Author: Wren

UnEpic Was the Opposite of Mundane

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Do you like RPGs? Do you like the idea of having a fully customizable character you can turn into a super-specialist or a jack of all trades without having to sacrifice character effectiveness?  Do you like Fantasy that is aware of the typical tropes and has a delightful mixture of falling in line with said tropes and standing them on their heads, both in such a way that it makes even the most tired trope feel fun an exciting? Do you like all of those things and side-scroll action, too (AKA, a “Metroidvania” style game)? If you answered yes to all of these questions or found the potential combination of them intriguing, then I have a game for you to try out!

UnEpic is all of those things and more. It is a side-scrolling RPG starring Daniel (at least, that’s the name he gets in the promo materials, you get to name your character when you start the game but that’s mostly for save file reference), a typical video gamer who got transported into the game when he went to the bathroom during one of his first ever tabletop gaming sessions. He finds himself in a castle and, deciding someone must have slipped something into his drink or food, decides that he’s hallucinating so blithely wanderings further into the castle. After a few rooms, he happens upon an evil spirit (AKA Zera) that tries to possess him, but it fails to do anything more than get stuck in his body. As he moves deeper into the castle, slowly becoming convinced he’s not hallucinating, he eventually figures out what he needs to do in order to get home. As he does, there are a number of humorous scenes as he and the dark spirit sharing his body try to trick each other. Daniel wants help navigating the castle and the spirit wants to kill him so it can leave his body and inhabit another that it can actually control. Daniel usually comes out on top since, ultimately, it is up to the player to decide whether or not to follow the Spirit’s advice, and the spirit is initially only trying to get Daniel killed. As the game goes on, the Spirit starts mixing in actual help with the incorrect instructions, making it much more difficult to figure out what is good advice and what isn’t.

As he explores the castle and learns more about what it’s going to take to get him home (and it’s fairly early that he learns he has to defeat the lord of the castle), he find money, items or gear, and magic to help him on his way. A lot of it is fairly typical fantasy fare, stuff like swords, bows, heavy armor, and more specifically named stuff like “Tunic of the Ranger” that makes you better at using bows and even unique stuff like Excalibur and an axe you get for, uh, helping out Goblins during mating season. Did I mention this game requires you to enter your age when you navigate to its page in Steam? Definitely not a game for young children, what with the references to sex, alcohol, and drugs. Fun fact, it’s also on the Switch now and plays even better on the handheld, wide-screen glory that is the Switch than it did on the computer.

Anyway.  As Daniel explores the castle, he discovers he needs to defeat the lord of the castle and, in order to do so, must free 8 light spirits from their prisons. From there, it’s all finding keys, exploring secret rooms, trying not to get murdered by traps, and finding the right gear so you can kick as much ass as possible while trying to figure out how to make it through rooms that randomly drop rocks on your head and through dungeons where every door you find is locked by a key that isn’t the one you just picked up. For the most part, in terms of gameplay, it’s nothing special. It’s fun, light-hearted take on dungeon delving is what makes it stand out. There are games with smoother controls, more intuitive interfaces, better layouts, and better levels, but this one hits the “satirizing fantasy” niche better than most similar games I’ve ever played.

The protagonist’s video gamer roots show in the way he tries to address his problems and the game’s mechanics catch him and any similar players off guard when it starts to introduce a lot of rules more commonly associated with tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons. For instance, skeletons take (slightly) reduced damage from swords and spears, but extra damage from blunter weapons like maces or clubs. Bows require targeting for enemies that aren’t straight in front of you, which can be a little frustrating because you might have to cycle through available targets before getting to the one you want, but the fact that you can miss a slug crawling across the ground when firing straight ahead is the first real evidence you get of the game’s excellent hit-box management. Never will you take a hit you feel you shouldn’t have taken and never will you hit something unless you see your weapon enter into the enemy’s model. It can be incredibly risky to use a close-range melee weapon since that requires getting within striking distance of most of the enemies in the game, but they usually do more damage and have better bonuses or stats than spears and bows.

It’s a fun game with relatively simple mechanics that don’t take long to pick up and really start to flow smoothly once you get used to swapping between items in your shortcut menus and rapidly targeting enemies with ranged attacks while avoiding the enemies closing in on you in melee. It even has a ton of fun little references to other games and media liberally sprinkled throughout. Some of them have been a little obfuscated in the Steam and Switch versions (the only versions I’ve played, but I read a few articles about it while trying to figure out if the spirit’s original name was a reference to something) for copyright reasons, but most of them are still there. There’s even one a few minutes into the game, when you fight your first enemy. I won’t spoil it, but it really sets the tone of the game.

If you’ve got ten bucks (or less, if you get it during a Steam sale event) burning a hole in your pocket and want several hours of relaxing dungeon exploration, I recommend checking out UnEpic. It’s not going to blow your mind, reveal the secrets of the cosmos as they relate to your inner-most heart, or make you acknowledge the secrets hidden deep inside that you won’t even admit you’re hiding to yourself (we’ll leave that to Celeste), but you’ll have a good time as long as you don’t mind a bit of a bratty protagonist who keeps getting shown up by the evil spirit possessing him.

Coldheart and Iron: Part 26

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READ FROM THE BEGINNING

We woke the next morning to a light snowfall and Natalie’s reminder that we had only twenty days before the next blizzard. That would be plenty of time to get into the Chicago enclave barring an encounter with the army of monsters that might be wandering around what was left of the northern suburbs of Chicago. Bearing this in mind, I sent Lucas and his scouts ahead as soon as they’d all eaten breakfast and then busied everyone else with breaking camp and following them north as soon as possible.

The day passed uneventfully, with only one tense moment when one of the Wayfinders spotted a glint of light being reflected from the top of one of the local buildings. Thankfully, it turned out to only be some old weather monitoring gear, but it cost us an hour as Camille snuck up to the building and investigated it. When we finally caught up to Lucas, he guided us toward what looked like an old park and had us set up camp under some of the aging picnic shelters. While people set up tents and attending to their evening meal, Lucas pulled me aside to report.

“We’re on the edge of the bandit territory. They match the description Camille gave me, mostly blunt weapons and one person with a handgun or rifle in each group of five. Pretty good thermal gear, from what I can tell, so they obviously know what they’re doing when it comes to avoiding monsters. Might even support Natalie’s theory that they got pushed out by whatever came out of the Waukegan landing area.” Lucas waved a hand in the air before I could chime in “Either way, there are tons of them and their patrols are thick enough that we’d have trouble sneaking through, but they’re nothing we can’t handle.”

“Any chance they’ll spot us out here if we give Camille a couple of days to sneak in and neutralize their leadership?”

“None.” Lucas gestured to the line of trees at the edge of the park. “The trees and playground equipment make the shelters practically invisible from the street and they don’t have regular patrols more than a mile from their base. They have a group that walks around the perimeter once a day, from what I’ve seen so far. Just checking for anything new or signs of someone encroaching on their space. As long as you’re gone before noon tomorrow, you shouldn’t have to worry about them and that’s even if they decide to check out this place”

“Okay. Keep an eye out for that tomorrow, but I’ll let Camille know what to expect.”

