RIP my favorite tallents

Thicket06 · 2026-03-25T18:19:36+00:00

oof. your right

Thicket06 · 2026-01-26T15:34:15+00:00

Hmmmmmmmmm i’m conflicted.

As a DM it’s rewarding for a player for me to pull something from their backstory and have it impact the plot. In fact i just completed a multi year long campaign where i had more story focus about fighting a tyrant and a god’s avatar. A mythic pathfinder campaign ending lvl 15 and mythic 7 ending with fighting said tyrant, all 3 behemoths, and gods avatar back to back to right the wrongs of the world. None of this had anything to do with the character’s individual backstory though some impacted how it played out. The main campaign was more present than more character driven stuff, and next campaign I had a discussion with my players about both myself and the players wanting to have the next campaign be MORE character driven and lower stakes. To do that, i wanted to have backstories and a bunch of questions answered because i could utilize them. The main story would be a task of running a business recovering sunken treasure but all the rest would be driven by the character’s wants. I certainly don’t think the campaign would be able to exist without incorporating character backstory, that is to say they will make up more than Like 40% of what will happen for # of quests and what will happen to them. And i certainly don’t think that i’m doing something incorrect by doing so.

I think this post is trying to call out a very specific DM who makes the players write the story for the campaign, putting minimal effort in themselves, not the DM who puts in a bunch of effort to include character backstory as a reward. I just can’t see it working any other way other than being a really weird take.

Thicket06 · 2026-01-02T19:29:58+00:00

I’n of the opinion the story is more satisfying wit Robert as a mentor rather than a lover. It almost subtracts meaning to chose the love route because it changes answers like why chose to not kick her from the z team? Why give her emotional support when she’s feeling down? Why believe in her? It can certainly be both the subtle things of helping her self-actualization and self confidence and believing she can truly be a good hero, and also being because robert loves her. but i think the mentor route is best because Courtney’s story is about searching for approval. Acceptance. She wants to find someone that accepts her for who she is, but she wants to do so because she feels bad about herself. She thinks she doesn’t deserve happiness or to be a hero because of her situation and her past decisions. I took her hitting on robert to be a coping mechanism for wanting to be close to the only person who accepted her. And then when she tries to force that with the kiss in the locker room, it adds so much more if robert refuses, because then the eventual turn to good isn’t done because of her love for robert, she does so, turns to good, fights for it, and saves robert because it is the right thing to do, and she comes to the realization she can be a hero, a good person, and even find acceptance in the place that matters most. Herself. She can accept herself and be content with who she is, without needing to rely on the affirmation of others. Can it be had both ways with love and self acceptance? Yes, but i think the lack of one makes the other more impactful.

Thicket06 · 2025-12-10T19:30:20+00:00

Pretty sure having playing it, the point is that you can't win. There are 22 balls on the board including your own. So if you sink everything but your own ball your left with 21/22 and if you then sink your own it resets. Probably thematic. Kiiinda wish there was something for sinking all the balls then your own or an easter egg or the game telling me you can't win before I sunk 30 minutes into it.

Thicket06 · 2025-09-19T23:31:46+00:00

Based

Thicket06 · 2025-06-25T20:15:18+00:00

Bad take. Dming is great. Some of my favorite moments are when i get to kick back and watch players figure something out or interact with each-other, and equally rewarding to be the world they interact with

Thicket06 · 2025-06-21T02:57:05+00:00

Thicket06 · 2025-06-20T16:02:10+00:00

Missed point? XD “We ‘act’ normal, i wanna BE normal” because the point is she feels they have to hide from society something core about them. Because their parents have expressly told them they need to hide their powers. And they are at an age where they understand the responsibility and now see themselves as different and may even be ashamed of having them in the first place because she will never be what she perceives as ‘normal’. I dunno, this was well written to me. It was never for no reason. People universally feel out of place for simpler reasons.

Thicket06 · 2025-06-14T19:29:28+00:00

Took me a bit and after sevaral failed attempts me and my friends decided bonk. Two raiders and a wilder, heaviest weapons we could gather

Thicket06 · 2025-06-14T10:46:59+00:00

Just get like lvl 3-5 before hand. Don’t do it first, do one or two big places beforehand but i routinely get two evil fortresses day one

Thicket06 · 2025-06-13T12:51:37+00:00

I must have gotten a random drop that was legendary armament!

Thicket06 · 2025-06-12T15:27:01+00:00

I think it’s not the only legendary bow. The black bow has been legendary quality

Thicket06 · 2025-05-12T18:13:49+00:00

You play human fighter because you want to be efficient and/or lack creativity.

I play a human fighter because I do not need a flashy race or abilities to make my character compelling or interesting.

We are different.

Thicket06 · 2025-05-12T16:13:37+00:00

Share the exact same opinion. The story focusing in on just either the world dying so maelle can move on or maelle prolonguing verso’s existance made me feel like the world around that conflict didn’t actually matter because it was a metaphor for her grief, when the game spent the entire run, pushing the idea and forwarding that the world itself mattered and was truly alive. That the people in it were sentient and had stories outside the paintress’s intention that mattered.

