#and how she ended up remembering how to get there pretty reliably without the npc that you needed

[realjem]

after having looked back through everything in the spamton sweepstakes like... 4 or so times the past week i just wanna say hoooly shit so much shit in there has now been put into context it's crazy.

[rekkingcrew]

Campaign Debrief

So for nearly 2 years I ran an Edge of the Empire campaign with 3-4 players, mostly weekly. These last couple of months we’ve been using discord, which has gone great. I want to get down some of my thoughts about what worked and what didn’t. 

This is gonna be a big wall of text and all but two bits are gonna be under the cut: system and play style. 

Fantasy Flight Star Wars game system is legit my favorite system EVER. (Not to dick wave or anything, but that’s including D&Ds 2-5, Gurps, White Wolf, Blades in the Dark, Dungeon World, Deadlands, and a few miscellaneous other short form ones). The system of advantages and disadvantages, and especially triumphs and despairs rather than just straight successes and failures really opens up complex narrative opportunities and gives a chance for wild story beats that just would not have happened otherwise. The fights go fast but feel meaty and there’s a lot of room to pitch advantages to your friends so you’re not just waiting your turn. Character creation is granular enough that your choices always feel meaningful, and points can be spent anywhere, so you can really specialize and shape your character. 

We played very collaboratively and it made things AMAZING. Part of this is that we were all good friends and have played together for a while now. Our taste in what kind of story we want is similar- nuggets of drama scattered throughout, but mostly cutting up. A lot of the best NPCs and story suggestions came from my players rather than from me- our season one boss villain, Imperial spymaster “Uncle” Karston Severax, a pantoran ex-special forces black operative whose current public face was a Mr. Rogers-esque children’s TV presenter, for example, was someone my players started out and all of us collective “yes and” added to around the table, and he was JUST THE BEST. These kind of exchanges also gave us moments like the time our tech tried to blackmail the head of a security corporation with the fact that he was having an affair and he’d written just LOADS of incredibly cringey fanfiction; but the roll was such that the attempt ended with him finally getting the push he needed to quit a job he hated, get out of a marriage that just wasn’t working, and follow his dream of self-publishing. He even dedicated his first book to our slicer. Because it wasn’t a DM vs Players atmosphere, because we were all on the same page, I could ask my players “hey, what do you want for your triumph?” and “all right, so who is the NPC you know?” as well as just “that’s enough to finish this guy, what does this look like?” This campaign was 1000% better for sharing that world building load, and the players were all, I think, more invested. 

more below the cut. 

What Worked

One of the most useful things I ever did was start giving players morality pet NPCs that were their special hench people, and I’m embarrassed that I waited so long to assign one to our droid. 

The zero session was absolutely invaluable in setting the tone of the game and the relationship between characters, and I will bang this drum until I’m fucking blue in the face. Don’t meet in the first session. Sit the players down and say “how do you know each other, why do you stay together, what are some of your past adventures?” It’s just so much better. 

Cameos and ties to our other games, in what we’ve been calling “The Drax Kreiger Expanded Universe” have continued to be welcome pretty much every time. People were delighted to have a moment or two to slip back into old characters. 

I was able to identify what each player wanted and give them that. Brick’s player wanted quiet scenes with big character emotion, like his one on one pit fight the character didn’t want to have, or the letter from his mother telling him how proud she was of him, or the time in training where he tapped into how angry he really was and it spooked the character and everyone on the ship. Nyla’s player wanted a big epic, but also difficult space journey of good vs. evil, and so Nyla got a padawan whose parents she had possibly killed when she fought for the empire, she dug up the grave of her clone teacher’s order 66′d jedi for the crystal for her lightsaber, she got to cleanse a temple that was trapped in a fruitless struggle between light and dark, and a climactic lightsaber battle that was about possibly sacrificing herself for the good of others. TK’s player was deep into star wars trivia and space stuff, so he practically squealed when Verpine shatter weapons showed up, and he seemed to get a kick out of the Evocii, and also that time they put on wing suits and dove the atmosphere of a gas giant. It’s worth noting nobody was actually all that interested in the thing that turns my gears: complex mysteries with a lot of clues and investigation, and once I let that shit drop, things ran a lot smoother. 

Some of our best stuff was non-combat challenges, like climbing the cliffs of Naboo or navigating the deep undercity of Nar Shadaa. The guys reliably failed anything social, but environmental challenges were always appreciated. 

I always tried to make sure there was more than one way to do things. For any given mission, especially early on, I’d try to brainstorm at least three ways something could be accomplished. 

My party split up a LOT, but we found a sort of cinematic cutting back and forth to be really useful. When there was a big crit, or a goal accomplished, or something like that, we’d jump to the other party even if the fight wasn’t over. Sometimes that was only just, like, Brick and the guys doing drunk karaoke and saying to no one in particular “MAN, I hope Nyla’s having as fun a time as we are!” but it kept everyone involved and it wasn’t just people waiting their turn for 20 minutes at a time. Also people chimed in with fun advantages and disadvantages. 

I had everybody write backstories and whenever I could, I incorporated in things from what they’d written. Our second season was basically TK tracking down the guy who’d made him, a Thackwash alien with the same sort of shifting personalities he had. TK’s player hadn’t written much about the guy except that he’d been a salvage mechanic who constructed TK for protection when he got in trouble with the local mafia. Giving that guy complementary personalities for each of TK’s really helped stick the landing on that one, and the player really enjoyed having actually completed his character’s goal. 

It’s worth saying, we took some time at several points during the campaign, either individually or as a group, to talk about what we liked and didn’t, what we wanted more of, where we wanted things to go, possible directions for characters, mechanical issues, how to have a better game, group dynamics, all sorts of stuff. In a way it’s like sex: people have this fucked up expectation that you’ll just be good at it without communicating, and man, fuck that. Talking to my players was ALWAYS worthwhile.

I was always adamant, because it was a thing that bugged me when I was a player, that if a character had spent the points to be good at something, they got to be good at it. That made some things difficult, but I think it was the right decision. It took me a while to tailor fights right, and honestly a lot of times, splitting up the party was the best way to balance fights, but I never said to anyone hey that thing you spent all those points on, could you please not do that?

My players were excellent about encouraging each other to have serious dramatic moments. TK was completely ready to die in a fight, and when he lost a significant chunk of his programming, the way he chose to play it was really heartbreaking. Everyone came inside and had tea with Brick’s mom. No one stepped on anyone else’s fun when it was time to be serious, and everybody was great about cheering each other on, whether they were being funny or being dead serious. 

I FUCKING FINISHED A CAMPAIGN. IT HAD AN END. So much stuff petered out over the years, I was adamant I wasn’t going to do that. 

What Didn’t Work

Boy, my players had pretty much all the trouble trying to remember to use “they/them” pronouns for NPCs with neutral or alien genders. 

No one is interested in falling damage. Sigh. 

I did not keep good track of money or ship fuel or anything. The campaign didn’t end up relying on it too heavily (I was honestly expecting a much more Cowboy Bebop setup than where we drifted), but that was an area I kind of fell down. 

We never really got obligation working correctly and in the end we just ended up abandoning it. We kept doing the force morality because the lone force player was very into it and it was a huge part of that character’s journey, but for the rest having people show up to collect on obligation was sometimes not possible in the story- or if it was possible it was pretty cumbersome. Campaign did obligation by arc, and I think that’s a pretty useful way to do it- roll at the end of the arc for what’s coming next. 

Early on, I made way too many assumptions about what was an adventure hook for my players and what was an annoyance. Honestly, bits of this lasted pretty late. At one point I gave my players a spy for the larger rebellion they could totally talk to- he was even working with their resident bothan spy- but they looked at the senatorial assassination he was doing and literally said at the table “I think it’s best if we just walk away from all this.” And so they did. Which was frustrating, but, you know, it is what it is. They also never much cared about the hutt gang war. 

I let a lot of things drop that I would have liked to bring back before the end, but in all honesty, I think we were all running a bit out of steam. I would have liked to put in Brick’s old mentor, or follow up with the imperial governor that was a falleen in a human skin suit, or see more of the bounty hunter’s guild, or have a nice end thing with our bothan spy, or any of that. But I do think it was time to end it. And we followed the threads people liked. 

I had way too many NPCS.

What sort of worked

I had like 200 npcs and they were not all bangers. In particular, I let the party design their own ship, which I wish had played a bigger role (though it did really set the tone), and I let them design 2 npc crew who would fill in any party roles they didn’t want to play and guard the ship so they could go on adventures without worrying about it. The devaronian scoundrel was with the party to the end though I never really got him to be more than a joke, but the bothan spy kind of fell off, and while she made some appearances, she didn’t really have as big an impact as I would have hoped. She kind of got replaced by Nyla’s padawan, a hench mon calamari called Nezrene, who was a better fit with the party. But, you know, players will do what they like.

Factions. In the first bit of the campaign, my factions were a fucking life saver, because I could design scenarios with a sort of “what is each faction doing/ which faction hurts from this, which benefits?” By the second season we’d kind of abandoned them to go to the core, and by the third my group was solidly rebel, so the hutts and bounty hunters fell a lot by the wayside. I still think having a couple of broad poles of power, and having the players know them and their leaders, is a good call. But they do seem to kind of organically pare down on their own, and it’s easy to get caught up too much in them. Useful sorta?

There was definitely a point where my players just were not challenged by conventional challenges. We ended up doing most of the later fights that involved a lot of minions in montage. I’d have them roll their fight skills unopposed, just to see if they got any interesting advantage/triumph set ups. I still had boss fights that were mostly challenging, but there just was no point in throwing storm troopers or low level gangsters at them. Not when they have soak 8 and autofire, and that one talent that lets you kill every minion in a combat. Designings fight got a bit tricky, and in those big high level combats, despairs and triumphs come up a lot more and really sway the fight, which I like, but also it’s very hard to plan for. 