“Good.” Lucas rubbed his hands together and grinned. “And now we start my favorite part. Watching them all night long and tailing any patrols that operate at night. I hope they sent out a couple.”

“Just keep an eye out for any monsters. I want to know if we’re going to need to deal with any of them while we retake the Nomads’ home.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.” Lucas saluted and then headed off toward the treeline where he was joined by his remaining five scouts.

Camille walked over as he disappeared into the snow. “With him scouting for patrols and monsters, and with me leading a group to take the base, you’re only going to have four Wayfinders, counting yourself and Natalie, to manage the Nomads and Tiffany isn’t going to be much use if it comes to defending the group.”

“I’m planning to just vanish for a couple days. Your groups won’t need any support or supplies, so we’re just going to swing a little further north and drop off the radar for two days. After that, we’ll head toward the base and help you out or just waltz in because you’ve cleared everything.”

“Do you think you can count on the Nomads if it comes to fighting?”

“They did well enough when we were captured. You’re taking one with you, to answer any questions you have, so you must trust their abilities to some degree or another.”

“Yeah, but I can always leave them behind if they start becoming a liability. You won’t have that luxury.”

“I think they’ll be fine. They’ve come this far and haven’t gotten any of us killed.”

“They’re also half children at this point.”

“What do you want me to do, leave them behind while four of us sneak up on a building full of bandits and hope that we can manage if it comes to a firefight? It’s not like our skills are going to help much in an urban environment. The more guns we have, the better.” I pointed to the two machine guns mounted on the sleds. “Plus, it’s not like they need to be good with a gun to use one of those.”

“Fair.” Camille smiled and punched me in the shoulder. “Warm beds! Real food that hasn’t been dried out for years before we dunked it in snow to soften it up a bit. A chance to rest for a day, in safety and warmth, before we start preparing the way to Chicago! So much to look forward to!”

I smiled back at her. “Just don’t let visions of cozy pillows distract you from your mission. You can’t enjoy a bed if you’re a prisoner or dead.”

Camille laughed and gestured to the waiting group of Wayfinders. “With this lot, we’ll have them surrendering before they even fire a single bullet! They don’t bother Wayfinder duos, so they’ll probably run in terror when they find out there are eight of us.”

“Good luck, Camille. Stay safe!”

“Yeah, you fight monger. Get us some nice cozy beds and don’t let any of our people get killed in the process.” Natalie walked up and hugged Camille. “Think you can manage that?”

“I’ll do my best, mom.” Camille rolled her eyes but was still smiling as she turned to leave.

“Did Lucas leave already?” Natalie turned to me. “I wanted to give him a map I drew with likely routes the monsters might take if they’re wandering around.”

“Yeah, just a couple minutes ago. I can catch up to him if I run, though.”

“Don’t bother. He’ll figure it out. He always does, somehow, even if he always forgets to map them afterwards.” Natalie patted her pocket absently and then looked over at me. “So we’ve got the tent to ourselves tonight. I think neither of us are on first sentry shift, so we should head to bed right away.”

“As you command, so shall I do.” I bowed and gestured toward the bag that held our tent. “However, it’ll take a little bit before we can busy ourselves with resting. I’ll have this ready to go in a few minutes if you wouldn’t mind grabbing food for our dinner.”

“Very well, Marshall. You can play house and I’ll bring home the bacon. See that you’re ready by the time I get back.” Natalie winked and then sauntered off toward the supply tent. I tore my eyes away from her and hastily set up the tent. Despite the fact that I’m pretty sure I missed a couple stakes and one of the tent poles slipped out of its socket halfway through dinner, we had a pleasant night, even if we didn’t get much sleep.

The next morning, we packed up and consolidated everything we had to one sled. We hid the other one under a snowbank next to what were probably bathrooms once upon a time and then hurried north. Natalie led us toward a place she knew of that used to be a bandit hideout before the Chicago enclave drove them out and I focused on covering our tracks. The light snow would help, but it’d still take several hours before our tracks were completely covered unless I did something to help it along. Simply smoothing the snow out was enough, though, since the falling snow would quickly mask any traces of human intervention.

We made good time and didn’t find so much as a trace of other humans, so we managed to get to Natalie’s temporary hiding spot in the late afternoon without being spotted. While I put a little more work into concealing any trace of our passage into the build, Natalie took our thermal sensor and made sure our little hideout was secure. Once we were both done, we joined everyone else inside and started passing the hours. At first, we all slept. This was our first time with more than a bit of nylon between us and the snow, so it felt nice to be able to move in and out of out tents without worrying about letting snow in as we moved from sleeping to guard duty.

After the first twenty hours of resting passed, people started getting squirmy. I broke out the cards and got a few games going while we waited, but those only lasted another couple of hours. When people started arguing, I got everyone together for a meal and we shared stories as we sat around in the cold, abandoned office building. Since there hadn’t been much opportunity before, due to me keeping on eye on the Laborers, I shared my story about the beginning of the Collapse and listened to the Nomad’s leader, Brianna, share her stories of life before the end of society as she once knew it and how she missed the brief golden age when it seemed like Humanity was going to prosper until the universe ended.

It was really interesting to compare her perspective to my own. She was about twenty years older than me, so she had a very different take on the world I knew growing up, seeing more of the good in it than I had. Even though she saw the Collapse coming from the same time I did, she reacted slower because she believed that Humanity wouldn’t be taken down that easily. It made me a little sad to listen to her as wistfulness and a sense of loss crept into her voice as she talked about the potential that we had squandered.

Once her voice fell silent, one of the younger adult Nomads pulled the kids aside and started telling some more fun and light-hearted stories. Everyone else stayed in the circle and talked about Humanity’s current potential and our likelihood of long term survival. When that headed down a dark path, Brianna started talking about all the food she missed and how excited to she was to go into an Enclave where some of that food might still be available. From then on, everyone shared a story about their favorite foods or fun events that had involved food.

After all the stories were told, everyone settled down to sleep again. I took the last watch and woke everyone up at about ten in the morning on the day we were supposed to meet up with Camille. While everyone got ready, I went over our little group’s fighting and scouting plans with Brianna, Natalie, Tiffany, and Gregory–the Wayfinder Camille has left us to help protect the group.

It was a simple plan. Brianna would keep the Nomads organized and enforce my commands. Natalie would pick out route, making sure no detours took us too far from our path. Tiffany would scout ahead, since she was the stealthiest, even without her hand, and Gregory would stay a little bit behind her, ready to spring into action if she needed help or if there was someone who was in our way. I’d stick with the sled and focus on relaying communication between everyone and taking care of any small, isolated threats that poked their head out while we were in motion.

It was a tense four hours as we walked through the snowy city to find Camille and the other Wayfinders, but it went smoothly. There was only one scouting patrol we had to take down, and Gregory handled the whole thing by himself after Tiffany had alerted him. When we got to the rendezvous point Camille had set, we found her sitting out in the open, gun on her shoulder, as she smirked at us.

“What did I say, Cap? They ran without firing a single bullet!” Her smirk grew larger.