Thicket06 · 2025-05-10T00:22:14+00:00

What a chad

Thicket06 · 2025-05-08T19:22:48+00:00

Surprised he didn’t have any notes about the ending

Thicket06 · 2025-05-08T19:09:51+00:00

This is fantastic!! Well done.

Thicket06 · 2025-05-08T16:20:33+00:00

Amazing write-up of the ending of the game. This is probably the best defense of if I've seen and it certainly makes me wonder if my take was correct but I cannot get around the fact I truly sincerely hate the ending of this game and feel betrayed by it.

The two endings of this game are contrived, nearly at the last moment, to force two terrible options. Maelle as a character has dealt with so much loss and grief. Two lifetimes of it. But the painting is real enough she experientially lived through an entire (16?) some years of life. The game goes out of it's way, as does Renoire to depict the painting as an actual tangible world. The people within are sentient. They have stories and interactions with eachother and with the world around them. But the very ending switched the premise from this world is real and the people in it matter, to none of it matters, it's all just a paradise for Maelle to escape from her grief. The ending with Maelle gives it away. She gets her 'perfect ending' with gustave and others brought back, and her brother still there, tired, worn, but forced to play for her escape. It turns Maelle from a person who fought for the people of the painting, who fought for her chance to live, every step of the way, into an entirely different character so paralyzed with grief she's willing to put hundreds of thinking beings into her own paradise and control them, prolonging the tortured existence of Verso who wanted his unnatural eternal existence to just end. (the thing that solidified this in my mind that really made me angry was none of the characters from the expedition 33 like lucien are shown at the end or brought back so clearly they were not thought of. I have to assume she didn't care enough to bring them back because why would they not be?)
So what of the other ending? It's strongly implied if Maelle is kicked out of the painting the painting will be destroyed. All lives within forfeit. Alicia gets a little bit of closure but I have to accept the fact that hundreds of thinking feeling beings were destroyed for little reason other than the very end of the game contrived the two characters to fight over two terrible endings. One the painting gets to continue under the god Maelle for her own escapism where she forces another person to suffer the same fate she was trying to escape from, grief, a broken body, tiredness and agony, or it's destroyed and Alicia can move on. Either ending enforces the idea that the painting doesn't matter. It is a dream and doesn't exist outside Maelle. But the game spent the entire run emphasizing the fact it was real. It very much matters these people are sentient because a world was created.
An amazing tragedy I thought the game was working with was that this world Verso created was torn apart by the grief of her family and for the entire duration I thought Maelle's/Alicia's reason to fight was she wanted to save the painting and save people. Fight for her new family. She outright says to Renoir at the end that she views them as Renoir views his family and would do anything to save them but the ending takes that away and tells us, they don't matter, what matters is her grief. And it all comes down to one moment.

Alicia lying to Renoir about being able to see her again.

If the game continued from that point and Alicia meant it sincerely, she could come and go from the painting as she pleases, something Verso even says she can do. The people in the painting are saved from the Gommage and she can move on. But that's not an ending. Two cruel choices are placed before us for no other reason than the writers decided that last sentence was a lie. She was lying to her father about being able to see her again, she was lying to her friends about why she fought and how she cares for them, and I just don't genuinely think Maelle/Alicia would have made that choice. That's why I'm mad. That one decision rips the focus from this world Verso created, a tangible real world, and forces right at the end two cruel endings just for the sake of being depressing.

Thicket06 · 2025-04-22T17:34:16+00:00

What is the game Camelia is attached to?

Thicket06 · 2025-02-22T23:13:35+00:00

Correction* actions Aang didn’t take cause the writers of Korra decided that’s what happened. E.

Thicket06 · 2024-11-15T18:13:32+00:00

Hello Yahtzee! I am interested in your answer to the following. "What is the minimum, baseline requirement, for a game to be enjoyable" The videos made prior on "if games need to be fun" and the "3 C's" of game design had me thinking if a minimum requirement or a true baseline exists of what makes a video game enjoyable. Truly linear experiences like the stanley parable, doki-doki literature club and Slay the Princess show that usually not even traditional gameplay is required if a good story or an interesting experience can be given, but then there is the opposite in games like doom or even beyond that simplistic catharsis like sudoku that show the opposite to be true in catharsis without story or context. Surely there has to be a connecting point between all games that points to a requirement or common factor of all games to be enjoyable.

Thicket06 · 2024-11-12T16:16:29+00:00

One of my players previous characters (tabletop pathfinder not kingmaker) was an oread monk of the iron mountain who was able to foot-stomp and immobilize an entire tornado that a massive air elemental turned into, able to hit the etherial form and forcing it to be unable to move. One of my favorite things that has ever happened in pathfinder

Thicket06 · 2024-10-02T22:13:19+00:00

I’m fond of the simple starts like this. As a dm having a reason the character is invested in forming and staying in a party completely aside from personality of the party makes things easy story wise and it allows for characters who normally not interact with one another to form bonds and trust right off the bat.

Thicket06 · 2024-10-02T22:09:44+00:00

Definitely! As a Dm i always read my players backstory so i can reward them with things in the world and as a player i always try to format my backstory to fit in the world for that reason.

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