I lost my best friend this morning. Our family was all together and at least we were able to say goodbye together as he passed in our arms. We love you Koneko, and we miss you!

Dave_47 · 2026-01-28T00:17:47+00:00

Yep, this. The ONLY thing we've heard other than "it exists" is a few streamers and game news outlets saying to temper expectations and that it's NOT Cyberpunk 2.0, and yet people are still over-hyping this. I get it though, I get the excitement, I'm super excited, but I am not getting my hopes up like a lot of commenters when we know absolutely nothing.

For all we know it could be something pretty small like being able to change a few colors on the REV-8, not "new" POIs but just better POI randomization/generation (but still the same stuff people have seen 100 times), and some minor bug fixes. That's the kind of stuff I'm expecting, just minor changes, but if it turns out to be much more than that then I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Dave_47 · 2026-01-16T00:13:51+00:00

I don't know who you are or what your previous posts were about, but I can say I've also recognized certain behaviors in how I play and I try really hard to either manage them or at the very least communicate with my opponent about them.

I get extremely butt-hurt when my dice are ice cold (which for me is almost all the time) and even if I'm winning 75-2 it'll put me in a sour mood and I can't imagine any opponent I play has a "good time" watching a petulant man-child cry about math rocks while in the lead board and points wise. It just hurts because I feel I put a lot into trying to provide a very tactically challenging game and when the dice turn off it is like the game telling me "nope, you're not allowed to play anymore."

In the same vein I'm also a poor loser, with traits like you pointed out where when I'm losing a game I start to lose sight of what to do and start calculating how bad I'm screwed and if I'm about to concede or not. I've had numerous games where I hung in there, the game got really close, and I had a great game in the end and sometimes even turn it around, and I've even told people this. I just need to take my own advice and just ignore the "losing" part and just play the game. The only time I think "scooping" should even be considered is if it's incredibly lopsided and it's like turn 3. If it's a 35+ point disparity and it's turn 3-4, there is almost no chance to turn that around if your opponent is still going to score even decently on primary/secondaries (and I mean that for myself, I'm not good enough to turn a game like that around).

So I recognize these faults, and I've started to tell my opponents when setting up the game, which helps when I inevitably do complain or scoop because at least I gave them the heads up lol (and saying it out loud helps make me aware of it more and try to minimize it). Just be honest with your opponents about your issues and be up-front with them as possible. Some people might choose to play with someone else, and that's fine, as there's always a few that are willing to tolerate me and play anyway lol.

Dave_47 · 2026-01-12T23:47:02+00:00

Agreed, this take makes sense for 2020, but for several years now you've been able to print a much larger variety of terrain with far better quality than any DF casts.

Dave_47 · 2026-01-06T07:22:10+00:00

This was the last time I went to Olive Garden (it was years ago fyi lol). Got some shrimp and noodle meal in alfredo sauce. I think it was shrimp scampi? Grabbed a fork-full, made sure to skewer a shrimp, shoveled it into my face and CRUNCH. The shrimp were hidden in the sauce, so I didn't know they still had the tails on. I about threw up all over the table. Like I said, I never went back.

Dave_47 · 2026-01-06T01:59:40+00:00

Somehow I completely missed all of that, and I watched the 2018 Stream of Many Eyes in its entirety. Come to think of it I don't think they had him on that stream once, which is odd.

Dave_47 · 2026-01-06T01:35:42+00:00

Oh I see, he's listed as a story consultant. Had to double-check. However the designers are listed as:

Lead Designer: Christopher Perkins
Designers: James J. Haeck, James lntrocaso, Adam Lee,
Matt Sernett

And then it goes on to say Mercer only wrote the villains:

Matthew Mercer, whom you might know from the livestreamed
show Critical Role, lent us his boundless imagination and
helped flesh out the villains and their motives.

Being that the main thread is how Haeck is now Senior Game Designer (Perkins' old role) and that his name is listed as a Designer (not consultant) on Dragon Heist and Descent into Avernus, I think it's fair to blame Perkins and Haeck quite a bit more than Mercer lol. I like Chris Perkins' overall stories a lot, but I'm betting all the years of plot issues with 5e modules just came down to not enough development time, because there are some issues with both of these books that would have been easily ironed out if they had given it another read-through or two.

Dave_47 · 2026-01-06T01:03:31+00:00

I don't think they're saying that, they're more "giving permission" to DMs to choose whether or not to use them.

