#against the theoretical opponent's type. and then it takes two moves to use any given type's version of weather ball so i just. don't

[front-facing-pokemon]

[selfdestructivecat]

Been thinking more about my Sanders Sides Pokemon AU and wanted to flesh it out a bit more. So here are some fun facts about each Side’s individual gym!

Link to my first post about this AU!

* Let’s start with Patton again, just for consistency

* As soon as you enter Patton’s gym, someone comes up and gives you a bunch of free potions

* Most of the trainers who come to challenge the gym gratefully take the potions and without thinking too much about it

* Little do they know, the potions are essential to reaching the gym leader

* In Patton’s gym, you don’t fight any trainers before you reach him

* Instead, you go through rooms, and in each room you face a “wild” Pokemon

* (These Pokémon, while scary-looking, all belong to Patton. They are simply pretending to be aggressive, and in reality are just as sweet as their owner)

* While these pokemon don’t look particularly special, a half-decent pokemon trainer would be able to tell immediately that the pokemon is at low health.

* (Again, the pokemon are just acting. Patton would never purposefully hurt his Pokémon and then send them to battle other trainers)

* Most trainers would immediately reach for their Pokémon or a pokeball, hoping to battle and capture it

* Of course, when they try to throw the ball, it doesn’t work, given that the pokemon is Patton’s

* Either way, if they try to capture the pokemon or make the pokemon faint, they immediately fail the gym

* In order to pass the room, the trainer instead has to calm the pokemon down enough to use a potion on them

* They are free to use toys, pokepuffs, or any other non-violent method to calm the pokemon down

* Successfully using a potion on the Pokémon allows the trainer to access the next room

* With each consecutive room, the pokemon are bigger, scarier, and much more “hostile”.

* But once the trainer makes their way through all of the rooms, they find their way at the checkpoint before the stadium

* Which is when they finally fight Patton, who shouts encouragement and pokemon-related puns the entire time

* Logan’s gym is much more complicated

* As you may expect, it’s puzzles galore

* The gym is a maze, each of the paths containing different effects (Electric field, psychic pressure, ground spikes, etc.)

* The trainer would need to use Pokémon that’s immune to them (ground type, dark type, flying type respectively)

* You can theoretically try to cross these barriers with other types of Pokémon, and depending on how much health they have they may even remain conscious

* Of course, if the Pokémon is at low health, it’ll put them at a disadvantage to the trainer waiting for them on the other side

* The entire gym is a test of cooperation between Pokémon and trainer, working together to solve the various puzzles and trusting each other to pull through

* Then, you fight Logan, who immediately starts floating above the stadium using psychic energy

* Likewise, you will begin to rise on a platform, your Pokémon remaining on the ground

* The ground of the stadium will suddenly fill with an energy field similar to the ones you had to navigate

* Like before, you must choose a Pokémon who will take the least amount of damage from the field

* Logan will take advantage of this, using Pokémon who will be strong against whatever Pokémon you use to defend against the area effect

* It’s a battle of difficult choices, whether or not to be offensive or defensive, and a test of your knowledge regarding Pokémon type weaknesses

* Roman’s gym is a 3 act play

* It’s similar to Pokémon Contests, at least to an extent

* The first “act” involves introducing the characters (aka you and your Pokémon)

* You can only choose three of your Pokémon to present to the judges (Roman and two of his highest-ranked trainers)

* Occasionally, trainers challenging the gym would be dumbfounded to see other gym leaders sitting as guest judges, from enthusiastic Patton to snide Janus to aloof Virgil

* Then, you have to impress them!

* You can use your Pokémon’s moves to make all sorts of spectacles, whether it’s a big explosion, a mystifying scene, or an elegant dance

* Points are rewarded for creativity and execution. If your Pokémon gets enough points, they’re allowed to participate in act 2

* If your Pokémon fails to accumulate enough points, they cannot be used anymore

* This means that you may have to continue with only one or two Pokémon, depending on how well they perform

* Act 2 is where the actual fighting starts

* Using the Pokémon that were allowed to proceed, you face the gym’s trainers

* The setting, or “scene”, changes with each battle, ranging from a forest that boosts grass-type moves, an oceanic seabed where water-types flourish, and molten landscape with lava pools where fire-types will feel right at home

* Defeat all of these trainers, and you make it to act 3

* Time to fight the star of the show!

