I just realized I haven't posted anything since the New Years post. I'm not even sure why since January has been fairly quiet for me. I think it's just I've been enjoying the first real slow-down I've had in a long time by being lazy.
And I've been doing a lot of writing. I'm not sure why, but I've written over 50 pages worth of content, and one has been a spontaneous project I just...started randomly. Good news with that one is I have pretty much zero attachment to it. I just started it as an exercise with fantasy elements I pull out of my ass, so my focus is still trying to get the project I ACTUALLY want to finish done. Someday.
I have been working on video, however, as I've posted two episodes of Before the Storm (in all it's transitional animation glitches and rubber newspaper glory) as well as continued to upload Pillars of Eternity. I still have about 30 episodes to go, so that will keep me running for a bit. Other than that, my other current projects are going through the Divinity 2 OS footage (which I am going to hold in reserve until we either get far along in it or completely finish it). I need to process Divinity footage as it takes up a lot of space. It's slow work though as I need to splice in audio provided by Mesk as I had a few issues on my end with my mic (mostly self-inflicted as I didn't check the things I was supposed to). Resident Evil 7 is my other priority project since I'm halfway through it and a lot of people seem to be actually interested in it/have been waiting for it...
Heh.
I need to find a good few chunks of time for Diablo 3 this week as there's an event that will be done by the end of the month. Apparently it's something I HAVE to experience, so I may do that with Mesk and HKS on Wednesday this week.
I also cleared some ancient Gauntlet footage off my drives, which I'm unsure if/when I'll be releasing.
Other than the above, been continuing with the Starsworn D&D campaign. Also revived the 4th Edition campaigns I've been playing with Nick and Shauna, only on a less frequent schedule. I'm glad they've continued regardless. It's been like...a 4 or 5 year series of campaigns. I really need to get around to the highlights videos for these. I'm also planning on making a master document for our Starsworn chat logs since it's now a massive document and impossible to find things in decent time. Hopefully this will be useful to the others, or at least a foundation for something better that they can devise.
Showing posts with label Starsworn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Starsworn. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Friday, October 6, 2017
Changes
First off, you may have noticed that I cleaned up the top portion of the blog a bit by removing that text I'm fairly sure no one read as I don't believe many people utilize that link. It has now been moved to a separate page along with a complete list of all LPs I've done to date, as well as some links to the sites and works of people I make LPs with. I may do some additional clean up like this for the bottom portion of the page as well since it's kind of a mess of information.
Next on the news list is I finished Pillars of Eternity. I didn't defeat the Master Below yet, which is something I may try to do again, but the main storyline is complete. I wanted it off my to-do list so I could focus on other projects/start another solo LP. I want to do the new Life is Strange game as well as Lunar-SSS (a request from Shauna). I still need to finish Sonic 2006, but that won't happen until the end of October because...
I'm moving again. This should be a more long-term move. Some stuff came up and I made the decision to move into my grandparent's old home (they moved to assisted living earlier this year). It's got more space and a bigger yard for the puppy which is nice. I think I mentioned this in a previous post, but it's actually a thing now. The remainder of this week will be dedicated to packing up, making sure the new place actually has a floor (we had to rip out all the old carpets cause they were shredded and disgusting due to my grandma's walker) and getting the old place clean and mostly cleared out. That all has to get done this weekend, because next weekend I'll be tied up at a friend's wedding.
With that in mind, we're getting a Starsworn session in tonight and I'll start the process of encoding the last segments of Pillars of Eternity. I have to edit one portion of the video somehow, but the rest will be easy. I also hope to get a little bit of Divinity OS2 in before I leave, mostly because I think HKS and Mesk have been wanting to play.
After these next couple of crazy weeks, I will be starting to get ready for Extra Life. I'll hopefully do an official announcement for that near the end of the month.
Next on the news list is I finished Pillars of Eternity. I didn't defeat the Master Below yet, which is something I may try to do again, but the main storyline is complete. I wanted it off my to-do list so I could focus on other projects/start another solo LP. I want to do the new Life is Strange game as well as Lunar-SSS (a request from Shauna). I still need to finish Sonic 2006, but that won't happen until the end of October because...
I'm moving again. This should be a more long-term move. Some stuff came up and I made the decision to move into my grandparent's old home (they moved to assisted living earlier this year). It's got more space and a bigger yard for the puppy which is nice. I think I mentioned this in a previous post, but it's actually a thing now. The remainder of this week will be dedicated to packing up, making sure the new place actually has a floor (we had to rip out all the old carpets cause they were shredded and disgusting due to my grandma's walker) and getting the old place clean and mostly cleared out. That all has to get done this weekend, because next weekend I'll be tied up at a friend's wedding.
With that in mind, we're getting a Starsworn session in tonight and I'll start the process of encoding the last segments of Pillars of Eternity. I have to edit one portion of the video somehow, but the rest will be easy. I also hope to get a little bit of Divinity OS2 in before I leave, mostly because I think HKS and Mesk have been wanting to play.
After these next couple of crazy weeks, I will be starting to get ready for Extra Life. I'll hopefully do an official announcement for that near the end of the month.
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Fuzzy
Too much been going on lately. Everything has been a crunch to get things done and ready by mid-October that ISN'T video or writing related. Then Kristy made me promise to submit to a writing contest. Then someone else made me promise to submit to a local writing program. I don't have anything prepped for this.
I had to cut D&D short this past weekend and everyone was kind of just flailing since they needed me for a few information points. I would have stayed, but I had family stuff to take care of that night that I got last minute notice for.
Then I needed to plan a trip to Murica for a wedding. Only going to be away for a couple days, so I'm not taking a computer. I don't want the farce that is security touching my laptop if I'm not going to be there for more than a couple days anyway. After I learned that security can seize your electronics and poke around on them and demand passwords, I decided that it's not worth it. I promised I'd be at this wedding and I'm not going to jeopardise my flight privileges/get denied entry into the country because I refuse to let them poke their nose into my privacy. They already get to strip me of my dignity at the security checkpoints. They aren't allowed to look at my personal information.
And what really pisses me off is it does absolutely nothing to make you safer. It's all for show. They haven't caught ANYONE this way. Security at airports is pointless. I know a guy who accidentally forgot a hunting knife in his CARRY-ON bag and they didn't even catch it. This was in the last 10 years too. He walked on the plane with a hunting knife.
And creating more restrictions and telling people what you're looking for doesn't help because smart people will find away to get around your precautions! Especially if they know EXACTLY what your criteria and "detection" methods are.
Why do you think we don't tell people how we know they're cheating on the site I help run?
Yes. This is something that enrages me to my core, especially after they forced my 80 year old grandmother STAND with a healing broken hip while they searched her wheelchair. She was in pain the entire time. Worst she could do to you is tell you about her childhood in Trochu about a 100 times while captive on an airplane for 4 hours. Screw you and your "security".
This is why I hate flying. One of the reasons anyway.
I'm desperately trying to finish my projects and I'm just...all over the place. I tried finishing Pillars of Eternity, which I started around this time last year. I gave up on the Master Below (for now) in the hopes that I'd be able to finish the game and get the majority up on YouTube just to have some closure with that. I mean...I still have approx 40 episodes to post before I run out, but still.
Also played some more Sonic 2006. After about 2 hours of anguish in the desert, I gave up and tried my hand at train hell again. I had stopped caring at that point and somehow facerolled my way through the level and....gasp...PROGRESSED. I still have a significant chunk left and I need to finish the never ending tears of Shadow's desert level again.
I'm not joking. I was 21 minutes in, and it was still going. And that didn't count all the deaths either. 21 unbroken minutes of hovercrafts that you can fly across the world with, sand wave rooms, robot crotches, birds, walking up random walls, sudden camera changes and like 7 checkpoints. Yes. The damn level has at least 7 checkpoints, at least 4 transitions and it was STILL not over. I think I died in part 2 of robot pain. I can't even remember. I blocked it out. I was there for about 2 hours before I returned to the gelatinous blue wonder.
And then I bounced across the water for about 10 minutes before I decided I had wasted enough of my life on the game and went to bed.
I've processed at least another 4 segments of Sonic 2006 for YouTube. I unfortunately forgot to do a Session summary and deleted all the files I was using to edit. I'm too lazy to go through it all and make a new one so I might just skip that session summary.
Working on the next chapter of Dishonored 2. I really just want to process that, Resident Evil 7 and Bioshock Infinite. Remove them once and for all from my hard drives. I'm just drowning in footage.
I had to cut D&D short this past weekend and everyone was kind of just flailing since they needed me for a few information points. I would have stayed, but I had family stuff to take care of that night that I got last minute notice for.
Then I needed to plan a trip to Murica for a wedding. Only going to be away for a couple days, so I'm not taking a computer. I don't want the farce that is security touching my laptop if I'm not going to be there for more than a couple days anyway. After I learned that security can seize your electronics and poke around on them and demand passwords, I decided that it's not worth it. I promised I'd be at this wedding and I'm not going to jeopardise my flight privileges/get denied entry into the country because I refuse to let them poke their nose into my privacy. They already get to strip me of my dignity at the security checkpoints. They aren't allowed to look at my personal information.
And what really pisses me off is it does absolutely nothing to make you safer. It's all for show. They haven't caught ANYONE this way. Security at airports is pointless. I know a guy who accidentally forgot a hunting knife in his CARRY-ON bag and they didn't even catch it. This was in the last 10 years too. He walked on the plane with a hunting knife.
And creating more restrictions and telling people what you're looking for doesn't help because smart people will find away to get around your precautions! Especially if they know EXACTLY what your criteria and "detection" methods are.
Why do you think we don't tell people how we know they're cheating on the site I help run?
Yes. This is something that enrages me to my core, especially after they forced my 80 year old grandmother STAND with a healing broken hip while they searched her wheelchair. She was in pain the entire time. Worst she could do to you is tell you about her childhood in Trochu about a 100 times while captive on an airplane for 4 hours. Screw you and your "security".
This is why I hate flying. One of the reasons anyway.
I'm desperately trying to finish my projects and I'm just...all over the place. I tried finishing Pillars of Eternity, which I started around this time last year. I gave up on the Master Below (for now) in the hopes that I'd be able to finish the game and get the majority up on YouTube just to have some closure with that. I mean...I still have approx 40 episodes to post before I run out, but still.