“Really?” I looked at her and took in the fact that she still hadn’t really taken her attention off the area outside past her seat. “Looks like you’re making things up so you sound more badass.”

“I’ll admit they shot a few bullets at us, but the they certainly didn’t hurt anyone. We snuck in the back entrance the Nomads had escaped through, killed their commanders, dealt with a little bit of wild shooting once they realized their bosses were dead, and then chased them out. We won’t find much by way of supplies since they grabbed most of the food as they went, but it’s safe and warmer than anything I’ve felt in what feels like years.”

“Sold.” I stepped forward and hauled Camille to her feet. “Let’s go get us some well-deserved rest. You especially.”

“Did they have actual beds?” Natalie took Camille’s pack and slung it over her shoulder.

“No, just giant bundles of feathers that aren’t really beds. They smell kinda funny.”

“That’s what a feather mattress is, Camille. A funny-smelling gigantic bundle of feathers. Though I thought they only came in pillow variety.”

“You’d be surprised at how literal I’m being.”

“You’ll have to show me. It sounds more comfortable than a sleeping bag and the ground, though.”

I watched the two of them walk off for a moment before signaling everyone else to follow. As we walked toward the Nomads old home, I could see their spirits lift and I found myself praying to all the gods I’d ever heard of, once again. This time, I prayed that they wouldn’t be horrified at what they saw when they got there. And that Camille had the foresight to clean up the mess she must have made for a bit before we departed. Whatever happened, I was looking forward to being able to walk around without my thermal gear on and actually sleeping without a tent around me, for once.

Tabletop Highlight: When You get a Little Minmax in Your Roleplaying

Wren 5 Comments

As a player of Dungeons and Dragons, I prefer to roleplay. I like the idea of coming up with a novel character concept and sticking to a personality I’ve devised to fit that concept, no matter what. What can make me frustrating for other GMs, though, is my propensity for focusing on excelling at one or two particular things. Given my understanding of the game, I’ve found it relatively easy to maximize my potential for a couple specific things that fit my character concept, such as the 3.5 edition Scout who could move 210 feet as a move action (that’s 120 miles an hour in 3.5 rules) or the fifth edition rogue who couldn’t fail a search, perception, or trap disabling check thanks to high modifiers and the skill that lets you get no lower than a ten on your check for a certain set of skills.

While this falls short of outright min-maxing–the act of using the game’s rules in such a way to sacrificing things of minimal importance in order to maximize your character’s more important abilities, also known as “optimization”–it can still be a little jarring for people to deal with. Sure, I don’t do something crazy like sacrifice my character’s ability to spell their name right or make friends on purpose in order to increase their total skill, but I’ve clearly found some loophole or another I can exploit in order to game a rather ridiculous benefit. Fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons did a good job of cutting down the potential for loopholes, but 3.5 is the best edition for it since there are so many wonderful ways to break the game if you really want to.

For my part, I don’t really mind it when my players do a little bit of minmaxing so long as they can justify their reasons for doing it or how their character got it. The paladin wants to take a special feat that lets him add his Charisma bonus to his damage in exchange for his ability to use Turn Undead? Sure, we’ve already established he’s got a close relationship with his god since he’s one of a select group of Paladins who serve that minor deity directly so it makes sense that the god would direct him toward being able to better slay evil. The rogue wants a sword made of a material I’ve never heard of, that can only be found and forged on one of the deep layers of the lower plains which technically doesn’t exist in my world thanks to the customization of the planes. Sorry, no can do since the very material itself would be counted as evil and the current laws of Heaven and Hell prohibit the export of materials to the mortal plane. If he wanted to make a trip to one of the layers of Hell in order to get that material, then we could talk. But there’s no way some random shopkeeper in the capital city of a federation pretty much run by a lawful good religion is going to stock a material literally made out of compressed evil. The black market might have it, but then how can you trust it is what you want? And it’s likely they’re not just carrying it around, so you’d need to go on a minor quest to get it and then you have to deal with the Paladin who is already one his last straw thanks to the Hellhound you bought on the black market and trained to be your hunting dog.

Hell, my party’s Scout has the highest Armor Class in the party because his main attribute is Dexterity, the rules allow scale mail to be made into light armor if you’re a particular prestige class (some dragon champion thing that I’m forgetting the name of because I tweaked it to fit my world), and he got reincarnated as a Bugbear the last time he died. He got really lucky and a bunch of stuff came together to put his AC through the roof. If he’d down it on purpose, I’d have taken him aside and told him no since no ninth level character should have an AC of thirty-one (or thirty-five if he’s moving), but it was just the culmination of chance and some custom stuff he and I’d put in the game.

In this case, role-playing and minmaxing work out since the whole theme of this game is to make the players feel like they’re ridiculously over-powered. They’re supposed to be able to reshape the world by tenth level because I want them to eventually fight gods or demons and Ancient Dragons. They’ve encountered plenty of powerful NPCs as well, which helps them feel like their extreme power is more in line with the rest of the world. My big rule is we can work out pretty much whatever they want so long as they can justify it in-game. Which means the Paladin is basically an honor guard of a god, the Scout is the chosen champion of an Ancient Dragon, and the Rogue/Assassin has a dagger that can cut through anything and potentially drain souls, in addition to becoming a business magnate between dungeons. To be entirely fair to the rogue, he’s probably stuck the most to role-playing since he’s not sure how he can make his character as powerful as the Paladin and the Scout, but they all do it really well. The Paladin has been on his current course of serving this god since before first level and the Scout has setting himself up to be a slayer of evil dragons since his conception. The Rogue has had the most change in his character’s journey throughout the two and a half years we’ve been playing, so it makes sense that he isn’t as hyper-focused as the other two are.

As long as your intentions are good and you’re not doing it to break the game or mess with the GM, I don’t really have a problem with character optimization or minmaxing. There’s a fine line between breaking the game and minmaxing, but it’s there and I’ve known plenty of people who have managed to walk right up to it without crossing it. The best ones have always been people who were in it for the roleplaying. I wonder if that’s a coincidence or a startling insight. Let me know if you’ve had cases of good roleplaying going hand-in-hand with character optimization or if your experiences have differed! I’ve love to hear your stories!

Babysitting

Wren 3 Comments

“You sure you’re going to be alright watching our little girl for a week?”

“I’m a professional!”

“But you’re an accountant.”

“Yes, but I did this throughout high school and college.” I smiled and walked inside, suitcase in tow. “I’ve got everything covered.”

“If you’re sure…” Felicia smiled and stepped aside. “Anthony will be back shortly, so I’ll give you the run-down.”

I took the piece of paper she handed me. “Doctor’s office, insurance information, and allergies?”

“All there, no allergies.” Felicia tapped the paper. “There’s plenty of food in the fridge, she likes her wet food. If she gets fussy, there’s some dry stuff in the cabinets, but she’s rarely fussy.”

“Sounds like she’s an ideal baby.”

Felicia smiled. “She’s a doll. So well-behaved, loves to talk but never cries, eats well, and never has accidents.”

“She’s potty-trained?”

“Of course she is. She’s over a year old. Why wouldn’t she be?”

