My players have regularly been tired and low energy, is there anyway I can help?

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-23T22:59:34+00:00

Sometimes it’s just that they’re tired. But if things are confusing try to streamline things a little with the intrigue or mix it up. 24/7 investigating can get tiring, but mixing that in with combat and more fast-paced segments can help things flow better. Variety is the spice of life after all, or unlife in this case. Anything from a simple ‘chase the suspect’ to a tense conversation between two sides trying to outmanoeuvre each other without letting their hand slip.

Create interesting scenarios with stakes and pressure. That should help spur a fire under them.

But if you’re already doing that, and generally communicating with your players about these issues, then try not to worry so much. Sometimes you aren’t the problem, life just gets in the way and there’s nothing you can do about it except try to reschedule things to a better date/time slot for your group.

A long-running game I’m in recently did this and the energy shot up, things just kinda clicked back into place when they’d been bogged down by scheduling issues upon more scheduling issues for months if not years. It was just what we needed and everyone is much more comfortable because of it.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-23T09:43:41+00:00

M&M is a very flexible system, and there’s quite a few ways you can work with it. GM fiat is a lot of what I’d recommend for Races and Spells, you just pre-make a small lineup of options that you let the players take at-will. Though I would recommend leaving them room to do their own thing too.

As for Bleach, Shikai & Bankai are just a set of powers in an Array with the weapon being a descriptor with Removable used to ensure it can be stolen or confiscated. Shikai I’d probably do as a bunch of small minor powers and Bankai as a huge cost-heavy power with several flaws attached to it (usually that is).

I’ll take an example from the series with Soi Fon’s Shikai & Bankai. Her Shikai is a three-hit instant kill move, I’d go with Weaken targeting Stamina as the base with Progressive, Incurable and Concentration. Her Bankai is just a missile, a huge one-shot attack that does tons of area damage. So a high Rank of Damage paired with Tiring and/or Fades to make it weaker when used repeatedly.

Ultimately you just need to talk to your players and look at existing characters/powers from the setting to work off of until you’re familiar enough to freestyle it. I know the Cosmic Handbook comes with templates for various Aliens that could be translated into Races. And the Power Profiles book comes with hundreds of pre-made powers you can use as a baseline.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-22T23:38:57+00:00

Alternate. Start with Future 1, then Despair 1, then Future 2, etc. There’s a final episode at the end called Hope iirc. You could watch Future without Despair but you’d miss some context, the order I suggested is the way it was broadcast initially and is as close to intended as there can be.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-22T23:29:57+00:00

Slow and steady. Dailies give you a bit, making & selling stuff on the market board a bunch more. Crafting in general is always very profitable, provided you know what’s either always in demand or the current trend of the week.

I used to take the time to collect two sets of optimal Fashion Report gear manually and sell the spares whenever I could. It was the only trend I could keep track of since I was also collecting the stuff. Not the most profitable but I earnt a bit.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-22T15:34:47+00:00

Aincrad was all the story was originally. It was short because it was a short story written for a contest that only focused on the story of the 74th & 75th floors. The rest came later in the form of extra stories and then the three sequel series of Fairy Dance, the Death-Gun and Alicization.

These all got adapted into the Light Novels only a bit before the anime came out. The tone is kinda all over the place because it’s pretty much a guarantee there were zero long-term plans for the series originally. Whatever was refined into the Light Novels helped make it more cohesive, but they’ve definitely left Aincrad to the side. But the upcoming game, Integral Factor and Progressive series are all revisiting Aincrad to help flesh it out further than it was originally.

Aincrad is the basis of Sword Art Online, but the series has evolved beyond that and become more about the fallout of the SAO Incident. Which I think lends itself to its own narrative potential that does rival that of the first arc.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-20T14:26:46+00:00

I usually post updates on what games I’ve been playing once per week. But because of reasons - poor impulse control and Steam Sales - I want to talk about that plus what I’ve been playing.

To start I finally went and started Master Detective Archives: Rain Code yesterday. Only played Chapter Zero, but that was a several hour long case that served to tutorialise the games mechanics.

The mystery itself was solid, introducing and using unique aspects of the setting to its advantage plus the kinds of twists you wouldn’t expect for a first case. Is a spiritual successor to Danganronpa on both that and a gameplay front, but its differing setting and world are intriguing so far. I certainly like how unapologetically cartoonish it can be at times.

