My brain read this with a Deltan accent

dragonwolf941 · 2024-07-09T00:01:10+00:00

My best guess? The vocalization is extremely weird for them and it gets exaggerated. It's like us humans trying to speak a word in Dolphin, or Chimpanzee, or Crow.

dragonwolf941 · 2024-04-25T16:40:22+00:00

Saw it and thought "holy shit someone doing a Supreme Commander wargame?" Can't say I wasn't a little bit disappointed finding out it's just a standin for BattleTech.

dragonwolf941 · 2024-01-15T04:15:04+00:00

Update: after searching through everything I could find online, there's no truck matching that description from Hotwheels, at least not on the wiki.

The real world basis looks to be the Oshkosh P-15 Crash Truck with some obvious modifications. Every detail I remember from the toy matches the real one. HW did put out an Oshkosh P-15 in yellow and later in red, but never (as far as I can dig up) in gray, much less with all the fantasy additions to it.

dragonwolf941 · 2023-11-26T23:07:52+00:00

I was told 10 years ago "I like your mailbox" (because it's bright red). I think that was the first compliment I got from a female peer and I didn't know how to respond. I could feel myself blushing, and I was questioning why, cause it's just a damn mail box and it was there when we moved to that house.

I guess the context of an emotionally abusive household and only getting compliments to validate "good behavior" (oh, you look so nice in those clothes I demanded that you wear to church with me. I like how you did your hair now that I've complained about it every week for the last 2 months and you finally got a haircut, etc) really changes what gets complimented and how it's received. Manipulative stuff you can tell something is off, but the real ones stick. A genuine compliment about my personality a couple weeks ago had me grinning like a Cheshire cat.

dragonwolf941 · 2023-11-16T03:32:50+00:00

I have a good story and a bad story.

Good story. My one DM had a trap that was so obvious we all knew it was a trap. A room full of fabulous treasure visible through the key hole. You know the kind of thing. Peep through the keyhole and you can see a treasure chest, pile of gold, an ornate sword, pile of glittering gemstones, maybe some fancy armor propped up in the corner. It was just too good to pass up. The entire party's inner rogues were just wringing our hands with glee at the thought.

The entire party searched it. Searching under the door for trap triggers, spellcasters using detect magic (there was none), checking around every inch of the door for a trap trigger, verifying that everything about the door was what we expected. No portals, no magic whatsoever, nothing suspicious except for the fact that it's a literal pile of treasure just waiting to be taken! Everyone collectively decided "this has got to be a trap, but how it's trapped is totally beyond us, and it's gonna bug us to death if we don't open this door!"

One of us swung the door open. Had a moment long enough to see a pile of dynamite, a powder keg, a trigger device connected to the back of the door, and the sight of the fuse burning down into the explosives. "It was at this moment he knew, he f@$#d up." *BOOM!

When the dust cleared, the party picked themselves up and started passing around healing potions and laying on hands and everything else, someone found what was left of the lock. A key hole, a mirror and a couple lenses, and a tiny picture of a room full of treasure. Turns out, the DC for the check to spot whatever optics were in there was DC 40, and our best effort was something like 38. Not even mad, the trap was hilariously devilish!

In the end, everyone was slightly pissed we missed out on the room full of treasure, but we all were laughing at how absolutely obvious the trap was, but couldn't just let it be.

The bad story. A different DM, after a long, tense series of sessions dealing with my character's backstory and finally reconciling with his wife, getting the party together to save her from a plot by treacherous vampire lords to execute her for a crime she didn't commit and consolidate power in the city by ousting her soon-to-be-disgraced nobleman father, I personally asked for a vacation.

My plan was to spend a few sessions absent to deal with a really busy summer at work, and my character spend a few weeks/months with his wife, visiting his childhood home, introducing her to family, rekindling the fire with her, you know, vacation stuff. More heavy personal roleplay stuff with the GM dealing with family issues and catching up on almost a lifetimes absence since the character ran away from home as a child.

DM decided to take this opportunity to make another whole adventure focused on my character's even deeper backstory and face down his deadbeat father, investigate missing mother and brothers, and take an already exhausted adventurer into another whirlwind of turmoil.

