyscrapers which will all be pointed at the city, creating interference of sorts. Like those fancy noise-canceling headphones used to do.”

“Does everyone know you’re willing to risk their lives on something like this?”

“We held a vote.” The lead counselor strode up to his brawny companion. “The vast majority of people were willing to risk it for the chance to live with more power and easier inter-enclave communication without needing to worry about stray electromagnetic interference or signal leakage. Anyone who didn’t want to stay was given the chance to leave and you can all take the same option if you doubt our science.”

“Great. And here I was, wanting to retire. So much for that idea.”

I pushed Lucas gently to the side and focused my attention on the lead counselor. “Is it really that risky?”

“Not really. It’s impossible to replicate the conditions of our world in a lab, but we’ve done a few field tests and are very confident that it will be fine.” The older counselor shrugged.

“What are the chances this will work the way you want it to?”

“Probably over ninety-five percent, but that’s hardly conclusive.”

“Good enough for me.” I shook the counselors’ hands and gestured toward the exit.

As we walked out of the room, Lucas sighed in frustration and looked over at me. “Marshall, let’s try to keep this place alive but make sure our bags are good to go. I don’t want to get stuck here if this doesn’t work.”

“Of course.” I nodded and looked over at Camille. “Let everyone know to be ready to go. I’ll handle things on the enclave side and you just make sure the Wayfinders are ready to go at a moment’s notice.”

“Sure, if we’ll even have that. This strikes me as the kind of plan where we won’t know if it’s going south until it’s too late to do much but run and wish we’d had more time.” Lucas started grumbling under his breath and I tuned him out after hearing him repeat the phrases “stupid metal fence” and “catch more signals with my ass” several times.

We’d made it in time and delivered our warning. We were going to be employed by the city in exchange for comfortable living arrangements. There was a high probability we’d be able to see the barrier go up if it everything worked out they want they intended it to and a small, but non-zero chance that we’d be swarmed by monsters reacting to the signals we suddenly started blasting out of the enclave once it went up.

The feeling of excited uncertainty and almost frantic nervousness clouding my stomach were almost comforting after so much time spent focused on the daunting task of traversing the plains and reaching the safety of the Chicago enclave. I was ready for something to happen and almost looking forward to finding out what trouble we’d be getting into.

 

Tabletop Highlight: What to Do When You’re Lawful Good

Wren 1 Comment

At one point, you decided that you wanted to give Lawful Good a chance. Everyone said you’re basically signing up to be the most frustrating person in the Dungeons and Dragons party, but you think that it would be fun to play the game with a strong sense of morality instead of just being some murder hobo in search of a paycheck. You even decide to go to the extreme end of the spectrum so there are consequences if you fail to stick to the morals you’ve chosen. Everyone jokes about the stick insertion that comes with your first level of Paladin, but you think you’ve clever enough to play to the nuanced alignment of Good over Lawful. So you roll up your character, assign yourself the role of the party’s moral compass, and then discover that you’re the main impetus behind the party’s decisions and everything you know is at odds with how you are choosing to play your character.

You manage to discourage the rogue from poisoning the well of a village you suspect has been behind the attacks on your colony, only to be found out anyway when your bluff is called and the Yuan-Ti (snake person) you’re talking to is actually a dragon posing as a god. You also manage to stay standing in a later encounter when everyone else falls only to lose your arm as you take all your hit points in damage from a single hit because the rogue got you into an encounter you couldn’t win. Later you stay out of the rogue’s business so they can do some clandestine research in the undercity, but they wind up wasting a lot of time and money because they go about doing things the most back-asswards way possible because they forget that other people can make sense motive checks and only survived because they got lucky, all while you take down what turns out to be a lich who is directing an attack against the city you’ve stopped in. A while later, you lose your cool and your fancy Paladin powers because you lost your temper interrogating the assassin who killed your friend and then told you not to take it so personally since he’s just a contract killer. Later, once you’ve atoned and aligned yourself with a god who not only helped you out in a pinch earlier but has a more proactive view on punishing evildoers, you sacrifice your life to buy the party time because the rogue accidentally woke an ancient proto-lich and even then only two members of the party survive because the Scout decided that keeping the proto-lich in the tomb was worth more than his life.

Finally, you’ve alive again, you’ve worked things out with the party so they respect your authority a little more, and things are finally starting to go well aside from the rogue who has a bit of a penchant for questionable decisions. One of which was to reveal your party’s goal to the prisoner you were interrogating and now you can’t just let this goblin cleric walk away to report back to his superiors. If the rogue had the stones or the sense, he’d “let the cleric go” by taking him over a hill, killing him, and hiding him in portable hole or bag of holding until a more permanent means of disposal became available. But you know the rogue isn’t going to do that and you can’t exactly tell him to because you’re supposed to be playing the moral compass of the party and there’s little point to doing that if you’re telling everyone how to get around you.

