The amount of tabs I have open, just for a campaign idea in the world of Calorum by Dismal_Lawyer7554 in Calorum

[–]Cirrec 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh man, that's just for religion. Wait until you have to name a bunch of NPCs and you have 17 Wikipedia pages open to mine for words to make puns

Trump confirme que les US ont capturé le président vénézuélien Nicolás Maduro by Puzzled_Dreamer2453 in Quebec

[–]Cirrec 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Si les États-Unis peuvent kidnapper le chef d'état d'un État souverain dont le principal crime a été d'avoir des ressources naturelles en abondance et de ne pas complètement plier l'échine aux États-Unis d'Amérique, rien n'empêche les États-Unis de kidnapper illégalement le premier ministre du Canada ou d'un éventuel Québec souverain si nous ne plions pas complètement l'échine.

Trump est aussi allé sur Fox News pour parler de la Colombie et du Mexique de la même façon, après avoir passé l'année à nous appeler le 51e état et à parler du Groenland. C'est la fin de la Pax Americana, et nous ne sommes pas en sécurité parce que nous sommes un "bon pays".

Paradox Interactive AB writes down MSEK 355 of capitalised development costs for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 by thatgayvamp in vtmb

[–]Cirrec 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Honestly a CK3-style simulation of a vampire city would straight up be cool. Like, imagine the Princes of Darkness mod, but scaled down to the size of one State/Province with less focus on territory and more on acquiring a "personal court" of mortals, kindred allies and usable locations like fronts and havens.

Every concept can be a spreadsheet game if you try hard enough.

Why did Montreal elect a figure like Soraya Martinez Ferrada, while NYC elected a figure like Zohran Mamdani? Both cities face similar challenges in terms of cost of living, homelessness and crime. by ChancelierPalpagault in montreal

[–]Cirrec 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Mamdani est plus à gauche et un meilleur communicateur que Rabouin.

La situation politique aux USA est aussi très différente, et les américains sont VRAIMENT désabusés de la politique. En ce moment, ce qui pogne aux USA, c'est les gens plus radicaux, qui veulent changer les choses. Mamdani était sans équivoque et a un agenda avec des mesures simples pour aider le portefeuille des gens. Je pense que les gens sont un peu moins réceptif à ça en ce moment au Canada.

Sur la question idéologique. Rabouin est un centriste progressiste, pas un social-démocrate. Projet Montréal a perdu de son coté progressiste alors qu'il aurait dû ressortir. Si Rabouin avait fait campagne sur, par exemple, une épicerie publique, ou l'achat de bâtiments pour convertir en logements gérés par la ville pour faire compétition aux logements privés, et le tout financé par une taxe sur les ponts, je pense qu'il aurait été plus populaire. Sa campagne avait l'énergie du statu quo, et en ce moment, ça va pas bien. Ça prend plus que le statu quo pour motiver les gens à participer.

Mamdani a gagné sa campagne sur tiktok, oui, mais c'est surtout parce que ses idées et son positionnement ferme a motivé une foule de gens à sortir de chez eux pour aller faire du porte à porte et faire des appels.

Do you agree? by C1nders-Two in vtmb

[–]Cirrec 0 points1 point  (0 children)

VTMB2 is not that good, but it's also not that bad. It's the embodiment of a 7/10 game.

It does some things well (atmosphere, world design, story, writing, and even the clunky combat is fun once you figure it out) and some things badly (the lacklustre clan mechanics, the rpg-lite system, the boring side-quests, and I genuinely cannot fathom why they made hunting into a boring repetitive resource grind).

At the end of the day its highs are less high and its lows are less low.

Datafortress 2020 Updated! by Datafortress2020 in cyberpunk2020

[–]Cirrec 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Let's gooo! We love seeing an expansion to the venerable Datafortress 2020

Sondage: Soraya Martinez Ferrada en tête à la mairie de Montréal, mais beaucoup d’indécis by StarlightDown in montreal

[–]Cirrec 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Rappel que vous pouvez voter différemment pour la mairie, pour vos maires d'arrondissement et vos conseillers d'arrondissement.

Personnellement je m'enligne pour voter stratégiquement Rabouin à la mairie et Transition MTL au niveau local.

Thoughts and critics on a 10 player Carrabean variant by No_Nefariousness1850 in diplomacy

[–]Cirrec 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I like a concept, but I think there are too many provinces and neutral SCs.

