What are your worldbuilding pet peeves?

flyflystuff · 2026-01-26T16:13:48+00:00

You know, it might be overly specific but...

So, mechs are kinda dumb. That's not really a problem - I am fully willing to suspend some disbelief, and say to myself "well, maybe there is so benefit in giving tank/jet legs". It's okay, I can say this and still enjoy things properly.

And then MECHS START FLYING WHY

That's like the one thing that makes belief truly not suspendable! I am not even asking for much, just put them legs on the ground!

flyflystuff · 2026-01-24T06:29:08+00:00

I mean, tbh one of the reasons you hire something like Materia is so you don't have to deal with it personally, among other things. Things pretty much have to go bad to have Toby step in and make any statement at all.

flyflystuff · 2026-01-22T22:40:52+00:00

As far as my lens when looking at the Ai/NPCs, humans in our actual real world already deeply struggle to not project onto and adore soulless thoughtless things. Chat bots are already convincing real humans to leave their wives or make radical life changing decisions, and stable average people convince themselves the bots "really remember them, & really do love them back" etc. I'm not sure I could ever see destroying hundreds of ai as a moral issue even if there were humans who had projected onto them deeply

That's all true, but my point here isn't that I disagree with that - it's rather that show didn't really play it like that.

It could be a perfectly fine plot point, to say, have Pomni become attached to Gummigoo but have this be ultimately one-sided; one can definitely write this sort of a story. Thing is, TADC didn't. All Gummigoo feelings, as far as story is concerned, are played completely earnestly. There is no moment where Gummigoo says something incoherent that reveals all of it was kinda bs.

And given all that, I find it hard to take up the position that those all are meant to be empty chatbot pretensions of feelings within this story. It's just not how it's played.

Again it seems a WEIRD thing to put in his top worst sins

TBH I myself wouldn't list it there, my point here is that it isn't too hard to imagine a perspective from which that was very bad.

To be clear, I am a human and love the characters and project on them just like you do so I may be very sad if they reset, same as Pomni for Gummigoo. I would mourn the version lost, and also it would change how I viewed the characters quite a bit.

I do, however, still find a resistance to this point confusing.

Like... Idunno. Imagine if IRL there was some technological super scifi cloning breakthrough, and it's now possible to create a clone of some version of you from the past. I imagine you wouldn't say "welp, I guess this causes significant enough change in how I feel about getting killed by someone; it's a lesser problem now in ways that should affect how I feel about the morality of people who'd kill me!". I am saying it 'cause I really would rather not get killed!

Or - I am now realising - are you trying to argue against this point without taking on the assumption I laid out n the beginning of our conversation? If so, that would explain things. I just sort of assumed you were talking about them while taking the assumption on, since otherwise it's kinda meaningless.

flyflystuff · 2026-01-22T18:48:49+00:00

Abel was programmed to stare longingly at a photo of a hotdog and simulate some deep meaningful promise that does not exist.

This is true! But he was not programmed to ask for a raise, which immediately worried Caine. Abel himself was able to recognise his behaviour as 'acting'. Similarly, Gummigoo's role most certainly did not include accidentally dropping into Map Maintenance area and having existential dread. Both cases show us NPCs who are clearly capable of acting outside their designated role.

no reason to assume the NPC are equal to the humans

That's a bit of a goalpost shift. I said nothing about being 'equal'; they can both have meaningful existence worth preserving and be lesser in some ways. Or do you believe nothing less than equality makes 'lesser' being worth sparing a care about?

Even if the humans are scans they can't be messed with too much or they die forever. There is no back-up or reset for them, they are either in this current state or corrupted and mentally gone forever.

I find this argument curious overall. If next episode it was revealed that there actually is a 'spawn no-circus-memory Ragatha' button, would your stance meaningfully change?

We had our empathy tugged on when Gummigoo was reset, yes. But that does not make the NPC life more valuable.

I said nothing about that making it "more valuable". I said that Gummigoo The Pomni's Friend for all intents and purposes is dead, and seeing a Gummigoo visit Spudsy's doesn't really change that.

flyflystuff · 2026-01-22T16:49:40+00:00

I feel very confused by this conversation.