In this case, it seems like your options are extremely limited because all you can do is either keep him prisoner or let him go. Fortunately for you, there are actually a larger number of options open to you than you realize. For a complete description of alignments, check out this great video by Matthew Colville, but the thing you need to know is that the best definition of “Lawful” is that you believe society benefits from having laws and that the laws should be followed. “Good” is usually defined as “not evil” or, more usefully, as being willing to grant people the benefit of the doubt when they ask for or look like they need help. You can also see this particular comic page (specifically the last panel) from Tarol Hunt’s “Goblins” for the best definition I’ve found. This means that, as a Paladin, all you really need to do is believe in the usefulness of laws, support those laws to the best of your ability, and that you’re willing to give people assistance without needing proof.

This allows you some leeway depending on the world you play in. In some particularly religious game worlds, Paladins are allowed to act as executioners or judges. There’s even a whole prestige class in the three-point-five edition of D&D specifically for this available to certain divine casters (Paladins and Clerics, mostly). In that case, the Paladin could put the prisoner on trial and either permanently lock them up or execute them, if they’re found guilty of particularly heinous evil. Depending on the which religious order of Paladins your character belongs to, the idea of a trial by combat is a fairly typical way to resolve problems like evil prisoners. Especially for Paladin orders that are a little more focused on purging evil. Hell, if you’re a really anti-evil paladin, a simple “detect evil” is enough. Dungeons and Dragons has objective Good and objective Evil for a reason. The definition Tarol Hunt supplies is actually a really great way to cut through the potential subjectivity involved in defining good and evil so it still fits into a “yes or no” system like Dungeons and Dragons.

While a lot of this post (pretty much everything up to this point, honestly) is geared toward the Paladin in the party of my campaign, it’s honestly a problem I see a lot of Lawful Good characters run into. Sometimes it feels either like you need to resign yourself to having a stick up your character’s ass or wind up basically murdering everything evil just because it’s Evil. Really, though, you have more options than this basic dichotomy. A lot of it depends on the laws of the land and what has happened in the campaign you’re playing in (for instance, some particularly lawful characters might be granted the power to enforce the laws of the land as a part of acting on behalf of a ruler), but you always have options. If you’re not a Paladin but some other class and still Lawful Good, perhaps a Knight or a bounty-hunting Ranger, you still have essentially the same options. Lock them up while you drag them back home, find a way to control them using magic, invest in a jail wagon of some kind, hire people to hold onto the criminals you capture, win them over to your side by giving them Stockholm Syndrome, cutting off their legs and them giving them first aid so they can’t run away but also don’t die, killing them outright, a trial by combat, or just letting them go.

All that being said, it is so much easier when you’ve got some chaotic or neutral characters who are a little more willing to DISCREETLY dispose of an inconvenient prisoner without tipping off your character. That requires a certain type of player, though, and unfortunately for you, you chose to be a Paladin who can’t even suggest such a thing without running the risk of losing their divine powers. At least Knights (one of the only other classes with a Lawful alignment requirement) can act unlawfully without permanently losing everything unless they do it enough to change their alignment.

Like all things in Dungeons and Dragons, the sky is the limit. Ask questions, try to puzzle it out, spend some time considering how your character defines “Good” and “Lawful.” There are more options than you realize and Lawful Good doesn’t mean your hands are shackled when it comes to dealing with moral inconveniences.

Giant Problems

Wren 2 Comments

The giant scratched his beard stubble, the sensation and noise helping him keep his temper as he glared down at the Humans.

“I did not eat your sheep. I’m a vegetarian.”

“That’s impossible!” The largest of the Humans waved his torch. “There’s no way a creature your size could find enough nutrients to survive by eating plants alone.”

“First of all, that’s demeaning. I’m not a creature. Second, I would know if my diet supports someone like me seeing as I eat it, am large for a giant, and do not look as scrawny as half the Humans you’ve assembled.”

“Our sheep are missing and your footprints are all over our land.” The man stopped waving his torch and shrugged. “Seems like you did something with them. Sold them, maybe? That’s a nice outfit you’ve got there and I can’t imagine giant clothes come cheap.”

The giant rubbed his face. “I didn’t take your sheep. Those aren’t my footprints. I live in the foothills and just walked over from there. You can see my footprints behind me.”

“And these aren’t yours?” The man waved the crowd out of the way and gestured at a set of footprints.

“No! Those feet are too small to be mine, see?” The giant lined his foot up with the prints. His foot was half again as long as the other ones. “Just because I’m a giant doesn’t mean I made those footprints.”

“Oh.”

“If you’ve got nothing else to say, I’ll be on my way.”

“See that you stay away from our town!”

“I wouldn’t go near it if you paid me.”