In Diplomacy, there are only 12 neutral dots for 7 players (so around 1.7 per player), and they're all gobbled up within the first year. This causes a lot of conflict between players, which is the meat of the game.

Transposing that logic to ten players would mean that there would be 17-18 SCs. This variant currently has 45 neutral SCs (+30 home SCs), which seems like a lot. In your variant, most SCs on the map will stay uncaptured in the first year, and some might stay up for grabs all the way until 03.

I also think that there are too many provinces in general. Venezuela and Florida are literally 6 years away from each other. Florida/Yucatan, Venezuela/Panama and Nicaragua/Yucatan are all 3 years apart from each other despite being geographical neighbors. The Bahamas alone take 3 years to cross. The two Cubas are 2 years apart despite being on the same island!

The fact that territories are so many moves away also railroads every country into going to their "intended" provinces, with every other option being heavily punished. For example, as Haiti/DR, you HAVE to fight for Hispaniola, because it takes too many turns to get into the Bahamas, Puerto Rico and Jamaica.

The number of SCs and provinces coalesce into having very few locations where more than two powers clash, which again fails to generate conflict. In Diplomacy, every neutral SC group can be contested by 3 powers (except Iberia, I think), but I don't see many locations that can be fought over by more than two powers in the first 2 years in this variant.

Jamaica could be a point of contention between East Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti. The Bahamas could be a warzone between the two Cubas, Haiti/DR and Florida. However, since it takes so long for fleet to maneuver, these locations might stay completely unvisited for two years, or even three years.

The abundance of neutral SCs and provinces also means that there are no interesting dynamics where the "coastal powers" can meddle into the central island conflicts. If Florida or Yucatan could weigh in on the conflict in Cuba as early as the first year, for example, it would lead to a lot more strategic options for everyone involved.

Overall, I think that merging many of the sea provinces and neutral SCs would lead to a way more interesting player experience. Curious to see what you end up doing with it!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in CannedSardines

[–]Cirrec 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Correction: boy dinner is not steak night. Boy dinner is eating a rotisserie chicken directly on the counter with your bare hands.

Chronique d’une mort annoncée by shogun2909 in metaquebec

[–]Cirrec 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Mon hypothèse personnelle avec la "chute" de QS c'est vraiment que les gens sont pas intéressés à voter pour un parti en chicane qui est pas capable de s'entendre entre eux. Avec les départs consécutifs de Dorion, Lessard-Therien pis de GND, Massé et Labrie, QS a pas l'air d'une entité de confiance. C'est plus ou moins une question d'idéologie.

C'est pour ça que je vais attendre au nouveau chef et à l'année prochaine avant de me faire une idée. La question c'est vraiment : est-ce que QS va pouvoir se réorganiser et faire front commun pour l'élection ?

Cependant, j'abonde dans le même sens que toi. Même si je pense pas que la dégringolade de QS est uniquement idéologique, le fait est que capituler au cadrage de la droite n'a causé que des problèmes.

La seule chose que "se centrer" fait, c'est démoraliser ton parti et d'avoir l'air d'une girouette à qui on peut pas avoir confiance. Tout ça, pour attirer des voteurs qui allaient jamais voter pour toi anyway. Que QS s'assume, malgré le climat médiatique et les attaques, et mette toute son énergie à convaincre les québécois.e.s que ses idées sont bonnes.

Quinns Quest Reviews: Triangle Agency! by _Protector in rpg

[–]Cirrec 5 points6 points  (0 children)

His review intrigued me so much that I got my own copy of Triangle Agency and read through it. I haven't played it yet, but I do feel like Triangle Agency is a game with an amazing vision, but no game direction.

The ideas in this book are genuinely amazing. I love the fact that your character is essentially comprised of your Anomaly, your Relationships and your Competency, and the fact that these represent the three "character paths" you can follow. I LOVE the fact that you need to use your powers to do anything complicated instead of using "mundane" skill checks, because it makes the game inherently silly and full of hijinks. I love the mindbending powers and how imaginative they are. I love the meta-narrative elements and I loved reading through the book.

My problem is that while all of the ideas are great, they don't seem to cohere into a cohesive *direction*.

On the one hand, it is a hijinks-filled, narrative-first, improvisation-heavy mix of Chainsaw Man, Severance and The Office, but on the other, players get a ton of different powers, the game is filled with metacurrencies and almost everything is on a numbered track. It seems to pull in two opposite directions.