Mass combat was tricky. I did a lot of it toward the end because my players were generals in a rebellion. I always had them do the rolls and some of the narration, but that wasn’t always enough to make them feel like things weren’t very arbitrary. 

I personally love the rule that if you roll a despair shooting into an engaged combat you shoot your friend. Nyla, who got shot twice this way, does not. 

We started the game with a tech character who dropped out. Toward the end, we picked up another tech character whose player couldn’t do their regular stuff because of covid lock down. Neither of these characters could fight at all, and both were very differently oriented than the rest of the party, and that was tricky to manage. Additionally, the dude coming in at the end had like a year and a half of in jokes he did not get and there were 200 goddamn npcs. I tried to give him the lowdown on what he might have heard about the party, but it was a combination of too much information and not that much player interest. He did get to break a star destroyer though, and I think he liked that. 

I offered players XP to write backstory stuff, and later goodbye notes others could find if they kicked it. Not all of them did. In the end it made a negligible difference, and I still think offering the bounties on this is basically a good idea. 

What I would do different next time.

Three ring binder that opens and closes so I could move fucking NPC stats around. I filled two goddamn school notebooks with notes for this campaign and there were so many goddamn times I was like “I KNOW I wrote this down, but where?!”

Players felt a bit aimless when they didn’t have a specific villain. I’d planted a few in, but they took finding, or they were too easy to avoid. Next time I would have a few more people who were actively on my player’s tails. 

I would keep better campaign notes and/or ask one of the players to do so. I used to do recaps for the games when I played Rek. There’s stuff I KNOW I’ve forgotten, and more I’ll forget as time goes on, which is a shame. It’s a weird, ephemeral medium, but possibly I’m just spoiled by living in an age of easy reproduction and enormous storage where data is concerned. 

Better book keeping in general, really. 

When I did a mystery short, I wrote up a list of all the clues people could find but not where specifically they were, so that I could just jam them anywhere they seemed like they’d make sense whenever a roll called for a player to find something. I think I’d try to do that with player’s personal stories so they could be woven in a little better. I did a lot of flying by the seat of my pants. 

All in all, I’m pretty happy with how it went, and I’m ready to get back to playing for a bit. I loved DMing, and I more or less DMed the game I would have liked to play, but man, doing this all the time, or being the only person who does it? After a while, that’d be a lot, and I’m looking forward to the break. 

[royalberries]

heyyy, hope you’re having a good night!! if you have the energy and feel okay answering, what’s up w taz graduation? i haven’t checked it out yet but i was thinking ab it. just asking bc you’re the first person i saw talk ab the show having serious issues, but also feel free to not answer this!! hope you have a good week!

i took a nice hot bath, had a strawberry kiwi capri-sun, and did a nice face mask and i’m feeling pretty good - so, y’know what anon? let’s talk about it. 

for anyone who likes taz grad who sees this post: it’ll be tagged with “taz grad hate” (although i feel hate is definitely a very strong word - it’s for the simplicity of tagging it) - so please block the tag if you don’t want to see this post (especially because i put a readmore on a post before and it didn’t show up on mobile and instead gave the full post). mobile tumblr has a tag blocking system, so please feel free to use it! i don’t mind haha

anyway, so this is... probably going to be a lost post, and i wanna go ahead and preface it: this absolutely isn’t any hate on the mcelroys themselves. i love the brothers and their dad a lot, and while i doubt any of them would ever see this (or have it sent to them, or shown to them, because im pretty sure they try to distance themselves from this sort of thing), i just want to make it clear that criticizing a product is different than bashing a person. which brings me to the point of if i do end up sounding as if im bashing someone - please call me out on it! it’s not my intention to target anyone.

with that said, let’s talk about this campaign.

so my problems are as thus: the railroading, the shipping (a fandom problem, but it’s present in the podcast), the NPCs, and some misc problems others have addressed better than i have.

which. i know. that’s basically the entire podcast. (i promise i’ll bring up some positive points to balance it all out). keep in mind i’ve only personally listened to... what, six episodes? and it was enough for me to drop it. some people dropped it first ep, some dropped it ep four, and others are still forcing themselves to listen.

the railroading

there was a time i could handle travis and his railroading [making sure the story goes exactly the way he has planned], because it was the very beginning of the podcast and that’s what you can kind of expect from a plot-heavy podcast. hell, i wouldn’t mind it if the interactions and goofs weren’t a huge part of why i listen to TAZ in particular (which, by the way, is why amnesty still stuck out to me - even if there was a direction griffin wanted to push them towards, the interactions between the players (or players and npcs) made up for any railroading). it’s kind of hard to not railroad a little when it’s story-heavy and you’re trying to built up a world that you’ve put a lot of thought into. however, a huge part of d&d is the spontaneity. 

it’s kind of why i think balance was so popular. while there was railroading towards the end, there was the presence of improv that made it all good. most mcelroy content is enjoyed because of the goofs. the magic brian moment is memorable. the jenkin’s fight still stands out because it was funny (albeit a result of some bad rolls). the boys teasing angus sticks out because the four would play well off of each other. even without that - griffin had talked about how he had to roll with things (the fact he had planned for a fight atop the train, but ditched the idea for what his family members came up with instead). even in amnesty, a couple moments that stick out to me still are ned with the jetpack taking out a pizza hut sign, and the scene with the water where jake was trapped inside. they aren’t as fun, but they still stand out as “things i didnt expect to really end the way they did.”

with grad, it’s just. one after another. the thundermen want to subpoena a xorn? cool, let’s run with that until actually the xorn gets fed rocks and goes home and who cares about the subpoena now. fitzroy wants to keep his cloak? lets talk about it for a while and you also get no rolls to even try to keep it. fitzroy goes to meet higglemas in his office? oh, why are you here fitzroy? im going to keep asking you until you answer fitzroy? you arent getting out of this scene until you answer me, fitzroy, so just tell me why you’re here already, alright, fitzroy? 

and even later in a episode i read a transcript of: hey argo, remember how you have this whole secret motivation? fuck you, im gonna talk about it here in your dream and reveal it to listeners and remove any tension you had building up, and you dont get a choice to talk about it because this all-knowing villain knows all about it :)

and even NOW in the latest episode, there’s a comment that “we should cap argo’s skills here” instead of just... making the checks higher. rogues are good at certain things and usually arent the best in battles. better hope argo never makes it to level 11, because who knows how people are gonna handle the fact that he gets a skill that’ll make it so certain skills can’t have a roll below 10 (reliable talent). 

(griffin, thankfully, calls travis out for that, but still - travis, why would you even imply that, considering you should be aware of how rogues work considering magnus multiclassed into rogue and you played one on tiny heist?)

and in the newest episode, their Big Bad chaos (which, god, i personally hate that name) straight-out says “dont do this” to the thundermen. travis tries to say, on twitter, “a character saying “dont do this” is different than me saying it” but i need to point out that it’s one thing if you’ve said “no” in character but worked with the PCs doing otherwise, but the railroading says differently.

the shipping

ill try to make this quick, because it’s nothing to do with the fandom (ship however you want, man) - but i really feel the need to draw attention to this.

fitzroy, as confirmed by griffin in a ttazz episode, is asexual. not aroace, but ace nonetheless. and i find it... troublesome that the idea of rainer and fitzroy having a relationship is still pushed nonetheless, despite the fact that fitzroy (to my knowledge) was never once shown to reciprocate any feelings. not to be that person, but i really hope that grad doesnt have any sort of romantic relationships in it (at least - not between NPCs and PCs unless they’re actually like... warranted?). 

i dont know, man. one of my closest friends is ace, and i know she wants a relationship, but i think it would reassure her a lot to see an ace character who isn’t pushed into one in case she ever changes her mind. someone once mentioned that they hope fi/tz/ra/in doesnt happen because theres relationships that have that “oh, you can just date” and it goes upwards there to “oh, you can have sex just to please them <3″  (which, to be honest, is kind of a gross mindset - if someone isnt interested, they arent interested).

also, uh, the TTAZZ where griffin states this, there’s kind of the mention tht the whole sexuality question was posed in relation to the episode “creative thinking” (the dream one i mentioned earlier) - which. uh. i don’t know if anyone caught this, but... rainer straight-up wrote fitzroy a letter in the dream like “are you going to accept my proposal? a girl doesn’t like to be left waiting” which. leaves me with some gross feelings because uh.

if... if the whole thing about fitzroys sexual orientation was addressed here, then why would you push your ship anyway? feels kinda iffy, man.

to which i want to say: fitzroy can date. he’s allowed to date. griffins allowed to do whatever he wants with his character. but when a lot of the flirting is met with nothing, i’m not gonna see the chemistry there. just because travis ships it doesn’t mean it’s canon.

the npcs

ah yes. lets talk about the npcs.

there’s... a lot. a lot a lot. i think travis trimmed down how many were present in a scene, but uh. there’s still a lot. and... uh... i kinda wish there wasn’t?

look, i know im going back to balance/amnesty, but just. hang in there for a moment. chill with me. vibe. 

balance didnt have too many NPCs present at all times in each mini-arc. gerblins had some big names like barry, klarg, gundren, killian, yeemick, and magic brian. rockport limited had angus, jess, graham the juicy wizard jenkins, and all of the tom bodetts mentioned. 

amnestys first arc had mama, barclay, jake, dani, pigeon, kirby, minerva, and that was about it for like. big names? and not all of them were present in each scene. 

in the first episode of grad alone: gary, hernandez, jimson, rolandus, zana, rhodes, buckminster eden, rainer, leon, tomas, hieronymous, higglemas, stuart, jackle, bartholomeus, mulligan, groundsy, germaine/victoria/rattles (the skeleton crew). and those are the ones i wrote down (minus groundsy, who i just. ignores. idk him).

like holy shit, my english prof got onto me for having too many characters in my first chapter and i didnt even have half the amount listed there! 

it’s just a huge cast. does this take place in a school? yes! theres bound to be a lot of students present - but you don’t have to name every single one of them, at least not in the first episode!

the miscellaneous

i don’t know if travis ever actually addressed it, but wheelchair users have actually like... said that rainer’s introduction bothered them, because she was like “please ask me abt my wheelchair :)” when travis saying she was in an ornate chair would have sufficed. 

uh. the colonization vibes people have discussed within the centaur arc. mentioned here, the replies here, and this post (and its replies) here as well.

the overall lack of d&d when the campaign was kind of advertised as a return to d&d if i remember correctly

also no one seems to be taking literally any criticism at all which like. ignoring the petty shit, sure, but people have stopped donating to taz and their listener-ship must have dropped some during this entire time - you’d think that maybe someone could say “we need to find out why people dont like the thing and fix the thing” consider this is. yknow. their livelihood.

anyway uhhh 

tl;dr: travis railroads way too much (even now), the shipping in-game has become pushy and gross (especially bc its shoving a relationship onto an asexual character), theres too many npcs that dont stand out well enough, and no ones taking any criticism about the major issues with grad. 