The giant walked away from the crowd of Humans and one of the men in the front turned to the one with the torch and shrugged. “You’re a bit racist aren’t you.”

Saturday Afternoon Musing

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I just took a five-day weekend and I already need another. One of the things I’ve been reflecting on recently is that it has been quite a summer. Two weddings because the relationship I was in, the end of the relationship I was in, throwing myself into my writing and my work in order to take attention away from the end of the relationship I was in, working more than ever so I could pay off my car loan, paying off my car loan, tons of flooding in my area, winning the Hamilton lottery, going to see Hamilton, trying to enjoy my long weekend and the game I took it for and being unable to because the internet has been going in and out without warning or pattern… A lot has been going on.

Sure, some of it has been good stuff, like the lottery and Hamilton, but that’s a still lot of emotional energy that gets spent. I can tell I’ve reached a new low because I’m always filled with the kind of existential exhaustion I associated with my depression but none of my other usual symptoms that go along with it. I also find myself spending an hour or more sitting on the couch, doing nothing or letting the TV just run because I know the internet is out again and, sure, I could write in a Microsoft document and just past it into WordPress when I’m finished or I could even just grab my phone and write my posts on it if I don’t want to bother with a bunch of temporary files but that’s a lot of effort and it’s taking all the energy I’ve got to just stay calm about how unreliable the internet has been and how that’s been negatively impacting my relaxation activities. Which isn’t at all a description of how I spent my early afternoon while waiting for the internet to come back so I could finish today’s post and get it online.

It definitely doesn’t help that work has been super stressful as well. We’ve got a big deadline coming up and I’ve had to assert my priorities to some senior coworkers a lot more than I’d like to. I’ve also had to deal with the prospect of getting put on a future project that continues a current project which has been a total nightmare of everything going wrong and one person domineering the design decisions. It’ll be a great product eventually, of course, but a lot of the time it feels like it’ll be good despite some people’s best efforts to turn it into an unholy abomination of things that sound good but are totally useless. I am extremely uncomfortable with conflict, but I keep finding myself gearing up for them at work because I don’t mind telling people they’re wrong or that they’re wasting my time. I’m one of the only people stubborn enough to sit through an hour of a meeting and stick to my (correct) line of reasoning rather than just agreeing so the meeting will end. I don’t blame my coworkers for not being willing to fight to the death like I am because they’ve been dealing with this guy for much longer. Most of them are much friendlier than I am with people who waste their time and none of them are as stubborn as I am. I’m a perfect storm of the right personality traits to confront people like this person and the sincere desire to never be in conflict ever. I’ll fight the battle because I recognize it needs to be fought and, if it turns out well for me, will save me stress and effort in the long run, but I’d also rather just keep my nose down and get through each day as it comes.

Some days, it feels like a lot of my life is like that. Lots of stress and effort now so things will hopefully be easier later. As I see this particular thought crop up in my life, I find myself wondering at what point I stop thinking “it feels like” and start thinking “my life is”? I think the main problem the later is that it’s easy to go from reflecting on how much effort I put into everything in my life these days to a whole slew of negative thoughts. Stuff like “is it worth working this hard” or “I have to work this hard because nothing good ever happens” or “I wish something nice and easy would happen because nice stuff never happens to me,” all of which are false. If anything, this past summer has taught me that this isn’t really a “good” versus “bad” scenario, this is a “work” versus no work” scenario. I did no work to get the Hamilton Tickets. Spent twenty dollars and clicked stuff on an app every day for so long I forgot I was doing it. That’s not any kind of definition of work in my book. That was a good thing that happened to me. It was an amazing thing that happened to me and I’ll be holding on to that happy giddiness for months.

I don’t sleep enough. I take care of myself last of all. I have depression that leaves me feeling listless and unable to do anything but focus on moving myself forward through the day. I get so caught up in my anxieties I can’t breathe. I have a hobby that fills my soul with meaning and helps me set direction for myself. I have good friends around me who care about me and the stuff I care about simply because I care about it. I have terrible luck, but it often turns good in surprising ways and at unexpected times. I can support myself and am only financially limited by my willingness to work extra hours. I make enough that I don’t actually need to work more than my required minimum number of hours to make ends meet. My life is pretty well-balanced, honestly. It’s not bad. It’s not great, either, but it’s on the positive side of neutral. I just have to work hard pretty frequently. Not because my life or lifestyle is in danger if I don’t, but because that’s the cost of making progress on my dreams. I wish it was easier, but then I probably wouldn’t value the time I get to work on my dreams as much as I do. I wouldn’t value a quiet weekend in the woods as much as I do.

Today, I don’t wish my life was different. Today, I just wish I had a few extra hours each day. There’s so much to do… It’d be easier if I suddenly got four extra hours every day so I could sleep more. I bet I’d get a lot more done if I was well-rested all the time. Maybe that’s what I should do with my next vacation. Just go to bed every day at ten at night instead of staying up super late because I know I don’t need to get up for anything in the morning. It’s worth trying, some day.