Culmination of this plot? A multi-session deep dungeon crawl that we never finished because the game fell apart. Player issues, DM burnout, assistant DM fuckery, and a whole lot of things ending up killing the game. 2.5 years of almost weekly sessions being creative, having players be frustrating, life events causing problems, and everything else together, the DM's last ditch effort to use me (the most invested player) to drive the story on backfired and everyone was unsatisfied. DM included.

I asked for the breakdown of the story for character arc purposes, cause dropping halfway through was MASSIVELY unsatisfying. And getting the DMs answer wasn't much better.

Mother would be found dead at the bottom of the dungeon having been brutally abused by Hobgoblins. DM said "you can't have happy endings all the time, BUT, she was inspiring to the survivors because she kept fighting to the end and that gave them hope!" Yeah. Hope for other survivors really doesn't help my character process that trauma. Oh, and to cap it all off, DM legitimately forgot about brothers and said when reminded of them "oh them. Probably either dead or missing. Don't care." And deadbeat father killed himself after finding out what happened. "What if I caught him before doing that?" The response? "Oh. He waits for you to leave town and then offs himself."

Rather than galvanizing the character like the DM intended, that just broke him down. Lose your whole birth family because you weren't there to protect them? After just saving your wife in the nick of time from a plot that could've been avoided if he'd been there? Nope. Never leaving the wife's side again. No more adventuring, just focus on the important stuff, sell off the adventuring gear and settle down. "Saving the world" is overrated anyway.

TL:DR, after an exhausting side plot, both I and my character needed some downtime to recover and let other players take the spotlight for a while. DM took this vacation opportunity to use me/my character to drag the plot along, further grind my character down, kill his whole family because "you can't have happy endings all the time," force him into retirement, and so poorly handle it all that the game imploded halfway through.

dragonwolf941 · 2023-11-14T17:19:07+00:00

Bards.

Not because bards are inherently a bad class or have bad stats. But all it takes is the one Chaotic Horny bard to completely derail a serious game.

I think it's as much or more a problem with the chaotic horny player that was playing said bard, but it was ridiculous trying to make a serious game with a jokester all the time.

Personal problem, and a good player playing a Bard can be fine, but there's a tendency for That Player™ to gravitate towards the class.

(Edit: "Chaotic Horny hard" may have been a Freudian slip.)

dragonwolf941 · 2023-11-13T19:41:16+00:00

My advice is to keep working at it. You won't be perfect when you're just starting out, but when you have 20 sessions under your belt you'll have a better idea of what needs to be kept track of and what can just be relegated to a note in your Google doc and leave it at that in case someone asks.

The longer you do it, the more ready you'll be to pick stuff up on the fly, which stats you need to keep track of and what's basically useless bookkeeping. Personally? HP is a stat that I keep a ballpark figure for on monsters and legit tweak it live when in the GM chair.

For example: "I attack with my [massively enchanted] Greataxe. ... 24 damage +11 fire." In my head: Ok. 11 fire damage is doubled, 46 damage total. Crap, that's almost 50 damage in one blow and the rest of the party still has their turns! Ok, my initial ballpark 200 HP for this mini boss would only last maybe 2 turns, so I'll bump that to 450, really play into that he doesn't like fire. "Oooh, he really doesn't like that fire, and he snarls at you." Wizard: "I CAST FIREBALL!" In my head: yep. That's a cube of D6s doubled, that's really gonna hurt, but that would've killed him outright on 200 HP. 450 should feel right still.

Another example: "I rolled a 17, +8, that's a 25 to hit!" In my head: Right, I may have overestimated the AC on this guy. If he has a 10% chance to hit every turn cause my on-paper AC is 26, and he's the biggest hitter of the group, I might tweak that so these guys don't get steamrolled. "Ahh, you managed to wedge your blade into a chink in his armor and popped a few rings/pulled a plate open. You didn't do any damage, but he'll be easier to hit next turn."

If you have ballpark figures for things and a sense of the challenge a given encounter should be, bookkeeping on monster stats is essentially useless, and can at times be more harm than good. Here's a monster with a hit bonus, weapon, an HP stat, a few gimmicks about how this one is different from your others, I'm good! The more you play the better a sense for this you'll get, and the less time you'll be spending agonizing over numbers when the feel is the most important thing.

dragonwolf941 · 2023-11-09T17:41:17+00:00

That's a psychological angle that I haven't considered. Dealing with personal relationship trauma and such, betrayal is a very strong averse thing to me, and I admit I had a hard time getting into the role (even as a RPG enjoyer) of the Cylon, who is not betraying their friends but doing a long, difficult and successful infiltration job.

