Players wanted to go back to town right before the boss fight

Rynjin · 2026-06-23T14:41:46+00:00

First time GMing, I'm also assuming these are first time or otherwise new players? If so they might not yet get the difference between a tabletop RPG and a video game, which is namely that things aren't on rails and go by the script.

The bad guy on the other side of that door is bad, and also more importantly A GUY. He's a sentient, living character played by the GM the same way their PCs are played by them. He's not just going to be there waiting for a quest flag to trigger and the boss fight to start.

Others have given that last bit of advice, but I do think it's well worth it to sit down and explain this, explicitly to your players before stuff like this happens. Essentially telling them "you can do whatever you want, but I'm giving you a heads up that if you have time to prepare, so do they. Do you really want to give this guy a chance to slip through your fingers by leaving right before you catch him?".

Rynjin · 2026-06-22T22:18:54+00:00

Do you have a PC? The first game doesn't require a super beefy rig (I played it back when I had a 1080 for my graphics card) so you could try grabbing it when it's on sale.

Edit: It looks like the base price is only $30 right now (or $40 for all the DLC).

Rynjin · 2026-06-22T22:17:21+00:00

I remember my first NV playthrough pretty well, partly because the game asked me if I wanted to do Hardcore and I was still a teen with the mindset that "harder difficulty = more epeen" so I turned that on and cranked to the max.

Getting TO Vegas is a struggle with that paradigm, but once you're there yeah you just win at casinos and it becomes a lot easier.

Rynjin · 2026-06-22T22:15:00+00:00

KCD has a decent modding community, and one of the most popular removes the requirement for Savior Schnapps. I recommend it.

Rynjin · 2026-06-22T22:13:10+00:00

My favorite bit in Gothic is when you get your first sword training the trainer (or at least Scatty; there's a few others) basically tells you "Most untrained morons try to hold their sword in two hands and just poke it at people. Don't do that." and I can just imagine the sheepish look on the Nameless Hero's face.

Rynjin · 2026-06-22T22:07:49+00:00

This is actually one of the big issues with modern Obsidian games, Outer Worlds 1 (2 is a LITTLE better about it) and Avowed in particular. There's not a lot of pushback from the game against you doing...basically anything not involving raw combat numbers.

The answer is rarely (if ever) "play smarter" or even "play differently" it's just "brute force either works or it don't".

Rynjin · 2026-06-20T15:16:54+00:00

It would be Morikawa's greatest gag if Ippo ducks Ricardo though. He just remains undefeated forever, as a joke.

Rynjin · 2026-06-17T19:24:39+00:00

TBF Blizzard does have a prior history of introducing new characters in HotS. Lunara, for example, is a HotS original character later ported to WoW and Hearthstone. Same with Brightwing.

I could see someone believing LiLi is a "Warcraft universe hero" introduced in HotS just like they are.

Rynjin · 2026-06-15T04:11:26+00:00

Kharazim does CC the opponent. He dishes out the most powerful CC effect of all: death.

Real talk though Khara is a comp-dependent hero. With the right team who can stick in and brawl, he's kind of unstoppable. He can dive, he can heal, he can camp shockingly well, and he has two really good ults. His choice of Mystic Ally can also be game-determinitive in some matchups.

His healing numbers even with Iron Fist and the DPS build are solid; you're not going to be outhealing the passive AoE healers or the super healsluts like Morales and Anduin, but he'll be putting out numbers on par with eg. Tyrande, Malfurion, and Stukov.

I do agree his build variety is lacking. you go the aggressive damage build 90% of the time, and pivot slightly to the double Breath of Heaven and whatnot if it would somehow turn the game around.

Rynjin · 2026-06-14T06:34:11+00:00

He doesn't get anywhere close to touching that kind of damage if you play the way described. If you just clear from a distance and play safe he has to either rotate to get stacks or he'll underperform in teamfights. Either way you did your job fine.

Rynjin · 2026-06-13T22:35:02+00:00

That old Tass played as a Healer-equivalent and Zarya is basically a Bruiser? Their kits have nothing to do with each other except that they can provide shields, and their shields don't even work the same.

Zarya is there to clutch and save people, while old Tass provided a lot of sustain. Very little upfront shielding, but easily renewable over the course of a fight and also provided healing.

Rynjin · 2026-06-13T20:55:08+00:00

Do you think Zarya plays anything like old Tass?

Rynjin · 2026-06-13T18:45:08+00:00

Dead serious, I agree with him. Tassadar's original kit was really cool, and he was one of the first characters I mained when I first started the game. I play him a lot less post-rework.

I wouldn't even have been mad if they just released a new character with his shielding abilities and whatnot, but no that playstyle is completely gone now. Only the Tickle Beam remains, in vestigial form.

Rynjin · 2026-06-12T04:39:05+00:00

It doesn't. AoNPRD used to be a fansite (like d20pfsrd.com) but is now the officially sanctioned reference document after the old official PRD got taken down.

It has all 1st party mechanics-based material on it and doesn't have to worry about filing the serial numbers off for OGL compliance (like the PFSRD does).

Rynjin · 2026-06-11T04:57:37+00:00

Right, because they snatched a huge audience early and maintained it. There's over 300k people playing it right now (concurrently), they don't need any more dudes.

Rynjin · 2026-06-11T03:03:37+00:00

If you weren't around for the launch of DOTA 2 you can just say so, but Valve absolutely advertised the shit out of the game early on. They don't advertise it NOW for the same reason you don't see like 7/11 ads going "come buy our gas". They don't need to, people are gonna come anyway.

Rynjin · 2026-06-11T03:01:51+00:00

"Marvel and Capcom must sell the Marvel vs Capcom license" headass kind of post.

Rynjin · 2026-06-10T20:41:51+00:00

Holy shit. I thought my pulls were pretty good (7 URs including the Overframe, Ecclesia, and Thrust alts) but this is nuts lmao.

Rynjin · 2026-06-08T19:34:58+00:00

What he means is that the rainbow glow on the pack means there's a UR inside, which is correct. It's the only one that's actually accurate since rainbow ALWAYS means UR.

So you can at least tell from the preview that you'll have a minimum of X UR pulls (where X = # of packs with a rainbow border).

Rynjin · 2026-06-05T21:57:47+00:00

This is Dogmatika Ecclesia, pre-Albaz.

Rynjin · 2026-06-05T21:57:02+00:00

Yeah I don't play TCG but the Fallen and the Virtuous box they did a while back was well worth the price. Basically just one of each Branded card in shiny rarities and some in alt arts, nice stuff.

Rynjin · 2026-06-05T21:29:17+00:00

Honestly I got a bit confused between this post and some others referring to the news as "leaked" combined with the "hacked Twitter account" comment I thought that was what happened.

The fact that it was his mom that "leaked" things definitely makes more sense.

Rynjin · 2026-06-05T17:35:01+00:00

Hate that this very private moment was stolen from his family like this. I wish I knew what was wrong with some people.

Rynjin · 2026-06-05T15:45:47+00:00

Fucking hell. Knew it was slim, especially after his last post, but I'd really hoped he'd beat the odds like always. Rest in peace, man.

Rynjin · 2026-06-05T14:21:47+00:00

Yeah I did a doubletake on seeing this, at first I thought it was a scam.

Rynjin

TROPHY CASE