Session 0 of the Heart: The City Beneath game went pretty well, I’d say. We got through the initial stages of character building, which has gotten us all pretty much on the same page as to what we’re expecting to see in-game. We talked through a bunch more stuff that might have made it into the Line and Veils list, since everyone now knows the sort of stuff that this game might introduce, but wound up not adding anything. I think I did a pretty good job, through my (just for the vibes, since they were originally produced for a very different game system) setting documents and explanation of the game, of setting the expectations for the group when we picked the game, since no one was surprised by what they found in the book. After that, we talked through our characters a bit more specifically, did a little bit of work to figure out what they’re all about, and then talked through the kind of game we want to play, the stories we want to tell, and what world we want to explore. It was a pretty thorough Session 0, if I do say so myself.
Continue readingStorytelling
Demon Slayer is a Cut Above the Rest
In my on-going quest to actually watch TV shows and movies on my own, rather than wait for the opportunity to watch them with someone, I did a full re-watch of the first two seasons of Demon Slayer and then watched season 3 (called the Swordsmith Village arc). The whole show is visually stunning, and not just in the quality of the animation (which is consistently high, a fact made possible by the lengthy time between each season or arc’s release). Every visual is gorgeous, from the various moves performed by the titular Demon Slayers to the flashy, powerful maneauvers of the more powerful demons. The whole series does a great job of balancing interesting, unique characters, absolutely killer fight scenes, and plot progression, even if the pacing of individual episodes frequently feels off to me. Specifically, some of the episodes hit their mid-episode break with a scene that I feel should have been the end of an episode and sometimes an episode ends at a point where I’d expect to find a quick commercial break. The beat-to-beat pacing is absolutely stellar, though, so I’m not sure there’s much they could do to fix the episode thing and I’m pretty sure it’s just me and my mind’s desire to find patterns in everything.
Continue readingStar Wars Jedi: Survivor Was a Great Sequel
After almost two months of intermittent playing, I’ve finally finished Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. It was a lot of fun, even if I struggled with just how many collectibles there are (though the game gets points for giving you the ability to eventually unlock map icons for all of them) that I just did not care about. Honestly, the thing I was most-consumed with hunting down was enemies, so I could unlock the extensive collection of skills that were made available to me over the course of the game (and I’ve still got about a third of them to unlock despite having run through as much of the game as I care to at this point). The variations in combat options was incredibly refreshing, as was the variation in enemy combatants. Sure, it could be frustrating at times if my loadout was absolutely not the right set of powers and moves to be using in a given combat situation, but the number of options available within those loadouts meant only that I’d need to be a little creative to overcome these limitations. Throw in an interesting plot, some fun references to the greater Star Wars universe, a cast of great characters, and I’m willing to overlook the buggy and visually lackluster experience I had playing the game.
Continue readingWorldbuiling Without Building Anything
One of my favorite parts of preparing for the start of a new tabletop game is the moment when everything crystallizes. Whatever errrant thought, subtle influence, or bright flash of inspiration you needed arrives and suddenly it all makes sense. You can see the strings the world dances upon and understand the way everything moves within it. It is the moment when you go from wondering what might be and pondering unknowns to knowing what is and looking for what might change. In the world I ran in a few Dungeons and Dragons campaigns starting back in 2019, this moment came as I was taking a break from my then-panicked preparations to do something fun and relaxing. I was watching Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse on Blu-ray not long after it was finally available for purchase and the whole campaign setting crystalized around the idea of missing heroes. It was a fairly simple idea, but that last piece of information fitting into the puzzle meant everything else clicked into place as well. Suddenly, I knew what was going on and what everyone was motivated by. It was a relevatory moment and something I’ve enjoyed every time something like it has come up any time I’m considering a story, be it something I’m writing, a tabletop game I’m putting together, or even just a video game I’m playing.
