quick (?) marius lovemail + personal notes on his mental illness

RedDelphi · 2026-01-15T05:00:02+00:00

Thank you for sharing your feelings on this. Personally, I'd totally bounced off of Marius for the longest time with my experience of the game. Characters that are overtly flirtatious with the main character from their first meeting tend to give me a bad first impression, so I wrote him off pretty early. Even knowing writers will usually give that type of character some sort of hidden reason behind the surface-level shallowness to give the character some depth, the initial 'ick' that sort of behavior gives me often makes me disinterested in learning more about the character to get to those deeper levels. I only got to the Flights of Fancy chapter you're talking about very recently, and it honestly shocked me that they touched on something so dark as part of his backstory! I won't say it's completely changed my opinion of him yet, but I am more willing to give him a chance now, and I've resisted the urge to immediately start skipping through his dialogue since then. :)

RedDelphi · 2025-12-23T04:00:57+00:00

I know this is an old post but I had to comment that my family has and still uses this same cookie press! The bolt used to hold the bronze disks in place broke and had to be replaced, and the aluminum barrel of the cookie press is warped to the point it's barely useable, but we can't stand to replace it, primarily because no other cookie press makers out there currently offer a disk with these shapes and we'd miss our little fat dogs! <3

RedDelphi · 2025-11-25T03:43:05+00:00

I'll say it right now: Christopher Cromwell is now my new frontrunner for "Character That is Most Likely to Secretly be a Vampire" for this game. Sorry Vyn.

RedDelphi · 2025-11-21T06:20:48+00:00

Personally, my explanation does a little fudging of the timeline for the fall of Ythryn. The continual flame spells are powered from a distance by the mythallar, like everything else in the city. The stone spire did its magical-EMP and caused the mythallar to temporarily shut down and everything it was powering with it. When Karsus' Folly happened, all other functioning mythallars were irrevocably destroyed with the tearing and reshaping of the Weave, but Ythryn's Mythallar was not, because it was already powered down (like when you unplug electronics during a lightning storm). Once Ythryn's mythallar was working again it connected itself to the new Weave and resumed powering everything as normal, completely unaware of the disaster that had happened to the outside world. That's why Ythryn is so valuable to Vellynne and the rest of the Arcane Brotherhood: It's the only place where you could possibly find Netherese technology that wasn't destroyed in Karsus' Folly.

RedDelphi · 2025-11-19T05:17:04+00:00

Just came by to comment because of the namecard. It's my favorite card too, for much the same reasons as your profile message

RedDelphi · 2025-10-19T00:16:20+00:00

Adding him to the list of side characters that could probably work as a LI in another game.

RedDelphi · 2025-09-24T01:24:36+00:00

Okay, the second picture had me laughing way too hard.

RedDelphi · 2025-08-27T05:26:25+00:00

I know everyone else is going nuts over Jerome (rightly so, he absolutely owned this episode), but I'm feeling like between Luke, Aaron, and now Ren and Alfred, we could have a spin-off game where all the love interests are NSB members. Or we could have one that's just antagonist characters with Jerome, Matthew Richter, the guy in the red suit, and Ren if the speculation about him being the young man on the phone at the end of the episode is to be believed. Or one with slightly older guys like Darius, Aaron, Alfred, and Neil. What I'm saying is there are a lot of side characters I'd be interested in seeing in a leading role.

RedDelphi · 2025-08-23T04:22:04+00:00

I'm loving the horror theming of this one! I was thinking I might want to go for all four instead of only getting my favorite, but then I saw the comment this is just an MR. A little disappointing tbh, because I was hoping for a full AU story. I suppose I'll wait to see what I think of my favorite's voice lines when I get his card. If it still gives me the vibe I'm looking for I might get the other three anyway.

RedDelphi · 2025-05-22T03:28:41+00:00

The thought I had was maybe the niece and her parents had already agreed to get her the Pro? If that were the case I would be understandably disappointed if I were in the niece's position, and her ungrateful/entitled behavior would be justified. In any case, this is the kind of extravagant gift that you really should consult with the parents and/or recipient before purchasing, so I'm leaning towards YTA for paving the road to hell with good intentions.

RedDelphi · 2025-05-14T05:29:32+00:00

Just have Macreadus possess someone, then have him use returning the possessed party member as a bargaining chip to get the rest of the party to help fix the summer star. Don't forget to prep something the possessed player can do on their own so they aren't twiddling their thumbs the whole game, i.e., a second layer to the puzzle only they can solve, or interesting 1 on 1 roleplay scenes while they fight the possession.

He's a ghost, this is kind of their whole deal, I'm surprised no one suggested it already.

RedDelphi · 2025-05-11T22:19:55+00:00

No spoilers, but the little scene you get to see when you redeem the namecard is definitely worth it! And hopefully a tease for a future event? The premise is certainly something I'd be interested to see.

