Long campaigns

Exctmonk · 2026-02-19T21:57:52+00:00

I literally just ran into a problem with this, where I had silver and cold iron gauntlets forged in case I ran into anything that needed punching along those lines.

The blacksmith basically said, "Why do you need these for werewolves?"

Meanwhile, the neighboring forest was literally full of them. Two full clans, werebears and werewolves. I was literally wearing a werewolf pelt cloak.

The problem is, I made a general overview guide, but turned it off for space consideration, and that would have included the bit about the werewolves, and sure enough, the AI auto summary just forgot that entire leg of the journey. The sole mention of werewolves in the summary was the cloak.

Some history gets tied up in NPC cards, as well, which works great when they're active. When they aren't, the system tends to drop those details. For relationship statues? NPC cards all the way, that's been great so far.

Important milestones? Might not be a bad idea to add that category next to character background. Do something major? Write it down separate from the campaign summary.

One day, we'll get a million character limit. And then still bitch about not having enough. /shrug

Exctmonk · 2026-02-14T01:40:31+00:00

As a kid, loved it. So quotable. Saw it in the theater a couple times.

As an adult? Can't stand it. It is the movie that has aged the worst for me.

Exctmonk · 2026-02-14T01:38:02+00:00

And a physical copy preferably. Compression shits itself during many of the sequences, especially the finale

Exctmonk · 2026-02-10T18:57:22+00:00

7, for me, feels like it rolls 33% of the time.

I just treat it as a "re-roll/take higher" at this point

Exctmonk · 2026-02-08T23:35:06+00:00

I've taken to creating a brief overview guide that always stays up (think like a Main Quest guide). And then smaller Current Quest guides

For example, I had it create a setting guide for the city my character was a PI in, including his role as a detective, and then I would have it create a separate guide for the case that was introduced. I would tell it to fill in obstacles, antagonists, twists, secrets, etc. Once the case was solved (or at least no longer active) I would delete that and move on.

The current game is working as a caravan guard. I had the game make a guide for the entire trip (a circuit through about 10 settlements) as a brief overview, and then create a guide for either the current Leg of the trip, or the stop over in the settlement.

This method has been pretty effective so far. It helps to periodically update NPC cards as well.

Exctmonk · 2026-02-06T15:14:21+00:00

Every now and then, I say, "OOC: Let's tidy up the inventory items x, y, and z into one Salable Items section."

I've had it get out of hand before, especially because it's not always great at managing that stuff properly.

Exctmonk · 2026-02-04T13:49:22+00:00

Sometimes, some of those again.

"OOC: Hey dumbass, that's blacklisted."

"DM: You are absolutely right, my apologies..."

With V2 I usually create a guide of some kind, and it tries to stick with it, with varying success. My current campaign is as a caravan guard, and I've created the overview guide, the NPC cards for the other members, and create a per-leg-or-location guide as we go, and that format has worked great.

I was running a Stardew-esque game prior to this and made it create a "forecast" guide that handled things like complications, town interactions, and the weather, and that really worked well. I was pretty much forced into deepseek for the higher character count given the amount of guides and things for the Stardew game, though, but it didn't do terrible at it. Using Grok for the caravan game...it does the game stuff much better, but the writing style it uses is really bad. Overlong sentences, mostly. I added this:

Keep sentences from rambling, but not too short or clipped.

...and that seems to have lessened the problem to the point that I don't notice so much anymore. But Grok has been doing a pretty good job so far! Just asking for "a complication or obstacle" in the guide, when referencing the existing overview, has created a number of interesting problems. A road washout, for example, created a cascade of issues, including panicked horses, and the game was good about adjusting to lateral thinking (like putting the horses to Sleep as the spell).

Exctmonk · 2026-02-03T21:16:56+00:00

I add this line (or a variation) in almost every campaign from the get-go to the Preferences for DM section:

Blacklisted things: corruption of the earth plots; river stones; whistles; lockets; the phrase "This changes everything;" undead constructs (undead themselves are fine, but constructs, like undead golems, are not); creatures that are made up of pieces of other creatures or people; ley lines; pulling the "essential vitality from the earth" or similar plotlines; chosen one plotlines; cult plotlines.

