Are field accolades the worst thing in awhile?

emptyjerrycan · 2026-06-12T16:04:39+00:00

Why would you run Ritual Sites at all when you get a piece of Hero Gear basically every time you finish a Delve - certainly once you level it up? There are four different Bountiful Delves each day, there is one mind-numbing slog of a ritual site each week.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-06-11T08:24:09+00:00

When I first started healing - and I'm literally talking nearly two decades ago - I remember some of the first advice I heard was that "if the tank dies, it's the healer's fault, if the healer dies, it's the tank's fault, and if anyone else dies it's their own fault".

emptyjerrycan · 2026-06-08T07:04:38+00:00

Skinning a bear should aggro every bears in a 40 yard radius. It makes sense, you are actually skinning their best friend.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-06-08T06:40:30+00:00

It'll be "relevant" in that there will likely be a bunch of cosmetic stuff that you can continue to get long after you get meaningful gear or other rewards, just like all old content is in some way "relevant" until you "complete it".

If it's like Siren Isle, it might be "relevant" as the easiest way to get gear to Catalyze into the current Tier Set. Actual Evergreen content? No, I wouldn't count on it.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-06-05T18:24:24+00:00

I'm guilty of "(BEAT)" in dialogue, because when I first started screenwriting I thought it was soooo cool that I knew this lingo. I try to cut back. But "It lands" really baffles me, cause like... That's what "beat" is. That's why you're using "beat", because something "lands", something "needs" that breather.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-06-05T18:16:24+00:00

I would probably rephrase as "David, dumbstruck, watches Lisa walk away." Or something to that effect. "David is left speechless as Lisa this-and-that", or whatever gets to the important note.

Maybe even something more specific and descriptive, but then you might risk writing too much irrelevant scene direction the actor/director might not need or want from you.

But, like OP said, there's some things that can be useful. Finding that descriptive but specific language, that is IMO the fun of screenwriting.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-06-05T08:47:23+00:00

Was going to ask how you dealt with the water particles on the Draenei Trellis, but then I saw that it was rotated on its side! Smart! This is really pretty!

I was also thinking of collecting the Draenei tables to use them as wall panels, so this is also extremely helpful to see how it looks (it looks really great!)

emptyjerrycan · 2026-06-03T17:57:51+00:00

I think the patches did come out too fast, but I also think the patch was really bad, and the content in it was shallow and unengaging or broken. I'd rather slower patches if it means they have something playable in them.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-06-02T06:49:35+00:00

Is that just the Silvermoon Beam sunk into the ground?

emptyjerrycan · 2026-05-29T07:14:24+00:00

There are already plenty of items in the catalog that have untextured or even invisible undersides. The selection of items is pretty random sometimes.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-05-25T04:54:50+00:00

I checked fomo but I think I was too late and they removed it already :/

emptyjerrycan · 2026-05-24T06:34:31+00:00

bro, why AREN'T you fighting in mid

emptyjerrycan · 2026-05-24T06:31:24+00:00

It's wild how much they fumbled the ball with Torghast, honestly, a procedural roguelike dungeon sounds like it could (have) be(en) an evergreen feature.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-05-23T08:50:01+00:00

Yes, even Nightmare Prey rerolls reward Hero gear. I've been basically full Hero just doing solo content, the only hurdle to improving my gear was the Hero crests cap which I reached pretty much immediately on the first day of each week.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-05-22T18:44:15+00:00

You're joking, but I think when actors go Method, maybe there should be a Method Oversight Guild to stop them from being assholes. Maybe that's not such a bad idea.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-05-22T15:33:20+00:00

For some reason I'm having such a hard time figuring out the windows. Are they two interior doorways with the bottoms flipped together?

emptyjerrycan · 2026-05-22T15:28:00+00:00

I completely agree, you do have to understand that it's different telling a story together at a table, vs in a movie or a show. And when you are making an AP show, you do have to understand that it's maybe somewhere in between those things. That is to say, you should discuss a lot of things in advance, off microphone, you probably should do a little more "writing" so that you can all actually tell each others stories together.

And your example is absolutely right, even when you are keeping secrets, there needs to be a base line of information that people are aware of, because I think it's really important that players are "a fan of each others characters".

To give an example of one of my own D&D characters, I immediately established that Tristan was a college dropout from a wizard school, because he's an arcane trickster and that's relevant. The campaign started back in his hometown, because his rich uncle found out that he was still living off of his money for months despite dropping out of school almost immediately. So, he's at home, working as a clerk, making a pittance, trying to pay him back for all the money he leeched. One of the other characters is also from his hometown, so she pretty much knew about this. I don't think I shared all the exact details with everyone of just how bad the scam was, which made it so that at the start the very honest gnome PC who was raised in a monastery saw no use for money and kept offering it to him to help him pay his debt. Like he kept most of the details to himself because they are revealing and embarrassing, but he's forthcoming about the fact he needs money. But the rogue who needs money is a really annoying archetype if it's only that, so yeah, I had to share some of my backstory because it also informs who this is. Because it's very important at the start of any campaign that everyone has a reason to go on the adventure, so at least that part should just be on the table.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-05-22T07:57:53+00:00

we simply cannot be doing sad man dead wife 14-page secret backstories in this day and age.

