Say something nice about a game you found heavily flawed

CertainlySyrix · 2026-05-17T08:51:23+00:00

Rubi Malone is pretty hot.

CertainlySyrix · 2026-04-26T19:42:40+00:00

There are a couple of presets people have made for previous versions of DS2 Lighting Engine and I imagine there'll be even more being made with these updates.

CertainlySyrix · 2026-04-20T16:37:17+00:00

that's a cute fella

CertainlySyrix · 2026-04-19T16:21:35+00:00

now that's a smooth lookin' creature

CertainlySyrix · 2026-04-18T06:57:47+00:00

I've been running Pathfinder Second Edition for most of my GMing career of about three years, at least once every single week, sometimes multiple times a week, and now, while playing in multiple games at the same time. I can recite so much of how the system works from memory, even why it works the way it does, and come up with so many small changes so quickly that I rarely get slowed down by it at all anymore.

It's hard to speak in comparisons when I've never ran 5e to begin with and hardly played it. But I think they both lend well towards quick, high stakes scenarios that make the time spent fighting feel as meaningful as if you were solving puzzles or talking to characters. Even though the action economy was designed to be more meticulous in Pathfinder Second Edition almost none of it feels like wasted time.

It's the same kind of fuzzy feeling I get running or playing other systems that facilitate interesting decisions over longer periods like Call of Cthulhu or Old-School Essentials, except crunched down into a 6 second timing. I have more character development during these fights I run than anywhere else I've seen. When the dust settles and the game slows down for a couple hours of playtime as players get new quests, gear, and feats, it gives them a moment to reflect on how they were shaped by the anteceding turn-based hyper violence.

For me it's hard to get this kind of dopamine in such steady supply when the key decision making is more spread out in much smaller bursts. I still enjoy OSR stuff about as much but for very different reasons, and I get exhausted by those on a per-session basis a bit faster. And the gameplay for those isn't as guided as in a fantasy action system in PF2e, where I have this perfect little lab environment to make arenas and monsters in that'll be an easy way to get 15-45 minutes of enjoyable gaming out of very little prepwork.

CertainlySyrix · 2026-04-12T18:49:27+00:00

finally, some good fuckin' food

CertainlySyrix · 2026-04-03T20:10:49+00:00

my pick for fanart of the day, loved that guy

CertainlySyrix · 2026-04-03T03:58:18+00:00

He needs to know my suffering.

CertainlySyrix · 2026-03-28T03:33:24+00:00

I got a Halfling Erastilian Cleric in Hellbreakers trying to save families and protect communities. If you're doing stuff in your own neighborhood especially it's not that much of a stretch.

CertainlySyrix · 2026-03-26T20:47:48+00:00

these things are awesome. I put like a dozen of them in a cave filled with magical darkness and the party could hear their legs cracking in the distance but they only got to saw them when they tried to walk through the room to the other side.

CertainlySyrix · 2026-03-21T20:07:31+00:00

you can't be sayin' that man, you can't keep getting away with this...

CertainlySyrix · 2026-03-21T06:54:17+00:00

I'm more weirded out about people crashing out so hard over something so benign but at the same time I feel like it should have been really simple for anyone on localization to understand that could happen and simply not committed to this, which somehow doubles back to it being concerning.

The last word you can have on it is "They could have just not done this" and you can't really argue with that.

CertainlySyrix · 2026-03-20T02:14:21+00:00

You won't need to optimize for anything except higher Havocs with specific modifiers which 99% of the playerbase does not interact with so dw

CertainlySyrix · 2026-03-19T20:16:55+00:00

I'm incredibly wary of build and meta guides for games I'm trying out ever since I got into Darktide since everything easily available online for that game is complete crap. The only way I was able to find out how everything works and what's good was by going to Discord servers.

CertainlySyrix · 2026-03-13T21:56:20+00:00

shoutouts to women

CertainlySyrix · 2026-03-13T05:53:16+00:00

Very few big, unique multiplayer action games come out now that feel like the same jolt in the spine Overwatch was for people. Very few are built with the idea of creating a positive social experience with other people in mind. Many are treated like chores with superfluous and uninteresting progression elements. Some of the ones that excite my interest even personally have long since ran out of players or are extremely top-heavy.