“Wow. That’s incredible!”

“I guess.” Felicia looked over her shoulder. “I just cleaned everything, so you should be good for a week. If she makes a mess, there’s some supplies in the bathroom.” She pointed to a door. “She still throws up sometimes, but not as much as she used to now that we switched to her current diet.”

“Sounds good!” A car pulled into the driveway. “Tony’s here.”

“Right! Suzy is in her room, sleeping. I said goodbye a minute ago. Go check on her in a bit and let me know if anything happens. Bye, Jordan!”

Felicia grabbed her suitcase and ran out the door. I waved as she rode away with Tony. A few minutes later, after I unpacked my bag, I crept into Suzy’s room to check on her. A minute later, Felicia picked up her phone and I screamed “Suzy is a cat?”

Saturday Afternoon Musing

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Some days, what you really need is to hang out with a new friend online and repeatedly punch each other in the face during a custom PVP match only to eventually betray each other with ridiculously over-powered guns so that you both wind up fighting over who gets the ammo for the over-powered guns by returning to punching each other once again.

That was my evening. Well, the end of my evening. Played a lot of other games before than and actually did some more progress-oriented stuff in Destiny 2 before inviting a new clan member to a private PVP match so we could punch each other more effectively. I mean, you can totally still punch people when they’re on your team and you’re wandering around a planet shooting bad guys, but there’s never a winner. It doesn’t do damage. No friendly fire in Destiny 2, thank goodness. My clan’s favorite pastime, while we’re waiting for an event to start or for someone to complete a platforming puzzle, is to shoot each other or try to knock each other off of stuff using melee attacks. It’s a good time.

Really, though, what helped the most last night was being able to just relax with my friends and do something that engaged my attention. Additionally, since I don’t have any plans for this weekend, I was able to just read until I finally felt tired enough to sleep. If I’d had plans today, I’d have stressed out about the fact that I couldn’t sleep until about half past one in the morning because I would have needed to wake up and get out of bed at a certain time. Sleeping in and having a leisurely, quiet morning that ended in me playing a few hours of World of Warcraft was so relaxing. I didn’t need to think about anything, there was nothing going on for me to plan or anticipate, just the calm meandering from one task to another that is a big breakfast, kitchen cleaning, and using up all the bonus XP my character in WoW got because I didn’t play for almost a week (which is a great feature, by the way, I really enjoy the fact that I basically got a free level’s worth of XP for not playing).

It’s been almost twenty-four hours since I gave up trying to process how I’m feeling and started focusing on just escaping for a bit. Coping instead of dealing with it, really. I can still feel it there, sitting inside me and demanding attention, but it’s sorta like the feeling your eyes get when you’re tired. It’s easy to ignore as long as I’m staying focused on something. At this point, though, part of me wants to move on to processing it. I’ve taken a bunch of time away from it, gotten a lot of sleep, and recharged as much as I can in a day. I might go for a walk first, as well, just to solidify my peace of mind by spending some energy on a relaxing activity. The weather never got as bad as they predicted it would, so today’s warmth and sun would be quite enjoyable.

That being said, I’m living in a city that’s been devastated by the flooding. I don’t really think I could go on much of a walk without running into signs of the damage. Dealing with it on foot, though, when I’ve got the ability to just pause and consider what I’m seeing rather than just the glimpses I catch in my car as I drive back to my unaffected home, might make it easier to handle. Or perhaps even help me process it. Walking has always helped me work through things and maybe that’d be the ideal venue for processing this feeling rather than meditation. Meditation can be isolating and a lot of my feelings are tied up in a sense of disconnect from the problems plaguing my community, so maybe entering more fully into it would be good. Plus, I haven’t gone into town since Tuesday afternoon, when everything was settling from “dangerous” to “safe, but still destroyed.”

I kind of miss the places I used to walk when I was in college. The town was small, like my current town, but more developed. There were sidewalks everywhere and streetlights often enough that I never worried about being unable to see my environment. Plus, that neighborhood was entirely suburban. It sprawled out, taking up a huge amount of space, because it was a suburb of Green Bay and most people commuted to work in the city rather than anywhere in their town. Plus, it had all the benefits of being a college town without being constantly full of students. I went to a small college, some twenty-five to twenty-eight hundred students, so I was pretty much the only person wandering around late at night when I couldn’t sleep and the few quiet stargazing spots on campus weren’t doing the trick. It really was such a peaceful town. I miss it.

I miss a lot of things about my life before I moved to the Madison area. I miss the sense of peace and possibility I had back then, when it seemed like I’d be able to do anything if I just worked at it long enough. I miss the confidence I had when I considered my future and the ultimately naive way I thought everything would be alright in the end if I just pushed through. Now, I know things will always work out in the end, but frequently not in the way we wanted them too and all too often in a less-than-positive way. I don’t know anything about my future or what I really want out of life, so I just focus on what I think is best for me and what goals I want to accomplish now. I know I can’t do everything, but I’m also much more certain of my ability when it comes to things I know I can do, like writing.

It’s been a long four years and eight months, but this place is home now. Even if I do miss where I went to college, I’ve got a lot more invested in this city. Maybe I’ll eventually find places to walk that I’ll love as much as De Pere, Wisconsin, but I know I already enjoy being able to walk around downtown or through the numerous parks in Madison. Or just through the “downtown” parts of my little suburb. There are plenty of sidewalks there and a bunch of benches that should no longer be submersed. Maybe I’ll bring a book and sit on one of those for a while. That’d be pleasant.

 

Sometimes, I’m Still Sick a Week Later

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If you read last week’s post, you’ll remember that I stressed myself out to the point of actually making myself sick. Well, with everything that’s gone on since then, I haven’t actually gotten much better. I can breathe through my nose, now, but only as a result of a steady application of DayQuil and tea. I’ve been sleeping more and resting way more than usual, but the flooding happening in my area has erased a lot of the benefits of the rest I’ve been getting.

Thankfully, I’m completely safe. I got a little water in the basement and was unable to go to work for a few hours, but that was it. What’s been stressful (and I recognize this is an extremely privileged problem to have during a natural disaster like this one) is trying to figure out how I feel about everything that’s happened. People down the street from me had to rip all the carpeting out of their basement because they had standing water. Go less than a mile away and there are people whose entire basements filled with water, people who had to be evacuated from their home, and streets that have been destroyed. There’s even a bridge that’s been half washed away. And I’m fine. I live at one of the highest points in the area so I escaped entirely unharmed. the biggest inconvenience was the loss of power while I was trying to make dinner on Monday night.

There’s nothing I can do to contribute to the flood relief efforts because I’m sick and my depression is at its worst so far this year. I can’t contribute money because I’m basically broke and I barely have anything useful to spare in terms of item donation. I replace most of my crap by asking for it as presents. I wish I could help but I’m effectively powerless other than writing something about it and even that isn’t working very well because I spent all night and day trying to come up with something for today’s poem post but ultimately failed to finish anything because I feel like all my creative energy has dried up. I feel like I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel and nothing I can come up with is any good. I’ve got five stanzas of something that’s clearly unfinished but I can’t even tell what’s wrong with it because my insides shrivel up every time I look at it.

