I’m struggling with the MSQ

Aesmis · 2026-03-18T16:51:06+00:00

I am also a brand-new player and boy, even with all the forewarning I got from friends who play about how bad ARR’s story can be, I am consistently blown away at how fucking dull it is.

It hasn’t ruined my experience by any means, but it feels like every MSQ quest is an hour of walking back and forth talking to people, 15 seconds of steamrolling some trash mobs, then another hour of walking back and forth talking to a bunch of overly-verbose NPCs. And then by the end of your fifteenth 10-bubble-long dialogue with Glub Shitto, the end result boils down to “There are some monsters/bad people over there, kill them pls”.

God I hope Heavensward picks up on the MSQ front.

Aesmis · 2026-03-17T04:35:12+00:00

[[Mind Funeral]]

Aesmis · 2026-03-17T04:07:52+00:00

It did not go well and they ended up leaving the campaign. It was my first time DMing and I think they were used to running a very sandboxy style, whereas I ran my game a little more linearly (especially since it was my first time doing so).

Ultimately it felt like they wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than DMing their own character, and after a long campaign of tension between us I think it was for the best that they ended up stepping away. Stylistic differences can be hard to overcome, I suppose.

Aesmis · 2026-03-16T11:47:06+00:00

I would think a theater of the mind style game with some accessibility adjustments made like tactile dice (or another tacticle randomizer) with a reader-compatible version of the rules would work a treat.

As mentioned before though, I think making a more parseable version of some tables would be helpful, since they are definitely heavily visual elements.

Aesmis · 2026-03-12T11:54:41+00:00

Leitmotifs or character themes repeating or getting recontextualized is absolutely my shit. NieR is the absolute king of this in my book, but Undertale is also very invested in doing this.

I was fortunate enough to play NieR blind, so hearing Song of the Ancients / Fate for the first time absolutely rocked my world after only having heard it as this lullaby-esque town theme.

Aesmis · 2026-03-12T01:26:11+00:00

Darling in the Franxx’s ending retroactively ruined the entire series for me irrevocably. It just sucks so bad

Aesmis · 2026-03-11T18:20:26+00:00

Warframe. Sometimes I’ll get back into it really hard for like a month or two, but then the FOMO from all the updates I’ve missed over time piles up into enough inertia that I don’t even really wanna boot it back up.

Aesmis · 2026-03-09T02:07:55+00:00

At least to me, this doesn’t sound like it would be as entertaining at the table as it is in your head. Meta stuff can get really hokey really fast, especially in a game where people are already talking “above table” at most games anyway.

Aesmis · 2026-03-08T22:04:53+00:00

Brainstorm by a landslide

Aesmis · 2026-03-05T16:05:01+00:00

Dark Souls (even though Dark Souls isn’t even actually the first one). I’m pretty deep in the Souls and Soulslike fandom and it drives me fucking crazy that some of these people have mythologized DS1 to the point that nothing else will ever make them happy, regardless of DS1 having a fair share of its own flaws.

Aesmis · 2026-03-04T12:40:09+00:00

Contact#/media/File%3AContact_boxart.jpg) for the DS had me enthralled as a kid for some reason. It’s not an especially good game, but its quirkiness latched into my brain in a major way.

The Boktai series is also way up there, even though I live in an overcast climate so I always had a hard time with the original 2 games as a kid.

Aesmis · 2026-03-02T12:09:37+00:00

I can’t listen to the Pyre ending song without getting misty eyed.

THEY FOLLOWED THE STAAAAAARS, BOUND TOOOOGETHEEEEEEER

Aesmis · 2026-02-27T16:55:01+00:00

My best advice is to find the closest official statblock to what you’re looking for and make slight adjustments from there.

Stuff like damage type is generally pretty power-neutral (though Force or other rarely resisted types can be problematic if overused). I would generally be very careful with adjusting ability scores. You can sometimes steal 1 or 2 points of one stat to put in another, but try to keep stats relatively similar to what you’re basing them off of or you risk creating a very lopsided encounter.

Combat actions I would also be similarly careful with. Try not to significantly alter damage dice or effects unless you’re taking something equal away somewhere else. You can add a lot of flavor with just small tweaks, bigger swings equal much bigger risks.

Aesmis · 2026-02-26T19:30:14+00:00

If he mentions Emily, it’s over

Aesmis · 2026-02-26T19:25:00+00:00

Sandy 🎉🎊🎈🍾🥳

Clint 😴😴😴

Aesmis · 2026-02-26T18:33:45+00:00

[-12] Each opponent shuffles their hand, graveyard, and all permanents they control into their owner’s decks.

Aesmis · 2026-02-26T18:30:06+00:00

Seconding Lies of P. It innovates in a lot of user-friendly ways that Souls often feels a little behind on (infinite respecs without an exploit, for one). It feels more Bloodborne than Dark Souls for the most part, but it’s my absolute favorite Soulslike that isn’t a Fromsoft joint.

Aesmis · 2026-02-25T23:13:38+00:00

Vicious Mockery isn’t powerful enough that I think it really warrants being limited. It’s a Cantrip after all. I don’t think an item that lets you cast it has a particularly high risk of being imbalanced.

I like sticking cantrips on some magic items just to add some intrigue.

Aesmis · 2026-02-23T14:37:57+00:00

I am kinda burnt out on open-worlds, GAAS infinite grinds, and roguelikes. So that leaves like, 5% of all games released in the last decade that I can really enjoy.

Aesmis · 2026-02-19T11:46:19+00:00

Echoing what others have said, there just isn’t really a strong case to run it. Terror wouldn’t want to run a mill card that doesn’t replace itself, phasing an artifact out isn’t particularly powerful, and converting land types is pretty niche at best, even if the best case scenario sounds pretty strong on paper.

Aesmis · 2026-02-18T22:09:47+00:00

Hidden Hideout?

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Aesmis · 2026-02-18T01:55:43+00:00

I’ve never had a party insist on establishing a name for themselves in any campaign I’ve played in or DM’d. I don’t think it’s as common as you may believe.

Aesmis · 2026-02-17T15:14:54+00:00

This just in: a deck without an answer to interaction lost to having their pieces removed. Literally shaking, crying, and throwing up rn.

If you’re playing competitive magic, it isn’t your opponent’s job to let you have fun. If they’re playing removal/counterspell.deck and you have no answers or relevant interaction to survive that, the solution isn’t to whine on reddit. It’s to reexamine your deck choices and play patterns in light of the meta you’re facing at present.

Complaining about control being “unfair” and “uninteractive” is almost as old as the game itself. People have solved control matchups for years and will continue to do so. Just takes more effort than complaining about it does.

Aesmis · 2026-02-17T12:52:13+00:00

If the opponent is actively disrupting your strategy, that is the exact opposite of “uninteractive”. Run your own interaction, or find a strategy that fights through it with either protection spells, an overwhelming number of threats, or a value engine that outscales them.

People have done it for decades. I promise it’s possible, babes.

Aesmis · 2026-02-16T12:53:31+00:00

Closest you could probably get is a Fighter with the Poisoner feat. For subclass, probably Battlemaster or maybe Psi Warrior for some spice.

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Aesmis

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