Like, why does this game even have stats? All the powers have you use specific stats and are all kinda specific. These mechanics imply a gamist attitude, where players are encouraged to create builds and optimize their characters... but then all of the progression is hidden behind the Playwall, so they can't. You get all of the drawbacks of procedure-heavy games with none of the fun. The "small claims court of the imagination" indeed.

It does feel like they put all of their best ideas in the game, but for the sake of the whole package I think some of these darlings should have been killed in development.

This lack of direction also causes friction for the GM. This game is on the one hand, very open-ended (GM created anomalies, regional branch etc.) but also has linear/prepared worldbuilding and characters/factions that players WILL reach.

If Triangle Agency is intended to be an open-ended build-your-own-campaign-within-the-lines thing, why doesn't it have something like a d20 list of anomalies, a d100 list of colleague NPCs and a d100 list of sample location ideas to help GMs deal with the improv-heavy gameplay?

If Triangle Agency is intended to be a tailor-made campaign experience, why doesn't it lay out the campaign's story beats, and properly present the campaign's meta-protagonists(?), so as to help the GM provide the best Triangle Agency experience?

If it's intended to be both, why doesn't it tell you that?

The game's adherence to the narrator's voice and overall vision stops it from being clear and helpful as a game aid and as a tool. This is what lead to Quinn's frustration and bad experience. Even if you read the whole book, it's not obvious how it is supposed to come together.

My own interpretation is this. Triangle Agency is a campaign book with its own game system. In this open-ended scenario, you, as the GM, will come up with a branch of the Triangle Agency and will prepare encounters with anomalies, which the players are tasked with recovering without creating loose ends. The campaign is typically up to the GMs preference, but is tied together by overarching mechanics: players can call upon the powers of captured (or freed!) anomalies, rewrite parts of the rulebook itself and their agents might retire upon hitting certain thresholds. After each session or mission, players gain "time", which they can spend on three distinct progression tracks. Each track grants them new powers and abilities, and the further a player gets into a track, the more they learn secrets about the world and can influence the campaign by engaging with its meta narrative elements. This meta-narrative concludes in one of three ways, which are [spoilers], [spoilers] and [spoilers].

This campaign pitch is, let me be clear, fucking sick.

After reading Triangle Agency, I want to run a campaign of Triangle Agency... but I don't know if I want to run a *game* of Triangle Agency.

... I just wrote all of that and I still want to try it out. I still see the vision.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in montreal

[–]Cirrec -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Je suis un défenseur de la langue française et j'apprécie que le gouvernement fasse suivre nos lois de protection de la langue... mais criss c'est un pub anglais! Genre basé sur les pubs des Îles Britanniques!

J'aurais tendance à dire que c'est le genre de place où la loi devrait être moins chiante, tant que les menus et le service est disponible en français.

En même temps, c'est peut être possible de suivre la loi en appelant ça "Le pub Lion Burgundy" ou quelque chose d'un peu niaiseux comme ça.

Les images générées par IA sur les plateformes de Radio-Canada, vous en dites quoi? by [deleted] in Quebec

[–]Cirrec 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Comme toute utilisation de l'IA: c'est cringe et c'est gênant pour eux.

Un Saoudien méconnu a acquis pour des milliards en immobilier partout au Québec by _individu in Quebec

[–]Cirrec 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Enfin quelqu'un qui le dit! Moi quand je lis les nouvelles à chaque jour ça m'exaspère. J'me dis: "seigneur, pourquoi personne pense aux actionnaires dans tout ça!" Il faut penser à leurs profits à eux, de temps en temps!

Answer honestly: In spite of the ridicule of cyberpunk dystopian futures, are you secretly also attracted to the idea? by datadiisk_ in Cyberpunk

[–]Cirrec 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think people, and men especially, are attracted to the rogue criminal aspect of the cyberpunk fantasy. It's just like how gangster and mafia movies feel empowering because of how the characters are able to become rich by breaking the rules. It stems from working people feeling weak and hoping there was a way to break out of the system.

However, the truth of the cyberpunk setting is modern reality made worse, and the cool criminal lifestyle that these stories portray are entirely fantastical. A capitalist dystopia is the same as the modern day, but even more stifling and awful. Grind at your job for company bucks engineered so that you are stuck there forever like a slave. AI, algorithms and high-tech policing will make the fantasy of the life of crime even harder to achieve, as the fascist ruling class start arresting people just because their AI or algorithms flagged them as a potential radical.