Poetry is about emotional expression to me. Something I’m feeling captured in words and brought out where I can look at it outside of myself. Right now, I can’t even figure out how I feel. I know I’m feeling something and that I’m feeling it strongly, but every attempt to confront it or start processing it accomplishes nothing and leaves me more drained than before. It’s like trying to lift a heavy lead blanket off of something when you’re already so tired you can barely keep standing and you’re only this tired because you’re carrying whatever’s covered in the lead blanket.

I think it’s partly because I feel powerless to address what’s going on in the world. There’s nothing I can do to effectively contribute to the flood relief going on where I live, and there’s nothing I can do to address the severe weather that’s contributing to (and possibly causing) the flooding because global warming is a problem for all of humanity to address but all the people with the power to do anything about it are busy fucking around with their heads in the sand. The current administration of the US Government is literally marching us further and further toward destruction, they’ve abandoned the rule of law, they stand for nothing but personal gain, and just thinking about everything that’s happened in the past three years has made me want to vomit. Sometimes, it feels like the world is ending and I can’t tell what point there is in fighting it since my only weapons are words almost no one sees.

So much has happened since I graduated from college and moved to Madison and it’s all been a daily reminder that I don’t really matter and the power of words is ephemeral and fleeting when it can be felt at all. My old job, some of my relationships, old roommates, the current government, people leaving, the reasons people leave, and natural disasters that feel surreal because my life hasn’t changed but a guy has died and thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes, all of which is happening only a few miles from me. For the most part, I feel like my life is just a thing that’s happening and all I can do is try to keep my head up as it carries me wherever it goes. I know that feeling isn’t entirely true, but it’s hard to push that feeling away when my birthday present to myself is using the money I’ve saved up to pay off my car loan so I can start putting more money toward my other debts. Paying off my car loan is great, but all the extra room it creates in my finances is just getting sucked into my other debt. It’s exhausting to be working toward something for half a decade now and feel like I’ve made almost no progress. It’s exhausting to look at the enormity of the world’s problems and know that I can’t change anything unless everyone else agrees that we should change it.

I’m tired. I’m going to go to bed early and rest up this weekend. Hopefully I’ll be able to sort out my emotions over the next few days so I can finally get back to feeling productive again. This blog might not do much in the grand scheme of things, but my words are all I’ve really got and I believe that I can eventually effect some small change even if it takes me banging my head against a wall until the wall breaks. I’m not going to give up trying to change things, but it’s hard to keep hoping I’ll eventually be able to change anything when I look back at the past five years and can’t figure out what’s changed for the better.

Like All Gasses, My Steam Library Expands to Fill All Available Space

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As a young, single adult with a modest amount of disposable income and a keen desire to get the most bang for my buck, I frequently took advantage of Steam sales to add a huge variety of games to my Steam library. Over the course of each year, I’d add any interesting games to my wishlist and, whenever I receive an email notifying me that an item on my wishlist is on sale, I buy the game if it is at least 50% off listed price. During big sale events, I will buy games with a smaller discount, but only if I’m out of big titles to play.  For instance, I still haven’t bought Dark Souls 3 because I haven’t even beaten the first one yet and I still occasionally dip into Fallout 4 since I’ve never actually beaten that, either. I’ve made it to level 100, but I’ve never beaten it because there’s just so much else to do. Which feels a lot like looking through my Steam library for something to do.

While I don’t have as many games in my library as some of my peers (one woman I know has over a thousand games in her Steam library), I’ve played maybe a dozen of them. I’ve installed well over 20% of them, but most of the time I wound up uninstalling them to make room for some other game on my hard drive. Every time I look through my library of unplayed games, I think to myself how fun they all look. Yet every time I’m looking for something to do, I invariably return to games I’ve already played or decide to put another dozen hours into Fallout of Borderlands 2. I started playing Broken Age a few months ago because I thought it’d be super fun to review, but I stopped playing to go hang out with my friends at one point and I’ve never gotten back to it. Half my library are low-commitment games, from 2-10 hours of projected playtime, so I shouldn’t have any qualms about committing to a new game since it’ll be over in a day or two of playing anyway.

But I do. I have tons of qualms. I’d like to chalk it all up to my depression and my habit of berating myself if I “waste” time when I could be doing something productive, but I feel like that’s just being unnecessarily harsh on myself. Sure, those things are contributing factors, but the real reason is that I’m a sucker for sales. A good demo makes me want to throw money at the people who made it and Steam is an excellent platform for introducing people to good demos and then providing them with an easy way to justify throwing money at it. “It’s on sale. If I buy this game, I’m only spending five dollars instead of twenty, so I should take advantage of this sale.” Never mind the fact that I don’t even really want a new game, much less need one. The whole idea of having sales works out perfectly, since it’s getting me to spend money I otherwise wouldn’t. Steam makes millions off of people like me who buy games they’ll never play and I’m sure the developers enjoy the income as well, even if it often doesn’t give them what their game is worth.

Honestly, I still plan to go through my library at some point and play all the games in it. The only problem is I choose not to do that now because I’ve got other things I’d like to do and I’m pretty certain I’ll have other things I’d like to do. I keep envisioning a future when I’m a successful writer and can write as my day job so I don’t have to cram it all into my evenings, leaving me time for stuff like regular gaming and exercise. I’d get so much more fun stuff done if I wasn’t spending all of my free time trying to work on my dreams. Which, you know, is fun, but it’s not the same kind of thing. Writing is still work and it always will be. It takes something out of me. Gaming only takes my time and, if it’s a good game, gives me so much more back. Which is why I always buy the games that look like they’ll do that for me when they go on sale. If I ever reach this hypothetical future I keeping envisioning, I want to make sure I didn’t miss out on the chance to buy a wonderful game for a bargain.

One thing I’ve learned after over a year of owning a Switch is that I’d much rather play games on a high quality mobile system than something chained down like a desktop computer. Even a laptop is more constraining that I’d like since I need a surface to put the laptop on and carrying a gaming laptop around can be a real pain in the back. If there was a way to play all of my little, low-requirement games on a mobile system, I’d probably play more of them. As more of them get re-released on the Switch, I’m starting to wish I hadn’t spent the money on them already. There isn’t much I’m willing to buy twice and anything I like enjoy to buy more than once is likely something I’m willing to sit down at my computer to play. Like Borderlands 2. I own the four-player console version and the computer version because sometimes people want to hang out together while hunting treasure and shooting bandits.

In more recent years, Steam has started edging its way into the hardware market with mixed success. I can’t deny their products are excellent in concept, it just often feels like their execution is lacking. Sure, the Steam Controller is nice, but that’s just another controller to use with your computer. Their living-room PC seemed really cool, but it seems to be suffering from a certain lack of interest from the general public. I know they dipped their toes into the Virtual Reality market, but there’s so much competition that they got lost in the crowd. The technology is still mostly in its gimmick phase, so it makes sense that there wasn’t really much Steam could add that some competitor couldn’t do better since hardware is still a side business for Steam. If they come out with a handheld or super mobile computer… then I think they might be able to break into the market. And possibly dominate it, since you’ll be able to play so many great games you’ve already bought.