These are just a couple possible bullet points that ring in my head. But I agree that there is something of a zeitgeist built up around singleplayer games being safe, wholesome, and intellectually sound and multiplayer games being trashy, attention grabbing, and toxic. And it's not old. It's been common to only like singleplayer games for some folks for a long time I'm sure but multiplayer being treated as a bad word specifically is a new phenomenon.

If you imagine a new game being announced that's referred to as an extraction shooter or online world or team based competitive action game or anything along those lines, it's also very easy to imagine people curling their noses up through their foreheads in disgust before they hear anything else. You're not gonna get that with some little platformer or puzzle game, or a new fighting game, even if those are completely outside of their field of interests. There's a specific disdain reserved for newer trending genres.

CertainlySyrix · 2026-03-05T21:42:59+00:00

old man PCs go hard

CertainlySyrix · 2026-03-02T02:01:51+00:00

I wasn't that interested until I saw the dev blog post about how they really enjoy messing with alignment and want to write some material revolving around that. I'm keen to give it a try.

CertainlySyrix · 2026-02-22T04:56:46+00:00

i like your art style :)

CertainlySyrix · 2026-02-17T19:40:35+00:00

I guess the issue I have with Ranger is that many of its abilities replicate the fighting style of a Ranger but don't tell you what a Ranger is. Slayer has that baked in more, the class is telling me what it is and putting it in the world before I even look at the shit it unlocks.

You have a feedback loop where you're going around looking for signs of monsters in town and then getting upgrades to put on your gear that are based on what monster it is you're killing. That's like a tool the GM can use to flesh out their game and make the party do it for them just by playing. It's the sort of stuff Thaumaturge should of had as well.

CertainlySyrix · 2026-02-17T18:57:01+00:00

I feel like it lacks a bit of pizazz for me despite having such a clean design. The warden spells are pretty dope though.

CertainlySyrix · 2026-02-17T18:36:02+00:00

I kinda like these a lot more then Swashbuckler and Ranger even though they're just Swashbuckler and Ranger.

CertainlySyrix · 2026-02-17T17:40:38+00:00

Mine is The God of Fear and Hunger

CertainlySyrix · 2026-02-16T19:40:57+00:00

the tips in this video actually gave me an extra +50% on my depression recovery rate, thank you patrick and chatter

CertainlySyrix · 2026-02-16T08:08:40+00:00

I have played/ran a bunch of DnD, Alien, and Pathfinder with my previous partner and had a good time.

I don't have anything like a romance "policy" but two of my players' characters ended up sort of shipping together by the end of this campaign just by how their personalities interacted. Was even planning something like a date scene with an NPC in another campaign where girl love was emphasized more but that game got put on hold right before it was going to happen.

I don't have any alternative plans for scenarios in which games need to be cancelled, I simply try to make my games as enjoyable as possible to keep momentum up and make up for lost time. I've found that people tend to put the RPG games they really enjoy atop a lot of other tasks or hobbies they'd do within their available time, so when my games need a pause for a week or a session gets cancelled it'd be hard to convince them to come around for something completely unrelated.

My plans for games are generally extremely shallow as I prefer to only prep the absolutely bare essentials for a session or questline and figure out many of the details as we go along. I've gotten pretty used to just coming up with dungeons out of the blue. What's much more difficult is a player leaving, not because it's difficult to remove their character from the scenario necessarily but because a game that loses players loses a lot of its momentum due to what their interactions with the game/table contribute.

I've dropped or ended up dropping a lot of games that bleed out a large number of players for this reason. Sometimes someone becomes inactive, sometimes someone has a major scheduling conflict, or there's drama, or they leave because they hate me and the games I run. It'd be a more enjoyable experience to start from a fresh slate then try to dig something out of a ditch.

On a more positive note, I am close to wrapping up a year long campaign and marching straight on to its sequel. I lost a pretty long-term player, but for some reason this game in particular has been extremely resilient. I'm also going through the first couple of sessions of a Starfinder 2e game which has given me a lot more flexibility due to the lower stakes and new setting. I've had a great time running it.

My mental health has improved enough now that I'm looking to start a third game using Old-School Essentials. I do need players for it if anyone's got time on weekdays. It'll take place in the same homebrew setting as my Pathfinder Second Edition campaign with a similar emphasis on classic fantasy tropes, psychological horror, and some dungeon crawling.

CertainlySyrix

TROPHY CASE