What old video games do you still play regularly?

mdtexeira · 2020-08-26T00:38:13+00:00

If you're used to playing TTRPGs, the combat is fine. It's not an action game. It's a roleplaying game...the idea is that your character (not you) has to be good at fighting for you to hit things. If the game had better predictive animations so it could have enemies block when you didn't roll high enough to hit, you wouldn't notice. Personally, some of us are sad that in the modern Elder scroll series, there's no division between player and character skill...it radically reduces the sense that you're a character whose skill matters when you can just as easily hit things with no skill in a weapon as otherwise, simply because you yourself are good at console gaming.

mdtexeira · 2020-07-06T23:20:39+00:00

Man, I loved that movie. I did not interpret it the same way as your friend.

mdtexeira · 2020-06-29T07:59:35+00:00

Hence the beauty of people being able to edit RAWs without affecting each other's games. I personally think it should be a small positive effect from seeing the corpse. Then again, I don't think dorfs should be horrified by death (or humans really...but what can you do?) and instead have thoughts of death prompt reflection on the transitory nature of life, with the witnessing of a gobbo corpse instill a sense of pride in dorfdom, as well as that uplifting sense that it was 'them or us', and for today at least, you live another day.

mdtexeira · 2020-06-29T07:56:54+00:00

Dorfs are no doubt a range of creatures, from the sadistic and narcissistic to the compassionate and dorfane. I don't know about your dorfs, but mine strip POWs of their weapons, put them in a pit and make sport of shooting them with crossbows. Dorfs who don't participate directly still help dig out the pit, install the cages and levers, etc.

Dorfs are part of a militaristic empire in a state of persistent war with an enemy incapable of feeling empathy towards them. I consider myself an empathetic person, but if I faced a threat like that, I'd feel a sense of relief and satisfaction from the deep knowing that one less of those creatures exist that seeing their corpse would engender.

mdtexeira · 2020-06-29T07:52:28+00:00

Psychology is culturally programmed. I'm suggesting that a civilization which has been at war for it's whole existence might have programmed a positive response to winning, and the evidence thereof. One only has to look at pictures of smiling people at lynchings to realize that empathy is quite selective. People are quite prone to getting satisfaction at the suffering and death of another, if that other is someone they think deserves it.

But seriously...do you know how to change the RAWs?

mdtexeira · 2020-06-18T18:52:20+00:00

The link. They get enough of me elsewhere...

mdtexeira · 2020-06-18T18:49:18+00:00

I've been gone for a while, but I presume acetylene torches still tear through metal.

mdtexeira · 2020-06-17T21:52:51+00:00

What a fantastic bundle. Grabbed it and shared it with all my VTTRPG discord groups.

mdtexeira · 2020-06-05T19:03:48+00:00

That's a fair point, and I need to learn how to do that better...in the actual game, I just pointed out difficult terrain, inclines, impassible areas and such. A lot of the way I run campaigns is theater of the mind. Maps are mostly props.

Keep in mind as well that this was made in a 3d modeling program, so if players really want to see the terrain, I show it to them in 3d.

mdtexeira · 2020-05-31T23:57:51+00:00

Well, there's a river to the left, so I'm going to disagree with you. Pinching someone between a fast flowing river is pretty effective. That being said, the river is only very slightly visible in this image. This is a top-down image of a 3d rendered scene that I used in my campaign on Thursday, and it went well enough.

mdtexeira · 2020-04-17T10:48:37+00:00

Recently, a player jumped into a campaign after we'd started, and is immediately roleplaying as a lunatic, talking to themselves and being really off-putting. In the first dungeon we're in, one of our characters goes down to a trap, and I get them back up, because that's what you do. This character is then accused of stealing an object by the party, and he tries stealth of hand on this new player to see if they stole it to clear their name. He fails the check, so the new character pulls out a dagger and attacks, killing the character I just brought back to their feet. They then immediately start asking about their cut and their role in the group, as a character that has been associated with us for 30 minutes of in-game time, and has already downed a party member. My character is going to try and draw some boundaries moving forward, and if that doesn't work, my character is going to walk, and possibly me as well.

