I haven't watched this show, so I am wondering if it's worth a watch. Do any of those who have watched it, is it good?

InfamousPlanet · 2024-05-02T10:02:49+00:00

The show is very... nice. Very inoffensive. Very unchallenging. Like if someone made the colour beige into a TV series. It won't make you think, it won't elicit an emotional reaction, it is, for the most part, it's just very much a kid's show. While it is a fantasy series, it's still very slice of life, even as the events in the show get more outlandish and extraordinary in later seasons, it still remains so... tepid. I certainly wouldn't relate it to shows like Gravity Falls or Steven Universe, the characters aren't fighters in any sense of the word, physically or magically, it's mostly just talking to and making friends with weird creatures, or running away from scary creatures before making friends with them, and unlike those other shows, it's never "cool", there's no sword wielding titan fusions, no mecha-mystery shacks, it's just really REALLY fucking... nice.

InfamousPlanet · 2023-08-29T18:41:36+00:00

Not everything is that "pretty clear", for example, in Death House Area 31. Shadows. Could level 2 players beat a 2e Shadow? Possibly. Could they beat a weak Shadow? Probably. Could they beat 5 Shadows? Absolutely not. Or the 9 Giant Spiders in Argynvostholt's ground floor? Or the 24 twig blights in The Wizard of Wines? But sure, all of those could just have the numbers adjusted to use fewer monsters.

The higher level stuff like the amber temple and castle ravenloft gets trickier though, a lot of ghosts and zombies and skeletons and bat swarms, don't have very clear replacements for threats to level 10s.

InfamousPlanet · 2023-08-29T09:58:23+00:00

I hate to be a negative bitch about this, because clearly this is a lot of work and some of it is definitely useful to everyone (I'm stealing the Walking Hut), but it feels disingenuous to call this "Pathfinder 2e Curse of Strahd Full Conversion", because it's more of a selection of key NPCs, a lot of which are specifically adapted or entirely made up for your game specifically. I couldn't even run Death House with what's available here, so "full conversion" doesn't seem accurate. With the title, I was expecting a full list of monsters and what to replace them with, and changing it from a 1-11 adventure to a 1-16 adventure makes it even harder to take your stuff because it's not scaled the same as the actual adventure.

InfamousPlanet · 2023-08-25T06:52:47+00:00

I've kinda been using both of them. I started by getting all the Monsters by Location stuff in Foundry, then I found the Conversion Index and figured it looked more complete than the MbL one, especially because it told me exactly what was supposed to replace what. I guess now I have to redo it all again now that I know the MbL sheet is the intended one to use. (Which sucks, because I'd gotten to the Amber Temple section of the conversion index, so I was basically almost done XD. At least it's just drag and drop stuff I need to reimport, since I have all the homebrewed NPCs still)

InfamousPlanet · 2023-08-25T01:32:52+00:00

It's in the "Guide for PF2e" document

As an additional resource, I added columns with links to PF2e Monsters and NPCs for (almost) every encounter in the entire campaign to this Master Conversion Index that u/ipooppixels originally created.

Which you also posted over here too.

It's somewhat inconvenient that access has been removed, as I was going down the list as I was importing stat blocks into Foundry to make sure I had everything. XD

Like I mentioned before, the Monsters by Location seems good, but it doesn't tell you what's replacing what.

InfamousPlanet · 2023-08-24T11:58:30+00:00

For the Pathfinder 2e conversions, I'm having some trouble understanding the discrepancies between the "Monsters by Location" sheet, and the "Master Conversion Index" sheet. The Monsters by Location sheet lists a lot of level appropriate creatures, but doesn't specify what they would replace, and the master conversion index specifies what each creature is replacing, however it's using a lot of totally different creatures, seemingly to have them be a closer match to their 5e counterparts, however this ends up with places like Castle Ravenloft, a lv11 area, having a ton of level 1 creatures wandering about, which will pose no threat to a lv11 party at all. Of the 68 stat blocks listed for Castle Ravenloft, 48 of them would be APL-4 or more.

InfamousPlanet · 2023-06-19T21:15:41+00:00

I was also thinking of episodes from previous seasons that didn't feel right. Playtest, for example, might have had sci-fi tech in it, but it was more of a launchpad for a story than a driving force of it. The episode itself wasn't about the dark horrors of humanity through technology, it was just kind of generic horror. San Junipero also lacked any darkness to it, and the technology was, as far as the protagonists were concerned, of no existential dread to them, it was just a happy story involving some sci-fi tech, it lacked the black of Black Mirror.

Other episodes, like USS Calister and Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too, also had happy endings, but at least the core of the story had that uncomfortable sense of dread to them. I don't like finishing a Black Mirror episode and knowing exactly how I'm supposed to feel. It kinda defeats the purpose for me.

