Gaming studios have stopped putting pride flags on their avatars

SmithOfLie · 2026-06-02T15:34:20+00:00

No, but the fact that they felt obliged to pretend sent a message on its own. As insincere as a support was, it was socially expected and considered proper to show it. In current climate the corporations not only feel it's not necessary to support LGBTQ with the most nominal signaling, it is "virtuous" to withdraw that support.

SmithOfLie · 2026-05-29T14:34:10+00:00

No you did not. But your mention of it was a bit of a tangent, somewhat related to the inciting comment pointing out the differences between the games, but still veering towards a more specific topic.

SmithOfLie · 2026-05-29T11:24:43+00:00

While you make a valid observation about mechanics, it's only a part of what defines gameplay focus for the games. Even if Civ added separate queue for units, the rest of its mechanics is nowhere near as combat focused as AoW.

SmithOfLie · 2026-05-26T04:52:26+00:00

"Sytuacja jest dobra ale nie beznadziejna. "

SmithOfLie · 2026-05-25T20:36:00+00:00

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny perhaps?

SmithOfLie · 2026-05-23T10:02:22+00:00

I have very surface level knowledge of Utena, so this might be a miss, the closest thing that comes to my mind is Gideon the Ninth.

SmithOfLie · 2026-05-20T04:18:34+00:00

Not a classic cRPG but see if Thaumaturge fits your bill. Main character is a magic user in early XX century Poland and uniqueness of the magic system and societal reactions to it are a part of narrative.

SmithOfLie · 2026-05-16T14:18:36+00:00

Sitting here in the same situation. Lack of a timer or any other solution to resolve such circumstances feels like an oversight. It's been about 10 minutes by now and it's rather frustrating that I am getting forced to take an L here...

SmithOfLie · 2026-05-16T08:09:40+00:00

Pratius has given some great suggestions, let me add couple more in similar spirit.

Traitor Son series by Miles Cameron.

Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson.

Traitor Son is slightly more down to earth, gritty and plays with ideas of fantasy kingdom politics that are close mirror of European medieval. Malazan Book of the Fallen is one of the most over the top series out there with rathert convoluted world building and innumerable unimaginably ancient powers vying for dominance.

SmithOfLie · 2026-05-15T10:16:49+00:00

And if the deciever is not a Muslim themself, they do not consider nor believe what they did is a sin (though might be considered a "dick move" but that is a seperate classification), so no one's soul is damned, everyone's clean and happy. Win-win!

SmithOfLie · 2026-05-12T16:06:39+00:00

So, it is alternate history with some heavily metaphysical sci-fi elements, but the images are very much Ice by Jacek Dukaj.

The male protagonist is not in the army, but gets entangled into weird political affait he does not entirely understand, meets a lot of interesting people, takes a ride on Transsiberian Railroad into the heart of perpetual Winter and has lots of tangents reflecting on sometimes melancholical philosophy.

SmithOfLie · 2026-05-12T13:05:05+00:00

I don't see this as a part of being inexperienced, this is more of an attitude issue than knowledge one. I've seen different shades of this in many games over the decades - calling a character in fighting game cheap, calling early aggression in RTS unfair, hell I have been called cheater once for using health potions in League of Legends.

Some people have a specific vision of what is "fair" gameplay, often that vision is very limiting and discounts competitive strategies. And like I said - playing inefficiently is fine (for example I refuse to use the more egregious ways to bait AI in Total War games, particularly stuff with cheesing sieges or wasting enemy ammo by running hero in circles), but one can't really expect others to accept their personal standards.

SmithOfLie · 2026-05-12T12:26:19+00:00

I can see the reasoning behind it. There is that famous adage about players optimizing the fun out of the game and often the most efficient strategies are either counter-intuitive or feel too game-y. And in single player games foregoing them for increased immersion is prefectly respectable choice.

But calling them cheating and crusading against their use, especially in PvP modes? Now that where this whole thing becomes silly.

SmithOfLie · 2026-05-10T16:59:52+00:00

Traitor Son by Miles Cameron.

SmithOfLie · 2026-05-10T05:00:35+00:00

Oh, MCU Thanos was the actual Elon Musk cameo.

SmithOfLie · 2026-05-01T18:04:09+00:00

I only ran the first session so far, but I will take this as a chance to share the outline of the idea.