[feelieking]

Series 12

A somewhat belated post - I started typing up my thoughts about Series 12 shortly after it ended, but only found the energy for a sustained bout of typing while taking a few days off work.

Season 12 of Doctor Who is now over. Readers may recall that I felt season 11 was pretty lacklustre. Season 12… has been an improvement, but a lot of the issues remain. The cast are great – Jodie Whittaker is fantastic, and I honestly cannot understand the vocal subset of fandom who insist on saying she can’t act – but there are too many regular characters, which means that none of the three companions get a decent share of screen time or character development. There’s been an improvement in the number and development of the guest characters, but many episodes have really suffered from the problem of scooping up all of the NPCs into the TARDIS and carting them along. As a consequence, a lot of episodes really struggle to cultivate a sense of location, and having guest characters in the TARDIS becomes run of the mill.

It’s also very interesting to me that, after making his first series almost entirely continuity-free, Chibnall’s second series is probably the most fanwanky we’ve ever had. Spoilers for all of the episodes follow.

Spyfall is a strong start to the series. The aliens were far scarier and better realised than anything for the preceding series, and part one benefitted from a strong sense of style and place, a slow build of the plot, and a genuinely shocking and tense cliffhanger. Part two floundered a bit by comparison, choosing to rattle through both Ada Lovelace in Victorian England and Noor Inayat Khan in Nazi-occupied Paris. Either one of these pairs of characters and settings would have been strong enough for an episode on their own; smooshed together, neither was really given a chance to develop. Still, the Doctor/Master scene on the Eifel Tower was very well done.

Orphan 55 seemed to go down very badly with my friends when it was transmitted, but I rather enjoyed it. It was a very trad base under siege story with a proper cast of supporting characters and some genuinely tense and scary moments. The “twist” of it being Earth all along, however, fell very flat – it’s a bit of a cliché by now, added nothing to the story, and has been done better before by earlier Doctor Who stories! The Doctor’s moralising speech at the end also made me grind my teeth – as others have said, it’s not that I disagree at all with the moral, but that we were bright enough to work it out from the episode without needing to have the Doctor break the forth wall to address the audience directly. I also question the logic of the Doctor taking the entire supporting cast, including a frail elderly lady and a young child, with her on her monster hunt, rather than leaving a group behind at the more defensible holiday camp.

Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror was really good, and felt like the most Doctor Who-y story of the Chibnall era by some margin. Great cast, great monsters (despite the usually reliable Anjili Mohnidra hamming it up as the scorpion queen) – all three of the main human guest cast were proper, fleshed-out characters – and a strong sense of location. The thing that struck me afterwards, however, as I rhapsodised about how much I’d enjoyed this episode and that it was the best new Doctor Who story in ages, was that in a Davies or Maffatt season, this would have been a good middle of the road episode, and not the showstopper it was here.

What can I say about Fugitive of the Judoon? The whole episode is one big slight of hand, which is pulled off very well – but as a consequence, it’s difficult to think on the plot as a whole. The Judoon are back as a returning monster at least in part to distract from the surprise reappearance of Captain Jack, which I suspect in turn was at least in part to keep the audience’s mind off of who Ruth could really be. The pay-off to that, when it comes, is a satisfyingly shocking moment that raises a lot of intriguing questions.

Praxaeus, sadly, was a bit of a damp squib. It’s one of the worst offenders for the Chibnall-era trope of gathering all of the guest cast in the TARDIS and setting big chunks of the story there. The idea of the Doctor and her companions investigating a global crisis at different locations around the world had a lot of promise, but because the Doctor was able to just swoop in and scoop them all up in the TARDIS whenever needed, that idea never really came to fruition. Because the guest cast were all thrown onto the ship, a lot of them never really got the chance to shine – and it’s never explained exactly how captured astronaut Adam is able to text his location to grumpy policeman husband Jake – though at least kudos goes to the episode for a really down to earth portrayal of a same-sex marriage.

Can You Hear Me? was hugely frustrating – this could have been a gem of an episode, but as it is it sinks like a lead balloon. The problem is that the writer has thrown far too many ideas at the story in the hope of seeing what sticks. A mental hospital in Fourteenth Century Aleppo being terrorised by monsters from the nightmares of one of the patients would have been a really good episode. The Doctor’s companions and their friends being trapped in their dreams in modern day Sheffield would have been a really good episode. A ship full of experiments orbiting two colliding planets would have been a reasonably decent episode – but by trying to do all three at once in fifty minutes, nothing is given any chance to breathe and develop. Again, supporting characters are just thrown into the TARDIS and moved from arbitrary location to arbitrary location, and then the monster is defeated by… the dialogue saying that they’ve been defeated. It’s such a shame, because there’s so much good stuff here – Ian Gelder is superb as Zellin, and could have easily been a great recurring villain if they’d chosen to make more than one episode from these ideas – but sadly the whole thing is so much less than the sum of its parts.

The Haunting of Villa Diodati, by contrast, is superb – one location, really well developed and realised, a strong, well-drawn cast of supporting characters (and some very handsome gentlemen as well!) and no TARDIS scenes. The early parts of the episode are fantastically tense and creepy, with the horror of being trapped in a moebius strip of a house very effectively portrayed. Like any haunted house story, it loses some interest once the reason for the “haunting” is revealed, but the second half remains strong not least because Ashad the emotional Cyberman is superbly well portrayed.

Ascension of the Cybermen/The Timeless Children is very much a game of two halves. Part one is pretty effective – Ashad continues to be an excellent villain (his big virtual confrontation with the Doctor is superb) and the grim reality of the Cyber Wars is very well conveyed. Showing the potency of the Cybermen by having them effortlessly destroy all the Doctor’s clever gadgets and scatter her companions is an excellent touch, and Graham and Yaz’s fight for survival is compelling and convincing. The wheels very much come off in part two, however – I like Dhawan’s Master (more on him later) but the fact that he perfunctorily kills off the far more interesting Ashad is a mistake, as is halting the episode for what feels like half an hour of tedious Gallifreyan story time. The “Cyber Lords” are a bad fan fic idea, look derisible and do absolutely nothing before they’re dispatched. The actual Cybermen, terrifying in small numbers last week, are unable to hit a single human with dyspraxia running away from them in their dozens this week. The big questions of the episode – why is there a magic portal to Gallifrey? How did the Master destroy the entirety of his own race singlehandedly? – are never even asked, let alone answered. And as for the awful deus ex “death particle” suddenly jumping out of the plot with no set-up – eugh! Pretty much the only thing this episode has going for it are the excellent Graham/Yaz scenes.

The two things this series is likely to be remembered for are the new incarnation of the Master, and the revelations about the Doctor. Sacha Dhawan is great in the role – his Master feels genuinely unhinged and properly dangerous, with a real predatory cunning – but given how perfect Missy’s arc and final scenes were, I’m genuinely a little disappointed to see the character back, especially in full-on villain mode. However, I will concede that jealousy over discovering that the Doctor really is “special” is a very in-character motivation for him to renew his vendetta.

As for the shock revelations – the idea of a secret incarnation that the Doctor herself does not remember is intriguing, and Jo Martin really makes the role her own. There was a lot of speculation at the time that she’s the “Season 6B” Doctor, between Troughton and Pertwee, and that’s still the idea that I like, and seems ripe for development. If she’s pre-Hartnell, then why does she call herself the Doctor, and why is her TARDIS a police box?

The whole “Timeless Child” nonsense however – why on Earth did anyone think that a protracted subplot to explain away a moment from the Brain of Morbius (transmitted forty-four years previously!) was a good idea? How alienating must this have been for casual viewers? As an idea, I think it stinks, not out of a slavish insistence that the Hartnell incarnation must have been the first but for the fact that the Doctor only really became the Doctor – the hero – as the series was starting. Chibnall tries to have his cake and eat it by erasing the Doctor’s knowledge of her previous lives, and reminding us on screen that the interesting thing about the Doctor is not her origins, but who she is now – but as that’s the case, why are we supposed to care about her Timeless Child incarnations? What was the point of it? Even if you subscribe to the idea that “who is the Doctor?” is an interesting and worthwhile mystery, the Timeless Child isn’t a mystery answered, just a mystery deferred. If I had to sum up my feelings in one word, it would be “meh.”