Until that day, I’m probably going to change my rule to seventy-percent or more as my cut-off for buying games since I really need to slow down my acquisition rate to something I can actually keep up with. Otherwise, with how many good games are going to be going on sale soon, my Steam expenses are going to expand to fill all available space in my budget.

Exposition X And X Narration X The X Anime

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For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Anime Hunter X Hunter, the title of this blog post is reference to how the show titles all of their episodes. And also a reference to the two biggest parts of the show that might as well be characters. In terms of story, Hunter X Hunter is an adventure show about a young boy joining an elite group of dangerous people called “Hunters” in order to find his father who abandoned him when he was a baby. Gon, the abandoned hero, makes a few friends along the way and constantly impresses people with his superhuman strength and sense until he complete his exam, becomes a hunter, and is introduced to the world his father inhabits, a world filled with people far stronger than him which exists a step removed from the world he used to know. To be specific for those wanting to look up this anime, I’m reviewing the much longer series that premiered in 2011, rather than the earlier and shorter series. That’s the one my roommate introduced me to, the same roommate who introduce me to My Hero Academia, so I’m not entirely sure what to make of his taste in Anime anymore.

Now, to be entirely fair, he didn’t talk Hunter X Hunter up nearly as much as he talked up My Hero Academia. He admitted there are some serious issues with the later episodes and that it isn’t as strong as some of the other ones he’s recommended, but it has held a special place in his heart for a long time and it’s actually pretty fun to watch. It has frequently defied my expectation when it comes to the story and I’ve enjoyed watching a large number of the crazy characters in this show wind up being surprisingly sane. An assassin bonds with his son, a martial arts instructor acts to help a pair of young fighters who are in over their heads, and two incredibly strong children are actually children who play around and get up to trouble between being ridiculously overpowered. It’s very refreshing to see it stray away from a lot of the more frustrating adventure anime tropes and to create an insane world occupied by sane people.

If it weren’t for two things, I’d love this anime. As it is, they are making it difficult to enjoy the show at times. If it weren’t for the constant exposition, often delivered by going over events that just occurred multiple times, and the steadily increasing amount of narration, I’d definitely recommend this anime to everyone who doesn’t mind ridiculous fights, stupidly powerful characters, and a hero whose main weapon is a fishing pole with an apparently unbreakable line.

While the show is rather complex, introducing some really fun concepts like the Hunter organization, a plethora of unique animals who inhabit an incredible dangerous world, magical beasts of all kinds who live in the same step-removed world as the incredible strong people, and some rather complicated and open-ended powers called “Nen,” it gets really bogged down in the details. When Nen is introduced, they just go over it countless times. While initially peppered my roommate with questions about how Nen works and what it means, the Anime answered all of those questions and more. Multiple times. In one episode. There’s literally a point where we watch a fight, get one guy’s ability explained to us in exhaustive detail by his foe as a means of psychological warfare, see the end of the fight, get the other guy’s powers explained in excruciating detail as a flashback aside by a mysterious healer who came to fix him up, and then go over them again as the hero and his friend learn about Nen from the kind man who has taken them under his wing. I was so bored and the flashback felt like it took an entire episode. If this was the first time this had happened, where the show went over ground it had just covered, I’d forgive it, but this is becoming a theme.

In the same vein, the amount of narration is getting tiring. While there is a narratorial voice who sets up and concludes each episode, the show itself does a ton of narration through the characters. In writing, there’s this phrase, “show, don’t tell,” that’s supposed to help people keep in mind that they should show the characters acting rather than just narrate through a scene. This anime does both. It shows and then it tells like it didn’t show you just a minute ago. This is heavily tied to the exposition I mentioned since the worst of it, the flashback exposition, is handled by a character narrating whatever happened. There are much more natural ways to show what happened. Heck, if they’d just gone over the fight as the two young heroes learned from their teacher and explained it all that way, it still would have made sense and then it would have been explained in a place it made sense to talk about what happened. I’ll admit that I just watched this happen a couple of hours before writing this review, so I’m still a little frustrated and steamed with the show.

I’m still going to watch more of it, though. I’m willing to sit through some odious exposition and unnecessary narration in order to find out what happens next. While the characters motivations are fairly basic–finding a father, getting revenge for the death of your family, financing your education so you can become a doctor, and trying to find meaning outside of what you’ve always been told you’re meant to be–the show explores them in a rather novel way. Gon wants to find his father, but he’s not in a hurry and he is very much committed to living his own life even if that means setting aside his quest to find his father for a while. Leorio, the teenager who looks like an adult, is willing to risk his life and harm people in order to become a doctor who can afford to freely give out the medicine that would have saved his childhood friend’s life. The child assassin, Killua, will kill whoever he needs to in order to explore life as a normal kid with friends. Kurapika, the last surviving member of his clan, will sacrifice his own life if it means getting a shot at a member of the band of thieves called the “Phantom Troupe.” Of them all, Kurapika’s story is the most cliché and ordinary, but he’s an angry child trying to take out a group of the strongest people in the world and the show has already proven that it’s not afraid to let the stars get the crap kicked out of them so I have high hopes he’s not just going to “fighting spirit” his way to victory. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but I’m a little bored of the trope. Just a personal preference thing, but it feels like it’s often used to let a character set up to be weaker than someone else win a fight they shouldn’t be able to.

I’d recommend watching the show for the characters, the interesting world, and the plot, but make sure to keep the remote handy so you can skip forward a bit once the boring exposition and narration shows up. Also maybe don’t watch every episode because I’ve heard the narration gets terrible toward the end. I don’t know for sure yet, since I’ve only watched thirty-four episodes. If the show changes a bunch before I stop watching, I might do a second review. There’s certainly been enough show in the episodes I’ve seen so far to justify doing a second one once I’ve watched more. I barely touched on the Hunter organization, the crazy exam people need to take in order to become Hunters, and the insane people who run it in a surprisingly formal and normal–if deadly–way. Let me know if that sounds interesting to you. I always need more stuff to review.

Coldheart and Iron: Part 25

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READ FROM THE BEGINNING

We spent a whole day resting in the forest. We were too worn out to move right away and I’m pretty sure Camille and the Wayfinders who had been fighting alongside her for six days would have rebelled if I’d even suggested it. We all slept, made plenty of food, and tried to recover as much as we could before we moved on the following day. After about a week, Natalie told me about an old warehouse we could shelter in for a few days, so I could do a better job of checking everyone’s injuries and maybe clear some of the injured Wayfinders to be able to start walking again.

Thankfully, the warehouse was clear and already sealed by some other group of Wayfinders. We took a week to rest and I was able to clear everyone to start walking again, though we kept the sleds because they’d need to take breaks to rest every so often until they had recovered their strength entirely. Fifteen days after we started moving again, we finally made it to the western suburbs of Chicago. We still had a couple days of walking to get to the enclave, but there were things we needed to do first.