 

For Now

Wren Leave a comment

I’m not all I want to be.

I do my best to listen and to look
As I follow each hook and crook
And read every single book
While I do my best to cook
Up some kind of understanding.

I don’t think that’s too demanding
A task for me to stick the landing,
But here I am, stuck standing
With nothing more commanding
Than a sense of appreciation.

It fills me with frustration
That I can’t form the foundation
Of a simple proclamation
Because I’m stuck with the realization
That I can only speak for me.

I can’t just let that idea be
So I try my best to truly see
But I think we can all agree
There is no guarantee
I will ever get the words out.

Constant fear and niggling doubt
Cause both a flood and a drought
Of words as I try to write about
A path without knowing the route
It takes from beginning to end.

No matter what I intend,
There is no way for me to bend
My experience so I can pretend
That I have anything to append
To what someone else has said.

At night, while I lie awake in bed,
I dream of a time when my head
Is no longer filled with things unsaid
But, right now, I see instead
That I’m not yet all I want to be.

So, for now, I can only speak for me.

Destiny 2’s Future Looks Brighter Than Ever

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When I finally managed to log onto the Destiny 2 servers on Tuesday, a few minutes after noon, it felt like I was playing a whole new game. Except worse because I knew I wasn’t playing a new game and had a whole pile of expectations about how things worked that wound up being wrong. There were some growing pains at first, and I’m certain there will continue to be more, but I’m optimistic the changes the “Live Team” made to Destiny 2 are going to result in a better gaming experience over the course of the next couple years. Even after only two days of play, both shortened by internet problems unrelated to the game, I can confidently say the game is miles better than it was before.

My only major gripe is how frustrating it is to try to track weekly progress now. Instead of having one place I can go to check out my progress on everything, I now have to go to the map location of each activity and hover over it to see my progress. This means that, in order to check my overall status, I have to do a few dozen clicks whereas I used to be able to check it by tapping or holding a few keys on my keyboard. Additionally, there wasn’t really a clear explanation of how the changes would roll out for the weeklies, so I was left searching for them until I hit both level 50 and the “soft cap” of my character’s power level (500). I’m sure the information is out there somewhere, but so much happened in the space of a week that it was almost impossible to process how the immediate changes affected my gameplay, let alone what the future changes would mean. You can even see it in the community as a lot of the once-reliable information resources are struggling to keep up with everything that’s rolled out and the vague promises that more will be coming as time passes. Even the patch notes are too dense to read through without missing stuff and I’m someone who literally studied how to parse texts in order to get at the meaning inside of them.

When it comes to actually experiencing the changes rather than trying to learn about them, things are much better. After the update, the gameplay feels so smooth that it’s like playing a different game. Shooting feels way better than it ever did before, as does bullet impact and ability strength. Reload speeds feel somewhat sluggish now, but I’m pretty sure it’s because everything else is so fast-paced now that the unchanged reload speeds feel extra slow. I feel like my character moves faster, that combat resolves faster, and that all of my abilities are available faster. In the first mission alone, I used my ultimate ability, my “Super” three times before the first cutscene interrupt the mission. It was amazing. I finally felt like the powerhouse the game’s lore and history says you should be. A one-man (or, in my case, robot) army capable of beating even the toughest foes into the dirt with enough cleverness and ammunition.

Probably the biggest change to the pacing of the game was the introduction of what feels like sharper contrasts around your character’s power level (or Light level). Before, I could easily muddle through encounters above my Light level so long as they weren’t that far above it. If the gap was bigger, about thirty or higher, I’d get stomped into the ground and the same wasn’t really true of when you’re that much stronger than your enemies. Now, even a ten-level difference is noticeable and that’s for both sides. Being stronger than my enemies lets me just soak up damage like nobodies’ business and laugh as my health drops into the red because nothing but a bunch of mini-bosses or a single-big boss could kill me before I killed them. Enough mooks could kill me, and they have the times I got overconfident, but it’s pretty easy to just mow them down on your way to the real fight.

The new story isn’t very long, but it sets up a few interesting questions and leaves enough of an open end that their promises of more to come might actually be in reference to lore and story content rather than just gradually shifting environmental stuff. It’s also pretty engaging, given that they revealed during the announcement of the expansion that they were killing off one of the favorite characters in the game. It’s hard not to get caught up in what’s going on, especially because the bad guys talk now and say things that make you actually think for a moment about what you’re doing and what a “Guardian” (the generic term for what your character is) is supposed to do in general, when confronted with a situation like this one. All that being said, it doesn’t really leave you with much question about what you’re doing by the time you get to the end of the missions and anyone who has spent any time thinking about mortality or taken a decent philosophy class in their life will be able to adequately answer the questions. It’s fun and engaging, but nothing particularly special.