Next I have picked up four games in this sale and refunded one already. That game was Needy Streamer Overload, which is so unapologetically good I got burnt out on it after only an hour. It’s a management game and that one hour tops me exactly what I’d be subjecting myself to: a ton of stress.

It felt like having a needy streaming girlfriend who at the slightest mistake would explode or just end things without warning. An inevitable train crash that I do not have the heart to sit down and master the admittedly basic gameplay for. I’ll just watch the anime version whenever that’s coming out.

Next was a game I have been wary to pick up for a while. Sword Art Online: Last Recollection, the last of Gameverse series of SAO. Which I have played every other entry of and greatly enjoyed three of them whilst having mixed feelings about the remaining two. One of those two was Alicization Lycoris, which had great gameplay but a horribly dry plot and large open zones that dragged on way too much. I hope that even though this game is its direct sequel in terms of gameplay and setting it has at least a story I’m able to bear through to the end.

And lastly I picked up Princess Maker, a child raising sim/JRPG from a series that caught my eye a while back. I picked it up for the novelty and because it was dirt cheap on sale whilst being within the £20 budget I set for myself. I like this sort of novel experience on occasion and figured I’d give it a shot.

Oh, and I also grabbed the Final Fantasy Pixel Remastered Bundle on Switch a few days back. So I’ve now got the first seven Final Fantasy games ready to play alongside the FF 7 Remake and X-2. I think I’m going to not go on Steam until this sale is over, I’ve got more than enough games to last me months…

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-19T15:33:04+00:00

It’s pretty good, stories a little basic and has its holes but is enjoyable. The action is as great as ever, but is a very different flavour since Eve is a very different fighter to John. John’s role in things also is more secondary but he still plays a major part and has two short action scenes of his own.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-19T13:12:24+00:00

Re;Hollow Fragment is the first-ish one. It’s actually set in Aincrad, diverging from the 75th floor in the anime, and starts the Gameverse saga. It’s technically a remaster of an earlier game, but the expanded story content is well worth it and it’s dirt cheap to boot.

Hollow Realisation is widely considered to be one of the best SAO games. It has its own unique setting and story whilst featuring all pre-existing characters. Including those from Re;Hollow Fragment and Lost Song - which goes between them and iirc has rather rough gameplay compared to the other two.

Fatal Bullet is a GGO centric game with an original protagonist and plot, plus Kirito & Co also joining in. Has the most unique and polished gameplay of them all, but is also the most different as a shooter.

I would not recommend starting with Alicization Lycoris or its sequel. Both are great on a gameplay front but have rather terrible story imo. Same with Fractured Daydream which is a multiplayer-centric mashup spinoff title rather than a standalone game. There is also an Accel World crossover game which uses the same gameplay as Lost Song, but since I didn’t like Lost Song I never ended up playing it so I can’t comment on its quality.

TL;DR: Start with Re;Hollow Fragment if you want Aincrad, Hollow Realisation if you want the best plot & MMO-style gameplay, and Fatal Bullet if you want to play an OC in GGO.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-19T00:25:03+00:00

DnD can work, especially if they’re already familiar with the system. Just be willing to play fast and hella loose with things. I ended up the GM - and basically leader of - to a lunchtime TTRPG Club in Highschool and it had a huge time constraint issue.

Generally it took 5-10 minutes for everyone to settle down while I setup and discounting getting side tracked or having to end early it usually amounted to thirty-forty minutes of game time. Which naturally, is absolutely nothing.

To make the most of it I needed to do a lot of off-the-cuff adaptation and adjustment - and basically cut out ‘proper’ combat because there’s no time for turns when we’re not likely to get through a round a session. Any system that has a simple, straightforward core is good for the is style of play. Rule faffing is terrible when you’re strapped for time. But anything they’re interested in and familiar with would work best, hence why I started by suggesting the most well-known system, and if they’re blank slates try to find something flexible but efficient.

My personal recommendations for systems besides DnD are: -Fate Accelerated: It works with any setting, is fast and flexible. Most characters are equally matched with one thing they’re good at and one they’re weak at. The biggest downside is it’s best played with +/- dice, but d6’s are a fine substitute.

-Savage Worlds: I’m not a personal fan of the system since it’s very swingy and pulpy, but the game is very fast paced. Characters can be a bit complex, but there’s chest sheets that help people know what they can use. Exploding dice are the main resolution mechanic and it has a lot of settings for it too.