When we made camp that night, hidden in what used to be a forest preserver, I called a general meeting. We huddled in a large circle with the kids in the center, while I addressed the group.

“We’re moving into the Chicagoland area tomorrow, so we need to abandon the sleds. We’re moving with only what we can carry on our backs and we’re traveling silently. Wayfinders, keep your guns in hand and keep an eye out. We’ll be going slow so the scouts have a chance to check each building before we pass it. Any questions?”

All of the Wayfinders shook their head. Before heading to Madison to pick up the group of Laborers that betrayed us, we’d handled a group headed north out of Chicago toward Milwaukee, so everyone was familiar with the dangers of walking through the crowded areas around Chicago. The Nomads, it seemed, where not as evidenced by the older woman, Brianna, who raised her hand and said “Every building?”

I nodded and leaned forward a bit. “We’ve had a lot of run-ins with bandits hiding in buildings and shooting anyone who walks by. Better safe than sorry.”

“Oh.” Brianna lowered her hand but kept talking. “If we head back to where we used to live and take care of the bandits there, we should be able to find a safer route. Our old home is about a day’s walk north of here and the north side is usually safer than the west side.”

“Thanks, that’s a good idea.” I nodded to Brianna and looked to Camille and Lucas. “If we use their old home as a base and then focus on finding a clear route to the enclave, would that shorten our time?”

“Depends.” Lucas glanced over at Camille for confirmation before continuing. “If there’s actually a safe route, then yeah, it saves us tons of time. If the bandits that pushed them out have taken over the entire area rather than staying focused where they used to live, then probably not. Clearing the buildings won’t be much trouble since most bandits around here know not to screw with Wayfinders since this is one of our primary hubs.”

“I wouldn’t mind having a solid base, though.” Camille shrugged, a difficult gesture while wearing a thermal bodysuit, but one she’d perfected. “Couldn’t hurt to check it out, at least, since we won’t be losing any time no matter what comes out of it.”

“Fair enough.” I turned back to Brianna. “Okay, we’ll do it. We’ll clear out your old home and use it as our base to get back to the enclave. Are you going to want to stay there once we’re done or continue to the enclave with us?”

Brianna looked around at her people and then nodded to me. “I don’t think we’re going to want to stay there very long. We lost a family and friends when the bandits pushed us out, and we’ve lost more since then. I think we’re all ready to give up a little bit of our freedom for the safety of the enclave.”

“Very well. Talk to Lieutenant Camille. She’ll want everything you can give her about the bandits, your base, and the area around it.”

“Of course.”

“Then our current plan is to move out, heading north, in the morning. We’ll take the sleds as far as we can, but mentally prepare yourself to carry everything important on foot. That’s all I’ve got. Have a good night, everyone.”

I watched everyone disperse to their tasks and meals, making sure Camille and Brianna were headed in the same direction, until Natalie walked up to me. “Hey, Marshall. Let’s go get something to eat quick. I wanted to show you something before we settled in for the evening.”

“Alright.” I nodded and followed Natalie to the tent. While I made a quick dinner of dried meat and trail bread warmed over our little gas stove, Natalie pulled out a map and started writing on it. When I brought the food over, she flipped it around to face me.

“Here is the latest map of the area with all of the known bandit nests marked out.” She took the plate I handed her and set it aside, still staring at the map. “What worries me is that there is only one group of bandits that would have moved into the area that Nomad woman was talking about.”

“Yeah? What about it?” I started eating, steadily working my way through tough bread and even tougher meat.

“I can only think of one reason a group that large would move, Marshall.” Natalie started chewing on her lip as she reviewed the maps. “All the other groups are barely a dozen and wouldn’t have the numbers to force anyone out of a permanent home.”

“So we’re going to be fighting a lot of bandits? More than the group that captured us?”

“Maybe? I doubt they’ll put up even nearly that much of a fight, though. They mostly use numbers to control their territory since the number of guns around here is pretty low nowadays. We’ll be able to push them out just fine. That’s not the problem. They problem is why they gave up their territory, Marshall.”

“Which would be?” I looked more closely at the map Natalie had spread out and my dinner almost came right back up when I noticed the two areas she’d been talking about. “Wait…”

“Right next to their old territory was a landing area. If they were forced to leave, that probably means something finally came out of it.”

“Shit.” I put aside my food picked up the map. “I thought the landing areas were the initial spots all the monsters showed up in. Didn’t the Waukegan one empty out like all the others, in the first wave?”

“Nothing ever came out of it. There were four other landing areas around Chicago and that was more than enough to nearly destroy the city. That’s the only reason the Chicago enclave is in as good shape as it is. They managed to fight off the first attack and build defences before the second one. But if they Waukegan landing area is finally emptying out, then that means there’s a ton of monsters spread out in the north.”

“So we might get up there and find everything swarming with a fresh load of monsters. Enough to destroy a large town.”

Natalie shook her head slowly, and then looked up at me as she shrugged. “I don’t know. They were given specific commands at the start, but we know their targeting words based on signals. If they started operating now, it’s possible they marched straight for Chicago and were destroyed. It’s just as possible that they’re just milling around the landing area because there are no signals to guide them. It’s possible they detected a signal from somewhere else and went in search of it. It’s even possible the bandits just wanted someplace new to live because they’d picked their territory dry.”

Natalie took the map back from me and set it down. “All I know is that we need to be ready for this to be worse than just a bunch of bandits who’ll run as soon as we start killing them.”

I scooted over to her side and gave her a hug. “Of course. I’ll go tell Camille so we can make sure we’re ready for whatever comes out way. In the meantime, you eat your dinner.” Natalie smiled and hugged me back.

After getting back into my thermal suit, I hustled through the snow to the Nomad tents and started knocking on tent poles until I found Brianna and Camille. After pulling Camille aside to tell her about Natalie’s suspicions, I let the two of them get back to work. I found Lucas with his scouts, discussing strategy, and did the same thing. After that, I returned to my tent and joined Natalie for an hour of quietly holding each other as we softly talked through our fears for the next few days.

The next several days, until we finally made it to the Chicago enclave, would be incredibly busy and it was unlikely we’d get any time to ourselves until we were safe behind their walls, so we tried to make the most of what we had left. She talked about her fears of being overrun by monsters and I shared my fears of being unable to get us to safety. Right as we fell asleep, still holding each other, I heard her whisper.

“Marshall?”

“Hmm?”

“What if I want to stay in Chicago, too?”

All traces of sleep vanished from my mind. “What?”

“What if I decide to retire, like Lucas?”

“I- I don’t know.”

“Would you stay?”

“I mean, would I- What?”

“Would you stay with me, or keep Wayfinding until you eventually get killed by some bandits or a monster?” Natalie untangled herself and looked up at me, meeting my eyes with a neutral expression on her face. “I know you’re still looking for your family, even if you won’t admit it to yourself, let alone anyone else. I know you want to find anyone left from before all this happened, but would you really keep looking? It has been almost eighteen years since the first landing and the blizzards started.”

“I don’t know.” I looked down at her chin, unable to keep looking her in the eye.

“That’s a cop-out and you know it. You’ve been doing nothing but thinking about this since Lucas brought it up.”