[scoutception]

Ranking the next 5 animes I’ve recently watched

After many distractions on my part, including playing through Steins;Gate, something that has quickly become something I adore like few others, I’ve continued my descent into the world of anime with 5 more series. The stuff I watched was a lot shorter on average than last time, and my attempts to be “objective” and my personal biases align much more closely compared to last time. With that, I’ll begin. 5. Soni-Ani: Super Sonico the Animation

Number of episodes: 12. Language options: subs only. Streaming availability: Crunchyroll. When it comes to visual novels, nitro+ is one of the biggest developers out there, alongside Key. Whereas Key is mainly out to make you really, really sad, nitro+ prefers a different approach. To my understanding, at best, their works are really, really dark, and at worst, they’re going straight for your nightmares, with stuff like Song of Saya and Sweet Pool. So clearly, the best mascot for them is the pink haired, constantly headphoned, and downright adorable Super Sonico. Even if it’s not outright official, it’s pretty jarring. Anyway, with that little rant out of the way, here’s the only thing on this list I actually wouldn’t recommend. Produced by White Fox back in 2014, this anime apparently got slammed pretty hard, and honestly, I have no idea why I even ended up watching this one. Perhaps this’ll be a reminder to be less impulsive in my choices in the future. Soni-Ani focuses on, who else, Super Sonico herself, an energetic and kind, yet clumsy college student who should reasonably be dead from stress and exhaustion. Along with college, she’s an idol, gravure model, helper at her grandmother’s restaurant and guitarist and main singer in the band First Astronomical Velocity with her friends Suzu Fujimi, the witty and manipulative bassist and official leader of the band, and Fuuri Watanuki, the mysterious drummer single mindedly obsessed with food. The series just explores some of the odd, extremely fanservice filled days of her life. It’s ok idea on paper, but in practice it’s just not really anything special or even entertaining for the most part. While I can usually ignore fanservice, it’s downright distractingly prevalent in the earlier episodes, to the point of several episode premises pretty much only catering themselves to it. Even without that, there’s just not much to be found; aside from Suzu and Sonico’s manager, the honestly hilarious Kitamura, who constantly wears a hannya mask and is willing to attack people for attempting to take advantage of Sonico, the characters aren’t anything memorable or entertaining on their own, leaving a lot of episodes feeling dry. They do improve in the second half, featuring episodes like a fairly charming murder mystery spoof, and an episode focusing on Sonico’s cats, of all things, but they’re still not something going out of your way to watch. The voice acting and animation, while at least ok, don’t stick out much either. Overall, again, this is the one thing I’d say to just avoid. There’s tons of other slice of life animes out there that are way better. If nothing else, though, I’m kinda glad I stuck to it just for the surprise cameo by Kurisu Makise’s outfit, considering I was already playing Steins;Gate.

4. Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun

Number of episodes: 12. Language options: dub (video release only, apparently) and subs available. Streaming availability: Crunchyroll, Hulu, Netflix. Moving onto stuff I’d actually recommend, here’s a nice little anime adaptation of a gag manga by Izumi Tsubaki, produced by Dogakobo. Chiyo Sakura, a high school student who stands at an impressive 4′9″, confesses her love to the tall and mysterious Umetaro Nozaki, and gets his autograph, of all things, for her troubles. Trying again, Nozaki instead takes her to his apartment... to assist him with his manga. As it turns out, Nozaki is a popular romance manga author, whose interests in life start an end at manga, rendering him utterly oblivious to Chiyo’s feelings. Thusly, Chiyo officially becomes his assistant in order to grow closer to her crush, meeting his other associates along the way. The main thing that must be said is that this is not a serious anime in the slightest, and it’s all just big parody of romance manga more than anything, especially with the characters, like Mikoshiba, who acts like a playboy, but in reality is cripplingly shy, and Kashima, the “prince” of the school who is both actually a girl and an airhead who’s frequently on the nerves of the drama club’s president, Hori. A lot of the humor thrives on miscommunication, and it’s exaggerated enough that it works well. Every character is an idiot, in their own ways, but endearingly so, and each of them stands out, from Chiyo, who mostly plays the straight man but has her moments of over imagination, or the hilariously abrasive Seo. The plots are the right kind of dumb too, like Nozaki and Mikoshiba becoming obsessed over a helper NPC in a dating sim, or Hori gaining an intense hatred for people standing on boxes due to Nozaki’s attempts to fix perspective problems. The jokes can get a bit predictable after a while, especially with Nozaki, but overall it’s a pretty funny time. The voice acting is good, and the animation is charming. Overall, this is definitely a fun watch. If you want a good laugh, or just something that doesn’t take itself too seriously, this is definitely something to check out. 3. Angel Beats!

Number of episodes: 13 (+ some OVAs not on streaming services). Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Netflix, Crunchyroll, Funimation. As it turned out, visual novels, or at least visual novel developers, became a theme in the things I watched this time around. As mentioned before, Key is one of the biggest VN developers out there, who specialize in making you really sad. From Kanon, to Clannad, to Planetarian, to Little Busters, Key’s made a lot of great stuff, and had some great anime adaptations made, particularly for Kanon and Clannad. Thus, Jun Maeda, co-founder of Key, conceived Angel Beats to originate as an anime, produced by P.A. Works in 2010. Angel Beats focuses on Otonashi, a teenager who wakes up in a strange high school with amnesia, only able to remember his last name. He soon meets a girl named Yuri Nakamura, who informs him that they’re dead, and stuck in a sort of afterlife, seemingly ruled over by a mysterious girl they only know as Angel. In this purgatory, they’re unable to die, as Otonashi finds out first hand at Angel’s hands, and the school is populated by fabricated teachers and students, but the real people stuck there are at risk of being “obliterated” if they act like normal students, ceasing to exist. Unwilling to accept this, Yuri leads class SSS in opposition of Angel and the assumed God that created this world for the cruel fates that everyone stuck in the afterlife met, Otonashi seemingly included. With seemingly no other path to take, Otonashi joins forces with the SSS. The main strength of Angel Beats is its cast of characters. From the pretty mean yet charming Yuri, to the reliable, yet often abused Hinata, to the crazy and energetic Yui, to even some of the side characters, like Shiina, the ninja girl with a crippling weakness for wind up dog toys, or TK, who speaks in gloriously mangled English and dances constantly. The premise as well is honestly fascinating to me, and makes for some very interesting episodes. It’s got some pretty entertaining action scenes, along with some really funny moments, mostly by playing the “nobody can actually die” tidbit for all its worth, with the second episode devoting a good amount of time to slowly killing off the main group in horrible, yet blase fashions. It delivers emotionally too, with the second half in particular having a good deal of touching episodes, especially episode 10. Unfortunately, there’s one giant problem with this anime that brings it down quite a bit: it’s only 13 episodes long. While I’m not a fan of 12 or 13 episode seasons, I can’t say that’s a problem by itself. What is a problem is that they were planning to have double that amount of episodes, causing the storyline to feel very rushed, and leaving nearly every character in the cast that isn’t part of the main group very underdeveloped. While there’s an entire expanded universe of stuff, good luck tracking it all down, and while Key themselves were making a 6 part visual novel of Angel Beats to expand upon it all, something that’s very promising, only the first volume has been released so far, back in 2015, with no word since, very likely because of Jun Maeda’s health issues. Overall, Angel Beats genuinely is a good watch, but it’s kinda depressing, just because of how much potential was cut short thanks to whatever genius decided to cut the episode amount in half. Unless the VN project really gets going again, it’ll probably just remain a bunch of what could have beens. 2. Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Number of episodes: 12. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, Funimation. Continuing the theme I unintentionally set up, here’s this famous little thing, from the mind of Gen Urobuchi, who, among other things, has worked on several nitro+ visual novels, mostly notably Song of Saya, wrote the apparently horribly depressing Fate/Zero, and was a scriptwriter for Kamen Rider Gaim, which, to my understanding, is one of the darkest Kamen Rider shows out there. Will all this in mind, there’s no real hiding that this isn’t going to be anywhere near as innocent as it tries to appear. Even if you didn’t know that, its reputation probably far exceeds it by now. Madoka Kaname is an average middle school student whose life is thrown into chaos when a mysterious girl named Homura Akemi transfers into her class, whom Madoka later finds attacking a strange creature called Kyubey. After rescuing it, Madoka and her best friend Sayaka are attacked by a strange creature known as a witch, only to be rescued by Mami Tomoe, a “magical girl” given power by Kyubey. Kyubey sees much potential in Madoka, and offers to grant her any wish of her choosing, in exchange for her becoming a magical girl as well and helping fight the witches. Homura, however, is completely determined to keep that from happening. Thus starts a chain of event in the lives of Madoka and Sayaka that, suffice it to say, don’t go very well. Without getting too specific, what starts as a mostly typical, if slightly odd, magical girl show quickly goes to very dark and twisted places, comparative to Neon Genesis Evangelion, though not quite as in depthly depressing with it. Everyone takes a beating in some way, and even with just 12 episodes, it can get a bit much for some people, even when it doesn’t end quite as awfully as you might expect. Still, it’s actually very well done. The characters are complex and flawed, but ultimately sympathetic, the overall plot is fascinating, and it ends in a very fitting way. It’s emotional, and has surprisingly good action. The dub voice work is solid, and the animation by Studio Shaft is as well, especially helped by the abstract designs of the witches themselves. While I’m not quite as passionate about it all as some are, it’s definitely earned its reputation. It’s a great watch, and definitely a big recommendation. 1. Steins;Gate