What has wound up being the most fun part for me has been the sense of exploration and discovery I get as I re-learn how to play this game at the same time that everyone else does. I can google almost anything new I want and never actually get answers to my questions unless there’s a discussion on a message board with people also trying to figure it out. The efficiency of new weapons, the locations of enemies that give you good rewards, how to trigger the more powerful versions of the public events, where to go to find all of the vendors, and so much more. Everyone is still figuring things out and it feels great to be able to contribute to that.

That being said, here are some things I figured out, specifically for anyone playing Destiny 2:

  • Join a clan and have people on your fireteam. It makes life so much easier and certain bounties require it.
  • Do all the bounties you can. Glimmer is easy to get right now, so spend it freely (and they’re super cheap) and reap the rewards in consumables and tokens.
  • Try new weapons and probably stay away from any PvP experience right now because either I really suck, everyone else is amazing, or people have just figured out how to win by being super shitty and do nothing but play PvP so they can be shitty to people. Seriously, it sucks.
  • Keep an eye on your random perk rolls but only for Legendary and up gear. If you like the perks, just hold on to it since you can always strengthen that gun or armor later.
  • The Tangled Shore is super fun, so spend tons of time there.
  • Bows are silly but only really work well in the Tangled Shore. They feel a little underwhelming elsewhere.

I’ve got a lot more specific information, but that’s not super useful unless we’re chatting while you’re playing so I’m not going to post it here. If you play and are reading this, let me know if you’ve got any questions or found anything particularly fun you’d like to share! I’d love to hear about it.

 

I Finally Saw Hamilton

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On Tuesday of last week, the twenty-eight of August, I got a notification on my phone I had always dreamed of getting but never expected to actually get. I had won the Hamilton lottery and could purchase one or two tickets to see the show in Chicago on the following day. Needless to say, after spending two minutes freaking out, I bought two tickets and then started going down my list of people to invite. Unfortunately, my first pick was busy since it was his first day back at work (as opposed to cleaning up while on the clock) following the flooding and he couldn’t get the day off to drive to Chicago for a matinée showing. Thankfully, one of my roommates was my second choice and he was able to get the day off. So I went. Even with eight hours of driving due to traffic and construction, it was worth it.

Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s big-hit musical, was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I cried throughout it, not just at the emotional moments, of which there were many, but whenever the writing, acting, vocal work, staging, and lighting came together to create these wonderful little moments of perfection. As a whole, the musical showcases some of the most clever writing I’ve ever seen and sets aside the tried-and-true method of weaving songs together for one that relies more heavily on certain phrases that are the best foreshadowing I’ve ever witnessed. Between the moments where the songs themselves pull you out of the show, to impart some useful historical information or to help move things along, I was caught up in a world of song and voice. I can’t remember what the people who sat in front of me looked like, despite the fact that I spent three hours staring over their shoulders. I lost sight of everything while the show was in full swing. I was more caught up in this show than in anything else I’ve ever seen, read, or done. The full three hours of the show passed in a blink, interrupted only by an intermission that felt longer than either half of the musical.

While I can’t speak about the show in a general sense, since my only experience with it was the specific show being performed in Chicago, I honestly can’t imagine how it could ever be done poorly. The set was fairly standard, a level stage with an upper deck the actors could reach using a couple of on-stage staircases or some off-stage ones, and mostly functioned as a place for more of the chorus to dance and sing from, though it was used to add emphasis for some characters during important moments. The set was used entirely for staging, for dictating where people moved and how actors showed up on stage. All of the scene-setting, all of the environmental stuff that told you where the bit the actor were currently performing, was done entirely through lighting and the clever use of props. Using stuff like tables, desks, stools, and various similar things, they were able to create everything from a tent in the Revolutionary War to bedrooms or open fields. The best part of the staging was their use of a two-part turntable so one group of actors or props would spin one way and another group would spin the other way. They used this to amazing effect in one of the songs during the second half of the show, “Hurricane.” It blew me away and created the images that have stuck with me the most.

Honestly, the entire show was memorable. Each moment felt perfect, each little bit of acting and each scene being set felt like it was perfectly natural and complete, like it was unfolding on stage the way it certainly must have unfolded in the eighteenth century (with perhaps some liberty taken for language). I’ve been listening to the soundtrack since I got back into my car after the show and I feel like I can sit back, listen to the amazing music, and rewatch the entire show in my head. Each of the actors stood out from the crowd in their own ways and there was no wasted movement as they made their way around the stage. It was super clear they had the practiced precision that comes with repeating something dozens of times, but the emotion and energy they put into the show felt like this was their first night in front of an audience.

