openworldadventurer

[openworldadventurer]

I made the mistake of diving back into an idle game recently, which is always a dangerous proposition. Allow me to share my hard-won observations, and to set the stage for the next couple articles, which will explore the psychology that makes the genre work, and whether or not the genre can (or should) be best used for storytelling.

[openworldadventurer]

Do wizards bid anything for God?

God forbid wizards do anything

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my favorite thing about the moomins is that their domestic cottagecore aesthetic is basically just a cover for the fact that they’re actually like 2 degrees of separation from going full feral at any one time and literally everyone knows it

[openworldadventurer]

Living in Amsterdam for a couple years was a real eye-opener on this front.

For those who don’t know, Amsterdam’s tourism has become such a problem that the tourism board is now taking out ads in other countries *warning people not to come*, particularly targeting bachelor parties from the UK coming for “a sloppy weekend.”

And as a local, I totally understand it: you could see the tourists coming into the city like a tide every Thursday night and emptying out on Monday mornings. Locals usually avoided downtown during this time, especially because everything cost more (“paying the tourist tax” as it was called). They were rowdy and loud, leaving garbage in their wake. And if you were anywhere downtown (or god help you, within a block or two of the red light district) you’d see no fewer than three stag- or hen-parties stumbling by on the streets any given weekend. Whenever there was a drunken street fight, it almost always turned out to be tourists from the UK (with the exception of the time it was incredibly racist Israeli football hooligans picking fights with local Palestinian immigrants, but that’s a different discussion).

Even as someone who likes getting in conversations with strangers and meeting new people, the tide of tourists was exhausting and irritating. No one likes it when you treat their home as an amusement park — and especially not when you’re drunk and disgraceful the whole time.

the majority of italian museums are literally kind of empty... you just went to the vatican in august lol

[openworldadventurer]

Behold, a Thing!

the default way for things to taste is good. we know this because "tasty" means something tastes good. conversely, from the words "smelly" and "noisy" we can conclude that the default way for things to smell and sound is bad. interestingly there are no corresponding adjectives for the senses of sight and touch. the inescapable conclusion is that the most ordinary object possible is invisible and intangible, produces a hideous cacophony, smells terrible, but tastes delicious. and yet this description matches no object or phenomenon known to science or human experience. so what the fuck

[openworldadventurer]

Bless the Maker and John Waters.

one hell of an email to wake up to

[openworldadventurer]

Top quality ame desin as art.

Shoutout to what is maybe the funniest game balance mod I’ve ever seen

(Context: In MMBN, all chips have a letter code, and you’re able to use chips that have the same letter code together in the same turn, so it’s an effective strategy to load up your folder with as many matching letters as possible. In Battle Network 2, the “G” code just happened to be filled with a lot of strong, easily obtained chips, making it disproportionately powerful. This mod balances the game by removing the “G” code, changing all chips that used to be “G” to different letters, and for good measure, removing all other instances of the letter G from the entire rest of the game)

[openworldadventurer]

A peek at our recent trip to the Bosch Parade in the Netherlands!

[openworldadventurer]

Just a quick rant while I'm on vacation: Good writing means giving people space to not get something right away.

[openworldadventurer]

10000 YEAR OLD ROCK ART OF GIRAFFES FOUND IN LIBYA LET'S GO

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In games where the player can do anything, it’s important to include an option to do nothing. See the counterintuitive reasons why.

[openworldadventurer]

Chris Becker (b. 1983) - “City of Another Time”

graphite on panel, 2025

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good morning to this tree by the riverside and this tree only

(müggelspree, germany)

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"why are tech companies always changing the UI for no reason" you have no idea how much of tech is about looking busy to keep the higher ups happy

[openworldadventurer]

A colleague once started a book club at work and her first choice was Ready Player One, and at our first discussion group I dismantled that book with the analytical fury that can only be achieved by a writer, game designer, and child of the ‘80s who realizes just how hamfistedly he’s being pandered to.

We never had another one.

Enough about favorite books. What’s a book you read and absolutely hated? The book you’ve got a bone to pick with.

[openworldadventurer]

Going to the opposite end of scale, my town had a series of “Mouse Shops” that were installed secretly in the middle of the night on commercial streets by an artist group known only as “Anonymouse”. This carried on for literal years, with locals excitedly sharing tales of new installations, until the artists revealed themselves to widespread local celebration.

They were all finely detailed and full of mouse-based puns and references. This carried on for literal years, with locals excitedly sharing tales of new installations, until the artists revealed themselves to widespread local celebration. Their pieces now live in a nearby modern art museum.

Your hometown has “culture,” but does it have a 13 foot, bright orange, bug-eyed t-rex with weirdly human teeth

[openworldadventurer]

Ah, that special blend of “I don’t know the context for this” and “Fuck it I’m on board anyway”.

One of my favorite Tumblr Experience Flavors (tm).