Number of episodes: 24 (+ 1 OVA). Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Funimation, Hulu, Crunchyroll. Finishing off my unintentional theme with an actual adaptation of a visual novel, there was no way I wasn’t checking this one out with how utterly passionate the VN made me. This is at least partially a bias placement, but this anime is a very, very good adaptation, and a great way to experience the story without the VN, and a great watch even having gone through it. Rintaro Okabe is a college student on break living in his “laboratory” in Akihabara. A self proclaimed mad scientist, he whittles his days away hanging out with his friends Mayuri Shiina and Itaru Hashida, inventing useless gadgets in a supposed fight against an evil organization. One day, Rintaro and Mayuri go to attend a press conference by Doctor Nakabachi in Radi-Kan, who claims to have invented a time machine, only for it to end horribly for all involved when Rintaro discovers Kurisu Makise, a young neuroscientist who had recently had her thesis published in a major science magazine, murdered by an unknown assailant. Sending an email to Itaru about the incident, Rintaro suddenly finds the world to have changed. According to everyone else, the press conference had been canceled due to a mysterious satellite that crashed into Radi-Kan, and Rintaro later runs into Kurisu, alive and well. Investigating, Rintaro finds that, by complete accident, his modified microwave has become a device capable of sending emails to the past- and that SERN, a French research organization, has been conducting time travel experiments of their own. In his attempts to understand the capabilities of what he’s invented, and his curiosity as to why his memories appear to be out of sync with everyone else’s, Rintaro rushes into a series of experiments that change his life, and those of friends old and new. This is something I could rant about all day, but putting it as succinctly as I can, I’ve never been as fascinated by time travel as Steins;Gate has made me. As fantastic as it, it’s also shown to be unpredictable, limited, and downright unsettling, especially when nobody knows just how time even works. It’s a story about the concept of time travel as much as a story about using it. The story definitely starts a bit slowly, but it’s well worth pushing past. As an adaptation, it doesn’t even need to sacrifice much, with the most that’s lost being some details in a few later arcs that aren’t worth much in the long run anyway. Beyond that, the main strength of the story is the cast of characters. Rintaro, with his rather severe case of chuunibyou, is a unique protagonist to begin with, but the events of the story turn him into an honestly fascinating and downright tragic character, and easily one of my favorite protagonists in a long time. The rest of the cast is just as good, with Kurisu being a great mix of intelligence, ravenous curiosity, and flusterability, with her and Rintaro’s interactions always being entertaining. As well, there’s the always kind, yet ditzy Mayuri, the outgoing, but odd Suzuha Amane, the endearingly gentle Luka Urushibara, and the energetic and wily Faris, just for some examples. The cast is downright loveable and very easy to get attached to. While I prefer the Japanese voice cast overall, the dub isn’t to be overlooked, with Trina Nishimura as Kurisu, Tyson Rinehart as Itaru, Cherami Leigh as Suzuha, Lindsay Seidel as Luka, and especially J. Michael Tatum as Rintaro giving great performances. Visually, White Fox did a great job giving it a distinct look. While the VN had a gorgeous and unique artstyle, it’s not really something that can be translated into animation. Instead, they used a whole lot of washed out colors and saturated lights that, combined with the sparse use of flashy effects and even music, gives a very subtle atmosphere to it all. Even beyond the style, it looks very good on its own, and it’s especially nice not having Rintaro look like a ghoul half the time, like he does in the VN.

Overall, this is very much something worth checking out. I’m beating a dead horse here since Steins;Gate is already wildly popular, but it’s that way for a very good reason. There’s also an extra OVA episode, along with a sequel movie, though both are only available via Funimation. They aren’t quite the best, but they make for entertaining watches worth checking out. And with that, that’s the end to my rambling. With the exception of, again, Super Sonico, everything here is very much worth a watch. I’m sure, once I emerge from the hell of Steins;Gate spinoffs, I’ll get to watching even more stuff. Till then, though. -Scout

[salavante]

that character ask thing, how about August en Zaied?? :3c

That funky, hunky elf. 

Full Name: August en Zaied

Gender and Sexuality: Male and mostly Heterosexual. I think there is the off-chance fellow that might pique his interest, but not at a frequency that I think he would self-describe himself as bisexual.

Pronouns: he/him

Ethnicity/Species: Umbran Elf. I talked about this a little bit in Ganzrig’s thing, but most people on Ismes have a different race back in their heritage at some point, and individuals will look a little more or less human depending on how many actual humans are back in their ancestry. August is on the more human-y side of the spectrum. 

Birthplace and Birthdate: I don’t tend to give birthdates to characters who do not use the same calendar systems as us. Maybe he was born in winter, ironically. August’s family formerly lived in one of the Umbran Empire’s capitol cities, and he was probably born on the family estate.

Guilty Pleasures: Not a ton. August is a very serious, dignified person and doesn’t put himself at risk of looking silly very often. He’ll smoke tobacco on occasion and likes his wine and port. He also knows how to play the accordion but just barely…which, really means that he doesn’t know how to play it at all, HAH. August also has a fondness for roses, as his mother had a garden on their old estate that she was very proud of. One thing he is guilty about is that after being exposed to and promptly rejecting most new technology…he really does prefer using an electric razor to a straight razor and no one can ever know. I think that’s his one true guilty pleasure. If someone caught him using it he’d be absolutely mortified.

Phobias: Oh wow I can actually fill this one out as god and OP intended, because August is a shipwreck survivor and now has a phobia of drowning and deep water, which is a shame because he’s a sailor by trade and formerly really loved the ocean. I do think it’s something he can work through if he tries, though.

What They Would Be Famous For: As far as August is concerned, he would prefer to not be famous for anything, ever, and that everyone would just leave him to his own business. Unfortunately, he has a moderate cult following on The Hunt for having a unique powerset and being kind of a dreamboat.  

What They Would Get Arrested For: August is fairly lawful and coolant headed, so, not a ton, but if he were doing something to ensure the safety and wellness of his family, he’d go to some pretty far lengths. There’s a perfectly serviceable AU out there where August is a mercenary, pirate or assassin.

OC You Ship Them With: August was never actually envisioned as being a ladies man, but it’s just what happened along the way. All of the ladies he has slept with in-game have been older than him, so I guess he likes mature women, HAH. I enjoy the chemistry between August and Jake’s character Elias, who is a silver tongued cannibal and a privateer, go figure. It’s kind of a classic chemistry, sailor-hero type and pirate. Many moons ago, when August was first conceived and was still a female character, his love interest was a half-orc bard named Benji, but he’s since been written out of August’s original story and has been replaced byyy….Iona Howell, August’s canon love interest. The ferocious, emotionally unstable illuminator/wizard who is trying her best to get her shit together, and August’s on and off again girlfriend.

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Pre-defection Iona was probably capable of killing August in a manic/jealous rage, though I think at the end of the day August is more powerful than her and would probably have killed her first as long as she didn’t get the drop on him. Ganzrig also threatened to slaughter and dismember him, but that’s just what Orcs do, I don’t know if she would have actually killed him.

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: August is from an early/mid 1800’s level society and so movies really overstimulate to the point that he generally avoids them. He resists most new technology at first blush and is very, very stubborn, though there are a few benefits that he cannot deny. He’s not really much of a reader either, his education stopped when he was somewhere between the ages of 12-14 so he reads kind of slow and his own handwriting isn’t very good, but that still puts him at an advantage among other sailors. He probably likes poetry because a) the ladies like to be read poetry and b) it’s something that could be easily translated into song or read aloud, which is his preferred method of receiving media. Epic poems, sea shanties, etc. August would go to a play before he would go to a movie, and would be perfectly entertained by being read aloud to.

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: August used to be an atheist before his world’s god, Al Fortuna, decided that he was their new favorite person. Now he just thinks Gods are assholes and generally does not like any media that presents gods as anything other than fickle and more trouble than they’re worth. And he absolutely, tremendously hates the idea of things being ordained by “fate”.

Talents and/or Powers: A couple fun ones! August is ambidextrous and can wield a pistol and sabre at the same time, and is in generally very nimble. But the most notable thing about him is that August possesses a passive ability called the Miasma of Misfortune, which is tied to Ganzrig’s Fortune’s Favor. While bad luck does not fall on August’s own head, he exudes an aura of bad luck to people in his vicinity, which gets worse the longer that he is exposed to them without reprieve. August has learned to manipulate the Miasma to a degree, and can either reel it in or dump all of its focus on a single target, usually ending with some foolish prick stabbing himself on ‘accident’. Celair has also been teaching him some cantrips. He is from a low-magic setting, so he is not very magically potent.

Why Someone Might Love Them: August is easy to become infatuated with, but not easy to be in a relationship with, and there is a string of broken hearted maidens behind him. He is dashing and courageous, with an intriguingly intense personality, and is confident, but not in a way that dips into vanity. He’s also very earnest, a reliable, straightforward man that keeps his head on straight and seldom shows his temper (though when he does, watch the fuck out). Though not an intellectual, August is very cunning, and has a dry sense of humor that some appreciate. He’s also quite chivalrous, and I think there is a very classical, romantic element to him.

Why Someone Might Hate Them: When I say that August is not easy to be in a relationship with, it’s because he’s a vault and values his privacy to a fault. He seldom wears his heart on his sleeve, and prefers to keep his stronger emotions to himself, for better or worse, and has trouble expressing his feelings even when it’d be in his interest to. He’s the most stubborn man alive, and would sooner double down on something than let someone he doesn’t like be right, making him just a little spiteful. August is resistant to too much external change, especially with technology. He’s also quite dreadfully serious and finds people who are too goofy kind of offputting (ex: he tolerates Wybjorn, but probably wouldn’t have anything to do with him if they did not have friends in common). Someone may also find his priorities shrewd at first glance - his number one concern is providing for his family, and so he is easily motivated by money. Because he is very private, he is not likely to divulge information on his personal life, leading his motivations often obscured and at times misinterpreted. He does not care very much about what other people think, and so seldom clarifies. 

How They Change: August changes a bit over the course of Godslaughter, but not very much, as he has mostly existed in an NPC capacity. The thing he will have to learn is to be emotionally candid with his family when he returns home, because they are going to have a lot of questions and he’s not going to want to answer any of them, but he HAS to. And things aren’t going to be the way he left them. Most of August’s challenges in this department are on the horizon.

Why You Love Them: August has a somewhat colorful meta history. He is my oldest character that I still use regularly (at over 5 years old) besides Calvin, and he was conceived at not a very good point in my life. I had been quietly struggling with my gender identity for many years, and had found myself pushing against my constraints in fiction, but by the time I got to the original August, I was exhausted and beaten down. The first pass at August was a very sad, somber character that was a lady crossdressing to work as a sailor. I’d hit on something important, but wasn’t really ready to open myself up to what it might mean, which, aside from being conceived during the worst year of my life, lead to Kismet collecting dust. Fastforward to 2018 when I was looking for Gods for Godslaughter, and remembered that I had always liked Al Fatima and Al Fortuna, and took another look at August by association. By now I was out as transmasc and decided it’d be a good step for myself to retool August into a character that I could be proud of - a confident, earnest person who wanted nothing more than to be the captain of his own fate and to protect and provide for the people he loves. I don’t really like talking publicly about my trans-ness, I (like August) have come to the conclusion it’s not really anyone’s business but mine, but my journey is inseparable from him. And that’s ok. August is my tiny hope that someday I can get a genre fiction story to a publisher that’s about a trans person, but is not about his transition or his coming out.