I don’t want to go too deeply into the content of the show because I avoided everything from the music to plot summaries for almost three years before I finally got to see Hamilton and I’m so glad I did. The sheer wonder and powerful emotion in some of the songs would have created scenes in my head and I would never have gotten the chance to see the show for the first time without any expectations or preconceptions. It was worth the years of denial for that moment when the lights dimmed and the first actor walked out on stage. I know it’s probably too late to recommend that you do the same thing, but hold on to that abstinence if you’ve managed to stay away so far. The music is magical and there are scripts out there you can read, but the show itself is better by far and worth waiting for.

What I will say is that it’s a relatively modern take on Hamilton, specifically it reflects modern scholarly opinions of Alexander Hamilton and some of the other Founding Fathers. The music is pretty Hip-Hop centric, which is another way it’s modern, but it seems like a pretty accurate portrayal of history, with the only liberties taken being in the way the characters spoke to each other rather than how situations resolved. I did some research to confirm this and it’s as accurate as a couple hours of reading can show. I’m sure a dedicated historian could shed more light on the subject, but I don’t have the time for getting another bachelor’s degree before writing this review.

I suggest downloading the Hamilton app so you can participate in the lottery or, if you’ve got a bit more money to spend, buying tickets the normal way. No matter where you see it, no matter who you see it with, it’ll be one of the most memorable days of your life. I suggest you go invest in enriching your soul.

Coldheart and Iron: 27

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READ FROM THE BEGINNING

The nomads’ old home was in the third, fourth, and fifth floors of a ten-story apartment complex. As we walked up to it, there was an old wooden sign by door that once proclaimed this building was the Park Estates but had been spray-painted over sometime in the last couple years. Now, it read “Headquarters of the Chicago Gents” in fluorescent orange and had a few splatters of blood on it.

“So you actually had to fight your way in, I see.”

“Yeah. Most of the patrols just ran, but the guards out here stayed and fought. I’m having Lucas look around for any more patrols, though”

“Sounds like you underplayed what you did to capture their base, Camille.”

“Not really. I had Lucas cover our backs and left one person to shoot at their defensive position at the front door while I led everyone else to the roof. They didn’t have anyone up there or ever watching all sides of the building since every other door and window on the first two floors is sealed. So we cracked the door and cleared them out. They were panicking when we started shooting and we just took them down. I’ve got a sniper on the roof scaring off anyone who pokes their head out, though.”

“I can’t wait to get some rest!” I stretched my arms and sighed. “It’ll be nice to sleep for a few days.”

“That’ll have to be later, unfortunately. There’s some cleaning to do, though I had everyone I could spare get started on it. We made a mess.” Camille wrinkled her nose and popped open the door. “Honey, I’m home!”

One of the Wayfinders, came down the stairs carrying a body wrapped in plastic and smirked. “Great, now help us haul around everyone you killed. There are a lot of them.”

“We’ll need one of the small supply sleds to move the corpses, so just dump it here for now and help carry supplies upstairs.” Camille gestured out the door at the Nomads who’d stopped to gaze around their old home. “I think they might need a few minutes to get used to how everything has changed.”

“Right away, Lieutenant.” the Wayfinder dumped the corpse inside an apartment and I got a glimpse of the other corpses inside, waiting to be hauled away.

“Any of them still alive?”

“No. I tried to leave a few injured but alive and they just kept trying to grab their guns so no it’s on Lucas’ group to capture someone alive.” Camille shrugged. “From the duty rosters we’ve found, I’m pretty sure that are at least a dozen other patrols out there.”

“Eleven or fewer, now.” Natalie walked up with her pack and an armload of papers. “We took out one of them on our way to the rendezvous. Once Lucas gets back, I should have their maps and routes copied into my maps so we can make sure we won’t run into any of them.”

“I’m more worried about them coming back here at some point.” I gestured for Camille and Natalie to step aside so people wouldn’t have to walk around us. “You’ve got a sniper on the roof, but what about someone on the ground to grab them if they sneak up?”

“That’s my job. Now that you’re back and once you’re unloaded, I’ll be going back outside to do a circuit of the neighborhood.” Camille moved toward the door. “Speaking of which, let’s get you unloaded.”

It took us a few trips to get everything up the stairs, but we managed it by mid-afternoon. It would have been faster, but there was, as Camille said, a lot to clean up and the Nomad parents didn’t want to expose the children to all of the blood and gore. It took most of the rest of the day to get the corpses moved since there were more of them than I wanted to count. Camille had led the Wayfinders in an absolute slaughter. As the sun began to set, the Nomads began walking through their old home, setting everything to rights and gathering everything the bandits had left behind onto a table in the central rooms while I led the Wayfinders in getting a meal started.

Once we’d finished cooking, using most of the perishable supplies after checking that they were still good, Lucas and the scouts showed up. By the time we’d served the food and the Nomads started going over everything they’d found with Natalie, Camille returned.

“Any luck?” Lucas looked over at her as he scooped stew into his mouth.