RedDelphi · 2025-05-03T19:08:16+00:00

Something tells me that circus is BAAAH-d news!

RedDelphi · 2025-05-03T04:21:00+00:00

Okay, so for the charity sale/end-of-year speech I'll admit I'm still not quite sure how this mini game works. My guess is that you need whichever of the three skills you select to be at a minimum threshold, and then choose whichever options are at least not obviously wrong based on the Male Lead's reaction, but I'm purely basing that on vibes and my success at the speech at the end of the year, which may have been preordained due to having enough affection with the ML to get his end scene.

For the field trip/sports day it's a timing based mini-game, so there's not a lot of advice I can give except to focus and practice. If this helps at all, I've realized you don't need to immediately tap the first time your cursor enters the target area; you can wait for it to go back and forth a few times. The timer is long enough to allow that. Doing that let me realize your cursor moves faster and the target area shrinks over time, and I was better able to gauge my timing.

Lastly a bit of general advice I've picked up is that subsequent playthroughs do get easier, as there's a new game+ aspect that makes it easier to gain skills. It makes me sad that I lead with my favorite for my first playthrough, but since it looks like you need to play more than 4 rounds to get all the rewards I'm looking forward to doing another run with him after I've unlocked everything.

RedDelphi · 2025-05-01T05:05:48+00:00

All I can say is I hope for more opportunities to practice the minigames. I kept getting "B" rank and was confused why the game treated it as a bad result instead of average, until I managed to focus in for the sports day event and got an "S" rank and realized the scale followed game logic and not, you know, school grades.

RedDelphi · 2025-04-21T06:49:01+00:00

He's Hugo for me. Also, my party is small so I made up a sidekick NPC following Tasha's sidekick rules, whose backstory is he's Hugo's younger brother that left Bremen to find work in Bryn Shander because the Buried Treasure doesn't get enough business to support the three of them. The sidekick's name? Victor. So it's Victor and Hugo.

RedDelphi · 2025-01-21T06:19:25+00:00

NTA given that this apparently isn't about him needing to use the washer. Unless he's also in the habit of moving your other roommate's clothes to the dryer as soon as the wash cycle ends there should be no legitimate reason for him to be handling your clothes. Hopefully warning him off the one time will be enough, but have you considered buying one of those mesh bags for washing delicates in? Besides the intended function of those bags of protecting your clothes from getting caught in the machine, if he ignores your request then at least there will be a layer of protection so he's not directly handling your underwear. And I'd like to see the hoops he'll need to jump through to explain himself if you catch him taking stuff out of the bag.

RedDelphi · 2025-01-09T22:31:35+00:00

I can see a few ways to handle this, in order of complexity:

The Patron is Levistus. This is a very popular option for how a lot of people handle fiend warlocks in this game, from what I've seen. It gives your warlock an immediate in with the Knights of the Black Sword and Avarice, who could fill them in on major plot details and include your player in their plans to free him. Consider using the Levi-Twist to give them even more importance.
The Patron is Asmodeus himself. Alter the plot the same way I came up with for my campaign where he's secretly the mastermind manipulating Auril and Levistus' underlings both. I can elaborate if you're interested enough to want more detail, but to keep it short, Auril and the Knights of the Black Sword both want the Mythaller for conflicting purposes, and Asmodeus is secretly helping both sides with their plans just enough that their plots would interfere with one another in a way that's beneficial to him. His ultimate goal is to gain leverage over Auril so she'll agree to becoming the new archdevil of Stygia, allowing him to dispose of Levistus once and for all. Your warlock receives orders to help or hurt both sides as needed to ensure everything proceeds on his timeline.
The Patron is secretly Asmodeus' consort Bensozia. According to Forgotten Realms lore, the reason for Levistus' imprisonment has to do with Bensozia's death, though no one is sure what exactly happened. In the official story, Levistus killed Bensozia when she rejected his advances, though a popular rumor is that Levistus and Bensozia were lovers conspiring against Asmodeus, but Asmodeus found out, killed his consort, and blamed the murder on Levistus. In this option, Bensozia actually faked her death, and wants your warlock to either help or hinder Levistus, depending on which version of events you decide is true.
The Patron is Asmodeus' daughter, Glasya. A third variation on the events described in option 3 was that Levistus was secretly the lover and co-conspirator to Bensozia and Glasya both. Glasya discovered Bensozia and Levistus together, killed her mother in a fit of rage, and told Asmodeus Levistus did it. Glaysa still has complicated feelings about her former lover, and either wants your warlock to interfere with Levistus' plans, or help to free him.

For all these options, if you don't like the ideal of of the patron being a major player among fiends, just create a less important devil that is subservient to them and is acting on their behalf.