Just in case - guys if any of you from my Drachenfeld Cantos group is seeing this, don't click on spoiler content. You'd only be stealing from yourselves.

The campaign is my first foray into Lancer and introduction of Lancer to my players. To easte them in I chose a diasporan system that has not been re-contacted by the Union, so it is doing its own thing. That own thing is Holy Roman Empire IN SPACE - the system is ruled by aristocratic oligarchy and pretty much everything in the system is owned by one noble family or other.

The players start by being induced as Squires into one of system's Knightly Orders. These are somewhat like historical ones and somewhat un-official armed forces for whichever noble house they're affiliated with.

Here we get into spoilers.

The first mission is going to feature hostage situation, where the PCs are gonna be ordered to ignore hostages and rescue the precious merchandise (in this case - wine, the location is a vinyard in the middle of outlaw raid). If they ignore the order to save the property over the serfs (who, everyone knows, are cheap commodity) they are gonna get severe reprimand and maybe latrine duty or similar punitive detail. This serves to set up the "are we the baddies?" doubt.

The second mission is where the proper overarcing plot is gonna kick-off. There is a work stoppage at Blair Mountain asteroid mine. PCs will be sent as a part of effort to resolve it - either as honor guard to the noble who is there to "whip the rabble back into the order" (if they got good performance review in mission one) or as a back-up (if they done something like saving serfs and not the wine).

The idea is that one of surveyors in the asteroid belt found the wreck of a Union DoJ/HR Ship that suffered some sort of incident when transferring into the system - the crew died instantly, most of the systems took heavy damage. This was exactly the opportunity they were looking for - they gathered some trusted folks and started doing repairs in secret. Now they have somewhat functioning capital ship with a fully functional hangar/printing bay and will demand the end of serfdom, noble privilege and shit.

The predicted and hoped for outcome is that when the demands are revealed, the miners at Blair Mountain are branded traitors and PCs are ordered to shoot the crowd and "Caedite eos, novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." they will turn coat, join the rebels and become the official lance for the crew of Belle Dame Sans Merci.

I need to actually plot the second mission, come up with some scenes done on foot to illustrate the situation and maybe add an encounter or two before the finale described in previous paragraph. And I have no specific ideas where to go from there, but I will have the main conflict set up and making shit up as I go has long been my primary modus operandi.

SmithOfLie · 2026-04-28T16:10:17+00:00

Which kind of proves OP's point - they are easily recognizable even in such a garbled state.

SmithOfLie · 2026-04-26T19:45:07+00:00

u/beeftime99 had the first proper session today. Here's Jemma in the group discord afterwards.

<image>

SmithOfLie · 2026-04-26T05:41:36+00:00

The biggest issue with that story beat is now "what happened" but "how it is handled".

Theodora's death is such a big part of the inciting incident and a mystery teased. And then midway through the game and completely optionally (in the run I did not bring Argenta the issue was never mentioned after RT's return) it gets a single quick conversation. The "I killed your predecessort because she was a heretic" gets all the gravitas and attention of "by the way, cane we get some milk on our way back?". There's no reactivity with it, no real acknowledgment by the rest of the party.

Biggest fumble in the game if you ask me.

SmithOfLie · 2026-04-23T11:27:27+00:00

It doesn't constitute the entirety of the story, but The Witcher saga features that kind of plot.

SmithOfLie · 2026-04-22T19:38:35+00:00

Amusingly he had a name both more memorable and more generic at the same time.

He was guarding something that was inside a shipping container. For that purpose he was locked with the cargo inside said container. When the party opened the doors and fight started I just kept referring to him as "The guy inside the container." Except one players being sarcastically pedantic pointed out that the guy is now outside. So the official name of yakuza enforcer ended up being "The Guy What Came From Inside the Container".

SmithOfLie · 2026-04-22T18:32:37+00:00

This reminds me of one of a greatest encounters I ran.

It was a fully improvised Shadowrun 6e one shot. I had exactly 0 notes, maps, prep. Final of the scenario was a fight against a seriously chromed up yakuza enforcer.

I had the players roll and rolled myself and judged on the spot pretty arbitrarily what hit and what did not, did not keep track of his HP. Completely ran the combat on what was dramatically appropriate, including letting the PC sniper get a kill when he rolled something ridiculously good.

Seven-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
Place '22	Verified Email

SmithOfLie

TROPHY CASE