[igromantic]

Издатель: Spike, NIS America, XSEED Games, Ghostlight

Разработчик: Acquire, Spike, Chunsoft

Дата выхода: 2011

Платформа: PlayStation 3, Microsoft Windows

Ru-Перевод: Любительский

Описание:

Видеоигра, разработанная Acquire и выпущенная Spike для PlayStation 3 в Японии 3 марта 2011 года.

Английская версия была анонсирована 19 января 2012 года компанией Rising Star Games. 4 апреля 2012 года XSEED Games издала игру для США в сети PlayStation Network. Релиз игры в Европе состоялся 5 октября 2012 года. Изначально игра была только для PlayStation 3, однако позднее она была выпущена для Microsoft Windows компанией Ghostlight 23 июля 2015 года.

Действие игры разворачивается в вымышленном портовом городе Амихама в последние дни сегуната. Игроки могут создать своих собственных самураев и выбрать себе одну из трех группировок: проправительственные силы, антиправительственные повстанцы, пытающиеся прогнать из страны иностранцев, или британский флот, дислоцированный в городе для ведения переговоров о заключении мирного договора.

Основная история происходит в течение пяти дней. Решения и действия персонажа будут определять его путь и, в конечном итоге, его судьбу.

Скриншоты:

Ролик:

Мнение:

Как это в игре про самураев и без чистой, светлой любви? Игра предлагает попытать удачу с немалым количество компаньонов, каждой из которых требуется отдельный подход. Но если все получится, счастливица отправится жить вместе с вами.

Арт

Руководство

Night CrawlingThe section I just don’t really care to explain! Basically this is a mini-game where your character tries to get in bed with all the women of Amihama!In order to successfully night crawl someone you must 1st make an appointment, which is simple for random women (but annoying) but can be complex for the 7 women who you can night crawl.

After that during the night you must go to the person’s home and find them without getting caught by anyone else in the house. If you’re not sure where the house is within the journal under night crawl it shows the area it’s in, and within that area will be a double heart icon to indicate it’s for the night crawl mission.

When you get to the women both go to the inn and have to fight to undress them (doesn’t everyone wins at this point normally?).

This section details the basic how’s of it, you’re likely going to have to try it out to really grasp it… overall this is a really simple mini-game that you have to do 100 times over for the platinum, so if you’re not going for platinum I’d suggest not really bothering with this mini-game in the 1st place.

Making the appointment

As mentioned above normal girls are different then the named characters, if you’re looking to night crawl a main character look below.

To make an “appointment” speak to any of the female characters and select the bottom option I think I’m in love. From here you need to say the right pickup lines to have her agree to go with you. The 1st two sets of questions I have a decent idea what they do, the next 2 are more about the reaction you get from the girl you’re hitting on and I can’t really say what they do.

The 1st set of lines is about the time of day. The 2nd set of lines is about the women’s age, I think I know what you need to use for which age but some models of NPC’s seem to be able to fit in 2 of the categories. From there depending on their reaction you seem to have to select different options for the next 2 responses… I honestly never found a good pattern to say exactly which option is the right one.

The exact lines are:

Set 1 time of day

If it’s morning select:

What nice weather we’re having…

If it’s the evening select:

The setting sun is so beautiful…

If it’s night time select:

The moon is absolutely stunning…

Set 2 age

If she’s young select:

Your voice alone can cure my ills.

If she’s mid-aged select:

Those clothes suit you well!

If she’s older select:

You have a nice, firm ass.

I’m listing the 3rd and 4th set but honestly I’m not sure what to select, it’s based on the reaction of the NPC.

Set 3 based on reaction from above:

You seem like an elegant person.

You seem like a gentle person.

You seem like a reliable person.

Set 4 the closer line, likely based on above again but I can’t be sure:

Open your borders. allll of them.

I would gladly cut my belly for you.

My ship docks at your harbor tonight.

I’m Hikikata of the Shinsengumi…

Night Crawl

Now that you’ve set a date it’s time to get her out of her home! I suggest saving before attempting this as the NPC’s can be weird at times. Basically this makes it seem like you’re a kidnapper trying to take their women away! What you have to do here is find the bed that is hiding the women you’re trying to be with and take off the covers of her bed (by pressing square).

You’ll know you’re near the right bed by the turtle in the lower left corner (near your health). As he comes out of his shell you’re close to the right bed… when you’re right beside the right bed he’s completely out of his shell.

All this is made difficult by the other NPC’s that are still awake, if you’re found they’ll either attack you or run to call the thief takers. So …. we don’t want that to happen so we can do one of two things, either stay out of their sight or knock them out. Knocking out an NPC is pretty easy, just get behind them and hold R1 and triangle, if your chop connects they’re knocked out.

What I suggest doing is 1st put the mini-map in the corner so you know where you’re going. Then start going around, trying to see if the turtle reacts (if it does you’re close). When you see an NPC I suggest simply avoiding them if you can… a lot of them are just looking at the wall and will never see you, and if you knock them out they’ll make a sound as they hit the ground somewhat alerting others. If the NPC is patrolling then it’s a decent option to knock them out, just move on fast. When you do find the right area get close to the bed’s, you should be able to tell if they’re right just by getting close.

Now if an NPC does find you make sure to knock them out fast. If they start attacking you try to circle them to knock them out. If they go for the thief takers chase them, they eventually take a knee (since no one apparently has any stamina) for you to catch them. If they manage to leave the house you’ll need to either find your target fast or get ready to leave since as soon as the thief takers come you either end it by leaving the house or getting caught, you fail either way when they appear.

Sexy time

Yup that’s right the final part to successfully night crawl someone is called sexy time. Apparently you need to fight the girl you’re night crawling to remove her clothing. You can do this in one of 2 ways, either attacking with square until she runs out of health or use the grab (R1 + triangle ) and throw her onto the bed. All the while you’re doing this your partner will attack you as you get near them, you have a limited amount of health but if you do have some Medicines you’ll use them if you run out of health.

If you’re night crawling a normal women it really doesn’t matter what you try, the square combo will likely win the entire match if it all connects. If you’re night crawling one of the main character they’ll have a LOT of health. So it’s far better to simply grab and throw them.

to throw an enemy I generally try getting near them to get them to attempt a move while being far enough away not get hit, the delay for the “partner’s” move should let you grab them no problem and throw them, if you didn’t manage to get them on the bed try again as normally I can grab them a 2nd time if needed… but that can be hard to aim.

Once you’ve managed to undress your partner you win! Afterwards you’re outside the inn being given a random item and most of your vitality will be gone.

Main female character appointments

Below is a list of how to night crawl all the female characters in the game

Nightcrawl Mayu

For all 3 sister you must get arrested 3 times at a specific crime rate. Basically you must endure their form of torture 3 times, the last time you must get a high score (above 100 I believe) and they’ll set a date that night. All 3 of them have the same layout for night crawling, they’ll be up the stair in the north-east corner of the building.

For Mayu the crime rate must be good or great.

Nightcrawl Chika

See above, for Chika you must keep the crime rate neutral. This can be annoying since you need to commit crimes to get arrested.

Nightcrawl Yuri

See above, for Yuri the crime rate must be bad or very bad.

Nightcrawl Melinda

Melinda is really annoying to get, basically you must defeat her with blunt attacks in every event possible she’s in, and find her after the battle tournament. I’m going to write a step by step because of the possibility of just missing one event so…

This method involved closing the hospital, if you want to keep the hospital open you’ll have to re-open it on another playthough.

My Method:

1) Harbor – Amihama Harbor Skirmish

-Be sure to tell Akagi to “Take your hands off her!” when prompted and beat the Prajna fast enough so you have to fight Akagi, Melinda then Kotobuki.

2) Little Britain – Audience with the Littlest Public Servant

Simple intro event.. which you’re going to ruin by drawing your blade on Melinda! Remember you need to use blunt attacks against her from here on it, as she will die if you use regular attacks.

3) Toasty Truth Bar (Town) – Violent Behavior of the Marine Corps

Get rid of the marines, then attack Melinda.. Akemi is a little scared of this failing the event… but that doesn’t matter.

4) Shrine – Sneaking into the Magistrate’s Office

-Doesn’t matter how you do this, you can get one crate and leave or go for more to earn more money.

-For this method you must close the hospital as you fight Melinda during it.

5) Magistrate – Denying Western Medicine or Plan to Shut Down the Hospital

Easy fights, just be sure to take cash from the sisters as playing with them would be them torturing you… not much of a reward imo, but if you’re into it…

-If the language school is OPEN and you want to keep it open, skip the next event by sleeping either at the inn (if you’re concerned about crime rate) or on one of the mats outside

6) Shrine – We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Language School! or The Lecturer Is a Dead Man

Simple events, click the links for details if you need em.

-If the Casino is OPEN and you want to keep it open, skip the next event by sleeping either at the inn (if you’re concerned about crime rate) or on one of the mats outside

7) Shrine – Destroy the Casino or Put an End to the Casino’s Reconstruction

Simple fights, J.J. seems to not care enough about his casino.

8) Main Plaza – Chief Minister Onsen Kinugawa

Auto event but don’t draw your sword, but you can enjoy a random comment or two.

9) Shrine – Washing Blood With Blood

Agree to help

10) Toasty Truth Bar (Town) – Kill the Traitor

This won’t be important for the ending, but do the next few events so that the Prajna will support you for the tournament.

11) Cemetery – The Truth

You don’t have to kill Akemi here really, we’re not going for the ending.. but do so if you want.