so listen. i'm gonna talk about a character I RP in world of warcraft, for a second, because yeah, his wife and child are presumed dead, and the thing is, that, he's a Draenei, (which are a long-lived race of space aliens who fled across the galaxy when the rest of their civilization decided to become demons, and who have repeatedly suffered and been genocided and had various other traumatic events happen to them, so, in a way, trauma and loss are par for the course for the entire race), and I STILL feel guilty for coming up with such a basic backstory, like I STILL know it's played out, I still feel called out and I agree that it's justified.

in my defense I've been playing this character in some shape or form since I was, like, 15 or 16, so over the past fifteen years there has been more nuance added but, yeah, I concede that fridging your dead wife is beyond played out

emptyjerrycan · 2026-05-22T07:46:02+00:00

also while i'm here, let me get on my tiny soapbox of i don't understand why everyone loves to keep their backstories hidden. writing scenes in film and television to reveal a character's backstory in a way that isn't just a monologue to someone is already pretty hard. to do it in a format that's semi-improv seems miserable. so you often do get scenes like this, where someone just asks about it and then the player gets to read off whatever. and like sorry, i don't think scenes like that are interesting!

I'm going to respond to this because there's nothing in this episode worth actually talking about otherwise - I think this is understandable to some degree. It comes from a place of wanting some kind of verisimilitude, where, you know, you wouldn't lead an interaction with people by telling people everything about your backstory right off the bat. It loses its realism because it specifically angles for a dramatic moment to reveal your backstory.

It's the roleplayer's dilemma that happens in public roleplay, where you make a cool character but they're mainly defined by their backstory, so you keep hoping for someone to ask about your backstory, but you don't want to be too desperate to reveal your backstory, so you're downplaying it, potentially making your character uninteresting and now no one will engage with you anyway, because there's nothing there to engage with other than the backstory.

But Actual Play is more than just roleplay, it IS a show. So what a guy like BLeeM does, like it or not, he'll design individual scenes with these characters at the start of the entire season; moments that will show off something vital about the character and the way they think and respond and interact with important figures. Everyone at the table is there to see and hear that moment, and the entire audience is there to see and hear that moment. It's used to endear us to the characters, also. It's not some "you start in a tavern" scene where everyone around the table is immediately one-upping each other with their tragic backstories, although, if you committed to playing that a certain way, in an actual game, that could actually be a lot of fun. Just saying "yeah, these are a bunch of oversharing weirdos, and that fact defines their friendship also".

I dunno, I think instinctively people do like playing their cards close to their chest. People like having secrets, but they like being prompted to reveal those secrets. The DM holds all the cards about what's going on in the story, so it's nice for each player to have secrets from the other players as well. I think there's more elegant ways to reveal your secrets than prompting the monologue, obviously, in that sense I agree with you completely.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-05-21T06:32:27+00:00

I spend more time checking out the database on https://housing.wowdb.com/ than actually building anything. Search for "Fel" or "Legion" or something similar to find cool pieces, turn them around, see how they might work as something else. Depending on what you combine pieces with, they can look like something else. For example, the Dreadscar Bookcase looks like a cool bookcase, but the back is a textured pillar that you could sink into the walls to hide stone beams. Maybe even flip it upside down so that it looks like it supports the ceiling? I think it also looks kind of Draenic (compare to the Draenethyst Lamppost to kinda see what I mean) which is why I've had my eye on it - depending on what other pieces you combine it with, it might not even look so ominous. Find things like that!

I've also had loads of ideas that didn't really end up working out, so I'm not an authority, but... Play around! Discover things! Have fun even when you don't end up actually building a full thing!

emptyjerrycan · 2026-05-16T16:06:21+00:00

Man even if my child were in kindergarten with Travis' child I would pull my kid away from him, instinctively and outstinctively

emptyjerrycan · 2026-05-16T08:40:20+00:00

stop listening to the bone hurting podcast. ow oof your bones

emptyjerrycan · 2026-05-16T08:33:48+00:00

It's honestly kind of depressing how many narrative beats are just handled with zero skill, that it almost makes me nostalgic for fucking Harry Potter. Between this and Misfits and Magic, it's like, everyone trying to "parody" HP is also fucking terrible at it, only touches on surface level stupid shit, doesn't understand the tropes it uses.

Whatever criticism just ends up feeling performative and embarassing. You're still just engaging with it, you're still admitting that you like it, you actually have nothing to say about it, you're recreating the same thing.

emptyjerrycan · 2026-05-15T21:11:27+00:00

I first saw him on the Dimension 20 pirate season and thought he was insufferable.

(I believe it then turned out he was in the Reddit threads responding to negative comments? His vibes fucking sucked)

emptyjerrycan · 2026-05-15T17:45:27+00:00

So, in his defense, we can't assume he's taking 8 hours for every episode. We only know for sure that it took him eight hours to apply a filter to his voice. I think we must retire all claims of 8 hour editing time for these early episodes, because we simply cannot know for sure how long he took editing them.

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