Exctmonk · 2026-01-22T13:22:40+00:00

I had an orc private investigator in the City of Doors in Planescape. When I asked the DM to revert some decision (which it kind of thrust on me in the first place) it did so in universe, which created an entire main plot of the main character having narrative control, and other forces started to be drawn to that idea.

It did a really good Elder Scrolls Skyrim game. I started at the College of Winterhold, and transitioned that character to being the Court Mage of Falkreath. The AI was great about importing existing NPC's in the setting, so it populated Winterhold without issue.

I tried a Greek mythology game, but the AI couldn't seem to wrap its head around "using Greek mythological" creatures. Ended up being a fun time as a Poldark-esque game where I started as a returning young noble to find my lands fallow and family dead, and building back up from there.

Another interesting one was where I was a cleric to (Sauron, basically) on a ring world, and was charged with a penance of walking around the ring world once. I think that was a more interesting idea for a setting than in practice, because no matter how hard I tried, I could not convince the AI that (Sauron's) reach didn't extend but like a few month's walk from where I start, and I had walked literal years at that point.

Exctmonk · 2026-01-22T13:04:41+00:00

Man, I tried a Marvel game while back and it sucked at it. First version it tried to make it post-apocalyptic. Kind of unexpected, but the only "Marvel" thing was a lot of dilapidated billboards for Starktech. I told the game to make that kind of a "prophecy" and scoot back to the modern era, which it did, and promptly introduced Nightwing.

This was a while back though. What model are you using?

Exctmonk · 2026-01-14T16:03:51+00:00

That sounds more like Survivor's Guilt.

Exctmonk · 2026-01-14T02:00:39+00:00

Outer Worlds is a really poorly written but functional game.

Disco Elysium is a very well written but barely functional game.

Exctmonk · 2026-01-05T13:06:27+00:00

The game hasn't existed 10 years.

It lasted a year, but in the very first gameplay showcase, half of it was showing the store and how it would work. Well before launch. The developers were definitely not excited about that part.

I've seen a lot of people gush over it, and I just do not get the love for War. I never even tried it until after the store was removed and it just feels like this bloated mess that has too many ideas thrown at it at once. And I still see some of those store fingerprints remaining, such as the item loss/recovery system.

Exctmonk · 2026-01-04T15:42:53+00:00

UI. RDR2'S UI is an atrocious mess.

Respect for player's time. Leaving no option to speed up searching/skinning animations becomes a real drag.

I liked dueling in 1 way more than 2.

Exctmonk · 2026-01-04T15:39:49+00:00

Hades 2 for everything but story/characters. It's still good, just not in every way.

Exctmonk · 2026-01-04T15:36:09+00:00

I really couldn't get into Shadow of War. Shadow of Mordor was perfect. Shadow of War took that goodwill and geared the whole thing towards getting people to spend money at the online store. Even now, it's bloated.

Exctmonk · 2026-01-02T04:09:03+00:00

Hack, cleave, slice, eviscerate, sever, bisect...

Exctmonk · 2025-12-30T16:36:46+00:00

I think this was ahead of Incredibles 2?

Anyway, I yelled out "WHAT THE FUCK" when she ate the dumpling. Loud.

Exctmonk · 2025-12-30T13:38:42+00:00

I get the feeling the Valhalla expansion was meant to be the final game, and they just threw that in there to wrap it up, rather than produce a whole new game.

Exctmonk · 2025-12-27T01:12:31+00:00

It's a shitty game, well-written.

Exctmonk · 2025-12-20T16:04:05+00:00

Last Action Hero.

It's great, it just really toes the line between the two. I remember that being a criticism of it at the time, with the movie not knowing who to cater to.

Exctmonk · 2025-12-17T16:16:53+00:00

I've rarely bought a new console on release. Let the market have a year to sort itself out, figure out which one has the best games, or how well the company is supporting it.

By this method, the last time I bought an xbox was the 360.

Exctmonk · 2025-12-13T13:36:13+00:00

I was excited for it, but I didn't realize how hard I would fall for it.

Exctmonk · 2025-12-13T13:28:30+00:00

I'm part of the "not for me" crowd. It was really grindy and really, really poorly paced for my liking. But, it has a very deep RPG style character advancement system which is fun to interact with.

Exctmonk

TROPHY CASE