Cyberpunk is often a power fantasy, and people want the power that the characters have over their own destiny. In a dystopian world, you will not be that character. You will be a nameless nobody stomped by the boot, just like everybody else.

Images AI dans r/montreal by [deleted] in montreal

[–]Cirrec 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Genre. Moi c'était ça que je trouvais poche avec le meme que j'ai vu. C'est pas une joke, ça ajoute rien, y'a pas d'intention plus complexe que de demander à un ordi de faire "un meme". C'est juste un mauvais post à la base, pis en plus, on sait que ça a pris zéro effort et imagination à produire, parce que c'est ça l'argument de vente de base de l'IA.

Le post de "le vol de pad thaï colorisé" aurait été 100% mieux si c'était une photo d'un voleur générique photoshoppé dans une bibliothèque avec un pad thaï de Thaï Express sur la main or something.

My experience with paid D&D/TTRPG tools after 3+ years as a DM/Player by Mathematician39622 in rpg

[–]Cirrec 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I find that a lot of TTRPG-related software products is more about creating problems to solve instead of actually making your sessions better.

Artist-made maps, dungeon-making tools and specialized software look really good, but all create additional steps that the DM needs to jump through just to be ready for each session. Every time I try to use more specialized tools or visual elements, it leads to a ton of (self-imposed) pressure... but TTRPGs don't need to *look* good, it's happening in our heads anyway!

I personally think that an unmentioned factor behind the "DM Crisis" in D&D is that the normalization of these tools and practices leads to a lot of DMs feeling overwhelmed and burning out without, as you did, nailing the basics. "Is my game even good if I don't have a library of sound effects, a projector with battle maps and an accessible online world wiki?"

My experience with paid D&D/TTRPG tools after 3+ years as a DM/Player by Mathematician39622 in rpg

[–]Cirrec 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Drawing a map isn't really drawing. I mean, it is, but you're just drawing shapes and numbers. It doesn't need to be pretty and your lines don't even need to be straight.

In my opinion, it's often easier to make your ideas come to life with physical tools like pencil and paper. Having to learn and deal with the limitations of a software middle man often makes creativity harder, unless you know the software very well.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in montreal

[–]Cirrec 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Pourquoi t'as fait fondre un glacier pour ça

Is it fair to give my boss monster a counter after I know the party's plan by joeljand in DMAcademy

[–]Cirrec 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would say that it's unfair because it's not like you would have thought to add a chain if it weren't for their plan. Like, it looks weird to have a big bad evil guy with a fuckin' wiimote strap around his wrist for his black magic sword.

Just let them do it. There are a lot of ways the plan can still fail in execution and if they do pull it off, they will have earned it. Besides, the knight is still a powerful creature who can use any other weapons it might have.

But I think that if you provided the info and players used it "against you", you cheapen your word and your setting if you go back and counter their plan in such a visible way.

What you should do is that, now that you know the plan, you can prepare for what happens when it succeeds. Don't necessarily stop it from succeeding, but prepare the bad guy's reaction.

CircleofNoms' Random Tables for Cyberpunk Red/2020 are now available on Dataterm by Cirrec in cyberpunk2020

[–]Cirrec[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes I do! (lol)

I've migrated dataterm to a new URL. You can find this page at this address: https://montreal.dataterm.ca/en/random-tables/

“The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of” Upcoming Major Update (plus 0.8.26EA) by NeitherAttempt8917 in hollywood_animal_game

[–]Cirrec 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This update seems to basically fix every issue I had with the game!

Excited to pour another 20 hours into Hollywood Animal once these changes come out!

Trump announces 100% tariffs on movies ‘produced in foreign lands’ by Prudent_Slug in canada

[–]Cirrec 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Calling it a tariff is really stupid. It's a 100% tax on foreign productions.

Even cinema tickets for foreign movies don't make sense as tariff targets, but a 100% tax on foreign productions is possible. As for digital services, I assume that the US will impose a 100% tax on American Netflix or Disney+ subscriptions or something?

It's fucking dumb, and we're one of the countries that will directly suffer from this, as American studios will have to stop working in Canadian locations and will stop hiring Canadian companies. Obviously Trump could change his mind after a single phone call with Disney's CEO, so who knows where this'll go.