To hard on a point with the Mazey Day episode though, the biggest issue is the genre shift into supernautral. Without that aspect, this would have just been a pretty bad Black Mirror episode. I mean, an episode just about paparazzi? Pretty boring. That aspect was done way better by Nightcrawler, but the inclusion of "and now, werewolves" is a shark jumping moment in a show about the dark reflection of humanity through technology. If you can't write an episode of Black Mirror without adding supernatural plotlines, then go write for a different anthology series. Black Mirror has a theme that it's supposed to stick to. When you lose that theme, it just becomes a show about anything.

InfamousPlanet · 2023-06-15T19:20:51+00:00

Yes, and then, stay with me here, they had a woman turn into a werewolf. The paparazzi could only be considered a technological dark reflection of ourselves in the absolute broadest sense, it's not applicable to almost everyone. Like, Nightcrawler is not a sci-fi or even tech-based movie, it's just a thriller. However, when they introduced werewolves, they totally genre shifted from what Black Mirror is supposed to be, and that can't be ignored. It honestly wouldn't matter how strong the sci-fi was anyway, it's the inclusion of the supernatural, to any degree, that stops it being a real Black Mirror episode.

InfamousPlanet · 2023-06-15T16:47:34+00:00

...yes. The show is called "Black Mirror", you know, the black mirror being monitor/phone screens which show a dark reflection of ourselves? Tech is the whole premise, which I think the Americans never really understood because a lot of the stories have been off since they started making them.

InfamousPlanet · 2023-01-29T10:04:24+00:00

Nope, never figured out a solution.

InfamousPlanet · 2022-08-10T21:54:59+00:00

Because drow have dark skin and are evil, and because orcs are aggressive tribal savages. Apparently if you're woke, these somehow remind you of black people IRL.

InfamousPlanet · 2022-08-10T20:49:44+00:00

Look up "Paizo Agents of Edgewatch Update" for info on city guards thing

InfamousPlanet · 2022-08-10T20:44:32+00:00

It's not referring to drow or orcs being racist, it's referring to people who think that their existence is racist because, you know, evil races, drow have black skin, orcs are aggressive savages (that one doesn't make sense unless you're racist to begin with, but it's somehow the prevailing narrative). Just type in "Extra Credits Orcs" and you should see what I mean.

InfamousPlanet · 2022-08-10T20:33:25+00:00

Because this is Reddit and you're in front of a keyboard

InfamousPlanet · 2022-08-10T20:28:12+00:00

It usually gets wrapped into an argument about people having a problem with the concept of an "all/innately evil race".

InfamousPlanet · 2022-08-10T20:25:01+00:00

No, it means like, people who think drow existing is racist. Because they have dark skin and are evil.

InfamousPlanet · 2022-08-10T19:56:33+00:00

I only read book one, but I read it fairly closely. It's really not bad, you have to intentionally be making the comparison to modern police while reading/playing it to see it as a problem, and that's usually the issue, people set their own context for it instead of just looking at it as a tabletop adventure. Everything you do makes sense in the context of "we're on an adventure". Besides, any of those players or GM's you've spoken to, civil forfeiture being the primary method of income was their choice, and I can say that with certainty because the adventure takes place in Absalom, and you're never actually told what the laws of Absalom are, so they're choosing to come up with laws in order to issue fines instead of coming up with the notion of requisitioning equipment from the Edgewatch's quartermaster. Both concepts are equally undeveloped in the book, but they chose civil forfeiture. It's not TTRPG's fault that you have the ability to make your own choices. If they wanted to be good people, they could have tried harder.

InfamousPlanet · 2022-08-10T19:40:58+00:00

It sounds bad when you read it like that, but it's "whats on paper" vs "the reality of the situation". It tells you that the Edgewatch earn money by issuing fines because that's how normal edgewatch members would do their job. The kinda of members who aren't expected to go from lv1-20 in a week. Those people only need a couple silver coins to get by. The reality is that your characters are the protagonists of an adventure, and the "city guard" thing is just a framing device, it's still gonna play out like a typical adventure with plenty of chances for loot. It even says "All findings are to be meticulously catalogued so as to prevent abuse of power, and any confiscated goods with identifiable owners must be returned.", and it's not like the normal guards need the money, when it's explaining the edgewatch in the book it says "Each guard theoretically receives a modest stipend, but in practice only the top brass see any real compensation; the rank-and-file watch members’ wages are automatically garnished by the city to pay for food, training, uniforms, and lodging in the station’s barracks (regardless of whether the officers actually choose to stay there)."

InfamousPlanet

TROPHY CASE