“Yeah. I found a small patrol. They’re cooling their heels in one of the lower areas. We’ll get to them in the morning. Now, I just want food and a bed.”

“Ask and you shall receive!” I placed a bowl of stew and an ancient biscuit in front of Camille. “Soak the biscuit before you bite it. I recommend using the stew, but Lucas seems to be enjoying his biscuit water well enough.” Lucas raised his glass and swirled it around, sending the soggy lumps dancing again.

“How’s the state of our supplies?” Camille stuck her biscuit into her stew and then used her spoon to push it to the bottom of the bowl.

“With what we’ve picked up here, we can wait a week before leaving and then take out time getting to the enclave without worrying about running out. We could even wait here for the Blizzard to pass, first, if that’s what we want to do. That’d require hurrying once the Blizzard ended, but we’d still have a day or two of buffer without moving too quickly.”

Camille nodded, a pensive look on her face as she picked at her stew. “One of the bandits offered up a bit of information as I dumped them in their new temporary home. He said there’s a rumor going around, passed between bandit groups when they trade, that the Chicago enclave has some big thing happening before the blizzard.”

“Yeah?” I sat down with my own bowl of stew, sans biscuit. “Did they finally figure out where the heat was leaking out of the subway system?”

“No. Maybe. They rumor wasn’t about that. Apparently, they’ve got some kind of wall or barrier tech they’re going to put to use before the blizzard. According to the rumor, it’s supposed to fix everything including the cold so finally people can use computers outside of bunkers, grow food outside of greenhouses, and protect them against any of the monsters that show up.”

“Does it grant wishes, too? Maybe provide us all with immortality?” Lucas sniggered and took a swig from his biscuit water. “Maybe it can provide everyone with biscuits that are entirely water-soluble.”

“Laugh all you want, but this guy believed in what he said. Maybe it isn’t everything he wants it to be, but the rumors are worth checking out.”

“It’s kind of a moot point since we’re going there anyway.” I shrugged and stirred my stew a bit. “Does it really matter?”

“If the rumors are true, we should probably get there sooner, rather than later. I’d suggest skipping out on the rest we had planned and heading straight there.”

“We’d have a mutiny on our hands.” Lucas set his glass down and pushed his bowl aside. “I’d mutiny.”

I gestured at Lucas to calm down. “What would we gain by heading there before the Blizzard? If they’re testing out some new technology, better to wait until it’s been put through its paces before we put ourselves at risk near it.”

“That makes sense, Marshall, and I’d normally be one hundred percent with you on this, but there’s something you’re both overlooking.” Camille leaned on her elbows and propped her head on her folded hands. “If this group of bandits is sharing rumors with us that they’re getting from other groups of bandits, and they actually believe everything they’re saying, what do you think is going to happen to the enclave when they start up their barrier?”

“It’ll keep bandits out, so who cares?” Lucas shrugged.

“The bandits will attack and try to claim the enclave, and this barrier, for themselves.”

Camille nodded. “And if we want to keep the Chicago enclave alive, perhaps even settle down there for an extended rest, then we should go offer what help we can before it’s too late.”

“Shit.” Lucas sighed and pulled his food back towards him. “I’m going to eat, talk to Natalie about maps so she doesn’t murder me, get eight hours of sleep, and then head out. I’ll listen for more rumors and start clearing a path to the enclave. I’ll send a scout back for you all, so be ready to move by noon.”

I smiled at Lucas as he shoveled food into his mouth. “How do you know what I’m going to decide?”

“It’s easy.” Lucas shrugged. “You always opt for whatever is going to help people or protect the people trying to keep society together. Plus, they need our help. Not even the Chicago enclave could take on the full force of the local bandits.”

“Well, now you have the force of an order behind your plans. Get it done, Lucas. We’ll catch up to you tomorrow.”

“So much for resting up.” Camille spooned stew into her mouth. “I’ll revisit the prisoners in the morning, make sure they’ve shared everything they’ve got for us. In the meantime, I’m going to finish eating and then crash.”

“Get some rest. I’ll take care of guard tonight. We’ll need you in top form for clearing the way forward tomorrow.” Camille nodded and I turned back to my stew, planning how to tell everyone we weren’t going to stay here as we originally planned. It was going to be a hard sell, especially for the nomads, but the prospect of a return of at least parts of the life we knew before the collapse would be enough to tempt anybody. Even now, I had to push down the excitement bubbling up inside of me. I needed to stay focused, or else we’d never actually get the chance to find out.

