New to the series or certain you’ve missed a chapter? You can find the introduction Here and the table of contents Here.
Continue readingMy 1000th Post: Today is the Day Tears of the Kingdom is Released
As this goes up, I am sitting in the parking lot of my local Best Buy. Either in my car or in the folding chair I keep in my trunk near the door. I think my Pro Controller for my switch is dying, since I’m getting a lot of weird input lag and short bursts of unresponsiveness that seems to be getting worse rather than staying the same or getting better, so I’m going to try to get one of the Tears of the Kingdom themed Pro Controllers if this store has any [they did not, but I managed to order one online that will arrive while I’m in New Jersey]. I’m not sure they will, since there is no guarantee that they’ll actually have in-store units of any hardware these days, now that scalpers buy up everything instantly. If I can’t get it today, I will probably wait to see if they ever restock rather than picking up a normal one. After all, I regretted just buying an OLED switch when I wanted one rather than waiting for what I figured was the inevitable upgrade or special edition unit that I just had to buy.
Continue readingMy (Incredibly Loose) Summer Plans
Now that I’ve finally finalized where and when I’ll be moving next month, I can start to make plans for the rest of the summer. Broad strokes only, of course, since I’m still too far out from any chance to rest to get specific. Gotta pace myself, you know? I don’t want to give myself so much to do that I wind up just exacerbating my current burnout. So I’m mostly focusing on the ways I’ll spend my time in general rather than things tied to specific dates. Which, in my case, means video game plans. After all, there’s a whole lot coming out this summer that I’ve been looking forward to, so it’ll be a good summer for gaming, even if I might want to (eventually) make some plans to get me out of what will hopefully be a much cozier, more comfortable apartment.
Continue readingBurnout Extinguished My Enthusiasm
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom comes out in two days and I’m too tired to be excited about it. Sure, I know I’ll have a blast playing it, but I’m too worn down to feel anything but base acknowledgment of what this impending moment means. I’ve been waiting for this game for six years, ever since I beat Breath of the Wild for the first time and knew there had to be more based on the DLC announcements and the rumors swirling around it. After all, if they had so many great ideas for what else they could do with the game via DLC, then it stood to reason that they’d make another one. Now, six years after that thought entered my head, I only feel more tired when I think about it.
Continue readingMisdirection At The Table
I use a lot of misdirection in my storytelling as a Game Master and as a player in tabletop roleplaying games. It is incredibly fun to put a bunch of information out there, hiding the important pieces behind less important information by taking advantage of knowing that you can only really tell what information is important in retrospect. I usually try to avoid burying what I’m trying to hide in bullshit, since that tends to indicate there’s something I’m trying to hide and I do my best to avoid outright lying about it because it’s not really fair if I’m just going to deliberately steer people in the wrong direction. It is only good, useful foreshadowing and storytelling if people are given the tools and information they need to start figuring things out on their own. Anyone can lie. It takes real skill to tell nothing but the truth in a way that draws attention away from the things you’d prefer people to ignore.
Continue readingMy Streaming Challenge Is Coming To An End, But My Streaming Will Carry On
Today is the fourth and final update on my streaming challenge: to beat The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on Master Mode while only wearing hats. I’ve cleared all the Divine Beasts, beaten all the shrines, fully expanded my inventory by collecting four hundred fourty-one Korok seeds, gotten all the memories, beaten the main plot, defeated Calamity Ganon, and only ever worn clothes when absolutely required to by the plot or circumstance (such as the one or two Korok challenges that require using the Zora armor to complete). I’m also just over halfway through the main DLC questline (which I should finish tonight), and then I’ve got a handful of shrine and side quests to find and complete. I have the Trial of the Sword quest on my to-do list, but that’s still going last since I’ve never once cleared it on Master Mode. It will be my crowning achievement on Wednesday or Thursday evening, should I complete it.
Continue readingInfrared Isolation: Chapter 19
New to the series or certain you’ve missed a chapter? You can find the introduction Here and the table of contents Here.
Continue readingTotal Burnout Is Dragging Me Down
One week from today, I’ll be getting myself to my local Best Buy so I can pick up my copy of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom before returning home to lose myself in a brand new game. I’m very excited for this game, enough so that I’ve had to convince myself not to buy a digital copy of the game as well, so that I can start playing the game the instant it becomes downloadable. It’s difficult to wait, even though there’s literally nothing I can do to make it happen sooner. All I can do is try to be patient as I try to distract myself from the slowly ticking clock. The flip side of this is that time will continue to pass no matter what, so it’s not like I have to do anything in particular to make progress. I just need to work on passing time gracefully.
Continue readingMy Tabletop Roleplaying Game Withdrawal Is Worsening
I am still going through tabletop roleplaying game withdrawal. I went from running or playing in four different tabletop games every week to playing so infrequently that I can count the number of sessions I’ve participated in this year on a single hand. The group I ran for coworkers fell apart as we discussed what to do other than Dungeons and Dragons back in January, when it became clear that everyone just wanted to kill monsters and get loot except for the one player who was interested in storytelling that had just withdrawn from the game for personal reasons. My Sunday group hasn’t faired much better as scheduling issues, combined with a player withdrawing for personal reasons (different player and different reasons) on top of the whole Wizards of the Coast debacle basically destroyed the group. I tried to put a new one together prior to that, but it involved both of the players who had to withdraw for personal reasons so that fell apart as well. I attempted to save the disintegrating group by offering some level of player attendance flexibility using games that didn’t require the same people to play each session, but we’ve yet to meet even once since I can’t get people to commit to a session.
Continue readingProblem-Solving Via Repetitive Work And The Back Of My Mind
I spent my entire afternoon turning something on and then off and then on again. That’s kind of par-to-the-course for my job, since I’m a tester and sometimes what I’m testing is what happens when I turn a thing off and back on. This time, I was helping a coworker chase down a really bad issue he ran into a couple times in the last twenty-four hours. The likelihood of it ever happening was low, but it was a significant enough issue that the off-chance of it happen was so bad that we dropped everything to work on hunting this bug down. After a few hours of work, though, we never managed to reproduce it, which usually means there is another hidden step somewhere in the process that we missed during today’s work. Such is the nature of testing, though. Lots of effort for zero pay off, sometimes, paired with the possibility that we’re going to find the issue the instant we stop looking for it. It can be a tiring, frustrating job at times.
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