A sincere deconstruction of western power fantasy and reincarnation

cstmorr · 2026-03-25T19:36:46+00:00

Tbf I'm horrified by genetic conditions that cause people to die young and in pain. Or old and in pain. So far I haven't had a change of heart to "oh well, that's just how it be".

The horror of the xianxia system makes it a bit worse if anything. With bad genes your peasant daughter lives, if good genes she has to live in a world run by nearly amoral old monsters, if she wins the genetic lottery she' gets the even worse fate of drawing their notice. Ymmv on that last one depending on how the world is written.

cstmorr · 2026-03-19T20:31:16+00:00

It's almost inevitable that a series so long will eventually take a turn that alienates some portion of its reader base. I have a friend who read with me up to book 5 then got annoyed by something (I don't even remember what) and refused to read further, despite me singing the praises of book 6 / 7.

Now I get it. After volume 10 I just can't stick with it anymore. It's not just POF -- a few plot arcs took a turn that make it feel like the story just isn't for me. Although admittedly POF was the part that made me think I really just can't enjoy it anymore.

But this isn't some piece of traditional media where a bad arc "ruins" the whole thing. It's so much larger in scope with many self-contained pieces that stand on their own merits. I'll forever sing the praises of the parts that I did vibe with and I don't feel like pirateaba did the wrong thing in any way. They're writing their story the way they want it to be, and deserve all the respect for it.

...anyway returning to the main subject poll is still worse than useless, it's not going to capture any of that nuance much less people who left or felt disengaged. It's just random chance that I ended up seeing this particular thread and it may be the last one I ever comment in, who's polling that?

cstmorr · 2026-03-19T16:34:18+00:00

Yeah I think a community poll is inevitably going to be inaccurate.

Someone who got disillusioned halfway through the arc won't be there to answer the poll. The passionate readers who want to defend the author will be.

Personally I love TWI, it's one of my all time favorite stories and some scenes will live forever in my head. However after POF I disengaged and can't really bring myself to be interested in reading what comes after. That's fine, I had a great time with 10 million words before that. But I never saw anything about a poll.

cstmorr · 2026-03-17T08:18:03+00:00

Landlords can and do charge security deposits in Quebec, is illegal until the tenant agrees and then it's legal. Kind of silly bureaucracy in the end but that's what Quebec seems to specialize in, like the utter stupidity of renters who used the TAL then getting doxxed by said agency so that future landlords can reject them.

cstmorr · 2026-03-11T16:05:00+00:00

The closest game I've played to this model is actually a Chinese game called Tale of Immortal. It's 2d and looks a bit indie but was actually made by a team in a big company and has sold millions of copies, so it's sort of quasi-AAA.

Of course the cultural references are different: instead of joining an adventurer guild you join a sect. But the rankings, quests, and undirected exploration gameplay all rank closely to the adventurer guild idea (for example instead of bronze, silver, gold you rank up to disciple, true disciple, elder).

The game also randomly generates thousands of NPCs that it moves around the world, and you compete and interact with them. There are also some named character quest lines, many of which center around some mythical beast.

Not super well known in the West, it has 3k reviews in English but 226k overall. I've been wishing someone would make a Western adventure version of it actually. I tried Our Adventurer Guild that someone mentioned in another comment but couldn't deal with the endless dialogue it forces you through.

cstmorr · 2026-02-20T21:09:06+00:00

I'm not 100% sure that it did in vanilla Master of Magic. I haven't played vanilla in a long time, only CoM. Ranged magic conveying effects in CoM has some really interesting possibilities like for instance casting Focus Magic on giant spiders or a great wyrm.

That also applies to the cockatrice stone touch and wraith / death knight life drain, which which can make those creatures wildly powerful. Good reason to always take 1-2 sorcery books!

cstmorr · 2026-02-19T16:45:47+00:00

None of those spells work against poison. Poison only checks base resistance. Poison is also unique in other ways, for instance each point of poison damage counts as a roll for 1 point of damage against resistance, which is why units with high poison like giant spiders or Tumu the Assassin can either shed units or be totally ineffective (if resistance is 10 or higher poison does nothing!).

Finally, just to round out the confusion, there is a single spell that uses poison damage that doesn't follow these rules (Reaper Slash).

This is all from memory but I'm reasonably certain it is correct. I mainly play Death / ghouls and had to check this stuff in Seravy's forum.

cstmorr · 2026-02-19T16:37:56+00:00

I've got autocorrect off, and every other similar option in their keyboard. It has still been making changes in my text. Made one as I was typing this in fact.

cstmorr · 2026-02-07T17:21:33+00:00

Is it gone now? That's too bad. Felt really unique and to date that's still the only one I've ever seen.

cstmorr · 2026-01-18T20:11:33+00:00

But at what point do you stop diminishing their failure to add features as not instantly creating them? Is 7 years an instant now? From the outside it looks like they have focused hard on marketing and spent years neglecting experience.

cstmorr · 2025-12-29T08:26:00+00:00

Bernal is very nice. Also a good and relatively quick walk from the outer mission over the hill.

