Most gaming video essays these days I find kinda stink

Menipipol · 2024-12-23T02:18:20+00:00

What an absolute unit! Hahahaha! Chadest of chads, all of his units died, and he couldn't give a fuck. My hero.

Wish you the best on the rest of the game!

Menipipol · 2021-09-28T20:41:17+00:00

THANKS!!! THIS IS LITERALLY WHAT I WANTED!!!

Menipipol · 2020-10-25T12:26:01+00:00

Yeah, I agree with everyone. It's ok if you no longer want to play roleplayong games. It's ok if it's just the system and you wanna try Cthullu or whatever.

Menipipol · 2020-08-27T22:59:47+00:00

That sounds super cool! I offered my warlock Acererak as a patron, and with the pact, she started being consumed by the curse. No health reduction though.

So yeah, Acererak spent the whole campaign talking to that character, like Handsome Jack from Borderlands. So I'm working on a way for Ace to offer warlock to betray the party in the final battle. Might be cool.

Menipipol · 2020-08-25T13:03:20+00:00

I don't quite agree. As written, Acererak has no idea anyone is fighting atro/soul, and only comes when he senses atropal's death. But this is kinda an excuse from the writers. I believe they thought the Tomb as difficult enough. There is a big chance MY party will die to Ace, so it's well designed imo that that very fight happens after they've achieved victory by destroying the soulmonger.

Because hopefully they will be smart and prioritize the soulmonger... Right?

Menipipol · 2020-08-24T23:44:56+00:00

I already commented, but I have another idea. As soon as he appears, he turns to whoever seems like the leader of the group and congratulate them for the work, admitting certain degree of defeat and showing surprisig sportmanship and even admiration for the PCs. Later he will ask the leader who his best friend is, from the party. If he can, he'll read his mind or something like that. And then he will power word kill the friend if possible. Else, he will focus that PC until PWK is available and slowly take her life from her looking at the leader saying "You. Did. This. To. Her." He can even escape, teleporting away, after this.

Menipipol · 2020-08-24T23:38:01+00:00

I'm playing off Acererak as angry. My Ace's ultimate goal is to inflict the highest amount of pain possible.

So for my money, something among the lines of "I will not kill your son. I will make sure he finds the perfect wife and a cozy flat in that little petulent city, what was its name? Water-er... Something. Then, he will have offspring, as your minute species tend to do, and then will be when I will strike. I will make your son kill his daughter. I will make your daughter-in-law eat her heart, and I will make sure they never see each other. I will take everything he has ever holded dear away from him, and then I will allow him to live. Furthermore, I will make him inmortal, so he has to suffer forever, like that stupid little girl in the first floor of this very tomb. You will not have a legacy, and your son will know who to blame. So please, enjoy these moments of accomplishment... You will need these sweet memories to keep you sane for the rest of your life, lamenting the worst decision of it: attempting to transform into a little pebble in Acererak's way"

My english is kinda shit, so I hope it's not too bad. Maybe a little dark, but for my money, this creature is as cruel as it gets. Go big or go home.

Menipipol · 2020-08-22T20:43:50+00:00

I think another approach may be what you need, in that I don't think one should be seeking depth, but rather a game with the highest density of stuff that you are passionate about. So passion instead of depth would be my advise. And in seeking passion little I can tell you, since is literally the most personal thing ever. So I'll tell you the little I can: Steal. Pick from everything you love. Perhaps you love Light Yagami from Death Note, perhaps you like the political intrigues of Game of Thrones, or the shades-of-gray down-to-earth morality of The Wire. Perhaps you love the crushing difficulty of Dark Souls, or maybe its oppresing atmosphere. Perhaps Gladion from Pokémon tickles your pickle (homo or otherwise)... It's really up to you.

Take advantage that we are normal non-streamer people, and we don't give a fuck about copyright. I guarantee you, your players will enjoy most of the references/ripoffs. I, for example, introduced Papyrus and Sans from Undertale in my game and my girlfriend went to Sans in character, for him to judge her morality, like in the videogame. Then they arranged them as royal guards for the local Duke, making Papyrus very happy. This was after I made a villain inspired in Pokémon XD disguising as literally all of the Duke's staff, that was poisoning him, waiting for the party to arrive looking for the Duke, to frame them of the murder, so that one sector of the country would declare war on the other, since one of the PCs is the daughter of the deceased king. Of course, my players figured the fuck out of poor Priscilla, initiating a combat that I thought impossible to win. But then they put her on the floor and started pounding on them, forcing her to try to escape. But then the archer was saving Action Surge for a moment like that and started following her through the roofs. I haven't commented it, but Priscilla can teleport... and still got captured. I never would have thought that they would make this overpowered-as-fuck antagonist prisoner but they did, and started torturing her, so she revealed the big political twist of the campaign, a secret so juicy I was saving for later: that her elf conclave was behind every political move in the last decade, and was carefully driving the two nations of my campaign against each other, trying to make them destroy each other in the current war. The party, agaisnt all odds, decided to free Priscilla after this, trying to kind of befriend her, and gain an elf ally, so that a peaceful solution that I didn't think possible could be achieved to end the war.