Also played some more Sonic 2006. After about 2 hours of anguish in the desert, I gave up and tried my hand at train hell again. I had stopped caring at that point and somehow facerolled my way through the level and....gasp...PROGRESSED. I still have a significant chunk left and I need to finish the never ending tears of Shadow's desert level again.
I'm not joking. I was 21 minutes in, and it was still going. And that didn't count all the deaths either. 21 unbroken minutes of hovercrafts that you can fly across the world with, sand wave rooms, robot crotches, birds, walking up random walls, sudden camera changes and like 7 checkpoints. Yes. The damn level has at least 7 checkpoints, at least 4 transitions and it was STILL not over. I think I died in part 2 of robot pain. I can't even remember. I blocked it out. I was there for about 2 hours before I returned to the gelatinous blue wonder.
And then I bounced across the water for about 10 minutes before I decided I had wasted enough of my life on the game and went to bed.
I've processed at least another 4 segments of Sonic 2006 for YouTube. I unfortunately forgot to do a Session summary and deleted all the files I was using to edit. I'm too lazy to go through it all and make a new one so I might just skip that session summary.
Working on the next chapter of Dishonored 2. I really just want to process that, Resident Evil 7 and Bioshock Infinite. Remove them once and for all from my hard drives. I'm just drowning in footage.
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
It Happened
I was waiting for it to happen all summer. We almost made it all the way through when finally, a couple nights ago, a person crashed into the park.
We expect it was a drunk driver this time as they ran away from their car, but I was woken up by someone yelling. I had slept through the impact somehow, which is amazing since it completely totalled the car. The driver seemed to be fine since they got out of their car and fled the scene, but when I went down to look at the impact site the next morning, there's all this cracked concrete everywhere.
Anyway, the person who woke me up was my neighbour a couple doors down. The first thing I hear is him yelling "where you going buddy? You're on camera!" (a bunch of the neighbours finally caved and got cameras pointing at the park it seems). When looking out the window you can see this mangled car there with coolant spewing out of it and this guy just running away down the street. The police showed up like 30 minutes later to clean everything up and tow the car away.
Great response time.
I suspect this will be the last one before I move. Will be moving into my grandparent's old house before the end of the year as it's bigger and is currently available. Also has a bit of a bigger yard for my puppy. The good news is I won't have people breaking into the shed, or pooping in cars, or peeping in the windows, or crashing through the park, or getting lost and blowing out tires when they turn around on the one-way, or singing on the swings at 5am, or screaming at each other about Pokemon, but the bad news is the new location is likely to be a lot less interesting in terms of stuff happening. Maybe I'll just make friends with all the crows in the area and turn them into couriers.
That or make up my own neighbourhood drama and assign roles to everyone. It'll be hard to beat the duplex though...or my previous home with underdressed 80 year old Russians yelling at each other and randomly turning on super bright lights at 2am, or secret grow-ops/party houses who started 6-foot bonfires ON THEIR LAWN WITH PIZZA BOXES and danced around on the roof, or the people that over-watered their lawn to the point that water would pour down the walkway like a waterfall.
So aside from that craziness, started a Divinity: Original Sin 2 LP with HKS and Mesk. We've already managed to murder a few people. It happens it seems. I kept getting side-tracked since I thought the other two were with me. Suddenly they're murdering turtles. Oops. I got a severed head and returned back to them. I'll likely just let them lead in the future so I don't get myself into any unfortunate circumstances.
Also continuing to play Starsworn. Might not get a session in this week because people are terrible at notifying me about plans that have apparently already been made. I feel bad, but I essentially offered up my entire week next week to atone. This week has been filled with birthdays, chats with realtors, medical crap and work. Then this weekend I have my friend Igpy's reading to go to, then Saturday I have more birthday stuff plus helping out a friend. Then Sunday is free until the evening when it would matter, then I have some family commitments.
We expect it was a drunk driver this time as they ran away from their car, but I was woken up by someone yelling. I had slept through the impact somehow, which is amazing since it completely totalled the car. The driver seemed to be fine since they got out of their car and fled the scene, but when I went down to look at the impact site the next morning, there's all this cracked concrete everywhere.
Anyway, the person who woke me up was my neighbour a couple doors down. The first thing I hear is him yelling "where you going buddy? You're on camera!" (a bunch of the neighbours finally caved and got cameras pointing at the park it seems). When looking out the window you can see this mangled car there with coolant spewing out of it and this guy just running away down the street. The police showed up like 30 minutes later to clean everything up and tow the car away.
Great response time.
I suspect this will be the last one before I move. Will be moving into my grandparent's old house before the end of the year as it's bigger and is currently available. Also has a bit of a bigger yard for my puppy. The good news is I won't have people breaking into the shed, or pooping in cars, or peeping in the windows, or crashing through the park, or getting lost and blowing out tires when they turn around on the one-way, or singing on the swings at 5am, or screaming at each other about Pokemon, but the bad news is the new location is likely to be a lot less interesting in terms of stuff happening. Maybe I'll just make friends with all the crows in the area and turn them into couriers.
That or make up my own neighbourhood drama and assign roles to everyone. It'll be hard to beat the duplex though...or my previous home with underdressed 80 year old Russians yelling at each other and randomly turning on super bright lights at 2am, or secret grow-ops/party houses who started 6-foot bonfires ON THEIR LAWN WITH PIZZA BOXES and danced around on the roof, or the people that over-watered their lawn to the point that water would pour down the walkway like a waterfall.
So aside from that craziness, started a Divinity: Original Sin 2 LP with HKS and Mesk. We've already managed to murder a few people. It happens it seems. I kept getting side-tracked since I thought the other two were with me. Suddenly they're murdering turtles. Oops. I got a severed head and returned back to them. I'll likely just let them lead in the future so I don't get myself into any unfortunate circumstances.
Also continuing to play Starsworn. Might not get a session in this week because people are terrible at notifying me about plans that have apparently already been made. I feel bad, but I essentially offered up my entire week next week to atone. This week has been filled with birthdays, chats with realtors, medical crap and work. Then this weekend I have my friend Igpy's reading to go to, then Saturday I have more birthday stuff plus helping out a friend. Then Sunday is free until the evening when it would matter, then I have some family commitments.
Wednesday, September 6, 2017
The Forgotten
So much has happened in the last couple weeks I'm not sure where to start...
Smoke in the air has been consistently bad. I think we had 1 day where I couldn't smell it. It's just been this oppressive hot and smokey hell for the past two months.
Last week the battery for my car fob died and I had to manually unlock my car, which set the car alarm off and it wouldn't stop until I started the vehicle. I get to work that day, run upstairs and find the entire floor deserted. I stand there dumbfounded for a few seconds before I realize that our all-day training must be at a different venue. So I pull up the event on my phone and see that it's just a few blocks away at another building. I rush downstairs and back to my car, which I try to get into again, but this time I can't get the door to unlock and the alarm is just going off. At this point I essentially run away from my car and jog 10 minutes over to the place I'm supposed to be and enter 15 minutes late, tripping over everyone as I move to a seat at the back. Then I was all sweaty for like an hour as the school doodles made a come-back appearance in my notebook.
This week I attended a football game and there were fighter jets and biplanes and gatling guns that fired mini footballs and they threw beef jerky around at the crowd for some reason (it was packaged). I also got a nasty sunburn and mustard all over myself.
Then yesterday I borrow a deep frier to make some popcorn chicken for a potluck today. We over-filled the frier with oil and didn't think of the consequences. Woke up this morning with oil all over the counter and floor because the drainage tray filled up and overflowed when the oil was cool. So that was fun and now the house smells like deep fried oil.
I finished Pyre completely, purchased and downloaded the new Life is Strange game (but haven't played yet) edited another session of Sonic 2006, and participated in another Starsworn campaign game.
I don't think I did an official summary of the first campaign game, but I feel like the last two sessions went really well other than me forgetting information I really should have known. The party seems to be meshing well with each other and I feel like we're all getting a chance to interact, ask questions and do stuff. I've been a little confused a couple times mostly because I'm not sure who information is intended for or what I'm supposed to share and to what extent. I suppose it's up to me a lot of times, but translating that into dialogue or action is a bit hard for me sometimes. I also feel like I don't ask enough questions if I'm unsure of something.
The thing I forgot was a dude's name. I knew who he was, what happened to him, all the details, etc. But when I heard his name I'm like "oh that sounds familiar" and then just continued along with it. You don't hear me swearing in the video...just a tired sigh. I can, however, assure you I was cussing like crazy in my head. I can write the mistake off easily enough, but I was really mad with myself afterwards. TO BE FAIR THOUGH. I never actually MET the NPC. I encountered his body in a vat and read about him, but I had tunnel vision and didn't really make the connection between the vat and the dude because I thought the dude was in another tower. Long story short, I basically confused myself 'cause all the information was there and made sense, but I interpreted it wrong.
Anyway, first two games were really good. Mucky, HKS and Thal are easy to play with, which I wasn't really concerned about, but I always get anxious when starting up these kind of things with new people. As for the game structure, content, environments, etc. it's all solid so far in my opinion. I may be a little biased as I'm used to/familiar with Mesk's storytelling and have been for many years now, but I don't really have anything to complain about.
Monday, June 26, 2017
Roll Save Against Mondays
Kind of a tense, miserable Monday as I'm waiting to see if my dog will be all right or if he needs to go to the vet. Last night he swallowed a pork rib bone whole and it's my fault for letting him get at it. He's kind of an idiot and has a tendency to swallow things whole if he can, but now I'm worried he's going to get a bowel obstruction or that pieces of the bone will splinter off and hurt him. So far so good aside from a little vomit this morning, but if he starts showing some bad symptoms I got to take him to the vet. Friend of mine has a dog that ate squeaker toys on two separate occasions. Both times resulted in bowel obstruction. Her vet bill was over $12,000 dollars for the two visits combined. Thankfully she had pet insurance (her pup is fine btw). So I hope it doesn't come to that with Locke.
Today is also going to be a hot, muggy day so...that will suck as well.