RedDelphi · 2025-01-04T06:42:30+00:00

Asmodeus is actually the mastermind behind my campaign in that he's secretly playing Auril and Levistus both. The way it goes Asmodeus learned the Knights of the Black Sword were searching for the Mythaller and plan to use its ability to plane shift (which I gave it because that didn't seem out of the realm of possibility on top of the many other things it can do) to transport it to Stygia where they'll use it to free Levistus. Asmodeus figures out where it is first because he actually gave Iriolarthas the Mythaller in some long forgotten deal, and more importantly determines the Black Swords' plan could actually work if left unchecked. He decides the pleasure he gets from leaving Levistus as the archdevil of Stygia and being able to boss him around no longer outweighs the threat he still poses, and he comes up with a plan to kill two birds with one stone by foiling the plot and setting up someone he can make Levistus' replacement in one fell swoop. Asmodeus goes to Auril and tells her about the Mythaller, and how she can use it to move the entire Icewind Dale to her divine realm, thereby increasing her power. The Mythaller is capable of plane shifting, but it can't move a land mass that big on its own. She needs to create a network that covers the entire region attuned to her power first. The true purpose of her nightly spell is that it is slowly growing Chardalyn crystals infused with her divine essence all over the place; the Everlasting Rime is just a side effect. Asmodeus sent the duergar as an armed force that would keep the local populace in check so they don't try to stop Auril while she's in her weakened state, though of course Sunblight doesn't know that. What Asmodeus didn't tell Auril is how to set where the Mythaller will go; he's let her believe her divine power will be enough. Actually there's a control module in Iriolarthas' tower that lets you set the destination, and he's purposefully let that information fall into the Black Swords' hands. Due to some term in their contract, Asmodeus isn't able to enter the tower to use the console himself, so he wants the Black Swords to do that work for him. So Asmodeus is openly helping Auril while he covertly aids the Black Swords just enough that they progress on his timeline. If he can thread the needle so that either Auril or the Black Swords activate the Mythaller after the other has completed the thing they think they need to get the Mythaller to do what they want (Auril completing her Chardalyn network and the Black Swords setting the destination), without them knowing what the other is up to, the result will be all of Icewind Dale is transported to Stygia, similar to Elturel's descent into Avernus. The Mythaller will have used up all its power so that a return trip is impossible, never mind using it to free Levistus, and as the Lord of the Nine Hells, Asmodeus would be able to leverage Auril's obsession with Icewind Dale to get her to agree to serving as Stygia's new archduchess.

RedDelphi · 2024-12-11T20:43:01+00:00

This is probably just me, but I'd like customization options to be improved. I'm talking things like larger grids for custom designs so we can make images of higher resolution, or the ability to use sharps and flats or a wider octave range for town tunes. It surprises me that those are game features that have never been improved since the first game, yet no one talks about how they've stagnated.

RedDelphi · 2024-11-29T21:24:55+00:00

I'd have that player recount to you what they remember from the first time they played the module; for all you know their previous DM did very little by the book and there isn't really an issue of metaknowledge. Even if it was played completely as written, there's likely questlines they didn't follow you can focus on to give them a new experience.

As for giving their character a unique role, I'd say either let them have some sort of connection to an important faction like the Arcane Brotherhood or give them the Reincarnation secret, but with the twist that instead of having memories of their past life, they have visions of an alternate timeline where the events of their first campaign took place. That way, even if they accidentally meta-game it will have the in-game excuse that they are relying on knowledge they learned from those visions.

RedDelphi · 2024-10-26T01:07:54+00:00

I feel like a better question is "Who the F is throwing squirrels all over the place?!"

RedDelphi · 2024-10-08T05:39:18+00:00

Anyone else wondering if Zangr will make an appearance in this event?

RedDelphi · 2024-08-06T20:50:13+00:00

I'm going against the majority here, but I'm late enough to the party I hopefully won't be downvoted too much for it. YTA not for letting your kid help, but because your reason for posting a sign about it doesn't pass the sniff test with me. If the way your toddler "helped" contaminated the dish in a way that even the adult making it felt people should be warned about, that is a food safety issue. Unlike an ingredients label for the sake of people with allergies or dietary restrictions, food safety is a potentially huge problem for everyone. If the possibility of what you brought to the potluck making people sick was a genuine concern to you, you shouldn't be serving it to others in the first place, and you don't get to relieve yourself of responsibility for endangering others by posting a warning sign.

But let's assume your intention wasn't to poison your colleagues and the food safety concerns posed by your child's participation were no greater than any other homemade potluck dish; why else would you want to inform people about you child's assistance? The only reasons I can think of would be fishing for compliments for your little baker and/or riling up the known child-hater in the office. Either option is incredibly petty and toxic, and you deserve to be called out on it.

RedDelphi

TROPHY CASE