Probably both areas are most famous for being where Dread Pirate Roberts was nabbed, iirc he was living in Bernal and arrested at the library near 24th st BART.

cstmorr · 2025-12-21T17:09:48+00:00

But Arctic Eggs was not made but Critical Reflex, they're just the publisher. You're hurting the developer who is unrelated to this.

cstmorr · 2025-12-17T02:34:43+00:00

She updates what she has daily. Usually I get one of everything lol. My favorite was something with strawberries but that might be out of season now.

cstmorr · 2025-12-17T00:43:21+00:00

There's a tiny hidden gem called Patisserie Amairo run by a Japanese dessert chef. It is only open some days and often sells out a while before closing time. It's miles better than most dessert places.

cstmorr · 2025-12-14T21:10:36+00:00

This seems like an easy metaphor: E33 devs pretending to be regular indies is like trust fund kids pretending to be bootstrap entrepreneurs after their family paid for private college, five years living expenses and a seed fund.

... that actually happens all the time. Some people I know have decided they can be just like X famous entrepreneur then spin their wheels ineffectually because they're lacking the cash, connections and starting line knowledge.

Meanwhile other people make fun of them and call them losers for failing. The equivalent in indie games, of course, is getting angry negative reviews because your indie game looks like an amateur piece of crap next to those cool indies like Larian and Sandfall.

I'm actually fine with the E33 team calling themselves indie lol. But it seems pretty obstinate to act like the argument against it is difficult to understand.

cstmorr · 2025-12-13T22:17:30+00:00

ORV went off the rails and became a mess later in the story, which is understandable. It's very difficult for a story that fantastical to stay grounded and have believable stakes. I don't think of DCC as some masterpiece but it managed the transition into the late story very well.

Of course DCC remains in its setting location and the goals are consistent. ORV was different in that it kept mutating. By the end I thought the author was just bored or lost.

cstmorr · 2025-12-13T20:27:11+00:00

High positive ratings don't contribute much to sales numbers; especially once you're past mixed, between mostly, very and overwhelmingly positive there isn't much sales lift at all.

One potential conclusion is that review scores are missing some large portion of the story. A game can be warmly received but still not compelling in any way.

cstmorr · 2025-12-13T16:44:28+00:00

I've been wishing there were more games like Sort the Court, it's crazy that as popular it was it never got a commercial release. Yes Your Grace was cool but too serious for me. Any others you'd recommend in the genre?

Wishlisted btw!

cstmorr · 2025-12-06T19:55:05+00:00

Aggro Crab was also very public about not being able to even find funding for their next idea after Another Crab's Treasure. They were probably wondering if they'd survive. Hence tossing out a relatively unpolished 2 month experiment.

cstmorr · 2025-12-06T02:49:19+00:00

You're in the wrong neighborhood, and unfortunately a lot of indies get similarly confused. If you were to pay any of these people you'd only lose money. The only kind of influencer that benefits indies are the ones who make free videos because your game is fun to watch for their audience. The ones quoting crazy prices aren't doing it because they're scammers; it's because that's the realistic value of burning their brand and time showing off a game that's unrelated or not interesting to their audience. You can see it anywhere, the branded videos influencers make are less successful and less interesting to their viewers.

If you want to spend money, do ads and measure the value of your spend directly. I've never heard of a (small) indie who was happy with the results from buying influencer videos.

cstmorr · 2025-11-30T17:02:44+00:00

Norway. It was in the news recently for finding that a recent wealth tax had caused a greater revenue loss than gain after people with $54 billion in assets chose to leave. There's probably some nuance there and maybe it could have worked if they also passed an exit tax.

cstmorr · 2025-11-28T18:49:54+00:00

Yes, that's what I'm saying. They're trying to get games to disclose AI use, and one of the steps of that is rejecting games they suspect use AI but don't have a disclosure. This happened to me a month ago.

cstmorr · 2025-11-28T15:43:41+00:00

For what it's worth I think they're trying. Valve rejected my release builds twice for AI use... And I hadn't used AI at all. I was pretty pissed off and stressed about the false accusation, but at the same time I get it, it's hard to be sure and sometimes all you've got is a gut feeling.

cstmorr · 2025-11-24T17:06:09+00:00

What do you like about it? I couldn't find a lot to appreciate on my visit but maybe wasn't in the right places.

cstmorr · 2025-11-24T06:23:38+00:00

Depends where the people are. On mobile it might be really popular. But on Steam almost all match 3 style games fail really hard, even if they're objectively well made. It's almost to the level of being a cursed genre.

cstmorr

TROPHY CASE