Had the last one-shot session for D&D, which was a rollercoaster of insanity and panic as everything tried to kill me. Mesk threw me onto a rock with a fortress with no support (i.e. no friendlies) and had me interact with NPCs that were either crazy or wanted to kill me...or were crazy before they tried to kill me. Spent a long time trying to pull enough information out of it to piece together a bunch of plot-related timeline stuff, which was thankfully mostly stitched together at the end. I had to go afk a few times, unfortunately one of those times was immediately after I released fluid from a vat and got it all over me. Apparently if I had let that drain, I would have been possessed by a cat.
I know Mesk changed up some of the abilities on the fly as he mentioned one or two instances after we played. There was one part where a dragon was dive-bombing me on a bridge and thankfully I knew that I was about to get ambushed so I burned my free class ability spell to not die. I still got side-swiped by a flying talon, but wasn't grabbed by it thanks to Mesk's edits. I had a huge chance of just dying on that bridge, but I managed to avoid it.
I would say the first half was just exploring and trying to make sense of everything. I think it was because of the afk incident, but I completely missed that the dude in the liquid vat was the dude that the giant peeping eye orb told me about. I think it was getting blasted in the face with the liquid that made me forget. I thought he was in the tower, but it turns out there was something else in there I never got to. The second half was just frantic trying not to die as the entire castle's population tried to kill me. I pissed off some dudes downstairs, then ran upstairs after another dude tried to mind control me, then I ran to the central room where I knew an artifact was and just crossed my fingers that I could use it somehow.
I ended up fighting about...7 regular units, one crazy dude, an alternate version of my deity, a copy of myself, a giant demon and a giant blood monster by myself. So that was a little crazy. I figured it was going to be a timed thing since there was no way I was going to be able to take down the majority of the list above. The only thing that really saved me was this ridiculous aura that did damage any time a creature entered or stayed in it. It required concentration, but lasted up to 10 minutes. I MIGHT have messed this up because I'm not sure if I was hit before or after the aura went up (if I got hit during, the aura would have gone away). I'll have to check the video.
Anyway, all caught up to the start of the campaign, which will start whenever the others are ready. Realistically I can start any time, but it would be good before August as I'll be missing for a good chunk of it. I won't have real internet for 2 weeks unless I can convince my aunt that legit wifi out in the boonies is a good idea. The test sessions have been good for me to getting used to roleplaying more and actually forcing me out of my comfort zone. In one way it was easier when playing with HKS because I was just watching what he did and filling in when I thought it was necessary to step up. In the last two sessions it was just me, which forced me to keep thinking/moving things forward on my own. I have no idea if I'm actually doing any good or not, but Mesk seems to be content as far as I can tell.
The next big test for me will be playing with 4 other players and trying desperately not to make an ass of myself.
Finished Horizon last night, and I'm pleased to say that it was likely the best game I've played in a number of years. It's rare that I encounter a game that has such a consistent tone, fairly well-written dialogue and text, has USEFUL and interesting supporting documents (i.e. the text and voice logs you find), an engaging story, good controls (other than me initially getting roll and crouch mixed up a lot...but that's me not the game), and just an overall creative universe that you can tell the developers put a lot of time, effort and care into. Really the only gripes I had in that game were a few bad voice acted lines, some weird jumpy conversations with NPCs (mostly talking to people in side quests where people pop in, drop out of the air or aren't facing the right direction) and some physics bugs that were more hilarious than anything else. I only managed to get myself stuck in a rocky crevice once and it was easy to get out of with fast travel. Some of the NPCs were oddly shiny as well...like they were coated in a thick layer of sweat. In Nil's case, his chest looked like a Ken doll.
The majority of the characters were interesting. The majority of the character arcs had them learning and thinking about the world in different ways, but they were still the same people. Some of Aloy's motivations and interactions with the world changed and evolved, but her main core objective never changed, even when it made her selfish. I actually really liked this approach because I hate in games when characters just have an abrupt change of heart or have the sudden "redeeming actions" to let them be a good person in the end. People just don't work like that. It's always a process and it takes years to break down what you are and change it (think about it, everyone has that "slap in the face" moment where everything you are and believe is challenged and it shakes you up...but it doesn't immediately change anything). Also helped that Aloy was voiced by Ashly Burch, whom I have a lot of respect for as a voice actor. She also voices Chloe in Life is Strange, which explains why Aloy's voice sounded so familiar to me. I had no idea until the end when I saw the credits 'cause I'm an idiot and can't do a five second Google search.
At any rate, I definitely recommend the game. I burned through about 70-80 hours in a relatively short period of time.
Today is also going to be a hot, muggy day so...that will suck as well.
Had the last one-shot session for D&D, which was a rollercoaster of insanity and panic as everything tried to kill me. Mesk threw me onto a rock with a fortress with no support (i.e. no friendlies) and had me interact with NPCs that were either crazy or wanted to kill me...or were crazy before they tried to kill me. Spent a long time trying to pull enough information out of it to piece together a bunch of plot-related timeline stuff, which was thankfully mostly stitched together at the end. I had to go afk a few times, unfortunately one of those times was immediately after I released fluid from a vat and got it all over me. Apparently if I had let that drain, I would have been possessed by a cat.
I know Mesk changed up some of the abilities on the fly as he mentioned one or two instances after we played. There was one part where a dragon was dive-bombing me on a bridge and thankfully I knew that I was about to get ambushed so I burned my free class ability spell to not die. I still got side-swiped by a flying talon, but wasn't grabbed by it thanks to Mesk's edits. I had a huge chance of just dying on that bridge, but I managed to avoid it.
I would say the first half was just exploring and trying to make sense of everything. I think it was because of the afk incident, but I completely missed that the dude in the liquid vat was the dude that the giant peeping eye orb told me about. I think it was getting blasted in the face with the liquid that made me forget. I thought he was in the tower, but it turns out there was something else in there I never got to. The second half was just frantic trying not to die as the entire castle's population tried to kill me. I pissed off some dudes downstairs, then ran upstairs after another dude tried to mind control me, then I ran to the central room where I knew an artifact was and just crossed my fingers that I could use it somehow.
I ended up fighting about...7 regular units, one crazy dude, an alternate version of my deity, a copy of myself, a giant demon and a giant blood monster by myself. So that was a little crazy. I figured it was going to be a timed thing since there was no way I was going to be able to take down the majority of the list above. The only thing that really saved me was this ridiculous aura that did damage any time a creature entered or stayed in it. It required concentration, but lasted up to 10 minutes. I MIGHT have messed this up because I'm not sure if I was hit before or after the aura went up (if I got hit during, the aura would have gone away). I'll have to check the video.
Anyway, all caught up to the start of the campaign, which will start whenever the others are ready. Realistically I can start any time, but it would be good before August as I'll be missing for a good chunk of it. I won't have real internet for 2 weeks unless I can convince my aunt that legit wifi out in the boonies is a good idea. The test sessions have been good for me to getting used to roleplaying more and actually forcing me out of my comfort zone. In one way it was easier when playing with HKS because I was just watching what he did and filling in when I thought it was necessary to step up. In the last two sessions it was just me, which forced me to keep thinking/moving things forward on my own. I have no idea if I'm actually doing any good or not, but Mesk seems to be content as far as I can tell.
The next big test for me will be playing with 4 other players and trying desperately not to make an ass of myself.
Finished Horizon last night, and I'm pleased to say that it was likely the best game I've played in a number of years. It's rare that I encounter a game that has such a consistent tone, fairly well-written dialogue and text, has USEFUL and interesting supporting documents (i.e. the text and voice logs you find), an engaging story, good controls (other than me initially getting roll and crouch mixed up a lot...but that's me not the game), and just an overall creative universe that you can tell the developers put a lot of time, effort and care into. Really the only gripes I had in that game were a few bad voice acted lines, some weird jumpy conversations with NPCs (mostly talking to people in side quests where people pop in, drop out of the air or aren't facing the right direction) and some physics bugs that were more hilarious than anything else. I only managed to get myself stuck in a rocky crevice once and it was easy to get out of with fast travel. Some of the NPCs were oddly shiny as well...like they were coated in a thick layer of sweat. In Nil's case, his chest looked like a Ken doll.
The majority of the characters were interesting. The majority of the character arcs had them learning and thinking about the world in different ways, but they were still the same people. Some of Aloy's motivations and interactions with the world changed and evolved, but her main core objective never changed, even when it made her selfish. I actually really liked this approach because I hate in games when characters just have an abrupt change of heart or have the sudden "redeeming actions" to let them be a good person in the end. People just don't work like that. It's always a process and it takes years to break down what you are and change it (think about it, everyone has that "slap in the face" moment where everything you are and believe is challenged and it shakes you up...but it doesn't immediately change anything). Also helped that Aloy was voiced by Ashly Burch, whom I have a lot of respect for as a voice actor. She also voices Chloe in Life is Strange, which explains why Aloy's voice sounded so familiar to me. I had no idea until the end when I saw the credits 'cause I'm an idiot and can't do a five second Google search.
At any rate, I definitely recommend the game. I burned through about 70-80 hours in a relatively short period of time.
Monday, June 19, 2017
Dangerous Draft
Kind of a busy weekend for me again.
Spent most of the day on Saturday throwing a bunch of old broken/worn out furniture out, moving books and other items around, managing a puppy and ripping carpets/staples out of a house. There is this lovely 70's style linoleum that was hiding under the carpet. And by lovely I mean rather hideous. It's this green-yellow pattern of suns and diamonds. The other linoleum in the bedrooms was this yellowy-gold pattern that looked kind of like marble cheese.
I also ended up transferring files off my grandfather's old computer, which was old enough to still have XP running on it AND not understand what the external hard drive was when I plugged it in. Also had to make a quick trip to the walk-in medical clinic when the spring-loaded arm that typically holds up the table part of a drafting table was sprung and sliced Oliver's face open. Missed his eye by about 2 inches.
I'm still trying to get rid of my grandpa's organ (like musical instrument...not trying to pawn off his liver or anything). I still have hopes that some hipster out there will want it/come pick it up, since there is absolutely no way I'm going to be able to move that thing on my own. I was going to also try to sell this old stereo from the 50's which has a turn-table and everything (definitely hipsters would want this), but I was told that someone in the family might want it since everything still works (just needs an FM antennae).