Tabletop Highlight: Creating Fun and Interesting Characters

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Having played and run tabletop games for over 8 years, I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to create a fun, interesting, and engaging character in almost any tabletop RPG. While the strict definition of those first two descriptors means there’s a lot of subjectivity involved in the process, there are a few things you can keep in mind while you figure out what you think would be fun and interesting that would help keep the game an enjoyable experience for you and those playing with you. For the most part, they fall into two categories I’d summarize as “the ability to be engaged in or by the story and other characters” and “a series of imperfections that expose them to risk.” These are two fundamental parts of creating a character that are generally built into tabletop games with a basis in hard numbers but they can often be overlooked in other games. Additionally, the later can be avoided in hard number games like Dungeons and Dragons if the player optimizes their character in such a way that obviates all risk.

For the most part, exposing your character to risk is part and parcel with playing a tabletop game. There are some characters who avoid most risks as a result of their playing making them cowardly or extremely self-centered, but those often include the risk of negative social consequences or a loss of advancement opportunities (advancing via level or ability progression, specifically). Risk is a pretty broadly defined word and the only real way to avoid it entirely is to find a way to make your character so powerful that nothing bad can happen to him or to play with a group of people who are going to enable your (the player’s) machinations and rule-lawyering (a term that means you rely on your knowledge of the rules, their exploits, and the various gaps between them in order to manipulate an interaction in the game, either as the player or as the character, so that it resolves to your advantage). Typically, the only players who do this are the ones who actually enjoy having a character who never fails, so most of the failure here is the fact that it often frustrates other players, by either wasting their time as you argue through some obscure rule with the GM (who is always the final arbiter of rules but often lets things slide just to get the game going again) or by making their characters essentially useless.

Risk is essential because it the main vehicle for growth and change in the story your character is telling. Even if they aren’t a central part of whatever plot is currently unfolding, being unable to make them strive or risk something means they’re going to remain unaffected by whatever happens. They might learn new information or they might gain interesting new abilities, but there’s no way for them to actually change their course unless they fail something. Failure is the best teacher there is and sometimes the price of the lessons we learn are steeper than we’d like. If there was no risk of failure or loss, then what is the point in playing out the scenario? We all roll dice because we’re not certain of the outcomes and removing the chance of failure removes the need to roll dice. At that point, you might as well be reading a book or listening to someone tell a story. Sometimes, you lose it all and your character dies. Sometimes they lose something important to them. That’s just part of the game and the sooner you accept that you might need to let go of a character you loved, the sooner you’ll be able to really enjoy the character you’ve created and their experiences in the world of the game.

Thanks to the structure of games like Dungeons and Dragons, your character is automatically a participant in the story that’s about to unfold. If your character wouldn’t actually leave their humble origins and go on an adventure, you don’t actually make them. There’s always some part of them that has a goal to accomplish or some reason to want to explore the world beyond their village. In other games, it isn’t always that simple. Some games, like any that use the Fate system, require a little more intervention on the player or GM’s part. A lot of the Fate system games are based a little more in real-world sensibilities. For instance, the Fate game I’m currently playing in is based in a fictionalized version of the city we all live in because we’re familiar with it and the game requires a certain amount of city knowledge in order to navigate the game and tell a story together (the Fate system is much more role-play intensive and gives more story-telling power directly to the players). As a result of this more real-world feel for our game, are people need to be functional adults in this game. We all have lives and jobs and responsibilities that existed before the game began and most of which still exist after the game has begun. If you weren’t careful, it would be possible to create a character who has little connection to the plot and the other characters, which makes it even more difficult to keep them involved in the story. The GM can only do so much. The rest is on the player to write their character in such a way that it is easy to involve them in the story or else they’ll spend more time sitting out than anyone else.

The easiest way to get your character involved in the story is build in some flaw that allows the GM or other characters to pull them along. Maybe they have really bad luck and a history of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, as my character in the Fate game does. Maybe they’re an insatiable thrill-seeker with little regard for their personal safety or the lives of others, like my first fifth-edition character was. Maybe they feel it is their duty to protect the overlooked members of society and are banished from their home for speaking out against their lord when the lord raised taxes too high for the peasants to afford. Maybe they’re easily swayed or they have debts they need to pay. Maybe they’re morbidly fascinated by crime scenes and bought a police scanner so they can go gawk every day. Maybe they are so meticulous that they can’t rest until they’ve reviewed every little detail that seems out of place. All of these things have one thing in common: there’s something that allows them to be easily put in danger, manipulated, or otherwise involved in whatever is going on at the time. If you’re having trouble thinking of something that would be applicable to your current game, just ask the GM for suggestions that would make it easier for them to set a plot hook or get the players involved in some story they’ve cooked up.

How you specifically apply these ideas is really up to your own interpretation. Like I said earlier, your definition of “fun” and “interesting” is probably different from my own and you should make sure your character fits into them. Including the two things I mentioned here, risk and engage-ability, should easily fit into your definitions, though. And don’t be afraid to give them more flaws or take more risks than necessary. Most of the fun in tabletop RPGs comes from success against all odds or when everything hilariously blows up in your character’s face.