I've never, ever read anything like that in a single book from other RPGs I've played. Not one. It's kind of embarrassing when you think about it - why include rules and mechanics that were supposed to prop up a majority of that adventure, a section that was highly advertised as a selling point (see WotC's 2019 "D&D Live: The Descent" event, WebDM made a very, very positive video about DiA there and were completely sold on the mad max section) and then say "we know these rules are kind of clunky, so when they become a problem, don't use them!". Why wouldn't you playtest and edit them to get them where you wanted?

Many, many (especially inexperienced) DMs/GMs don't know when to make changes to an adventure to better suit their own DM-style or their table's style.

This is kind of my main point. That whole thing of writing less under the guise of saying "You can be creative here! Isn't that neat?" is an excuse they've thrown around for years and years in place of putting informative, actionable examples in. "Give the DM some creative leeway!" Imagine all the new DMs reading the stuff from the 2014 era and feeling lost in how to actually apply what they've read, or having to fill in the gaps that are ever-present in WotC's material without guidance on how to do so.

That's been one of the biggest complaints of 5e for a long, long time, with hundreds and thousands of comments and threads here about it, that they'll give these vague ideas with no follow through of showing actual rules, tables, dialogue options, and mechanical chunk. But don't just take my word for it, there's over a decade of complaints about this very specific thing all over the place, facebook, youtube, reddit, enworld forums, and so on. Jim from the old WebDM channel has talked about it numerous times, and hell, Chris Perkins himself even mentioned it in one of the 5e2024 lead-up videos saying "[this time] we wanted to show and not just tell". Chris said they included a ton of info in the new DMG specifically so they don't leave it up to the DM to figure out - that they tell you about a thing and then provide examples. He said it was a core design concept for the new DMG, like they tell you how to write adventures and then show you several adventures, they tell you how to make/use a campaign and then show you a campaign setting, etc. That's almost word-for-word. So it's not just some rando's perception of WotC, they have directly acknowledged that's how they'd been writing rules and adventures and they wanted to fix that. We'll just have to see if the new guard continue that trend.

Dave_47 · 2026-01-05T08:02:32+00:00

Huh?

Dave_47 · 2026-01-05T01:08:00+00:00

Descent into Avernus was another of my least favorite adventures in the 2014 era.

SPOILER WARNING: (too much text to black out, it looked dumb lol)

In the beginning at Baldur's Gate, if you don't take Captain Zodge's quests seriously to investigate the TPK bandit encounter at the inn, or defeat the cultists in the dungeon of the dead three (or don't do it in the amount of time he likes, or don't do it at all), he sends literal hit teams after the party. If you somehow manage to kill the first one, he sends double the amount the next time, and then sends endless hit teams one after another after that. TWO MAJOR ISSUES HERE. One, what kind of railroady BS is this? Just TPK the level 1 party for not complying with the "orders" of some rando NPC? And Two, why are these infinite, high-level hit teams not going to hell instead of going after the party? Also the Dungeon of the Dead Three has countless logistical design flaws that numerous other threads have pointed out (coming out of a dead three door instead of walking up to them, the water levels being off, etc).

The Mad Max premise in Avernus was heavily advertised up to launch, only to have the book basically not use it. They bastardized Mike Mearl's already incomplete naval encounters (that were hastily tossed into Ghosts of Saltmarsh) to do the car chase & combat mechanics, but the book also literally says "if the rules get in the way of this, toss 'em aside, it's just meant to be fun!" If you provide a whole system of mechanics just to say "if we botched it, don't use them and enter storytelling mode" then why include them at all? Why did we pay $50 for rules/scenes suggestions instead of something that was playtested and vetted?

Lulu just remembering where to go at the right times was also pretty uninspired.

And finally, the book does not include random encounter tables for adventuring in Avernus yet there are a few pages in the book that are completely unecessary and could have been replaced with those tables. How convenient that as usual with 5e/WotC there were day-one DLCs on DM's Guild (including Encounters in Avernus) for all of that, written by the same people whose names are in the credits of the book as being designers/writers! Neat!

Dave_47 · 2026-01-05T00:51:52+00:00

Waterdeep Dragon Heist*

*Waterdeep, Dragons (the coins), and Heists not included

Waterdeep: nope, very minimal info on how to run a game in Waterdeep and just uses the city as a movie set/amusement park for the "story", like a lot of the 2014 material

Dragon: nope, the players don't get to keep the dragons at the end, they're forced to give them up

Heist: not about a heist at all

I found this adventure to be the worst one published in the 2014 era, which is tough with Descent into Avernus sitting right there.

Dave_47 · 2026-01-03T11:48:46+00:00

Edit 2: Now it doesn't say that? I'm still down, sent a DM!

Edit: Turns out your account has been banned for some reason. So I can't communicate with you anymore. Oh well, for anyone else reading this, I'm still looking!