Yesterday was spent mostly walking puppies, participating in family events and playing Horizon. I think I'm pretty close to finishing the game, but we'll see. It's essentially the reason beyond lack of motivation that I'm relying on my never-ending stash of Pillars of Eternity video as I haven't done any actual video editing in days. I think the meds I'm on have really screwed around with my mood and made it a lot worse than it would have been off them, which is ironic because theoretically, it's supposed to help. That said, the thing its supposed to be doing is not working anymore, which means the dose is too low again and I'm not going through another dose increase. That was awful. So, I don't know what I want to do. Either way, this has meant that if I don't need to go out of the house, I've either been working on D&D things, or hiding and playing Horizon.
Planning another D&D session next weekend. It may be split over two days since Mesk said there's a lot of content he's planning. I'll also make sure to start early so we don't get another late night. Mesk joked about how we should just play yesterday, half-prepared. He said we could just wing it and have me die a disgusting death in the first 15 mins.
Got no idea what's going on this week other than that. Last dodgeball games are this week and next week, then I have very little commitments for the summer other than getting my grandparent's old house habitable.
Spent most of the day on Saturday throwing a bunch of old broken/worn out furniture out, moving books and other items around, managing a puppy and ripping carpets/staples out of a house. There is this lovely 70's style linoleum that was hiding under the carpet. And by lovely I mean rather hideous. It's this green-yellow pattern of suns and diamonds. The other linoleum in the bedrooms was this yellowy-gold pattern that looked kind of like marble cheese.
I also ended up transferring files off my grandfather's old computer, which was old enough to still have XP running on it AND not understand what the external hard drive was when I plugged it in. Also had to make a quick trip to the walk-in medical clinic when the spring-loaded arm that typically holds up the table part of a drafting table was sprung and sliced Oliver's face open. Missed his eye by about 2 inches.
I'm still trying to get rid of my grandpa's organ (like musical instrument...not trying to pawn off his liver or anything). I still have hopes that some hipster out there will want it/come pick it up, since there is absolutely no way I'm going to be able to move that thing on my own. I was going to also try to sell this old stereo from the 50's which has a turn-table and everything (definitely hipsters would want this), but I was told that someone in the family might want it since everything still works (just needs an FM antennae).
Yesterday was spent mostly walking puppies, participating in family events and playing Horizon. I think I'm pretty close to finishing the game, but we'll see. It's essentially the reason beyond lack of motivation that I'm relying on my never-ending stash of Pillars of Eternity video as I haven't done any actual video editing in days. I think the meds I'm on have really screwed around with my mood and made it a lot worse than it would have been off them, which is ironic because theoretically, it's supposed to help. That said, the thing its supposed to be doing is not working anymore, which means the dose is too low again and I'm not going through another dose increase. That was awful. So, I don't know what I want to do. Either way, this has meant that if I don't need to go out of the house, I've either been working on D&D things, or hiding and playing Horizon.
Planning another D&D session next weekend. It may be split over two days since Mesk said there's a lot of content he's planning. I'll also make sure to start early so we don't get another late night. Mesk joked about how we should just play yesterday, half-prepared. He said we could just wing it and have me die a disgusting death in the first 15 mins.
Got no idea what's going on this week other than that. Last dodgeball games are this week and next week, then I have very little commitments for the summer other than getting my grandparent's old house habitable.
Monday, June 12, 2017
Over-Thinking Schwas with Doors
Doors. Doors are my bane. I swear to god it's always the doors.
Busy weekend with a dodgeball tournament and a D&D session. My body is letting me know what it thinks about that today. Our team came in 5th in the tournament, which is fine cause it's for fun/charity anyway (though some teams take it a little more seriously) though I'm a little sad I wasn't really playing all that well. I think a few of the players' extremely fast throws + small gym + memories of whiplash cowed me a little.
My favourite part of tournaments. Quick Draw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylKS84hQzKg
I've officially joined the Starsworn campaign as a regular player. I ended up making an Earthborn Trickery Domain cleric with a disadvantage on stealth. Figure that one out.
Mesk was kind enough to set up a 1-shot, especially since I ended up joining a little late (the full campaign is likely close to starting and Mesk probably would have already if schedules lined up a bit better). I feel a little bad too because I was unable to join until about 5:30pm because my dog wasn't feeling super good, but he still needed a walk, meaning I took him out later than I intended. Then I had to change and wash up a bit after because there was water and mud everywhere and half the park ended up on my shirt (and arms and feet and pants and...somehow...on my forehead). As a result, the 1-shot ran for 10 hours and we finished at like...4 in the morning. Poor Mesk.
To his credit though, he did a good job stamina-wise DMing that long. And he CONTINUED to challenge my decision making and creativity the whole time. By 4am though I was really stretching to recall details and think of useful dialogue for extra information. That was my fault though so...
This 1-shot was hilariously ridiculous. It started off with the most nat 20s I've ever seen so close together (unless you count the time Nick crit me 3 times in a fight and Jayde nearly died...and one was on the reroll I FORCED him to do). Anyway, we were way stealthier that we had any reason being and managed to sneak all the way into the ruins and a Starborn camp. Thank god Mesk was feeding me subtle (and not so subtle hints) through the NPC Darian as I think he saved me from a lot of catastrophic actions. Either way, I disguised myself and ended up playing the most dramatic chess game I've ever seen (which included a nat 20 and a 1 from me).
After the chess game of destiny I spent like...20-30 minutes over-thinking what I was going to do about a giant undead golem before I walked into the thing Mesk was probably screaming at me to just walk into and I managed to convince a super giddy Fireborn to roast the undead for me. That said, Darian dealt a pretty devastating blow to the golem and launched it halfway across the map taking two or three buildings with it.
After, I got to explore an underground facility, which had its own points of hilarity. The gimmick with a barrier/shield went right over my head as apparently, according to Mesk, all I needed to do was back into it. This is where the over-thinking issue comes up for me. I do this in video games too (especially puzzle games) where I'll think it's more complicated than it actually is (ex. just...closing a door re. Riven). So again, I think I wasted...A LOT of time, especially when the pressure was on to try and get into the centre. I could have shaved off an hour at least if I had been a little more observant...or thought to investigate it more (for once, throwing a rock at it led me astray).
Long story short, a lot of exploration happened, I climbed onto and knocked over a dresser onto a bug and squashed it, started stealing from statues, opened ALL the doors, avoided a golem drinking Mountain Dew, slammed the door in a bug's face and then touched things I probably shouldn't have touched. Then we squashed two bugs, talked the gentleman in the centre out of trying to kill us and then got him a new body. After some dramatics and a fight where I couldn't get up the stupid stairs and failed all but 1 of the blink actions (which was useless anyway because we just got telepooted up to the top on that turn), we ran outside to catch Mr. Chess Master Bonestaff and turned him into tomato sauce (to Mesk's dismay as he apparently had a bunch of chess-related moves and lines to use).
Aside from my occasional stupidity, the session seemed to go fairly smooth. I liked the premise and the setting, and Mesk found interesting ways to tie my character into the story. The music choices were really good, but the battle music was the best, as I'm a sucker for that kind of thing. It managed to distract from the fact that I was being nibbled on by bugs, rolling around in a sea of broken glass and smashing my face into cliffs.
One thing I'm really going to have to watch out for in the regular campaign is my tendency to comment and joke about what's going on in-game. I know some of the other players (especially when there's more than just one or two) find the chatter really distracting and feel it clutters up the chat. I'll have to 'hold my tongue' a little more. In addition, off-hand comments got me into trouble a couple of times (see: Dresser Incident). I figure if I say something, I have to own it, even if it has unfortunate consequences. I also forgot about a few mechanics (I forgot about the bonus to the dex mod at one time, thought one spell was 8 hours when it was 1 hour, got confused with concentration spells and then screwed up and didn't use Hold Creature when I should have). Roll20 didn't help a few times either when I got confused about who rolled what a couple times. I think I'm going to make a spreadsheet since the word doc is just not cutting it (less scrolling and more windows). I also want to review movement actions, as my character is likely going to rely on being able to move around a lot.
Lots of things to review (including spells), but I'm glad to have had this session to get used to these specific mechanics. I was also super smart and picked a spellcaster to get myself into 5e. I haven't really played a spellcaster before, so apparently I like to make things difficult for myself.
Busy weekend with a dodgeball tournament and a D&D session. My body is letting me know what it thinks about that today. Our team came in 5th in the tournament, which is fine cause it's for fun/charity anyway (though some teams take it a little more seriously) though I'm a little sad I wasn't really playing all that well. I think a few of the players' extremely fast throws + small gym + memories of whiplash cowed me a little.
My favourite part of tournaments. Quick Draw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylKS84hQzKg
I've officially joined the Starsworn campaign as a regular player. I ended up making an Earthborn Trickery Domain cleric with a disadvantage on stealth. Figure that one out.
Mesk was kind enough to set up a 1-shot, especially since I ended up joining a little late (the full campaign is likely close to starting and Mesk probably would have already if schedules lined up a bit better). I feel a little bad too because I was unable to join until about 5:30pm because my dog wasn't feeling super good, but he still needed a walk, meaning I took him out later than I intended. Then I had to change and wash up a bit after because there was water and mud everywhere and half the park ended up on my shirt (and arms and feet and pants and...somehow...on my forehead). As a result, the 1-shot ran for 10 hours and we finished at like...4 in the morning. Poor Mesk.
To his credit though, he did a good job stamina-wise DMing that long. And he CONTINUED to challenge my decision making and creativity the whole time. By 4am though I was really stretching to recall details and think of useful dialogue for extra information. That was my fault though so...
This 1-shot was hilariously ridiculous. It started off with the most nat 20s I've ever seen so close together (unless you count the time Nick crit me 3 times in a fight and Jayde nearly died...and one was on the reroll I FORCED him to do). Anyway, we were way stealthier that we had any reason being and managed to sneak all the way into the ruins and a Starborn camp. Thank god Mesk was feeding me subtle (and not so subtle hints) through the NPC Darian as I think he saved me from a lot of catastrophic actions. Either way, I disguised myself and ended up playing the most dramatic chess game I've ever seen (which included a nat 20 and a 1 from me).
After the chess game of destiny I spent like...20-30 minutes over-thinking what I was going to do about a giant undead golem before I walked into the thing Mesk was probably screaming at me to just walk into and I managed to convince a super giddy Fireborn to roast the undead for me. That said, Darian dealt a pretty devastating blow to the golem and launched it halfway across the map taking two or three buildings with it.