12) Harbor – Break the Snare

Spare Moro if you like, doesn’t matter for getting Melinda in bed…

-auto event The Chief Minister’s Big Move-

13) Shrine – Blades of the Patriots

Agree to being in the tournament under the Prajnas name.

14) Main Plaza – Battle Tournament Opens and We Are the Champions

Be sure not to kill Melinda in the final round… otherwise this is the same as always, finish the 3 fights then leave the tournament grounds saying “I wish to be excused”

15) Main Plaza – inside the restaurant on the east side of the area

Melinda will be in here say to her “Because I want to fight you again.” to set the date!

Save before attempting to night crawl Melinda. The area will be crawling with marines and blondies… anyways Melinda will be in the south-west corner room… it’s hard to get here without being spotted so you might want to rush it but to each his own.

Nightcrawl Akemi

To night crawl Akemi 1st thing we need to do is give her fish. 10 to be exact most types will work, some don’t (she doesn’t like crawfish for example).

Doesn’t matter when this is done so long as it’s done before the event The Truth. And since we need to see that event following my guide for The Flames of Prajna is what I’d recommend. Save after step 10 the event Kill the traitor (it’s your last chance since it locks you into doing the night crawling after the next event).

At step 11 instead of saying you overheard her say in order when prompted:

So, there are actually four sisters… It’s dangerous out here, May I escort you? Let me escort you to your bedroom.

Which apparently works… anyways you’ll be in the bar, upstairs to nightcrawl but you can’t leave the bar as time advances if you do.

Akemi will be in the southern most room, in the western bed.

Nightcrawl Laura

Do events for the foreigners until day 3 midday (follow my ending guides Setting Off to Foreign Lands if you want step by step, basically up to step 10).

After you get Laura her medicine completing the event The Ambassador Collapses it might not be required but speak to J.J.

Leave Little Britain so it becomes night and come back, The lost and found shop below the tracks should have an item for sale called mysterious key. Purchase this and then save (just in case you’re caught).

You now need to enter the consulate, but you can’t get close to J.J. so hug the east side wall and you should get in without triggering the event. From there go to Laura’s room on the 2nd floor to attempt to nightcrawl her.

She’ll always be on the west side room of the house, but there are a lot of Blondies/ marines here, so I suggest just running past them to the bed Laura’s in.

Now I’m pretty sure the somewhat comical event that happens next is the only possible thing that can happen… for clear reasons they took out the ability to do it with Laura…

Nightcrawl Sensei

First and foremost Sensei must not be at the dojo at the start of a playthough where you intend to night crawl her. So if she’s at the dojo you’ll have to kill her.

I suggest following The Light of Hope ending path and just going as far as getting Akagi to the hospital, as it’s easier then the other endings to deal with Getting Sensei, however you can work getting her in any ending.

Once she is at your dojo you need to get a 5 star rating. It doesn’t matter who’s in your dojo just so long as they’re good quality (see Dojo section for tips of who to get). When you get the 5 star rating with Sensei at your dojo speak with her and say:

Glady. Any time!

Go to the road, before the fight say to Sensei:

I’m listening… Partake of my loins.

Defeat her with the back of your sword and speak with her, you should get the scene that you made the appointment.

Sensei will be in the north-west corner of this house, once again there are a lot of towns people here, you’ll likely be caught, so run past them and get Sensei out of bed!

Main male character appointments

All you need for all the guys is the right style, Nightly Pleasure Martial Arts. To get this style you must have a 5 star dojo with all females. There’ll be a challenger who uses it.

Equip this style and attack one of the below 7 male characters. Doesn’t need to be a blunt attack and you should see a unique animation when you attack.

Nightcrawl Shigeru Moro

Moro is easy enough to find we normally is in the Magistrate area. Find him beat him with Nightly Pleasure Martial Arts until he agrees to go with you.

Nightcrawl Reddo Akagi

Akagi and Kogure both are normally in the Shrine area except during certain events. Again using the Nightly Pleasure Martial Arts beat him till he agrees to it.

Nightcrawl J.J.

J.J. spends pretty much all his time in the consulate in Little Britain. Find him and use the Nightly Pleasure Martial Arts to get him to go with you.

Nightcrawl Jinrai Kogure

Akagi and Kogure both are normally in the Shrine area except during certain events. Again using the Nightly Pleasure Martial Arts beat him till he agrees to it.

Nightcrawl Hikaru Kotobuki

Kotobuki spends all his time at the Magistrate inside the building. Attacking with the Nightly Pleasure Martial Arts to set the date with him.

Nightcrawl Gunji Dojima

It’s a lot easier to get Dojima as your smith so he’s always in Town. Once again attack with the Nightly Pleasure Martial Arts until he agrees to the date.

Nightcrawl Onsen Kinugawa

Kinugawa can be rather annoying to get since he isn’t always there. I suggest following the Road to Ruin ending, after step 10 the event The Chief Minister & The Three Sisters you can find him upstairs in the center area. So for the final time attack him with the Nightly Pleasure Martial Arts style till he agrees to go with you.

За кого переживать:

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Way of the Samurai 4

[bookwormguri]

Escape the Brothel- Background

So I’ve been told by a very reliable source that it might be a good idea to write down little recaps for the DnD group I DM for. She was very convincing ;3

So I was originally going to start the recap in this post, but I’m VERY long winded and it ended up becoming a background piece about what went into making this homebrew (avoiding as many spoilers as I can). Maybe I’ll actually get into the gameplay next time, WHO KNOWS.

Warning for rambling and mushiness and the writer having no sense of flow:

So for background, before this group, I had DM’d for approximately 3 ½ sessions with my other Curse of Strahd group. That group is pretty vanilla, but I was kind of craving something a bit darker. Even after months this need never left me. (I even jotted out some little point for an overall plot) Through some luck and fate I found some players that I adore and who were as ravenous as I was to explore dark themes through DnD~

So I started my first homebrew campaign. Since I was (and still am) nervous making my own campaign I knew from the start that I wanted the first game at least to be contained to a small area. That way it would make it simpler for myself and the characters to get used to the world without being overwhelmed. I was kinda obsessed with Escape Rooms at the time so I decided to go with that type of theme; escape. Thus sprouted the Deep Fantasia brothel and the Escape the Brothel arc. Sometimes I worry that after they escape the brothel there will be some disappointment that the rest of the world does not have the same depth of detail, but I’m sure we will all live.

And because I have no fucking chill, the ‘small’ brothel became a four-story map, with additional basement and sub-basement for possible human sacrifice purposes? Did I mention I created 69 unique NPCs to populate the brothel? (I swear that number was not on purpose) So far, I’ve only needed to come up with a handful of NPCs on the spot, and even fewer that needed names. (Bet you didn’t know Lady Artana is someone I just made up, did you?)

When I was creating the NPCs I decided quickly that even if they were going to be treated as throw-away side characters/canon fodder (how naive I was then) I wanted them all to have at least one personable quirk. Just something written down so that they didn’t seem completely flat should the PCs want to get to know them better. Soon those little quirks evolved into half of them having their own mini-side quests. Whoops. I wanted this campaign to be light on the monster encounters so in the end, I think I went 180 the other way. ;D

Now, let it be known I am absolutely shite at pinning down how long a session will last and how fast players will complete challenges. I naively (SO NAIVELY) thought that the PCs might escape the brothel in one, maybe three sessions max. I WAS SO WRONG! I had only ever played with one Player in this group and I was going off what I knew from their playstyle and my own previous knowledge playing and built out from that assumption, but my players surprised me. They actually wanted to fully explore and get to know this little world I created. They wanted to talk to ALL the NPCs, ferret out ALL the mysteries, and most surprising of all, they actually played by the ‘rules’ I set out. I have been told that I’ve never once created a PC that didn’t hate authority. I never would have thought twice about breaking the rules as long as I could sneak or talk or pound my way out of them.

But here, my players surprised me by playing within the rules they were given before the game and because of this the time it has taken them to explore and progress is slower, but it has also shown me there is a certain cunning and subtlety that comes with trying to build up to breaking the rules without shaking the status quo. It’s honestly fascinating to watch and learn from. Although, I do also vividly remember having a lengthy phone convo with a friend (PC in my CoS game) where I happy-cried, “My players are smarttttttt!! They’re too smart for meeeeee!!”

One thing that I wanted was for the characters to come together on their own. I know most people have probably played through that awkward first session where everyone ‘introduces’ their PC at a bar and that your background is that you are a merry band of mercenaries. That works well enough, but it’s never really given me the emotional investment I need to build up to a Party that I’d literally die for. So, in a way, I wanted the brothel to be an origin story for the PCs and their party. I wanted them to come together naturally (or as naturally as they could with my NPCs saying, “Yes, the three of you should be here at this time.”) The one downside to this is that in the beginning I had a bunch of one-on-one time with the PCs while the other two needed to spend time on the back burner. I felt really guilty about this, always worried the others were bored. I tried my best to switch between them as often as I could so they all felt included and that their goals were being given the same time and effort as the others.

I think I was very clumsy and awkward with it at first, but what can you do? Growing pains and all that, you know? And even with my perceived awkwardness I’m still blown away with how natural and perfect we all worked together in-game the first few sessions (considering half of us had never seen the other half’s faces XD) I’ve gotta thank my kickass players for that. They really went all-out in immersing themselves in the game, making my job a lot easier. They’re kinda impressive or something.

When I designed the brothel and the various ways to escape, like most DMs I didn’t want to railroad my players. I came up with some foolproof ways for them to leave, with certain plot beats that needed to be fulfilled for them to progress forward at all, but in the end, I think I came up with a skeleton and a few blood vessels of a setting and plot. I didn’t want to be so married to my idea that it would stifle the creativity and ingenuity of my players should they come up with something brilliant (and I’m pleased to say as far as I can tell it has not).