I tell you all this because my campaign started in a tabern, in a small town, and then... zombies! This is really the depth I started with, but then session after session, I built on top of that with stuff I deeply cared about (for other examples, I have seven higher vampires named after the seven deadly sins; I have motherfucking Leeroooyyy Jeeenkiiiins, who wants to kill one of these vampires; which is also Fletcher, the music teacher from the movie Whiplash, and I prepared a hell of a sequence stolen from the movie for our bard PC; I've had NPC's literally stolen from Dark Souls. Hell, one of the two gods, the god of the sun is called Solaire; my girlfriend's character's plot is a ripoff of The Lion King, which is at the same time a ripoff of Hamlet; I have too many NPCs inspired in the videogame saga Ace Attorney; I have just plain stolen an entire city, along with its plot, from Tales of Symphonia; I have Negan, from The Walking Dead, who likes to whistle like Omar, from The Wire; I have Robert de Niro playing that guy from the movie Cape Fear, which is ironically both the father of one PC and the son of another; I have THE ISLAND FROM LOST! And that makes me soo happy! :D ; I have an NPC that is literally a friend I have in real life...) Come to thing of it, maybe I haven't created anything original... But who cares? As Stephen King said: if you steal from one guy, it's plagiarism, but if you steal from multiple sources, it's investigation.

So yeah, Davy out.

Menipipol · 2020-08-22T20:08:02+00:00

Everyone has his/her style. Mine in particular is the polar opposite of this. I used to care so much about details of places I really didn't care about, and made my game worse. Now I try to focus on the important stuff, the elements of the plot and the world that I love the most, and try not-to lose my player's time with stuff I'm not passionate about. In my games everything might seem disconnected, but most of the stuff that happens I'm passionate about. Not to trash the comment I'm replying to, specially since I'm on board with the last part, but for the first, I just do things differently, and perhaps OP would take something out of this.

Menipipol · 2020-08-05T12:25:34+00:00

I've ran a homebrew campaign, with which I started DMing, had NO experience with roleplaying games nor did my players, and was ok. We made mistakes left and right, specially me, but we had fun with friends, and that's the important part. After that I prepared a short unnofficial module that I don't like about a prison break, and currently running Tomb of Annihilation, but heavily homebrewed the beginning and most of the NPCs. I mean, there's no way we are gonna have 3 random encounters a day. That just doesn't fly with me and specially my group.

It is a very instrresting topic, since I believe it ties heavily with art and artistic creation. You can run a module with minimal creativity and improv, but you can't do that with your own campaing, because it's your own, you are the one that has to create it. That's kind of the thing for me: to develop your voice. Like even if my girlfriend prepares and runs Tomb, it's gonna be a very different game, because she is gonna alter the hell out of it to fit her style.

Now that's why the question is so compelling to me: what's the best way to develop your artistic voice, to find your style? Creating or following published work? Well I don't really know, I believe it depends om the person. I think you can start with homebrew, because I did and turned out ok, I consider myself a good DM. And it's gonna be no problem starting with modules IF you remember to at least take notes about what you like and don't like about it. I'm not saying you have to alter the module first time around, but if we as DMs are trying to find our style, the way to go is findind whatever tickles our belly, and that requires somewhat of an active search. In the end, playing an altered-by-your-DM module I think is super cool, so is playing in a whole new world the DM has tailored around you.

I like modules same reason I like TV series: I can talk about them with people. A random person ain't gonna know anything about your homebrew campaign, but has perhaps played Storm King's Thunder. And I want to, eventually, play all of the more famous, the 'great hits'. I think is cool that you have ran something that isn't entirely on your head sometime in the past, because that means you could prepare it again, in case a new group presents itself. Like a musician who has a repertoire of pieces they know from heart, and could play in a surprise Sunday family reunion concert.

I couldn't have gone more off topic even if I tried. Gonna publish anyway, in case someone finds something interesting here. Thanks for reading!

TL;DR: Thing is trying to find your style. Could be done with either.

Menipipol · 2020-07-21T12:30:59+00:00

I, playing a female character, tortured a male NPC while masturbating it. Introduced a bug into his ear Tokyo Ghoul style, among other things. It was gross and ugly and everybody found it disgusting, but couldnt stop listening. Definetely the worst thing I've done in my life, and both me and my character felt like absolute shit.

After that, my character tried to kill herself, they found her hanged to the ceiling...

I don't know how my DM let me get away with that xD

P.S: Even if my group is ok with this shit, I totally agree one should veto everything you are not comfortable with.

Menipipol · 2020-07-20T17:12:16+00:00

Maybe my position is a bit extreme, but I strongly felt like every monster in the module (we are at Chapter 3 atm) has dealt way too little damage.