After, I got to explore an underground facility, which had its own points of hilarity. The gimmick with a barrier/shield went right over my head as apparently, according to Mesk, all I needed to do was back into it. This is where the over-thinking issue comes up for me. I do this in video games too (especially puzzle games) where I'll think it's more complicated than it actually is (ex. just...closing a door re. Riven). So again, I think I wasted...A LOT of time, especially when the pressure was on to try and get into the centre. I could have shaved off an hour at least if I had been a little more observant...or thought to investigate it more (for once, throwing a rock at it led me astray).
Long story short, a lot of exploration happened, I climbed onto and knocked over a dresser onto a bug and squashed it, started stealing from statues, opened ALL the doors, avoided a golem drinking Mountain Dew, slammed the door in a bug's face and then touched things I probably shouldn't have touched. Then we squashed two bugs, talked the gentleman in the centre out of trying to kill us and then got him a new body. After some dramatics and a fight where I couldn't get up the stupid stairs and failed all but 1 of the blink actions (which was useless anyway because we just got telepooted up to the top on that turn), we ran outside to catch Mr. Chess Master Bonestaff and turned him into tomato sauce (to Mesk's dismay as he apparently had a bunch of chess-related moves and lines to use).
Aside from my occasional stupidity, the session seemed to go fairly smooth. I liked the premise and the setting, and Mesk found interesting ways to tie my character into the story. The music choices were really good, but the battle music was the best, as I'm a sucker for that kind of thing. It managed to distract from the fact that I was being nibbled on by bugs, rolling around in a sea of broken glass and smashing my face into cliffs.
One thing I'm really going to have to watch out for in the regular campaign is my tendency to comment and joke about what's going on in-game. I know some of the other players (especially when there's more than just one or two) find the chatter really distracting and feel it clutters up the chat. I'll have to 'hold my tongue' a little more. In addition, off-hand comments got me into trouble a couple of times (see: Dresser Incident). I figure if I say something, I have to own it, even if it has unfortunate consequences. I also forgot about a few mechanics (I forgot about the bonus to the dex mod at one time, thought one spell was 8 hours when it was 1 hour, got confused with concentration spells and then screwed up and didn't use Hold Creature when I should have). Roll20 didn't help a few times either when I got confused about who rolled what a couple times. I think I'm going to make a spreadsheet since the word doc is just not cutting it (less scrolling and more windows). I also want to review movement actions, as my character is likely going to rely on being able to move around a lot.
Lots of things to review (including spells), but I'm glad to have had this session to get used to these specific mechanics. I was also super smart and picked a spellcaster to get myself into 5e. I haven't really played a spellcaster before, so apparently I like to make things difficult for myself.
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
Combat Mechanics
I really need to review some of the combat mechanics in 5e it seems. I didn't understand or forgot that there's an entire action to disengage an enemy in combat as I'm really used to being able to use shift in 4e. I think the opportunity attacks are a little more devastating in this edition as well, since when it happens in 4e it tends to be a basic melee attack. Needless to say, I got my ass handed to me a few times I tried to escape enemies in this past weekend's D&D session.
Mesk ran one more session for HKS to set up his character and I joined in once more playing as the NPC I did last time. I may be joining the regular campaign, which will be interesting as I'm getting rather attached to Renfis (this always happens with me though). I'm definitely more biased towards HKS' side of the campaign though as I'm more interested in the demon side of Mesk's Apex world. Either way, looking forward to seeing the interaction between all the characters when the time comes.
The session went well, and we started in the afternoon, which was really nice because it meant I wasn't up until 3am and hating myself the next day. I was also more or less awake and not struggling as much to recall details late-game. Though, the lack of sleepiness didn't seem to help me remember a lot of vital combat elements. The fights were larger and more complex as well, which I really enjoy, especially from a strategy point of view.
I really liked the maps/locations we used this time. Having the environment involved in the overall mechanics and story was also interesting. I tried to not inspect every single thing this time, which I hope Mesk was happy with as I know he was scrambling a little last time to populate the rooms with STUFF to find. Also I noticed there was only one door to open, and it was more of a gate. Poor Renfis.
Also HKS managed to roll around in more stuff due to some bad investigation checks which was just perfect. He's just going to have to roll around in everything from now on whether or not he actually succeeds a check or not. His character is going to think that's just how you look for things.
In addition to the campaign, also ended up playing a long session of Outlast 2 on Monday. After playing a bit more, I'd say we're more or less enjoying it aside from the stupid pick-axe lady (which I'm sure someone is going to correct us on her real name about a million times once the video is posted). That said, we forgot our protagonist's name at the start of the session so...
We played about 4-5 hours of the game, which was added onto the original 1 and a half. Shauna looked up how far we had to go and apparently we're only on something like 2 or 3 out of 6 chapters. So uh...there's a lot of game left. I also have no idea how I'm going to handle editing this stuff. Usually when I do LPs with Shauna, there's no audio delay between what we see and what the system records. There is a delay here, which means syncing up the audio is going to be an adventure of epic proportions.
As for my own projects, I picked up Pillars of Eternity again over the weekend in the hopes to finish the game and get it off my current project list. The only problem is there seems to be DLC as well and I'm not sure if I want to delve into that as an LP or not. It could mean a lot more content and A LOT more videos. I have some other games I'm going to want to finish as well...so we'll see what happens. I think I'm at the end of the main quest though. I still need to fight the Master Below, which Shauna says I HAVE to fight. Meaning if I somehow talk my way out of it, I need to reload and get my ass kicked.
I also continued some work on the RPG. Really all I did was set up waypoints and some dialogue events. I have one string of dialogue that I would, ideally like to do, but it's going to require some mental gymnastics to determine what the order of operations on that is going to be. I've actually fully mapped the layout of Map 2 (not Map 1 cause I'm a little hung up on assets vs the image I have in my head). But I also need to make pig people for Map 2. I at least know how this map will function mechanically. I'll have two options for getting the main door open, a combat route and a puzzle route, cause I know there are people out there who aren't too keen on one or the other. I mean, I know how much Mesk loves puzzles.
Anyway this week my focus is finishing PoE, having a character ready in case I join the campaign and trying to figure out what I'm going to do about the first area in the RPG.
Thursday, May 18, 2017
8am Parade of Cars
I guess they all start work at 8:30-9am cause every single day there seems to be a coordinated exodus from the houses along the back alleyway. I swear there aren't that many properties along the alley though, so I have no idea where they're all coming from, whether they're taking shortcuts of if there's a secret Stepford-esque society I don't know about lurking somewhere in the maze of houses that is my neighbourhood. I'd believe it too. If you walk down one of the centre walkways in that area it's this eerie line of identically built, but slightly different coloured houses and it's quiet aside from the occasional child or dog in the backyards staring out at you with beady little eyes. Whatever it is, it's unsettling.
Anyway I'm like the antithesis of this orderly manifestation. Aside from the off-chance I'm up in time to witness the Parade of Cars, I'm usually the one who's running out of the house late with their hands full pulling on a jacket and trying to juggle my pack, keys and coffee, leaving laundry on the roof of my car, using the air conditioning/heat to dry my hair and eating week-old cookies from the package I left in my car on the way to work.
And these are on the days where I'm not carrying electronics out to the car, or having birds fly into my vehicle, or carting puppies around, or learning that someone took a dump in one of the cars.
I'm super healthy and organized.
While it's still Calgary's rainy, cool months, the season is fast approaching where I'll need to keep the windows open overnight. It'll be too hot in the house otherwise and we all know what that means: Shit that Happens in the Park is about to begin. It is with mixed feelings that I announce this will be the last summer witnessing the events in the park as I am moving again around September. I'll be taking up residence in my grandparent's old house as they have moved to a senior's assisted living home. The neighbourhood is almost deafening in it's quietness every time I've visited and is on a tiny side-road vs at the end of a major roadway. This means no more nights of people screaming about Pokemon in the sound-dish of a park outside, no more creepy singing swing lady, no more people turning around on a narrow one way street and bursting their tires on the curb, and no more street racers turning the greenspace in front of the house into a crash-test course. There is promise of trolling an overly nosey neighbour on the horizon though. This also may mean the return of the Crows as I think that the new neighbourhood is infested with them. Maybe I'll make friends with them this time and have a legion of birds at my commend.
So what does the rest of the spring and summer look like for me?
Well, I may be officially joining Mesk's Starsworn campaign with a regular character vs playing as an array of NPCs. This depends on the availability of the others joining, but either way, I need to seriously think about a character in any case.
Speaking of D&D, going to try to set up a session every other Sunday with Nick and Shauna to get through our own campaigns and make a bit of progress. I still need to produce the videos for these.
I'm going to try and make the RPG playable as one of my top priorities. I have a massive backlog of video, so I don't need to worry about not having any videos to release. The problem is a lot of this video is un-edited, so I really need to get working on the backlog. Top priorities for editing/recording right now are Resident Evil 7, Sonic 2006 and Outlast 2. I still have another special video I'm trying to produce, but, I need the Deletion Ceremony for Evil Within to happen first, which requires Shauna and I to finish re-watching the series (there are reasons).
I've made a lot of progress on writing this year, so that will likely continue. I have identified a number of issues with the narrative that I will go back to fix in the coming weeks. Really, what I need to do is get my documents organized because all of the work is spilt into about 10 pieces over a number of files in about 3 places.
As for current releases, Pillars of Eternity and Dishonored 2 should remain pretty regular. RE7 and Sonic 2006 will be the other ones posted as I finish them. Other than that, I have made it this week's project to get the rest of the Riven videos on YouTube with timestamps as I have left that project stagnant for too long.
Middle of August I'm checking out and disappearing for two weeks. Going to keep contact down to a small group of people and actually take some time to relax for once (I'll likely prep videos to release for two weeks and just press the "publish" button periodically...but it's not like I've been super regular with releases lately anyway).
What does right now look like?