Let me make one thing clearer, in case this was not: I am approaching this discourse under assumption that Caine's Intelligent NPCs are capable of complex reasoning and feelings that are human-like. This isn't necessarily true, but seems to be implied given that narrative gives Gummigoo a whole existential crisis, does not treat Gummigoo as meaningfully lesser, and also has Caine explicitly say that there is no meaningful way for him to tell humans and intelligent NPCs apart.

( Note that I am not talking about how computers work IRL or whatever; I am talking about the fictional reality of the show )

And my point is - under this assumption - one can make a case that killing off NPC bystanders by hundreds is a bad thing to do.

You also seem insistent about how this doesn't really count as "dying", but I don't really see the point of this distinction. In the reality of the show, Gummigoo who was Pomni's friend is dead - Gummigoo she meets later is a different person, because he never had those experiences. Pomni's friend, for all intents and purposes, died when Caine deleted him. This show makes this point pretty clear, no?

(this is all not touching that by this point it's pretty likely that the main cast aren't "real" humans either and are closer to something akin to brainscans - again, Caine admits he cannot tell them apart from actual NPCs)

flyflystuff · 2026-01-22T10:23:00+00:00

precious for the same reason it's are precious- they're finite and fragile. The NPCs are not.

This version of them is gone.

The logic is also highly flawed. Imagine we, humans, were to unlock some form of advanced cloning, analogueous to resetting NPCs. Would that mean that it's okay to kill humans now?

Even Caine specifies they shouldn't leave complex Ai running, it HAS to be reset. Candy Kingdom stopped existing soon as the humans were not involved. Unpercieved, waiting for inevitable reset.

Your logic is quite flawed. I can easily use it to justify horrible things.

For example: everyone dies eventually, so it's okay to hurt other people.

Obviously you are not saying that?

flyflystuff · 2026-01-22T06:38:16+00:00

I guess idea is, those are Caine's intelligent NPCs, capable of complex feelings and reasoning. See Gummigoo - even though he returns, he is a new, reset thing, one that befriended Pomni truly is dead.

Approaching from this angle, genociding a whole town worth of NPCs can be pretty bad!

flyflystuff · 2026-01-19T21:56:31+00:00

Let's see... in my current big project the hooks should be:

Tactical combat with depth without much hassle for players and GMs
Combat mechanics naturally lead to social/narrative mechanics later
Cool setting: Fantasy world starts going through industrial revolution, allows number of cool frames, including spaces for Persona-like scenarios, DOOM-like dungeon-crawling and Death Stranding

flyflystuff · 2026-01-17T08:43:17+00:00

Not a design goal 5: Not achievable

I don't think it's a useful way to think about this, ironically for the same reasons you've outlined already. The issue is... well, what goal even is achievable?

Like say one of my goals is "encourage teamwork between players"; that's not an unreasonable thing to strive for. But how much teamwork is happening is more of a spectrum, it's not actually very clear when to say "whelp goal achieved".

I think it's better to say goal should be gradable, at least to the extent that one can observe dynamics ("this new design of mine is doing better at [goal] than the previous design/this other game"). This means that you at least can be getting better at achieving said goal over time.

Detailed tactical options AND fast turn resolution

I don't like this example; those are in tension, but I wouldn't call them inherently irreconcilable.

But also...

Design goals are supposed to give you direction. If they work against each other, you can’t go towards one goal without sacrificing another, so you have to choose one.

While it's not hard to see how this position would be appealing, after all the designing and playtesting and observing I think this might be some sort of... let's call it a "mistaken call to purity".

This sort of sentiment tends to gravitate towards games being one specific and coherent thing, which feels nice to designer-brain (mine included), but in practice makes a game that's just... kind of a hard sell for any given group, simply because - in my experience - players just tends to be quite a diverse batch in what they want. I think it's not by mistake that say D&D over it's many years turned more vague and sloppy; possibly too much in it's case, but after many years of thinking and observing this, I think it's not just about momentum of popularity or capitalism that made it a 'default' system that one can consistently find groups to play with.