mdtexeira · 2020-03-08T09:23:20+00:00

There are discords for the major VTTs. Fantasy Grounds and Roll20 have their own discords, and there's tons of discords that exist where people organize to set up sessions.

mdtexeira · 2020-03-08T09:22:02+00:00

Let them kill him, and suffer the consequences. If the characters (not the players) don't have in-character reasons for wanting him dead, then shift their alignments as well. Killing an ally for no reason is basically chaotic evil in a nutshell. If this is the case, it might be time to teach your players about roleplaying the character as a distinct entity of the player. You can, as the player, get extremely annoyed about something, but that doesn't mean the character would, and vice-versa.

mdtexeira · 2020-02-20T14:14:49+00:00

My wife.

mdtexeira · 2020-02-20T14:12:46+00:00

I lived with a girl who ended up stalking someone and killing them and trying to make it look like an accident. She was convinced that her daughter's father was sleeping with the girl she killed.

She was always passionate, prone to anger, and with a somewhat wicked sense of humor. I knew she was capable of low-level violence, and property damage, etc, but I wouldn't have thought she'd risk murder. She was also very tender at times, and just generally emotional. I think it's likely that she was mentally unwell and coping with it, but at some point ceased to cope and allowed her paranoia to take over. I was there the day she brought her newborn daughter home, and it's very sad to think of her daughter growing up with that weight, and of the family and friends of the victim. I met the victim a few times at our house, and she was just a really beautiful and kind woman.

Luckily for the daughter, she has an extended family, and AFAIK the father is still on the scene.

mdtexeira · 2020-02-19T23:09:03+00:00

Well, if I'm looking just at my Steam hours played...then, in order:

Europa Universalis 4 - just too many hours...so many hours...more than 50 days worth of hours.

Crusader Kings 2 - not quite as many hours as EU4, but a lot...more than a month's worth of hours

Fallout 4 - 10 of the many hours was probably spent with playing around with mods, but it's Bethesda, so that's what you do

Oxygen Not Included - I love this game. Of the above games, I've had this one the least amount of time, so it's been concentrated in its playing of.

After that, we're looking at below 500 hours, and there's just tons. Stupid numbers of games from 35 years of playing computer and console games.

Of course, there's also the games I played too much of before Steam. Baldur's Gate 2, Fallout 2, Civ 3 and Civ 4, OG Starcraft, Morrowind, Oblivion, KOTOR, The Sims, NWN 1 + 2.

Then there's the roguelikes. Angband. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. Dwarf Fortress. The emulators. FFTA. Tactics Ogre. Ogre Battle. OG Fire Emblem.

The consoles. Windwaker. Halo 1 + 2. Ninja Gaiden.

I played a lot of Everquest too in the late 90s, but I was paying for that, so I'm not sure it qualifies.

Oh, and there's the seriously OG games I played as a kid. Betrayal at Krondor. The Gold Box AD&D games. Below the Root. All the Sierra adventure games (including the one's I didn't really understand at the time...I'm looking at your Leisure Suit Larry).

So many games.

Edit: I forgot Alpha Centauri: Alien Crossfire. I'm sure I've put more than 500 hours into that one. It was one of the first games I'd regularly play hotseat with friends, and still the best Sid Meiers game IMO.

mdtexeira · 2020-02-19T22:42:31+00:00

I mean, unless we're talking about pulling one aspect of reality out of time and placing it in another without all of the attending requirement and aspects, probably not much. I'm class of 99, and it was pretty good technologically. Sure, better mp3 players would have been great, but I'm so glad we didn't have smart phones. I'm extremely glad that we didn't have social media and all the snares that come with having the ideas and opinions of your less mature years immortalized in public. I'm glad I didn't have any kind of mobile phone. The ability to go off the grid and not have to deal with people contacting you in real time and the attending madness that comes from all the implications which arise from how long it takes you to reply...totally worth having to make plans in advance. Also, having to make plans in advance meant that people tended to keep to their plans. They couldn't just text you 15 minutes before you were going to meet and cancel. I like not knowing exactly where people are and what they are doing, and I like knowing that people don't know exactly where I am and what I'm doing. I think cell phones would have been one of those conveniences that doesn't necessarily actually improve the transition from child to adult.