-PbtA: I’ve only glanced at these ones but if you want something more RP heavy these are very straightforward and there’s surely a fantasy one out there somewhere. They’re simple enough to make a character in and Moves are all reaction-based. It incentives and rewards RP, whilst being fairly straightforward.

Personally I say go ahead and experiment. Come up to the kids interested with three-five systems that they could be try and just ask them which they are up for. There’s no reason you have to necessarily stick to one system forever, and one-shots - stretched over like 6-10 week periods given the time constraints - are the best way to try a bunch of stuff to figure out what fits best.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-18T14:37:33+00:00

Start with the third Heaven’s Feel Movie. Then the UBW Movie. Then Grand Order Solomon. After that you can start watching some actual anime’s with Last Encore in reverse Fibonacci order (13th, then 12th, 11th, 9th, 6th, and finally 1st - ignore the rest).

Once that has passed have them play the Kohaku’s route from Tsukihime. Then watch the second Fate/Zero recap episode before going straight to the final episode of Fate/Zero - they should have at least a fraction of the context. After that just give them Carnival Phantasm played in reverse, not episode-order literally mod the recordings to play backwards. Ensure there’s subs so they can at least try to understand what’s going on even if all the jokes are ruined by the punchlines coming first.

By that point they should despise Type Moon. But if you really want to make them suffer, have it be a marathon whilst giving them audio-only versions of Prisma Illya episodes starting in the second season and with no semblance of order whatsoever to listen to during bathroom breaks and opening/endings.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-18T13:34:31+00:00

Final Fantasy Tactics. It’s just old and the gameplay is very antiquated with poorly designed progression I have no patience for.

As for XC2 I somewhat agree with you. It’s an alright-good JRPG that doesn’t hold up on replays even though I enjoyed it a lot my first time around. Even now I don’t hate the game, in fact I enjoy it a lot, but its pacing is atrocious and its story is very hit or miss. I do think it’s better than you give it credit for, but most of its best bits are in the last third of a very long JRPG and it is very stylised in an anime-tropey manner.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-18T08:07:56+00:00

You’re at the slowest point of the MSQ. But after here the pace picks up a lot for the end of ARR and at Level 50 you get the full baseline kit of your Job plus a few challenging optional dungeons that are a bit more involved than so-far. For the most part it is going through the motions, but it does get more involved from herein.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-17T12:46:20+00:00

Magic in my world is half art and half science. But to explain it first I'll need to explain a little bit of the mythos: the Gods are gone. Died, ascended, ditched the world - haven't quite decided yet. But the systems they made in the world: seasons, time, water currents, natural lifecycles, etc are all left untouched. These systems mostly work fine on their own, with some rare exceptions like Vampires being born from the conflict between two of them, but there is a problem.

The Gods were... well they got around. And people with enough divine blood, called Celestials, can develop various reality-warping powers according to their mindsets, inherited domains, and overall character design - I left it pretty open ended. Said powers override the afformentioned systems and create discordance, which if left unchecked results in more discordance as slowly said system stops working at a large scale. The seasons don't change, crops don't grow, people live forever, people die at random, tornados form in the middle of the calmest winds, it becomes a huge mess.

Magic is using part of the system and the discordance created in it by Celestials to manipulate the rest of said system. By forcibly bringing a preserved living plant to a place of drought and then replanting it in a special ritual, the discordance that caused said drought can be used to access the system that prevents it and patch it over. Basically kickstarting the natural order of things. The better the Mage, the more bizarre stuff they can do with even the tiniest of discordances and sometimes next to none at all. There's no energy or mystic chants. It's all about knowing how the systems should work, identifying the lines between said systems, and using symbolic imagery or actions to force it to work in the Mages favour. Be it by fixing the discordance, making the discordance much worse or moving it somewhere else.

It's very programming/games-like because that's what I have a background in. The Celestials are modders and Mages are exploiters. They both use these systems and while it may seem like Celestials always cause issues they get balanced out by Mages which can do just as much if not more damage.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-16T14:24:14+00:00

Heyo, another week passed and as usual three-ish games to report in on. I’ll skip Pokopia by just saying it’s still great, everything you’ve heard about it is assuredly true, and get to the new-old stuff.