Chaos mostly. Sitting back and watching the fallout of some of the events at work, because there's a lot of things I simply can't do anything about at the moment. One is just watching a person who has been cheating/boosting their work get caught and burned...the other is a little more disheartening. The latter is hard because I want to see these project succeed so badly, but things have been difficult, through no real fault of the particular person I'm working with on the client side. Also saying goodbye (hopefully temporarily) to a friend at work as she leaves to have her baby, but, with a company this small, anyone leaving at this point is kind of sad. I'm lucky I work with some great people.
As for what else is going on...dodgeball has a couple weeks left and then I'm joining in the Teddy for a Toonie tournament. I've checked out of my one job for the summer (aside from one final random shift...but meh). I have yet to decide if I will return in September (probably will just for Tuesday nights). Took a first aid and CPR course over this past weekend, which is probably why I have no idea what day it is most of the time this week. Now I have Stayin' Alive perpetually stuck in my head and know what happens when your eyeball falls out and is still attached by the optic nerve (you can totally still see out of it). Uhhhh all caught up on Game of Thrones, much to Shauna's delight. Carlo intends to do a final session playtest for his Fickle RPG, but not this week cause he's sick. Friday might get more recording done, Saturday is fooooood, Sunday is fooooood and also HKS' final session of pre-campaign Starsworn stuff and then Monday going to be playing Outlast 2 with Shauna in afternoon and evening.
So I'm busy and stressed, but still going. Really looking forward to those August weeks out in the boonies.
Anyway I'm like the antithesis of this orderly manifestation. Aside from the off-chance I'm up in time to witness the Parade of Cars, I'm usually the one who's running out of the house late with their hands full pulling on a jacket and trying to juggle my pack, keys and coffee, leaving laundry on the roof of my car, using the air conditioning/heat to dry my hair and eating week-old cookies from the package I left in my car on the way to work.
And these are on the days where I'm not carrying electronics out to the car, or having birds fly into my vehicle, or carting puppies around, or learning that someone took a dump in one of the cars.
I'm super healthy and organized.
While it's still Calgary's rainy, cool months, the season is fast approaching where I'll need to keep the windows open overnight. It'll be too hot in the house otherwise and we all know what that means: Shit that Happens in the Park is about to begin. It is with mixed feelings that I announce this will be the last summer witnessing the events in the park as I am moving again around September. I'll be taking up residence in my grandparent's old house as they have moved to a senior's assisted living home. The neighbourhood is almost deafening in it's quietness every time I've visited and is on a tiny side-road vs at the end of a major roadway. This means no more nights of people screaming about Pokemon in the sound-dish of a park outside, no more creepy singing swing lady, no more people turning around on a narrow one way street and bursting their tires on the curb, and no more street racers turning the greenspace in front of the house into a crash-test course. There is promise of trolling an overly nosey neighbour on the horizon though. This also may mean the return of the Crows as I think that the new neighbourhood is infested with them. Maybe I'll make friends with them this time and have a legion of birds at my commend.
So what does the rest of the spring and summer look like for me?
Well, I may be officially joining Mesk's Starsworn campaign with a regular character vs playing as an array of NPCs. This depends on the availability of the others joining, but either way, I need to seriously think about a character in any case.
Speaking of D&D, going to try to set up a session every other Sunday with Nick and Shauna to get through our own campaigns and make a bit of progress. I still need to produce the videos for these.
I'm going to try and make the RPG playable as one of my top priorities. I have a massive backlog of video, so I don't need to worry about not having any videos to release. The problem is a lot of this video is un-edited, so I really need to get working on the backlog. Top priorities for editing/recording right now are Resident Evil 7, Sonic 2006 and Outlast 2. I still have another special video I'm trying to produce, but, I need the Deletion Ceremony for Evil Within to happen first, which requires Shauna and I to finish re-watching the series (there are reasons).
I've made a lot of progress on writing this year, so that will likely continue. I have identified a number of issues with the narrative that I will go back to fix in the coming weeks. Really, what I need to do is get my documents organized because all of the work is spilt into about 10 pieces over a number of files in about 3 places.
As for current releases, Pillars of Eternity and Dishonored 2 should remain pretty regular. RE7 and Sonic 2006 will be the other ones posted as I finish them. Other than that, I have made it this week's project to get the rest of the Riven videos on YouTube with timestamps as I have left that project stagnant for too long.
Middle of August I'm checking out and disappearing for two weeks. Going to keep contact down to a small group of people and actually take some time to relax for once (I'll likely prep videos to release for two weeks and just press the "publish" button periodically...but it's not like I've been super regular with releases lately anyway).
What does right now look like?
Chaos mostly. Sitting back and watching the fallout of some of the events at work, because there's a lot of things I simply can't do anything about at the moment. One is just watching a person who has been cheating/boosting their work get caught and burned...the other is a little more disheartening. The latter is hard because I want to see these project succeed so badly, but things have been difficult, through no real fault of the particular person I'm working with on the client side. Also saying goodbye (hopefully temporarily) to a friend at work as she leaves to have her baby, but, with a company this small, anyone leaving at this point is kind of sad. I'm lucky I work with some great people.
As for what else is going on...dodgeball has a couple weeks left and then I'm joining in the Teddy for a Toonie tournament. I've checked out of my one job for the summer (aside from one final random shift...but meh). I have yet to decide if I will return in September (probably will just for Tuesday nights). Took a first aid and CPR course over this past weekend, which is probably why I have no idea what day it is most of the time this week. Now I have Stayin' Alive perpetually stuck in my head and know what happens when your eyeball falls out and is still attached by the optic nerve (you can totally still see out of it). Uhhhh all caught up on Game of Thrones, much to Shauna's delight. Carlo intends to do a final session playtest for his Fickle RPG, but not this week cause he's sick. Friday might get more recording done, Saturday is fooooood, Sunday is fooooood and also HKS' final session of pre-campaign Starsworn stuff and then Monday going to be playing Outlast 2 with Shauna in afternoon and evening.
So I'm busy and stressed, but still going. Really looking forward to those August weeks out in the boonies.
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
Touch ALL the Things
Had another session of 5e D&D with Mesk, this time playing with hks. I think this was hks' introduction to Mesk's Starsworn campaign in general, and like me, he hasn't really done too much of this before in the past. Both of us were a little unprepared for the session as we were a little busy during the week. I personally ended up putting all my character details together at the last second, but my liberal arts degree in BS came in handy as I pulled actions and dialogue out of my ass.
This session went way better for me in terms of engaging with the story and the events and taking more of a leading role in terms of exploration and interaction. One of my theories was just it was easier to work with a smaller group of people (i.e. what I'm more used to playing with just Shauna and Nick) and I didn't feel like I was interrupting other people's stories/dialogue. Another idea was that I was just more comfortable in general because I know Mesk and hks and have played other games with them in the past, vs the other group who are all essentially strangers to me. This doesn't mean that I wouldn't play with the other group in the future (cause that was fun too). I just don't know them as well.
Anyway, the campaign took longer than expected because hks and I pretty much went everywhere and touched all the things. We also did it in an order that didn't railroad the plot as much as Mesk anticipated. I became the official door opener somehow and kept exploring and investigating EVERYTHING. Poor Mesk had to make up some things as he went because of it.
I actually got to test out the combat which was fun as well. It's a lot more simplified from 4e D&D in that the abilities and skills are much more limited. In 4e you get a wide array of powers and feats to mix and match for combat. My other D&D campaigns have been mostly focused on the combat vs the storytelling, which is fair considering one group really loves fighting and loot, and the other group was brand new to D&D and hadn't had as much of the experience with the roleplaying aspect. That said, both groups had enough of it to balance. There is definitely more roleplaying in Mesk's campaigns vs combat, which I think is fine when you have that level of content to go through and flesh out. If we spent hours on combat, these sessions would never end (or would need to be paced much differently). An example would be a major fight Nick set up for Shauna and I which took about 4 hours to complete, and included ballistae, giant crocodile god monsters, a group of NPCS (who all uh...died heh) and about 3 or 4 types of lizardmen. In game time was likely about 10-15minutes. Nick gives out a crap ton of experience for these though, which gets us levelling up faster. We're between levels 10 and 12 in the three campaigns we cycle through.
(Nothing was as great as the time we recruited a bunch of giant purple vagina rocks to fight a succubus on a mountain and stop it from opening some sort of portal. We got the dude down to like 5hp left and he tried to escape by shape-shifting into a bat. One of the rocks got an attack of opportunity as he left and it miraculously hit, essentially back-handing the bat and killing the succubus. Nick placed a tiny little blood smear on the rock for our amusement. What made it even better was Nick tried to make him act all cool and dramatic and he got killed for his efforts.)
Mesk's other action that made it take a lot longer was that he made the session a kind of mystery and I'm kind of a sucker for mysteries and problem solving. I play too much Fire Emblem too, so I like the high-level planning and strategy, while trying to think of creative ways to accomplish goals or fights. This is part appealing to my interests and part experience as Nick often rewards us for thinking out situations or battles creatively.
So we opened all the doors, investigated all the things, and touched EVERYTHING. Then I misunderstood some of the backstory and confused both of them by constantly trying to blow up the station when I thought it was compromised. Oops. I'll just write it off as a quirk of the character I was playing.
Anyway, I tried a little harder at the roleplay aspect this time and Mesk seems to think it went well, so hopefully that's a good sign for future sessions. I unfortunately had to quiet down at the end of the session because my voice was starting to go again and it was like...4am when we finished, so the video again will be of varying quality. If Mesk wants me to revoice some things later, I'm totally fine with that.
Again, if I get permission, I will share links to the videos on the blog when they are complete.
This session went way better for me in terms of engaging with the story and the events and taking more of a leading role in terms of exploration and interaction. One of my theories was just it was easier to work with a smaller group of people (i.e. what I'm more used to playing with just Shauna and Nick) and I didn't feel like I was interrupting other people's stories/dialogue. Another idea was that I was just more comfortable in general because I know Mesk and hks and have played other games with them in the past, vs the other group who are all essentially strangers to me. This doesn't mean that I wouldn't play with the other group in the future (cause that was fun too). I just don't know them as well.
Anyway, the campaign took longer than expected because hks and I pretty much went everywhere and touched all the things. We also did it in an order that didn't railroad the plot as much as Mesk anticipated. I became the official door opener somehow and kept exploring and investigating EVERYTHING. Poor Mesk had to make up some things as he went because of it.