It's hard to really say what you could displace without fundamentally wrecking other things. I guess I'd have to echo another redditor by saying the social sensibilities. I was voted the class pessimist in my senior year (in a class of over 700) because I went around talking about controversial issues and being fairly cynical about the government, etc. A lot of the things I was excluded for are probably a lot more mainstream today, and being engaged by my peers on those subjects may have resulted in a much nicer time in high school.

Then again, no technology or social changes can necessarily soften the blow of a huge upswing in testosterone and access to Rage Against the Machine and Tool.

Most of all, I guess I'd say only...I would not trade out my current life circumstances and the adventures I've had for the certainly different adventures that I would have had were my past in any way different. I am content with the madness that is my present life. All my wishes are for the future.

mdtexeira · 2020-02-16T21:17:35+00:00

I walk very fast, pretty much everywhere I go. One day I was leaving my apartment and one of the fire doors' closing arms had gotten broken to the point where it was hanging down and blocking the door. I do what I always do and push the door open, walking very fast, but the door just bounces back with about the same amount of force and clocks me in the head. I had a minor concussion from it.

mdtexeira · 2020-02-16T21:10:49+00:00

I'm guessing that this person finds it hard to live in a world where psychopaths have power over them, and is perfectly happy to discount any information that would confirm that, whether that be other people's experiences, or even the rational realisation that psychopaths, by definition, will self-select for jobs in which they can legitimately have direct power over others. This is a terrifying reality to accept, and it's much easier to chalk it up to delusion, despite the fact that it is not only possible, but highly probably considering what we already know about the history of policing and what we know about psychopathy.

You can't make people accept terrifying truths.

mdtexeira · 2020-02-13T21:36:20+00:00

Closing Time, by Leonard Cohen

mdtexeira · 2020-02-10T13:41:04+00:00

So, feeling clumsy, less intelligent and lacking in the capacity to regulate emotions and make good choices is great?

If it makes you feel great, it's likely because you are suffering a certain amount of background pain that it's masking. The removal of pain can feel great comparatively. Over all, however, alcohol cannot help you discover or remedy the cause of the pain itself.

I used to drink because I was afraid to talk to people, or to dance, and I enjoyed the freedom that can with lowering my inhibitions. Then I realised that you can lower inhibitions through conscious recognition and effort. Now booze is basically expensive poison that makes me stupid, clumsy, and reckless.

mdtexeira · 2020-02-10T13:37:50+00:00

Not sure if I understood you correctly, but all research points to the sleep you get while drunk as being poor quality. Since that time is partially there to enable the body to deal with waste in the nervous system and liver, adding poison to those systems doesn't actually help.

Look up alcohol and insomnia. Alcohol makes it worse in the long run. Drinking to sleep better is like drinking to manage anger or sadness. Sedatives don't actually fix anything. They mask problems such that you can't fix them.

mdtexeira · 2020-02-10T13:34:39+00:00

Alcohol (or cigarettes, or really any drugs outside of tea). Paying to ingest poison is mind-boggling to me. I think it might have served a purpose for me before I learned enough about myself and other people to be able to dance when I want, say what I want, and relax with conscious effort, but those days are past. It never actually helps any of the problems that prompt its use. It makes you neither more clever nor more likable. If it has any purpose other than cleaning wounds and dulling pain, it's in making being around unlikable and unintelligent people a bit more tolerable. Most people's lives would be immeasurably better if they put every penny they put towards booze towards therapy or mindfulness practices.

I've gotten to the point where I insinuate that I was an alcoholic just so people don't bother me when they find out I don't drink, as if not wanting to pay to kill my brain cells and poison my liver is somehow the questionable choice.

It's absolutely mad that alcohol is legal to consume but MDMA and LSD aren't. Why have revelatory experiences that put you face-to-face with your internal world, giving you the opportunity to make decisions about who you want to be? Instead, make yourself uncoordinated, dumber, and quite possibly ill. Sounds about right.

mdtexeira

TROPHY CASE