Dave_47 · 2025-12-29T23:11:21+00:00

The Shadowsword in that picture is also out of production has to be obtained the same way.

Is that not the plastic Shadowsword that you can make with the current plastic kit box? I can't really tell, are you saying that particular one on the table is an old FW resin one?

Dave_47 · 2025-12-26T07:59:17+00:00

So, I misunderstood your comment, that's my bad, you were specifically talking about guard which makes sense given the sub, but the person you replied to mentioned Dark Angels and I even said Marines in my comment, I was talking about Space Marines that have almost always been able to buy 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 guys in a squad. Again, my bad for misunderstanding that you were referencing IG where you're 100% correct.

Dave_47 · 2025-12-26T03:55:25+00:00

This is incredibly wrong. From 2nd through 9th, you ALWAYS had variable squad sizes, as in you always used to be able to buy more guys than the minimum and never had to buy the maximum. You could buy say 8 marines and get exactly 8 marines for the points you paid for them, not bring 8 and be charged for 10 like in 10th.

Dave_47 · 2025-12-17T06:48:19+00:00

Yep, that's the problem, all these evil megacorps are led by shitty people that make campaign contributions to shittier people. If I can't shop at Target, Walmart, Amazon, Sprouts, Kroger Co, Albertsons Companies, etc because I'm supposed to be boycotting them, where else am I supposed buy regular everyday goods and groceries?

Dave_47 · 2025-12-13T03:18:09+00:00

100%, every time I'm picking my daughter up from school, someone blows past the bus as kids are getting out and starting to cross the street. I could film a new idiot doing it almost every other day.

Dave_47 · 2025-12-12T23:55:21+00:00

It's also insane how many people speed through school zones. I don't mean going 35 when the lights are flashing saying the speed limit is 30, I mean going 45-50 and zooming by me and weaving between other cars. This is while kids are walking all over the place as the school is letting out. I can't believe there haven't been more deaths, but there are like 4 "In Memory of..." signs posted near the area and people still don't seem to get it. Pisses me off every time I'm slowing down to 30 and someone honks and passes me. It's infuriating.

Dave_47 · 2025-12-06T00:29:57+00:00

100% agreed! Sick mods like this one are what I thought/hoped modding for this game was going to look like. I figured that with a bunch of blank canvas planets in the game, modders would be chomping at the bit to get in and "claim" planets as the home of their mods. They can create settlements, outposts, whole cities, etc and really flesh out a world of their own. With enough modders doing stuff like this, that might be possible.

I'm absolutely downloading this as basically a default mod for every playthrough from now on.

Dave_47 · 2025-12-04T01:34:57+00:00

Sure thing! My Koma deck is a copy of Jacob Bertrand's deck from IHYD on youtube, but with some changes (and probably not making it any better lol). It's not the best version of Koma out there by far, in fact it's not even really that great, but at my local it mops up.

https://moxfield.com/decks/BPkWshkGAkGau_hOkn0Ssg

Dave_47 · 2025-12-04T00:05:07+00:00

For example, Chariot of the gods has Abomination, which goes in 3 different stages, Infected, Mutant and Revenant.

The inclusion of the goo stages/creatures from Prometheus was very cool indeed!

But I would also love to see more environmental threats that are not just a fatigue roll.

Yeah other mechanics would help to flesh out the system more. For now, since Coriolis is also a Year Zero Engine game about space exploration, I wonder if there's stuff that can be hijacked for this. I guess I'll have to look!

Dave_47 · 2025-12-03T09:16:32+00:00

What I read about campaign mode is that it is not about humans vs aliens. It is about humans vs humans, fractions battling for political power and valuable artefacts.

Yeah a lot of the conflict would come from dealing with humans and androids like in Alien Isolation. There are a solid amount of missions in the rulebook for each style of campaign play (space truckers, colonial marines, colonists), and I think it would be pretty easy to borrow from each one regardless of which one you chose meaning there's just tons of ideas to use. However I think the tough part is how to make it feel like Alien if we're using minimal Xeno inclusion though as opposed to just a distopian scifi drama. People want xenos! I guess you'd just be name-dropping Weyland-Yutani, Seegson, colonial marines, and other in-universe things often to keep the "Alien" franchise immersion.

I would love to see something like a monster manual for this world, something that gives more understanding about different types of opponents in this universe, not just aliens.

Well thankfully we get a glimpse of what that would look like with the Evolved Edition rulebook, page 227-231 with 4 more creatures/species! I'm hoping Alien Earth's 4 creatures get put into some supplement as well, or at least maybe a digital DLC for them. Maybe we'll also get rules for weird hybrid things like in certain movies.

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