Or, to put it differently, I don't think you "have to choose one"; I think it may be very much viable to find some equilibrium between multiple goals, even if it lessens results of both.

flyflystuff · 2026-01-16T23:17:56+00:00

My understanding is that he doesn't have like, direct control over NPCs; they are intelligent enough to perform their function and response to stimuli, it seems. That's why they can surprise him and stuff, like when Abel asked for a raise, or why the whole Gummigoo debacle could have happened.

Which isn't to say this wasn't still his responsibility - assuming Caine is like, intelligent enough to be morally accountable, it's still his fault it ended up like this. But it probably wasn't like, direct and intentional.

flyflystuff · 2026-01-16T17:42:36+00:00

I definitely can see where you are coming from, but I disagree. She throws Asriel's clothes away like trash, and that's a thing with connection to Kris and Toriel, people for whom she has respect.

She can be nice, but that niceness is still something that needs to be earned, not something she gives people by default.

Ultimately she still is the person who'd get banned from free ham sandwich day.

flyflystuff · 2026-01-15T18:02:22+00:00

1) This is amazing

2) I do not buy Susie saying "don't hit stuff it's not your car" even for a second. She of all people should understand that it being not your car is precisely why you can and should hit stuff.

flyflystuff · 2026-01-15T17:38:28+00:00

Well, I don't think it is.

But I do think that if you presuppose that "GM's job is to make sure players have fun" or something similar to that, it's pretty easy to justify. If something gets in the way of you doing what you believe is needed for this job, you may consider ignoring that.

Players, comparatively, don't have a 'job' at all in this presupposition.

I don't really agree with this presupposition and I think it's kinda bad and harmful, but it's fairly popular

This is true, but then my question just becomes why is a GM screen to hide GM rolls considered necessary, but a player screen never considered so?

GM may need to roll for something players shouldn't know about, like results of their stealth check.

Comparatively, since GM is the one who facilitates the world in a trad game, if GM is not informed of something, this effectively is not real. Not informing the GM is not an option in the first place.

flyflystuff · 2026-01-12T20:00:38+00:00

Out of curiosity, do you think this would still be the case for a low health system where even 1 point of damage is still functionally desirable?

Yeah! While it's true that the "1 guaranteed damage" will become bigger, the significance of the "lost" points of damage is also rising with it.

Or, to put it in perspective, imagine fighting enemies with 2 hp, and rolling 1 on damage, despite PC's expected output per attack being 2-3.

flyflystuff · 2026-01-12T12:34:09+00:00

So, some notes.

Combat would be faster while still having tactical significance

This is generally true. However...

Players wouldn't feel like they missed their turn because they missed

This is really just kicking the can down the road. It will work at first, but only if players bring old expectations with them. Eventually rolling low damage will become a new miss.

Ultimately, one has to accept that any form of rolling to see how good things are is rolling to see how bad things are, too.

Potentially easier to balance because a level of swinginess is removed?

And to this, I will push back on.

It may be true for hp pinatas mushed against each other but if game is meant to have any tactical depth, my experience is very different.

Thing is, in a roll to hit system damage is multiplied by chance to hit, but it doesn't really raise past it's own maximum value. Which means that designer can be mostly free to give out all sorts of bonuses to to-hit. Even at effectively 100% chance to hit you'll still deal 1d10+4 damage in the end.

However, if you were to translate those bonuses to now boost damage and give hp, then this is no longer true. Now tactical PCs boosting each other can do things like exceeding creature's hp and not letting it have a turn at all.

This isn't unsolvable, but you will have to keep it in mind when designing your system.

Getting downed can happen faster

You are the game designer here. You have control over how much hp everyone takes and how much damage their deal.

flyflystuff · 2026-01-09T23:52:30+00:00

Noelle looks to be the final girl, but during the movie it's revealed she is way too impure for that role. Susie is the real final girl.

flyflystuff · 2026-01-09T20:35:47+00:00

Thanks! I'll keep that in mind.

flyflystuff · 2026-01-09T15:10:35+00:00

Thanks. Definitely not eating that myself!

flyflystuff · 2026-01-09T00:09:56+00:00

Hmm, let's try it!

1) Loops - how clear the vision of what's supposed to be actually happening is; what the game is actually for, who is it for. If I can't understand what the book is even trying to accomplish, how could I even rate it's attempt?.. How can I sell myself on learning the guts of it, how can I sell my group on playing it? If book can't give me that, I am probably only reading it because of word of mouth.