At its core, there are two things keeping the players from escaping, the Brands that threaten to make them go ‘poof’ if they exit certain areas and the various Defenses that the brothel uses to keep people in (and out). Once they solve those two issues things should (theoretically) be smooth sailing. It’s just up to the players to pick up the breadcrumbs I’ve left lying around of how to do both, unless the PCs come up with their own brilliant escape plan (I would be lying if I said I haven’t impulsively burnt down an inn or two in my day). I make it sound easy, but those two obstacles are actually fairly formidable in their own right.

Speaking of the PCs, when designing the brothel I also designed three factions/roles for the PCs to choose from in addition to their race and class: Whore, Guard or Servant. Going off rock-paper-scissor rules I built each role so that they could succeed where the other’s failed or be lacking where others had strength. All the same, I designed the overall escape so that even if every player chose servant they would still have a chance to escape (although choosing all servants would be doing it in Hard mode, I swear).

Homebrewing this was really a challenge. There was making the plot, the maps, picking out music (which I’ve STILL never been able to get work), knowing the rules, picking out monsters, making NPCs, making traps, having technical difficulties every other week. :D

But still, the nice thing about DnD that I always remind myself is that not everything has to been written down. I don’t NEED to come up with a counter to Every Possible Outcome. Bullshitting is my specialty after all~ (Also those years of improv classes help a bunch too~) And these players make playing just as enjoyable for me as it is for them (I hope).

Especially in the beginning (but also now) I needed constant validation that people were having fun and I was doing a good job. Because if the players aren’t having fun then I need to up my game as that’s my primary goal. One of the players suggested that we do a little thing at the end of every session where we go around and say our favorite thing, least favorite thing, and things we would change. This helps me SO MUCH as a DM that I can’t even express it correctly through words.

I look forward to every Saturday game session, counting down the days until my brilliant players can surprise me again in my own sandbox.

Next, I’ll TRY to actually retell some of the most important bits that have happened to them so far.

@@autumninthenorth @nyako-chan @yarking

[rekkingcrew]

Rek DMs, Some Thoughts

Buckle up, it’s Edge of the Empire tabletop Roleplaying time.

Yeah, I know I don’t post here much. I’m still doing the devaron’s angels thing, which is scratching a lot of my online itches, and I’ve got a part time job and full time parenting. 

I’d really planned on doing regular updates of what happened each session. Aaaaand that didn’t happen. Which is a shame, I’d love to be able to have those summaries to look back on. But here’s the short version:

The gang, who are a crew of space chancers and criminals rolling around in a stolen police ship, were doing odd jobs together for a while, including some for the empire. Their contact, a Pantoran spymaster whose cover was as a children’s entertainer, congratulated them on their most recent heist job (where the campaign started in medias res), and gave them a new job: deliver a mysterious sealed orb to the leader of the peskiest rebel cell in the general area, led by a Rodian pirate by the name of Cheng Maxeda. They said maybe, took the orb, and then checked around and picked up a delivery job for their local Hutts going the same direction for some extra cash. 

They were brought in because the Hutt shipments had been interfered with by somebody. Their Hutts weren’t sure who, but were damn sure they were going to pay. The gang defeated a whole crazy mess of people who were being lead and bolstered by a falleen who had been surgically altered to boost their pheromone output. Then they picked up the package and made the poor decision of looking inside. It was the carbonite frozen but still living body of the cop who’d previously owned their ship that they were now knowingly handing over, because they couldn’t bring themselves to cross the Hutts. 

Moral issues aside, it was an easy job, they got well paid, the team failed a bunch of social roles and divulged more information than they should have to the Hutt point man, and Brick, the party’s wall of meat, got signed up for a pit fight. He won his round, but imperial troops broke up the match before he could win completely. TK cornered but lost a rebel bomber, and Eshi got contacted by a rebel who recognized him from a bit of backstory. Nyla chased down one of the other gladiators, an old clone with a sword who’d entered the fight because the prize included a bacta dunk and he had a friend who was hurt and dying after being caught by the Hutts trying to bust up a slaving operation. And that’s when the bomb went off, destroying some major imperial instillation bits and projecting a 40 foot holo-image of Cheng the punk rock rodian pirate queen striding across the smoking crater proclaiming she had come to liberate the outer rim. The party was presented with three job options: 1) after Brick’s pit win, the Hutts were down some muscle for a convoy and ready to pay reliable thugs 2) the rebels were looking for a study ship to bust up the hub of a spy satellite network 3) the clone and his weequay buddy (Edge and Horm) still wanted to stop the slave convoy (which was, as the party figured out, job 1). They opted for job 2, leaving town amidst a firefight with the imperials, and brought along Edge and Horm, providing Nyla with a sword fighting trainer who’d studied under a jedi, without being a jedi himself. 

The guys busted up the satellite base by hijacking a shipment truck coming in (I’d provided them information for a couple of routes, including asteroid hopping amidst giant vacuum-proof winged frog monster creatures, and they figured this best matched their skillset). Inside they found tech that looked a whole lot like our droid character TK, a completely brainwashed cyborg engineer, and the control rods that were their target. TK, who is a droid with multiple program personalities, suddenly and without warning displayed a program personality they had never seen before and destroyed the computer mainframe, remembering nothing afterward. The cyborg also had hardware a good deal like Nyla’s, and contained a message begging for help from someone held against their will and being moved between facilities. They blew up the station, retrieved valuable tech, and flew off, triumphant, to get their payment from the rebels. 

The rebels welcomed the gang, who got to know the faction a little bit better. TK nearly started a gunfight, Nyla got a haircut, and Brick and Eshi developed mouse droid beer pong in order to provide historically unique droid bits to an eccentric collector for the last bit Eshi needed to build his machine from the prototype he’d stolen from the corporate sector in his backstory, which runs on two kyber crystals and provides a similar benefit to the force power “foresee”. He used this to figure out the sphere they were carrying contained an intensely virulent ship killer plague that would likely kill them as well, and they resolved to throw that in the sun. The gang foiled an assassination attempt on Cheng and got a new assignment: break her old pirate buddy out of maximum security prison (again, they were presented with several possible assignments, some of which tied in to other plots.) Nyla and Cheng also worked out mutually that they were both force sensitive. 

The prison break went off well. It was a sort of siberian gulag set up on an ice planet, plus some eight foot carnivorous burrowing worms- yeah, those walls are pretty short, prisoners, but where are you gonna run? The gang picked up some extra supplies by agreeing to break out a Hutt operative while they were there anyway. After some exciting sky battles, Nyla and Eshi turns the ship’s forward shields into a battering ram. They made short work of the guards inside, but discovered that there was an unexpected other party there- a wookie bounty hunter who was looking into the disappearance of the guy they handed over to the hutts. That guy was a tough fight even for the team’s big heavies, and they set a load of prisoners free to help them- taking the risk that the maximum security violent shipjackers would not decide to jack their ship to escape. Luckily between the two heavies and the giant devaronian pirate they just released, they were able to intimidate them into just accepting a ride off planet. Nyla, meanwhile, fought the wookie’s cat beast in an enclosed tunnel and nearly died, but won a pretty hard solo battle, enabling her to pick up the Hutt contact and a delirious nautolan who she had a force feeling about. Eshi forgot he was a reptile and went out in the ice with no coat, then defeated his own personal corpsec bounty hunter’s attempts to come at him with robots. With great success, they headed back to rebel space, got paid, and received a message that their former imperial employer was officially fucking pissed at them. Also, the nautolan was force sensitive and having visions of the inquisitor who tried to murder Nyla. 

Faced with mounting tension and the inability to continue lying to each other, the team pretty much spilled all their secrets to each other in the absolute most fun room mate meeting I have ever witnessed. Nyla is a force sensitive ex-imperial pilot ace, TK has an extra personality, Eshi has an I-assassinated-a-king level bounty and a machine that tells the future, Thirteen (the bothan spy) knew all this and told no one, Brick likes light beer, etc. They decided they really need to murder the children’s TV spy master as their next move. Their bothan spy provided them with a dossier on him and his six lieutenants. Nyla and Thirteen went to go meet the spymaster and try to throw him off, and had to fight the stealth assassin lieutenant, which they survived. Eshi hacked the slicer lieutenant and stole her state of the art surveillance droids. Brick checked up on the Hutt-embedded spy and learned she was a pretty awful person. He also ended up scheduling a rematch with the douwutin he beat in the pit fight, who the Hutts later dropped a word in that they wouldn’t mind if he just happened to kill in that fight. The group’s one cop friend, a red-string and corkboard conspiracy melitto, got attacked by assassins, because the spies and the governor were working against each other. Nyla and TK accidentally killed the master of disguise spy lieutenant without realizing who he was. They turned the surveillance droids on the Hutts and found out the Hutt-embedded spy was working against the spymaster as well. 

The spymaster was scheduled to attend the Chancellor’s day gala on Naboo, which is fancy far outside of anything the party is probably capable of pulling off, but I wanted to give them the opportunity to try. One of the spy lieutenants there, a slimy alderaanean lesser noble, has found a packet of forbidden information that had been stolen and hidden there, and the spymaster is going in person for the hand-off. Rebuffing an offer from the planetary governor, the group made a very temporary alliance with the Hutt spy to kidnap the noble spy and use him to force a meeting with the spymaster on their terms. And that’s where we are now. 

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All in all, I’m really pleased with how this is going. I’m having a lot of fun and my players are absolutely great. I’d... assumed that would take less time to type up, and it’s leaving out a whole lot of stuff. I started this in October, so that’s about seven months worth of weekly sessions. That it breaks pretty easily into arcs, I feel, speaks pretty well for what I’d intended of it. I have SO MANY FUCKING named NPCs. It’s over 50 at last count. Factions are helping a lot. Each faction has a main plot that’s going to move along no matter what the PCs do, hitting beats whenever I need something interesting for the background. 

I’d like to keep making some posts here about what I’ve learned, what’s worked and what hasn’t, and about each player and their character. I personally think it’s interesting, and it helps me collect my thoughts. But for now I think I’m going to bed.