I actually got to test out the combat which was fun as well. It's a lot more simplified from 4e D&D in that the abilities and skills are much more limited. In 4e you get a wide array of powers and feats to mix and match for combat. My other D&D campaigns have been mostly focused on the combat vs the storytelling, which is fair considering one group really loves fighting and loot, and the other group was brand new to D&D and hadn't had as much of the experience with the roleplaying aspect. That said, both groups had enough of it to balance. There is definitely more roleplaying in Mesk's campaigns vs combat, which I think is fine when you have that level of content to go through and flesh out. If we spent hours on combat, these sessions would never end (or would need to be paced much differently). An example would be a major fight Nick set up for Shauna and I which took about 4 hours to complete, and included ballistae, giant crocodile god monsters, a group of NPCS (who all uh...died heh) and about 3 or 4 types of lizardmen. In game time was likely about 10-15minutes. Nick gives out a crap ton of experience for these though, which gets us levelling up faster. We're between levels 10 and 12 in the three campaigns we cycle through.
(Nothing was as great as the time we recruited a bunch of giant purple vagina rocks to fight a succubus on a mountain and stop it from opening some sort of portal. We got the dude down to like 5hp left and he tried to escape by shape-shifting into a bat. One of the rocks got an attack of opportunity as he left and it miraculously hit, essentially back-handing the bat and killing the succubus. Nick placed a tiny little blood smear on the rock for our amusement. What made it even better was Nick tried to make him act all cool and dramatic and he got killed for his efforts.)
Mesk's other action that made it take a lot longer was that he made the session a kind of mystery and I'm kind of a sucker for mysteries and problem solving. I play too much Fire Emblem too, so I like the high-level planning and strategy, while trying to think of creative ways to accomplish goals or fights. This is part appealing to my interests and part experience as Nick often rewards us for thinking out situations or battles creatively.
So we opened all the doors, investigated all the things, and touched EVERYTHING. Then I misunderstood some of the backstory and confused both of them by constantly trying to blow up the station when I thought it was compromised. Oops. I'll just write it off as a quirk of the character I was playing.
Anyway, I tried a little harder at the roleplay aspect this time and Mesk seems to think it went well, so hopefully that's a good sign for future sessions. I unfortunately had to quiet down at the end of the session because my voice was starting to go again and it was like...4am when we finished, so the video again will be of varying quality. If Mesk wants me to revoice some things later, I'm totally fine with that.
Again, if I get permission, I will share links to the videos on the blog when they are complete.
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Suicidal Pedestrians and Interesting Names
There was a man walking against traffic, on the Calf's Robe bridge this morning, on Deerfoot. ON THE BRIDGE AGAINST TRAFFIC. I kept seeing all these people ahead of me slamming on the brakes out of surprise, and I get there and there's a dude carrying a trash bag, walking in the shoulder on the god damned bridge where you drive 100km/hr and is the most dangerous section of the most dangerous road in our city. That was about as good as the people riding bicycles on that road last year.
Then I get into work where my coworker was waiting to hear about the birth of her nephew. She got the news a few minutes ago and they named him "Ansible." Okay then. I fail to see how a baby translates to "faster than light messaging," but maybe it's a magic baby. Either way, we've been trying to figure out what his nick-names would be. Maybe he'll just go by his middle name...
While I wait for the world to inevitably come to an explosive end, I've been working a lot on writing and the RPG. I got an extended session in to work on the RPG last Saturday and I got A LOT done. I'm actually almost done the functional bits of the "Tutorial area" (the Office). And I know that sounds like tutorial as in showing you how to play, but really I mean tutorial in that I'm learning how to work with RPG maker and making things as silly as possible. Functionally, it's playable. There's a few elements that lead to dead ends or incomplete segments though, which is next on the list. I've also started to map out the next two level sections.
One thing I've learned is that all the dialogue and text I have pre-written ends up changing when I translate it to the screen.
If I could work regularly at the rate I worked last Saturday, I could be done a lot of this by the end of the year. That said, motivation, life circumstances and difficulty barriers will likely crop up. I want to see if I can have something playable for Extra Life this year so I can offer it as an incentive for Kathleen raising money. This game is intended to be for a small audience (mostly private), as there are a lot of assets like music that I wouldn't be allowed to use. That said, if I could create most of the assets myself, which is difficult, but I have the ability to do, AND could come up with a solution to the music, I could make this available to more people. I never intend to sell or market it though.
As for the writing...I've actually got a lot done there in that department. I've cranked out a lot of pages over the past two months, spending a lot of time downstairs on the couch keeping an eye on my puppy.
The downside to this productivity is video production has been reduced to a couple hours a week. In the past two weeks I've done little more than edit a little bit of Dishonored 2. I still have a massive repository of videos in the form of Pillars of Eternity, but even that will run out eventually and I will need to finish the game. The good news is a lot of the footage is there to work with, so now that I've set up my remote desktop, I can realistically work on this.
Lastly, in the past week we had the second session of Mesk's D&D campaign, in which I participated as an NPC character from the previous session. It again, went for a good 8+ hours, but I was able to stay to its conclusion (well mostly, I think Mesk did something extra with one of the characters afterwards). I also managed to voice (very terribly) all the lines as I played. I often neglected to voice my own lines though, mostly because I was focused on what I was typing. I think it went really well.
The session was as interesting and entertaining as the last, with more focus on plot advancement and character interaction than anything else. There were only a few opportunities for battle, some of which were talked their way out of...or escalated to the point where one of the characters tried to solo a boss (and then got interrupted when I sent a gundam in there cause I'd been waiting for that freaking robot to skewer someone all game). Speaking of robots, there was definitely some softcore robot love going on in this past session.
As for my first "real" roleplay (in that Nick and Shauna aren't around to forgive my terrible interactions with other characters and that it was not verbal), I think I did okay. I already know I wasn't GREAT and there was an incident where I had to move locations and it happened to be at the worst possible time (as my character was required for information), but I was WAYYYYY out of my comfort zone. This isn't something I've ever really done before, and a lot of these roleplaying or tabletop games have been forcing me to learn and try to get better at this.
It's definitely a rediscovery/retraining. It's something I think I had when I was kid when an old friend of mine and I would make up our own games and fantasy worlds. Then he left without notice and my new "crew" swiftly crushed those fantasies as they weren't too interested in those sorts of things. They also weren't afraid of voicing those opinions to my face. Since then I've been hardcoded to think things like roleplaying, writing and world building need to be kept a secret, and any failure to do so results in ridicule and embarrassment. So in my head I'm like, "yeah, this is cool and engaging" but you go deeper and all I hear is "you're making a fool of yourself." It's also an issue of "if you aren't good at it, or taken the time to get good at it privately, then don't even bother," which is a whole other clusterfuck that's built up over the span of a decade and only started to get broken down and rebuilt about 5 years ago. I care a lot less now about what people think, but it's the reason I get scared away from some things still. An example is when "you know *insert famous person here* has already done it right?" ended up translating to "someone better than you did it already so why bother trying?" in my head and I completely abandoned multiple hours of work on a project and never returned.
At least I'm learning a lot about myself. I guess that's why I have a lot of respect for these other players and the ease in which they jump into their roles. I enjoy watching them interact with the world and develop their characters/story. I know the campaign has been a lot of work for Mesk to run, but it's paid off in my opinion. Apparently there's a lot of people interested in joining, so I'll likely take on the role of various NPCs, which will probably be good training for me. Either way, I'm in for the other sessions, whether I'm watching/commentating or playing.
When I find out what Mesk wants to do with the D&D videos and what he wants to share of it, I'll likely post links to them in the blog.
PS - To my old friend, I doubt you're reading this, or ever will, but if you are, know I still have that house you built for my favourite toy. It's on display in my sitting area. I lost all the monster cards and that stick figure book though and that kills me a little.
Then I get into work where my coworker was waiting to hear about the birth of her nephew. She got the news a few minutes ago and they named him "Ansible." Okay then. I fail to see how a baby translates to "faster than light messaging," but maybe it's a magic baby. Either way, we've been trying to figure out what his nick-names would be. Maybe he'll just go by his middle name...
While I wait for the world to inevitably come to an explosive end, I've been working a lot on writing and the RPG. I got an extended session in to work on the RPG last Saturday and I got A LOT done. I'm actually almost done the functional bits of the "Tutorial area" (the Office). And I know that sounds like tutorial as in showing you how to play, but really I mean tutorial in that I'm learning how to work with RPG maker and making things as silly as possible. Functionally, it's playable. There's a few elements that lead to dead ends or incomplete segments though, which is next on the list. I've also started to map out the next two level sections.
One thing I've learned is that all the dialogue and text I have pre-written ends up changing when I translate it to the screen.
If I could work regularly at the rate I worked last Saturday, I could be done a lot of this by the end of the year. That said, motivation, life circumstances and difficulty barriers will likely crop up. I want to see if I can have something playable for Extra Life this year so I can offer it as an incentive for Kathleen raising money. This game is intended to be for a small audience (mostly private), as there are a lot of assets like music that I wouldn't be allowed to use. That said, if I could create most of the assets myself, which is difficult, but I have the ability to do, AND could come up with a solution to the music, I could make this available to more people. I never intend to sell or market it though.
As for the writing...I've actually got a lot done there in that department. I've cranked out a lot of pages over the past two months, spending a lot of time downstairs on the couch keeping an eye on my puppy.
The downside to this productivity is video production has been reduced to a couple hours a week. In the past two weeks I've done little more than edit a little bit of Dishonored 2. I still have a massive repository of videos in the form of Pillars of Eternity, but even that will run out eventually and I will need to finish the game. The good news is a lot of the footage is there to work with, so now that I've set up my remote desktop, I can realistically work on this.
Lastly, in the past week we had the second session of Mesk's D&D campaign, in which I participated as an NPC character from the previous session. It again, went for a good 8+ hours, but I was able to stay to its conclusion (well mostly, I think Mesk did something extra with one of the characters afterwards). I also managed to voice (very terribly) all the lines as I played. I often neglected to voice my own lines though, mostly because I was focused on what I was typing. I think it went really well.
The session was as interesting and entertaining as the last, with more focus on plot advancement and character interaction than anything else. There were only a few opportunities for battle, some of which were talked their way out of...or escalated to the point where one of the characters tried to solo a boss (and then got interrupted when I sent a gundam in there cause I'd been waiting for that freaking robot to skewer someone all game). Speaking of robots, there was definitely some softcore robot love going on in this past session.