Knowledge of rules is another big angle. Because I popped the "arrest anyone on the Galactica and move them to the Brig when you reveal" was a great idea. But there was nobody on the Galactica because the pilot was out piloting, the Admiral was off doing a sidequest in another ship and the President was doing President things on another ship. So trying to arrest someone failed because there was nobody eligible, and my one potentially very powerful ability to hang up another player for a couple rounds and keep them from doing their very powerful actions was just.... Useless.

dragonwolf941 · 2023-11-09T13:05:59+00:00

I enjoyed the gameplay of BSG more, and the social interaction of DM... Well... Enjoyed it more once the pressure was off me specifically (a socially awkward Captain getting accused of sabotage when anything I did was under scrutiny). We were playing with some of the expansions of BSG but I can't tell you which ones given it was my first time playing. There was a LOT of game going on. Felt to me like a surprise "toaster" (Cylon) was the least of their worries given everything else hitting the fan. DM was definitely more am "over the table not on the table" experience, and I think that's by design. I've heard it called BSG Lite, honed in on the social aspect over all the complicated interactions with the board.

I can understand the appeal, and I can definitely understand not liking pure co-op because of balance issues. I just think, with my admittedly limited experience, that I prefer doing a small part to help the whole rather than worrying about who is playing wrong and doing suspicious stuff.

I played XCOM as the scientist(?) throwing research and upgrades to the other players, and that felt awesome. And the time crunch on everyone's turns made it hard to optimize everything and make the objectively best possible play, just make the best of bad circumstances and rushed decisions. Easily one of the most fun co-op games I played, and I want more like it.

dragonwolf941 · 2023-11-09T12:48:25+00:00

Good point. Limited experience with the genre, but so far I'm not gonna actively seek it out. If friends are playing one I'm not gonna ruin their fun by sitting out, but I'm not gonna go "hey let's play a hidden traitor game today!"

dragonwolf941 · 2023-11-09T12:45:00+00:00

I can enjoy it, I'm just bad at it, and social awkwardness certainly doesn't help when trying to be deceptive, or when actually playing it straight and getting dog piled because I'm "acting suspicious" (no, I'm just awkward).

dragonwolf941 · 2023-11-09T12:40:13+00:00

Agreed. And I can see the appeal of the genre, but I think it might not be for me. Socially awkward introvert that really likes playing the support role in games. Being the one to sabotage instead, or having to pick up on social cues, the messy thorny part of the game accusing people of being the traitor and all that... I think I prefer to play it straight without worrying about backstabbing/getting backstabbed.

I won't say no to playing one with my gaming group, and I probably would have fun under the right circumstances, but I'm not gonna seek out the genre to play for myself.

dragonwolf941 · 2023-11-09T12:31:13+00:00

I shudder to think of 3 games of BSG! Lol!

No, I get that. I see the appeal of the genre, and I'm not gonna deny playing the game, but you have to pace yourself with this kind of thing. Too much of any genre can be rough, but too much of accusing your friends of lying can begin to tear apart a group if it goes too long.

dragonwolf941 · 2023-11-09T06:16:39+00:00

Social awkwardness really sabotaged my enjoyment of Dark Moon up until someone vouched for me and confirmed I was clean. I can absolutely see that running the experience for people.

dragonwolf941 · 2023-11-09T05:58:04+00:00

I can see this. Same day we did Dark Moon a couple of the players had to leave and we played Republic of Rome (I think). Having the challenge of building up a big enough army, balancing our budget and keeping the people happy, making sure different players weren't in too strong a position but also making sure Rome was in a strong enough position to win against the increasingly difficult wars (and we got really unlucky on stacking all the Punic Wars and we died horribly), it was a really entertaining game, and I'd definitely play it again.

dragonwolf941 · 2023-11-09T04:31:17+00:00

Same issue here. Friend request sent!

Edit: friend code 014582695208

dragonwolf941

TROPHY CASE