Continue readingNimona Is A Wonderful And Powerful Movie
Last week (when I wrote this), I opted to purchase myself a month of Netflix. I will probably wind up using this month to watch The Witcher and whatever other Netflix stuff I’ve missed over the last few years of not wanting to watch shows by myself (like Stranger Things season 4), but the reason I paid for a month of Netflix was because I wanted to watch Nimona. It hit Netflix on the 30th of June and I knew it was something I wanted to watch, even if I had to do it by myself. I’ve been following ND Stevenson for years and found his posts, comics, and online journaling about his gender identity incredibly informative and helpful. I was excited to see the movie made about the comic that wound up being so unintentionally about his identity and journey, even though I’d never read the comic. It was one of those things that I always meant to read but never got around to reading. Then, when I heard there was going to be a movie I decided to wait until after it came out. I almost broke down and read the comic when the movie got canned by Disney, but wound up being glad I waited when Netflix announced they’d picked it. Now, I’ve watched the movie and am preparing to read the comic (as soon as I have the time required to that, since I’m writing this less than 24 hours after watching the movie).
Continue readingAdding Streaming To My Multi-Media Creative Life Goals
Since returning from my friend’s wedding, I’ve been streaming mostly Wildermyth (and a little bit of Valheim) when I’ve had the time to actually do a stream on my twitch account. It has been a lot of fun, even if I did spend most of my first two streams using OBS at a horrendous 360p, because I’ve been treating it like I’m reading a story to my audience rather than like I’m playing a game. Sure, there’s some combat stuff that occasionally interrupts the story I’m reading, but that’s usually over fairly quickly. The same is true of the overland movement and map unveiling portion of the game (even if I’ve coincidentally spent way more time managing things than I usually do on account of character hook quests pulling my characters to incredibly inconvenient locations). I spent probably forty-five minutes of every hour trying to keep the character’s voices consistent as I read through storytime and the other fifteen minutes managing mechanics. I’m really enjoying myself, even if it’s pretty difficult to manage audience comments and interactions at the same time.
Continue readingSprinkling TTRPGs Back Into My Life
I’ve slowly begun the process of restoring my Tabletop Roleplaying Game schedule. Sure, none of it will start for another week or two at earliest since I’ve still got a move coming up, but it feels nice to have begun the process of making plans. I’ve got a Pathfinder Second Edition game I’m going to be joining with a bunch of people I’ve never met (I got referred to them by a mutual friend) and I’m working on setting up a group in a fun, rot-themed world I made for a different group (whose game is still slowly happening). There’s no reason I can’t have two games happening in this same world, after all. It’s a huge place and some of the underlying stuff I’ve built into it means that it can support a bunch of concurrent games without running into continuity issues. I dunno if my players in either group will every know they’re playing in the same world (all the ones who read my blog will know as a result of this post, of course), but it’s fun for me to consider this. It’s also very unlikely that anything they do with impact each other since I’m trying to keep the games in this world on a smaller scope than I usually do.
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 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 readingYou Should Check Out Friends At The Table. I Just Think They’re Neat.
I spent most of last night (technically the 13th, not the 22nd, since I write these a week ahead of time and then juggled all of this week’s posts around so I could tell everyone how much I enjoyed the Diablo IV beta) watching the Friends at the Table crew (well, most of them) play King of the Castle on Twitch. I participated a little bit, since you can sign up to become a noble in the kingdom playing out on a stream game if the streamer has it set up correctly (and I can’t think of why you wouldn’t, given the fun I had last night), and it was a very enjoyable experience. Between the amazingly accurate Gilbert Gottfried impression, one of the players using a fun voice changer for her roles, and the overall humor of the group, I recommend checking them out (this link is to the YouTube upload of their stream). It was a very fun time and while there will be some loss of fun because you can’t participate in the voting after the stream has ended, it is still a hilarious few hours of a video game that is absolutely worth your time. There’s even a wonderful, friendly troll and a campaign to legalize a plant that makes everyone feel great when they’re around it all the time.
Continue reading