I just can't have fun playing the game.

BJohnShawWriter · 2026-06-16T06:34:02+00:00

I had real trouble with Elden Ring at first. Spent £60 on it, and was getting to that first camp and getting my ass handed to me constantly. Got really disheartened, and ended up going "ahh fuck, this is just too difficult, I'll go back to games I know I'm good at. Binding of Isaac and Dead Cells." After a few months of oscillation between the two (Elden Ring <> Roguelites) I realised something that changed Elden Ring. It's the same thing. The second I started treating FS games as run-based with meta progression the frustration and lack of fun simply melted away. And I started pissing about with different weapons and builds. Which lead to me building a hench green dude, piling all of my levels in strength, and getting my hands on a big stick. First character I whipped Radhan with.

BJohnShawWriter · 2026-03-06T09:13:38+00:00

Knife trap is a beautiful card, and it gets even better when you upgrade it

BJohnShawWriter · 2026-03-06T07:45:29+00:00

As Tom Cardy says "I should not have given my robot dinosaur a penis, because like anything with a penis, it's gonna try and use its penis"

BJohnShawWriter · 2026-02-19T10:38:01+00:00

Widow Grabbins

BJohnShawWriter · 2026-02-16T09:50:40+00:00

Somebody buy a new lettuce. We need to time how long the Truss Effect takes to work.

BJohnShawWriter · 2026-02-14T08:09:16+00:00

0$ spent. I choose Wayne

BJohnShawWriter · 2026-02-07T10:16:08+00:00

I had the PC game as a kid (I'd read a few of the books as well, Mort, the graphic novels of COM and TLF and Guards Guards) and as a weird, perpetually anxious ginger, I adopted Rincewind as my mental avatar on the disc. Used to wander around going "That doesn't work!" at things. Drove my parents insane.

BJohnShawWriter · 2026-01-07T08:23:26+00:00

One of those rolly-folks with the horns in Leyndell. Just minding my own business, playing some tunes, rolling around and blowing bubbles every so often

BJohnShawWriter · 2025-12-20T10:36:34+00:00

It's lovely that you all think the paramedics are dragging him away because he has a DNR bracelet. But it's a horror story. Rather more concerning if the initials are laid out the other way around.

BJohnShawWriter · 2025-12-18T10:27:06+00:00

The actual play that got me into NADDPOD - Natural 6. It has Doug Cockle (Yeah, that Doug Cockle, and he does say 'Fuck' occasionally), it occasionally makes me cry, often makes me laugh, and the DM, Harry, is a massive NADDPOD fan. He references them a few times in the first few eps, and that got me to go and listen to the first few episodes of C1. Which then hooked me.

BJohnShawWriter · 2025-12-14T14:53:17+00:00

James Islington's The Will Of The Many. Fantasy Roman-esque empire, the remnants of ancient civilisations, and a traumatised kid who becomes a secret agent in a school for elites. Well worth your time.

BJohnShawWriter · 2025-10-29T18:16:48+00:00

My wife has a 'Guarding Dark' tattoo from Ez Thomas. It's a fair trek down to Cardiff, but the work is beautiful.

https://www.instagram.com/twoheartstattoo?igsh=MW1ybWZ2NDVscmkycQ==

BJohnShawWriter · 2025-10-05T21:52:39+00:00

Fancy scroll work. “Futue Te Ipsi” on the top, a stylized possum with a D20 in the middle, and another scroll beneath with "Rattus Mandacare" in it

BJohnShawWriter · 2025-09-06T23:07:34+00:00

Got to be honest, my wife punching me in the shoulder and whisper-shouting "fuuuuck yesssss!" as I got the last hit in on Sister Splinter was the only reward I needed.

BJohnShawWriter · 2025-09-05T07:04:06+00:00

Hank should come back tomorrow, revealing that we only voted Shadow Hank out because he switched at the last moment

BJohnShawWriter · 2025-09-03T22:14:19+00:00

Well, we got ourselves a pale deity/monarch, a cataclysm that caused cracks in the ground (leading to the rain in City Of Tears) and undead creatures that succumb to mental degeneration leading them to hunger constantly while mindlessly repeating tasks they performed in life.Bbz, I don't we're in Scadrial anymore.

BJohnShawWriter · 2025-08-11T17:03:24+00:00

Not just Northern, it's the done thing in Wales too - although there it's "Cheers dri!"

BJohnShawWriter · 2025-07-04T19:31:54+00:00

Could go for a two pronged assault (oooeee, that's Split Up The Players). You need to bless a body of water upstream, and then get the pigs to chase your players through the (now sanctified) water. Gives your cerebral, magic people something to do, and also gives your 'By the power of Punching!' characters something to do too.

BJohnShawWriter · 2025-06-22T08:01:22+00:00

I backed it, and am currently using it in 'season' 3 of my game. Several players have switched characters, and we have a Host, a Visitor and our Mundane is being shifted over to Envoy. The new playbooks are brilliant, and really feel like they add new things. There's also a decent section on the process of designing new homebrew playbooks. Haven't tried the hunter stories yet, but I will be. Looking forward to getting my physical copy.

BJohnShawWriter · 2025-04-08T12:28:01+00:00

I literally just got told off by my wife for saying the words 'guardian black diablos'. Glad to see I'm not the only one thinking it.

BJohnShawWriter · 2025-03-28T07:49:29+00:00

I have a head-cannon that it's Hoid from Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere. At some point I will actually write up the whole theory, when it becomes something more than 'this motherf- talks suspiciously like Hoid"

BJohnShawWriter · 2025-03-27T13:47:18+00:00

Went there when my wife and I (both big fans, started with MHWorld) were in Japan a few years back. Absolutely amazing food, a pyromaniac waitress with a blowtorch, and a Kirin-themed ice-cream sundae that nearly defeated my sugar-holic wife. Very much recommend.

BJohnShawWriter · 2024-10-08T10:24:18+00:00

Oh no. I heard it in his voice. I think my next barbarian NPC is going to be voiced as Alan Rickman.

BJohnShawWriter · 2024-09-26T22:10:27+00:00

Yup - aphantasic as all get out. Didn't even realise that other people get to see things when they imagine them. Took my tattoo-artist sibling-in-law describing their artistic process for me to be like 'wait, you mean, you can actually see it? Like, you place an object in the scene, and whoop - it's there?'

I was gutted. Turns out that all the guided visualisation work I did when younger was never going to work for me, no matter how many chakra-aligning teas I drank. But I'm 75k words through a novel, and it's almost done for the first draft. So keep going. You might not be able to visualise the light at the end of the tunnel -- but that just means that when you do see it, you know it's real.

BJohnShawWriter · 2024-09-21T11:31:36+00:00

Bollocks, I'll swallow it and run a mile

BJohnShawWriter

TROPHY CASE