I looked back up for a moment. “Am I that transparent?”

“No.” Natalie smiled at me and rubbed my arm. “I just know you.”

“You’re right.” I rolled over onto my back and pulled Natalie to me. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I really don’t think anyone else is still alive, hiding somewhere. Or, if they are, that I’ll find them at this point. I want them to be, I want to find out that they’ve been hidden inside some city, somewhere, surviving despite the odds. But I don’t think they are. I don’t think I’ve believed they’re alive for years.”

“Then why are you still doing this?”

“I guess I just wanted something to do. The world fell down around our ears and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Now, though, there’s so much I can do. I feel like I should be doing something to help keep humanity going. This is what I’m good at.”

“There’s plenty you could do in Chicago. Train new Wayfinders, help organize the defenses, scout the area to keep it safe for the people who live outside the enclave. You could do a lot of good.”

“I guess.” I took a deep breath and sighed. “I just feel like stopping will mean that they’re dead and gone. As long as I’m looking, it feels like they might still be alive, somehow.”

“Marshall…”

“I know. Believe me, I know.” I rubbed my eyes with my free hand. “I just… I don’t know what I want to do, yet.”

“Okay.” Natalie snuggled up to me again and closed her eyes. “You can always talk to me about it, you know. Whatever you decide, I’ll support you.”

“I love you. Thank you. Whatever you want to do, I’ll support you, too. Even if it means we wind up being apart from each other.”

“I love you, too, Marshall. I promise I won’t make a decision without letting you know. And I haven’t decided yet, either. Lucas just got me thinking.”

I started stroking Natalie’s hair as I closed my own eyes. “Thank you for reassuring me, Nat.”

“Shhh, go to sleep now. We can talk more in the morning but we won’t hear any end of it if Lucas and Cam find us awake and cuddling.” Natalie covered my mouth with her hand as I opened it to respond. “Mar, I said ‘shhh!’”

I smiled underneath her hand and hugged her tightly for a moment before letting my attention drift until I fell asleep. There’d be plenty of time for me to think over the next few days and whatever happens when we get to Chicago would likely influence my decision. No point in worrying about it now.

As I listened to Camille and Lucas return an hour later, quietly chatting as they ate and went to sleep, I was constantly reminded that such things were always easier said than done.

Tabletop Highlight: How Many Players is too Many?

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The first campaign I ever ran started with six players, made its way down to four, and eventually settled at five with one more who’d play once every couple months. The second one had eight. The third one had almost a dozen, but only about six-to-eight ever made it to a session at any given time (it was specifically built for this). My main Dungeons and Dragons group in Madison was six players for a while, but then it shot up to eight and now sits nine after a couple years of jumping around. The campaign I currently run the most frequently, “Broken Worlds,” has three players. I’ve run a campaign for two people, and even ran a one-day campaign for a single player while introducing them to D&D. While a specific idea of a “basic party” exists for D&D, which is what the D&D rules expect when it comes to assessing difficult or setting up appropriate encounters, I have rarely had four players in my group and the party has almost never been “balanced.”

As I’ve said before, a good GM can find a way for any party composition to work, but what could bear saying is that even a good GM can’t always make any size party work. I know a lot of GMs who thrive in that four-to-ten player range, but who absolutely struggle to make the game work for fewer than four. I know a couple GMs who can’t handle more than four or five, but almost prefer the super small groups of one-to-three players. Personally, I struggle with anything over seven players, but can easily handle anything up to that point. What usually gets me is trying to manage combat and player engagement for eight of more people. There’s just so much to keep track of that I often can’t keep the turns going so my players can stay focused or I keep needing to pull people aside so they do their little solo mission because they feel like they’re getting lost in the crowd and thus start doing things alone to force their character to stand out. The latter is a slippery slope if people start doing it for unnecessary stuff, since it usually means more people start to feel like they’re not getting enough of a chance to act so they start doing solo stuff as well and then you might as well be running several small D&D sessions instead of one larger one.

To be entirely fair, that can be a way to manage a large group. If you know there’s a stealth section coming up that the Ranger, Rogue, and Bard want to do without the noisy Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, and Paladin following then around, call a separate session just for the sneaky people. Even if the non-sneaky people are waiting outside to start busting down the gate in the case of an alarm, you can always run the sneaky-people along until they either set off the alarm or finish with whatever mission they’re on. If they set off the alarm, mark down where they are and say you’ll pick it up when everyone is around.

Another thing you can do for player engagement is handle down-time adventures via some text format. There are plenty of forums that are set up for this kind of thing or you can just do it all via email. Heck, you could even do it via text message between sessions. Or set up a session day as half-hour increments of time people can come to you to do whatever they want when they’re in town. That way, they can include other members of the party in decisions or little role-playing moments just by going into the next room and asking for an answer or whatever. Anything works, so long as it’s happening outside of the actual session. This way, the time you’re all together to play is when your party is all together and everything that’d slow your group down is handle at another time.

For combat, managing large groups is trickier. You can tell everyone to have their actions figured out and establish a turn timer, but the longest turns are usually the GM’s turns (well, the turns taken by whatever it is the players are fighting). Because everything in D&D is set up for an optimal four-person group, doubling that number of players can mean that some encounters that should be challenging just aren’t. With a large group, few GMs have their players fight against a single tough monster. Instead, they’ll have them fight more, but slightly smaller, things. Or, as is more common, a huge number of much smaller things instead of the large number of medium things. Here, it gets tricky. If your players are all fighting the same thing, that makes it a little bit easier, but that’s rarely the case. Usually they’re fighting a variety of smaller hings so it’s not all spear-chuckers or sword-swingers or spellcasters. Sure, you can save time by making everything that’s the same move or act at the same time, but that’s still a lot of moving, acting, and rolling you need to do.  All of which needs to happen in addition to managing the players are they react to what is going on and need questions answered. The only real solution I’ve come up to this–aside from having super patient and understand players–is to have a second GM step in.

While that might seem difficult, it usually isn’t. All you really need is a knowledgeable player or someone who you can trust to avoid meta-gaming. If they’re knowledgeable, instruct them to handle player questions about the situation and you likely won’t even need to show them your notes. If you can trust them to avoid meta-gaming, have them play the parts of some (or all) of the enemies. If you get another GM to sit in on your session, then you don’t even need to worry about everything else. Just give them the enemies for the party to fight and make sure you set a reasonable expectation for the other GM on how you’d like the fight handled. If you trust them to mesh well with your game, you might even be able to get them to not only run the enemies, but also create them in the first place. They’ll probably want a little more autonomy then, but that’s not a problem if you trust them to carry your intentions into their monster/enemy creation.

After that, the only real problem you have for large groups is how to keep everyone playing in a friendly manner and where you can get enough seating. I suggest folding chairs and regular potlucks. Can’t hate someone if they feed you regularly. Though, to be fair, this is less likely to be a problem than anything else since GMs should be good at monitoring groups and understanding which people will play together. You’re unlikely to need to deal with inter-player conflict for long, though, since people tend to just leave. Good luck with your big groups and let me know if you’ve encounter similar problems before!