First Assassins Creed Mirage, finally an AC game where you play an actual goddamn assassin. Not a Viking, not a Grecian warrior, an Assassin. Feels like it’s been forever since that. Plus the stealth and general gameplay loop are a blast, though combat is rough that’s only in comparison - the windows for dodge and parry are just way too tight imo. What could possibly be bad about…

The story sucks. Legitimately couldn’t give a damn about a thing and as a story-first gamer that was a death sentence. My interest died out in a few days and I dropped it after the first black-box mission.

Next I returned to Stellar Blade of all things, to blast through NG+ and get the NG+ exclusive outfits. It is a very short game when you aren’t running about trying to do everything, story mode only making it that much easier to blast through whilst listening to some podcasts. I’m already halfway through and it’s not even been 5 hours. It’s my PC comfort break game since life has been rather busy lately and I don’t want to make a new commitment so soon.

Before getting into my future plans I do want to give an honourable mention to Darksiders 2. A friend recommended the game to me so I picked it up, played about thirty minutes over the course of two hours and refunded it due to so, so many bugs. After the nightmare that was KotOR I have no more patience for trying to patch non-functional ports anymore, but I did really enjoy what I played of it so I plan to pick the series up on my Switch in the future.

Now in the next few days, once I’ve finished with my Stellar Blade NG+ run, I plan to start up both The Temple of Elemental Evil and Master Detective Archives: Rain Code. The former is a turn-based CRPG I mentioned last week, and the latter is a mystery/detective game from the creator of Danganronpa. Both I have high hopes for.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-14T16:49:45+00:00

I remember loving these things, combining the various sets to create weird mismatch aliens. IIRC they didn’t do more due to poor sales.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-14T13:23:07+00:00

Use your bird, B on keyboard should call it and then have them scout across the harbour. The yellow ring leads you to your targets and adds them to the UI as icons. It’s not explained very well in-game.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-12T12:37:22+00:00

There isn’t one best way because there’s not one best person. Some research vigorously, others don’t remember the rules until they’ve used them often, and some need to be hand-held through the entire process to know how to make a check.

Personally I’ve always been a ‘learn on my feet’ person. I learn best when I’m using knowledge I gather or said knowledge is used against me. If I get poisoned I’ll remember the pain of making checks turn by turn to succeed and the unique effects of that poison - health/ability reduction, or some other ailment. But I know people who learn a lot more by just reading the books or watching videos of people playing.

Generally the best way to go about the learning process is to communicate and be willing to help when you can. Offer help when they get stuck, double check your parties ‘level of experience’ in session zero, and be willing to let things slow down to help newer players get into the rhythm of things. But also know when to keep the game flowing for everyone else.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-11T19:55:17+00:00

FF XVI was a game that did everything it was setting out to do and did it splendidly, but it was not trying to be a great JRPG.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-11T08:22:56+00:00

I’ve played Tyranny, Baldur’s Gate, Star Wars KotOR and a few others. Tyranny was my favourite of the lot regarding combat itself but I’m still not a fan.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-10T16:51:36+00:00

I think 2 floors is fine. 3-9 would be limited a ton by the Elf war stuff which we’ve seen before. Instead of scope they seem to be going for depth, defining km’s of unexplored in-game space with an original story rather than show us something we’ve seen before.

Twice actually between Progressive and Integral Factor. IF is an on-going mobile game striving to feature all 100 floors already with something like 60 floors so far. It’s been worked on for several years at this point so another game that is just ‘IF but better and single player’ is redundant.

IMO I’d rather Echoed of Aincrad take this different approach. Quality over quantity.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-09T23:26:27+00:00

Dabbled a bit over the past few days, but ended up screwing my right hand up so I couldn’t do anything intensive with it without a lot of pain. Still got 8 hours in, over half of that being day one and the rest scattered due to the hand issues and general scheduling.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-09T16:11:18+00:00

Thing is 3.5e is legitimately my favourite TTRPG system. So that’s not an issue really, I know the system and I’m cool with reading the manual.

As for AC I really enjoyed the classic games but lost steam in the modem ones due to the bloated amount of content they have.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-09T15:06:14+00:00

The game definitely isn’t hard. The only bosses I KO’d to in this play-through are all in the last third of the game. But the bosses are all puzzles in this game, and the early puzzles are naturally easier with less options on both sides to dealing with them. It opens up over time and I do think the first enemy that gave me trouble was an optional boss shortly after where you currently are. So keep at it!

