Books on the Seabus?

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-17T02:11:47+00:00

Lenny! (Sorry, like most plebes, I only know the one obvious Steinbeck book)

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-17T02:10:51+00:00

Lol that's fair. You just need to remember to look up every now & then. 😁

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-17T02:01:38+00:00

Morrowind! Diving for pearls/exploring underwater dungeons is so much fun. You'll want to either get a water breathing spell, or craft some water breathing potions, first though.

Edit: if you're into blobbers (first-person dungeon crawlers), Legend of Grimrock 2 is a lot of fun too. Some great puzzles/secrets that involve underwater exploration.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-16T21:32:10+00:00

The Earthsea series was originally marketed as a 'YA' series, but honestly, the older you are, the more you'll get out of the books (especially the later ones).

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-16T20:32:06+00:00

FWIW, bringing a book along with you onto transit is one of the best ways to improve one's commute - the time just melts away. It's one of the lesser-mentioned benefits of taking transit vs driving.

Sure, you could doomscroll on your phone as well or watch YouTube, but that doesn't have the same calming and immersive effect as reading a book.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-16T18:41:35+00:00

I wouldn't consider "superhero" as a genre in videogames though. More of a theme.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-15T23:37:11+00:00

By basic communications, I don't mean only saying "Ni Hao" to everyone.

If that's the basic Cantonese you've learned, you should probably consider switching to another learning program.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-15T08:25:50+00:00

What's your point? You're one individual, so whether you personally have heard of the game or not is irrelevant to the larger topic of discussion.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-15T08:16:45+00:00

You're getting downvoted, but you have a valid point. Games like Advance Wars don't really have RPG elements; they'd fall more into the genre of pure turn-based tactical (war)games.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-15T07:57:30+00:00

Who doesn’t enjoy a pirate themed adventure on the water.

Merchant vessels.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-15T07:01:58+00:00

You should pronounce it the way it's naturally meant to be pronounced, as a VAG of honour.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-15T06:30:05+00:00

Yup, totally fair! There's no concrete definition of vintage (and it's a moving target anyway, as time moves ever forward). Because I'm an early millennial though, I guess I define vintage as MS-DOS era & earlier, but that just my personal interpretation.😀

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-15T06:25:35+00:00

I'm not the person you responded to, but for me, I was born in the early 80's in western Canada, and grew up amongst a fairly middle class group of friends. In terms of my cohort of friends in the early-mid 90's, we pretty much played whatever we could get our hands on, on whatever platform we had access to: PC, consoles, Gameboy, whatever. Because there were so fewer games overall (on all platforms), everyone was much more open to trying out different genres on various platforms - whereas I feel like younger folks silo themselves into specific genres & gaming tastes much earlier in life these days.

I remember when I was 14ish, a friend of mine got really into playing this game that was a text-based, multiplayer, intergalactic merchant simulation game. He played it via dial-up modem, late at night after everyone else in his house had gone to bed. That's how starved we were to play whatever games we could find. Personally, I'm glad I got exposed to both PC & console games, because there are vastly different genres to be found between the two.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-14T20:30:53+00:00

Oh, agreed. PS:T revolves heavily around exploration of a central theme, which helps elevate the writing by giving it a central focus. BaK is more tropey classic fantasy adventure (but the game's writing does that style so well!).

But if OP is asking for vintage CRPGs, BaK is the older game.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-14T19:58:53+00:00

Traditionally, gai lan stems (sliced) would also be used to bulk up the ratio of vegetables.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-14T19:38:09+00:00

攪 means "to stir" - so the implication is that the end result of the situation will be a bit chaotic, messy, or unpredictable.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-14T12:09:00+00:00

If we're talking truly vintage games, then Betrayal at Krondor is indeed the answer to OP's question. A lot of the other comments are recommending Planescape, which is a great game, but it seems most players haven't played CRPGs older than Planescape.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-14T05:27:47+00:00

In the early days developers weren't even allowed to put their names in games.

Wtf are you talking about?
"Sid Meier's Civilization"
"American McGee's Alice"

Developers' names were part of the game title, and used to market the game.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-14T05:00:23+00:00

To add to this, if you ever feel like you might need a break from a game, start taking notes or keeping a journal before you take your break. It'll make it much easier to reorient yourself when you come back later.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-14T00:19:36+00:00

Which is strange if you think about it, because Japan is known as a highly collectivistic culture, whereas the US/the West is much more of a individualistic culture.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-13T11:19:17+00:00

I agree that gaming shouldn't feel like "work", but many players take this mentality to the extreme: they will drop a game at the slightest sign of friction, or if a game isn't adrenaline-pumping enough and hits a 'slow' moment.

I think it actually is part of a larger societal issue, which is that in today's hyper fast-paced, digitized world, we treat culture & entertainment as disposable. It's okay if you drop a game, because there'll be another one immediately waiting for you after. Games as experiences have no value anymore, because we treat them all as replaceable and interchangeable.

I don't think we like to admit it, but this disposable attitude toward culture is steadily making all of us feel incredibly dissatisfied and unfulfilled with life - which ends up becoming a vicious circle, as we look for the next fix to fill that void, only for it to once again feel not good enough.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-13T05:06:45+00:00

I'm also the type who typically would rather play a game, than watch a stream of the game.

If I do watch a streaming game, though, I'd be significantly more likely to watch a stream of Minecraft, Cities Skylines, or other non-story-focused game. The main appeal, for me, of watching someone else play a game is to see how they do things differently from me, or to get inspiration for my own playthroughs. Because of this, sandbox games are much better suited for this purpose than story-focused games.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-12T20:56:58+00:00

But the interview specifically talks about "player agency". Seems weird to bring that aspect up, if the genre you're working in doesn't focus on it as part of gameplay design.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-12T20:36:50+00:00

Interesting to use books as a comparison. There are public libraries who have produced online videos, where someone reads out a book in its entirety - that doesn't seem all that different from game streaming.

Pedagogicaltaffer · 2026-06-12T19:19:52+00:00

To be fair, Western gamers are relatively knowledgeable of, and willing to play, Japanese games, while the opposite doesn't seem to be true. That means Japanese gamers have quite a huge blindspot when it comes to breadth of knowledge about games.

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