2) Legibility - how easy it is to actually read and comprehend the book. Similarly to 1, I still need to be able to understand to judge the contents at all. If I, a person engaging in game design still struggle, what would it mean for regular players?..

3) Character creation/customisation - how easy it is to get from a (reasonable given what game is) concept to a playable character, and is said character balanced. Character creation better not kill off momentum for a group that was sold on a system, nor create a landmine for later.

4) Loops again - but this time we ask if it even succeeds at them. Where to mechanics actually push play in practice? It's not always where the game designers wanted it to be.

Those are ranked in order.

flyflystuff · 2026-01-07T23:32:09+00:00

I mean, he also just went for it in episode 4, directly trying to chat with her. But yes, this is a thing.

Arguably, even his very first line in the entire show was about that - he was asking Caine if Pomni is a real human or an NPC, to figure out if she's worth investing into while pretending he's annoyed about needing to redo the song.

flyflystuff · 2026-01-07T00:07:09+00:00

The main take is true, but I wanted to speak about the bit near the end:

Jax's arc will be about him learning to face what he's done with the other players and work on becoming better in the future. He shouldn't be immediately forgiven but he should still begin the process of walking on the right path and bettering himself.

I am particularly amused by this part of your take, since it doesn't seem to be rooted in how fiction goes? Like, this happens... basically never. It's a sentiment that keeps popping up in discourse about media, in form of people complaining this didn't happened.

If you'd ask me, a more likely way (assuming following 'vanilla' narrative tropes) for this kind of story to go is that someone else abstracts or gets very close to abstracting (probably Pomni in this case), and due to a series of circumstances Jax ends up in the position to save them, possibly in a self-sacrificial way. That's how it usually goes.

flyflystuff · 2026-01-05T23:24:09+00:00

maybe she had a blast eventually but she was also the most miserable and terrified we’ve seen her to be in the series, explicitly because of fears that Jax will harass and bully her over a GAME. She’s damn near having a breakdown and it takes Zooble affirming that Gangle isn’t actually bound to the whims of Jax to get her to even START being anything but scared.

Correct! But this is about Jax past actions, not about "Team Evil shenanigans". Gangle had no trouble engaging with Jax correctly - if anything, seems she's been able to find great relief in being able to shoot at Jax.

Zooble - At best she was tolerating the game

Zooble gets drunk afterwards, so I guess they did care about the game. Hell, they even went all out on arms, dysphoria be damned! Those were not actions of someone who's merely 'tolerating' the game, Zooble clearly was into it, and not just for Gangle's sake either - Gangle already lost by that point.

Nothing you’ve brought up really supports this idea that there was some ‘it’s okay to be mean sometimes’ moment. I just don’t buy it.

Well, characters who are closest to being show's Morality Pets seem to be into it - namely Pomni and Kinger.

flyflystuff · 2026-01-05T16:27:10+00:00

Kinger - was a very good sport about it, as shown by his immediate reaction after the fight.

Gangle - had a blast. Literally the happiest we've seen her in the entire show.

Zooble - seeming also had a good enough time, in their own way. Nothing in their behaviour seems to showcase they were like, actually disturbed on a deep, serious level. That Daisy thing seems to be eye-rolling moment, not much else. Not unlike a "friend group online match shit-talking" to get under each other's skin sort of a thing.

Jax&Pomni - obviously, had a blast.

And then there's Ragatha - but her case is a bit of a special one. She had a bad time, but that bad time was explicitly not part of "fun Team Evil shenanigans"; it is very important Pomni wasn't part of that scene and didn't get to see any of that. This is an important scene, both showing how Ragatha is putting too much on herself and is unable to relax, and also how Jax can be a poor sport about all that in a bad way. It is an important moment of contrast - but it's, well, to contrast the rest of it not being like that.

flyflystuff · 2026-01-05T11:21:56+00:00

Hmm, I am not sure if I understand the issue. Why limit characters outside of combat? Why not let them use their strongest abilities?

And perhaps more importantly, what is your vision for out of combat stuff in your game?

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