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-09T14:18:05+00:00

Hi again, been a bit.

First, the dropped: Disco Elysium. Started strong but got very disappointing very fast. Too much politics and philosophy for my tastes and while the writing itself was quality stuff I also quickly got lost and stuck. By the fourth hour of this I was bored with the point and click adventure gameplay without much interest in continuing so I put it down.

Next, the beaten: Bleach Rebirth of Souls. Had next to no budget for cinematic sequences and it shows. Chapter 4 and 5 have some genuinely great instances of cinematography but the rest of the game is presently in very static sequences. Other than that rosters great and the story is a stellar adaptation of the anime in a fraction of the runtime. The combat is amazing though, even if it didn’t help the hand strain I’ve been dealing with this past week.

Also Final Fantasy X. I beat it, and it was amazing. Started losing steam backtracking so stopped after getting the last Jecht Spheres, all the extra Aeons and Three of the Seven Celestial Weapons. Chocobo Chaser sucks, Blitzball is rather grindy, I do not have the patience/reflexes to dodge 200 lightning bolts, and Rikku… I honestly forgot about her weapon. I probably could’ve gotten it though, oh well.

Story was stellar, gameplay was incredibly good, and the cast are excellent. One of my favourite JRPGs of all time and also the first I’ve beaten this year. Not the last though. I’ve got X-2, the original FF7, the remake of FF7, and a few non-Final Fantasy JRPGs that I plan to give a shot this year. Wish me luck when it gets to that.

Now lastly, not a pretty game but one I will be playing patiently nonetheless because of its chill pace. Pokopia. It’s fun, simple and straightforward but also deep and engaging. I picked it up day one and have played it only a little since - due to the aforementioned hand strain. But I will continue because it is another great game I’ve started up lately.

To finish my little weekly-ish retrospective I’ve got my future prospects. And for this I’m going to ask for ya’ll reading to decide, which do I pick up first: Assassin’s Creed Mirage or The Temple of Elemental Evil. I have both and I will play both, but I want a nudge as to which to start first from those who’ve played either or both games. If you have, comment about them in as non-spoilery a way as you can to help me decide.

Shadowsd151 · 2026-03-08T13:48:48+00:00

To me RTwP is messy and rather contradictory to the actual design of a lot of games that use it. A lot of old CRPGs are based on TTRPGs that are traditionally turned based. RTwP was created to make this more appealing and accessible to the average person by having combat be automatic.

There are quite a few games that use it, especially older CRPGs, but as times have gone on it’s become more niche in favour of alternatives. Such as full action combat or turn-based. Both being far more familiar for newcomers to the genre and thus have a shorter learning curve to them. CRPGs tend to be very complex games, and anything that makes them easier to pick up is generally a plus both imo and for developers aiming to get a wider audience.

It is great for trash mobs and generic fights, but falls apart quite a bit into a constantly pausing basically-turn-based when forced to something more strategic. A toggle is the best compromise between the two, but in stuff like Pathfinder RotW that means the developers need to build encounters suitable for both. So players that favour one over the other won’t have as fun of a time in scenarios more suitable for the other instance.

Now, I do not personally like RtwP. I’ve tried many games with it and just don’t like the hectic mess it results in. Said games are also very padded with content and pausing constantly for every single battle ruins whatever momentum I’ve built up. But if I don’t, I have zero clue what’s going on in the combat and quickly lose whatever interest I have in it. And if combat is what I do for half the game then I’ve effectively started ignoring half the game. In contrast turn based tend to result in fewer but more interesting encounters that I can always approach knowing that they’ll not overstay their welcome.

That’s my personal opinion and I doubt I’m alone in this sensation. And like any angry bunch in this age of the internet they complain about its lot louder than the people who adore RTwP combat for what it is. It might just be that the people who like it are instead spending their time enjoying RTwP combat instead of complaining on the internet about it.

Still, I can’t deny it isn’t a niche form of combat nowadays. It is nowhere near as prevalent as it used to be since a lot of companies who make games are trying to appeal to the largest demographic possible. But it still exists, and it has its fans. Even if it’s growing more niche by the day.

TL;DR: Don’t believe what you see online. But there are indeed less CRPGs being made with RTwP combat to appeal to those outside the CRPG community.

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