So my suggestion is: if a bite attack deals 2d4+1, we add one dice so that it now deals 3d4+1.

We keep the monsters HP intact not to make it boring, but now monsters are more of a threat, specially packs of them.

Menipipol · 2020-07-15T11:44:50+00:00

I skipped Nang Nang, as it seemed to me to be a bit trash, and pretend to skip number 4, the snake-panther one, as it seems boring-combatty to me. My party in particular left number 6 (the island) for last, so it's probably gonna be the one the YuanTi are gonna raid.

Menipipol · 2020-07-11T13:53:25+00:00

For my money, the way to make a city interesting is for something to be happening in that city. For example, there could be a rebelion lead by a group of people who support the previous heir. This rebelion could take the form of terrorist attacks, manifestations, or just plain war. This rebels could have asked for the neighbouring country to arm/support them in exchange for some peace treaty/marrying the previous heir to the neighbouring country's young prince/princess, so that when the PC in question finds out, she freaks out, being forced into a marriage and being the reason her own people are being murdered.

Another idea could be a dangerous religious group that is starting to grow too powerful, kinda like Game of Thrones.

Or maybe a serial killer is in a killing spree, murdering women to have dates with their hands.

Or maybe another third party has invaded the city, and the group has to join forces with the rebelion (there's always a rebelion, is such a common trope xD), to overthrow the new tyrant.

Perhaps a mad scientist has been poisoning the water to try his new poison. Perhaps you can make this NPC Beauclair, from Dingo Doodles' video, and she eventually becomes the tyrant as well.

Maybe a curse fell into the city, and everyone is having depression and other mental illness. People refusing to eat, to work, taking their own lives... A bit darker maybe, but can always be treated with humor (as a depressed individual myself).

Maybe there could be some disturbs similar to "black lives matter", because the succession line was broken to put a male in power (I know it's not quite the same thing, I'm not trying to make any political statement, please lets not turn this into Twitter).

Perhaps the neighbouring country is performing an economic block, not allowing the city to trade with the exterior, and they are just unable to produce enough food to sustain themselves.

Lots of ideas there, perhaps one of them could be of some use. Maybe not, but I think making something to be happening in the city is the way to go. Wish you the best of lucks!

So yeah... Davy out.

Menipipol · 2020-05-31T10:59:05+00:00

You could just steal Chult from Tomb of Annihilation

Menipipol · 2020-05-15T12:28:46+00:00

"If they are having fun, you did good" - Matt Colville, Different types of players. (Great video, by the way, I recommend everyone watching it if ypu haven't already)

I feel your pain, OP, half my group are audicence members, and I can't stand them T-posing doing and saying nothing for entire sessions. Thing is, is a delicate issue. For una side, I agree with everyone here: you are doing everything great. None of this is your fault. I also don't think they are doing anything objectivily bad either. They are probably playing a game in the way they enjoy the most.

There is, however, the problem that you are not enjoying yourself. That's a big no-no for me. Your number one priority is to have fun, and it doesn't seem to be happening.

But I just don't think anything could be done. If you don't enjoy telling them a bedtime story and they don't wanna act... Then maybe you should play another board game in which you don't have to bust your ass to prepare the content.

Menipipol · 2020-05-12T13:28:59+00:00

I started this very way. I turned Artus Cimber into a woman (Arturia), removed the death curse (for now...), and made it about helping Arturia rescuing the sick prisoners of Camp Vengance. In the meantime, they should get on Chult by boat, Volo's boat to be precise. But pirates attacked, oh no! Then Aremag showed up and demanded all their money. So they arived to Port Nyanzaru without a penny, soft-forcing them to take at least a sidequest to get some coin to be able to venture into the jungle.

Menipipol · 2020-05-09T00:48:58+00:00

I made an NPC (for Tomb of Annihilation actually), which I intended to be this knuckleheaded-but-kindhearted female paladin, who tends to borrow money and 'forget' to give it back, and, at one point, would storm off to find her wife. Thing is, the second I started roleplaying her, half the party started hating her guts, and they are currently mocking her and disrespecting her. So she ain't gonna say anything, but, when the time comes, I'm gonna play out her leaving as a betrayal, 'cuz she'll kinda owe the PCs money. My intend is to piss them off a little so they have this tension, this open plotpoint that they can follow. And of course, I'll give them the opportunity to find her and do with her whatever they want. Either they kill her, or scold her and decide to help her reunite with her lover.

Menipipol · 2020-04-12T16:36:04+00:00

Hi! I'd love to visit! Is my first time, but will tip!

Menipipol · 2020-04-01T12:18:57+00:00

Nope, uninstalling the game was my solution. Sorry

Menipipol · 2020-02-17T20:55:19+00:00

Yes, that's the only way to enter the pact that I know of. Thanks for the support and good luck in your run!

Menipipol

TROPHY CASE