As for my first "real" roleplay (in that Nick and Shauna aren't around to forgive my terrible interactions with other characters and that it was not verbal), I think I did okay. I already know I wasn't GREAT and there was an incident where I had to move locations and it happened to be at the worst possible time (as my character was required for information), but I was WAYYYYY out of my comfort zone. This isn't something I've ever really done before, and a lot of these roleplaying or tabletop games have been forcing me to learn and try to get better at this.
It's definitely a rediscovery/retraining. It's something I think I had when I was kid when an old friend of mine and I would make up our own games and fantasy worlds. Then he left without notice and my new "crew" swiftly crushed those fantasies as they weren't too interested in those sorts of things. They also weren't afraid of voicing those opinions to my face. Since then I've been hardcoded to think things like roleplaying, writing and world building need to be kept a secret, and any failure to do so results in ridicule and embarrassment. So in my head I'm like, "yeah, this is cool and engaging" but you go deeper and all I hear is "you're making a fool of yourself." It's also an issue of "if you aren't good at it, or taken the time to get good at it privately, then don't even bother," which is a whole other clusterfuck that's built up over the span of a decade and only started to get broken down and rebuilt about 5 years ago. I care a lot less now about what people think, but it's the reason I get scared away from some things still. An example is when "you know *insert famous person here* has already done it right?" ended up translating to "someone better than you did it already so why bother trying?" in my head and I completely abandoned multiple hours of work on a project and never returned.
At least I'm learning a lot about myself. I guess that's why I have a lot of respect for these other players and the ease in which they jump into their roles. I enjoy watching them interact with the world and develop their characters/story. I know the campaign has been a lot of work for Mesk to run, but it's paid off in my opinion. Apparently there's a lot of people interested in joining, so I'll likely take on the role of various NPCs, which will probably be good training for me. Either way, I'm in for the other sessions, whether I'm watching/commentating or playing.
When I find out what Mesk wants to do with the D&D videos and what he wants to share of it, I'll likely post links to them in the blog.
PS - To my old friend, I doubt you're reading this, or ever will, but if you are, know I still have that house you built for my favourite toy. It's on display in my sitting area. I lost all the monster cards and that stick figure book though and that kills me a little.
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
One-Shot Marathon
I started this blog on Monday, got busy, went to dinner and passed out on my couch so I never finished it. It's Tuesday now, but pretend that this was all written yesterday mmk?
Had my first taste of Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition last night as I watched a campaign run by Mesk. It was drastically different than the other experiences with Dungeons and Dragons I've had in the past. I was introduced to the game on version 3.5 and I've played with two groups of people on 4th edition. In both cases, I've played with/know the people in person (in addition to playing with one group occasionally online when we can't get together). This was an incredible learning experience for me because I had a chance to really pay attention to text-based interaction and roleplay. I've seen some of Mesk's videos, but I must admit I wasn't so concerned with the mechanics until this.
I notice that the players have a lot more time to think about their actions, roleplaying and conversation vs when it's voiced, which is a lot more awkward when you have long pauses to figure out whether a) it's really what you want to say/do and b) whether it's actually in character. Writing it lets a person say exactly what they want in a relatively orderly sequence and have time to think through it. This is a level of interaction and roleplaying I was not prepared to experience because I REALLY suck at roleplaying at the best of times (that said I've never really done...text based roleplay before so...). Seeing these players do it with such ease was a little intimidating, but impressive. I can tell there's a lot of anime influences in these people's lives though with how many references were made. I got like...1/3 of them (and the only reason I got the DBZ ones is cause Shauna introduced me to DBZ Abridged).
I recorded the game and ended up voice acting a lot of the spoken lines (very poorly). Was more for practice and fun than anything else since I haven't been doing much LP work lately. I made it through about three of the eight hours before my voice completely gave out and I had to resort to just commenting occasionally, or when I was really tired late-game, simply giggling. Some of the rolls were really hilarious. One of the things the players tried I'm like, there is no way this isn't going to end in tears. It actually didn't, but man that whole end boss sequence escalated quickly.
One thing I didn't expect was the length of the one-shot. I expected it to be 3-4 hours tops. It went for 8 hours and I ended up delivering a 10GB recording to Mesk. I actually didn't know how it fully ended (there was a lot of character building stuff going down) so I peaced out at 3:30am to be unconscious for three hours (work in the morning).
Personally I think the campaign went really well. There's a lot of weird things in 5e I'm not used to, but Nick made the comment that it was really plug-and-play vs 4e, so I can see why that edition appeals to custom campaigns. I saw a couple players min/maxing their characters, though when two of them were actually hit, they were almost one-shotted, so I can see that a lot of it went into maximizing damage. The test seemed to give Mesk a lot of experience and information, so that was good to see. I'd definitely watch again or even join in the future, but I don't know how my experience would play into the group dynamic. My campaigns have made me very cynical in terms of events and characters - see Boats of Doom and Undead Campaigns when I finally get the videos done for them. Basically the former had us enslaved at the beginning and we got all our items constantly stolen and the latter has been never-ending harassment from the undead and assassin HANDS.
So after my nap I attempted to vote in the morning. I packed up a puppy and drove over to a church nearby to vote (by-elections cause Harper took his ball and went home). I walked in and made it pretty far before I realized that it was the advanced polling station and actually had to go to a school to vote. A school that's like...a block away from where I live. I debated going back and realized that it was the start of school (was about 745 and the school starts at 759), so I decided it wasn't worth dealing with the kids and the buses and cars and parents and general chaos that I typically avoid the area for. The people I knew would win, won anyway so meh (my area is full of of new families and old white conservative people...the latter being the majority that votes). Then I facerolled a few spreadsheets at work, ate a lot of Brazilian food (BUT NO BBQ PINEAPPLE!!1!!!1!) and made it through watching two cat videos before I was suddenly unconscious on the couch.
I think the short-term solution to needing to supervise a puppy a lot on the main level would be to set up a remote desktop on the laptop for my main computer and just work on things downstairs. I would get so much more done for RPG making, sprite creation, video editing and going through some old files/videos. This will likely be implemented Thursday or Friday though as tonight I work and will definitely be passing out immediately when I get home and Wednesday I'm TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS. Don't know why I capitalized that to be honest, but now I have BTO stuck in my head.
Had my first taste of Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition last night as I watched a campaign run by Mesk. It was drastically different than the other experiences with Dungeons and Dragons I've had in the past. I was introduced to the game on version 3.5 and I've played with two groups of people on 4th edition. In both cases, I've played with/know the people in person (in addition to playing with one group occasionally online when we can't get together). This was an incredible learning experience for me because I had a chance to really pay attention to text-based interaction and roleplay. I've seen some of Mesk's videos, but I must admit I wasn't so concerned with the mechanics until this.
I notice that the players have a lot more time to think about their actions, roleplaying and conversation vs when it's voiced, which is a lot more awkward when you have long pauses to figure out whether a) it's really what you want to say/do and b) whether it's actually in character. Writing it lets a person say exactly what they want in a relatively orderly sequence and have time to think through it. This is a level of interaction and roleplaying I was not prepared to experience because I REALLY suck at roleplaying at the best of times (that said I've never really done...text based roleplay before so...). Seeing these players do it with such ease was a little intimidating, but impressive. I can tell there's a lot of anime influences in these people's lives though with how many references were made. I got like...1/3 of them (and the only reason I got the DBZ ones is cause Shauna introduced me to DBZ Abridged).
I recorded the game and ended up voice acting a lot of the spoken lines (very poorly). Was more for practice and fun than anything else since I haven't been doing much LP work lately. I made it through about three of the eight hours before my voice completely gave out and I had to resort to just commenting occasionally, or when I was really tired late-game, simply giggling. Some of the rolls were really hilarious. One of the things the players tried I'm like, there is no way this isn't going to end in tears. It actually didn't, but man that whole end boss sequence escalated quickly.
One thing I didn't expect was the length of the one-shot. I expected it to be 3-4 hours tops. It went for 8 hours and I ended up delivering a 10GB recording to Mesk. I actually didn't know how it fully ended (there was a lot of character building stuff going down) so I peaced out at 3:30am to be unconscious for three hours (work in the morning).
Personally I think the campaign went really well. There's a lot of weird things in 5e I'm not used to, but Nick made the comment that it was really plug-and-play vs 4e, so I can see why that edition appeals to custom campaigns. I saw a couple players min/maxing their characters, though when two of them were actually hit, they were almost one-shotted, so I can see that a lot of it went into maximizing damage. The test seemed to give Mesk a lot of experience and information, so that was good to see. I'd definitely watch again or even join in the future, but I don't know how my experience would play into the group dynamic. My campaigns have made me very cynical in terms of events and characters - see Boats of Doom and Undead Campaigns when I finally get the videos done for them. Basically the former had us enslaved at the beginning and we got all our items constantly stolen and the latter has been never-ending harassment from the undead and assassin HANDS.
So after my nap I attempted to vote in the morning. I packed up a puppy and drove over to a church nearby to vote (by-elections cause Harper took his ball and went home). I walked in and made it pretty far before I realized that it was the advanced polling station and actually had to go to a school to vote. A school that's like...a block away from where I live. I debated going back and realized that it was the start of school (was about 745 and the school starts at 759), so I decided it wasn't worth dealing with the kids and the buses and cars and parents and general chaos that I typically avoid the area for. The people I knew would win, won anyway so meh (my area is full of of new families and old white conservative people...the latter being the majority that votes). Then I facerolled a few spreadsheets at work, ate a lot of Brazilian food (BUT NO BBQ PINEAPPLE!!1!!!1!) and made it through watching two cat videos before I was suddenly unconscious on the couch.
I think the short-term solution to needing to supervise a puppy a lot on the main level would be to set up a remote desktop on the laptop for my main computer and just work on things downstairs. I would get so much more done for RPG making, sprite creation, video editing and going through some old files/videos. This will likely be implemented Thursday or Friday though as tonight I work and will definitely be passing out immediately when I get home and Wednesday I'm TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS. Don't know why I capitalized that to be honest, but now I have BTO stuck in my head.
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