* This time, you must combine the skills demonstrated in act 1 with the combat introduced in act 2

* Each move, you alternate between using moves to attack, then using moves to wow the crowd

* Roman’s Pokémon, likewise, will alternate between attacking and performing

* Attacking, of course, does damage based on regular rules

* Moves used to perform will only work if you create a more impressive display than Roman (a VERY difficult feat)

* Then, depending on the move, you can get a drastic stat increase or do a surprising amount of damage

* The scene is also constantly changing like in act 2, meaning that your fire-type pokemon will be fine one moment, then thrust into an ocean setting where they are greatly weakened

* And then, the finale: Roman’s dynamaxed Charizard

* Those outside of the stadium would watch in amazement as a giant Charizard flew out of the stadium, igniting the sky in a beautiful kaleidoscope of fire

* To this day, only his brother Remus has been able to beat this move (although rumor has it that gym leader Virgil, in a private battle between the two, has gotten close)

* As mentioned before, Remus’ gym is pretty controversial because of how weird and disgusting it is

* Even before you enter the building, the stink is almost unbearable

* His gym is essentially a maze where trainers have to alternate between moving forward and fighting one of the gym’s trainers

* Whenever they progress, they need to choose between two or three paths, each filled with an unknown substance the trainer has to wade through (or swim through, as the paths get deeper the farther you progress)

* One of the paths is safe, albeit filled with a disgusting substance. This ranges from mud, to piss, to baked beans, and all manners of revolting concoctions

* However, this path is always better than the alternative

* The wrong path(s) is filled with a substance that is poisonous to Pokémon

* That means, if you go the wrong way, you will have to face the next trainer at a disadvantage

* One trick at the very beginning of the gym, a ruse Janus helped Remus come up with, is that the first of the poisonous paths looks like water

* Compared to the other path, a chunky substance that smells like death, most trainers don’t hesitate to dive into the clear water

* But surprise, it’s poison!

* Eventually they reach Remus, their pokemon heavily weakened from the poison and the trainers, smelling absolutely awful

* They are not allowed to shower before the final battle. Any attempts to use a water-type pokemon to clean up immediately disqualifies them

* For some reason, fewer people turn up to watch Remus’ battles than the other gym leaders...

* Janus’ gym is a hall of mirrors

* Like a funhouse, each mirror distorts your image

* Suddenly you have longer legs, a stretched torso, a bulbous head, or other types of silly deformations

* It becomes much less silly when your reflection suddenly grins back at you, mischief twinkling in their eye, and steps out of the mirror

* You’re suddenly fighting a distorted version of you and whichever pokemon is first in your party

* Depending on how they were distorted, a certain enemy stat is boosted

* Longer legs increases speed, a chubbier body increases defense, a larger head is higher special attack, etc.

* So basically, you must fight a stronger version of yourself

* Any attempts to change pokemon causes your reflection to switch to the same one

* There are two ways to defeat your opponent

* 1) Defeating them in a pokemon battle

* 2) Destroying the mirror

* (There is a third way to defeat them, but only a rare few have figured out this method in the hall of mirrors)

* However, destroying the mirror, while a quicker and easier way to end the battle, causes the stat it previously increased for your reflection to drop

* This effect is permanent until you leave the gym

* Once you finally make it to Janus, likely having lots of stat decreases, it doesn’t get any easier

* Like every gym leader, you face three of Janus’ pokemon

* Every time you cause one of his Pokémon to faint, however, his appearance suddenly changes

* You will once again face the distorted version of yourself that you had previously avoided, pokemon and all

* And no, there aren’t any mirrors to break this time

* However, Janus does reward cunning

* If you managed to discover the third method in avoiding the illusions in the mirrors, you can apply that same method here:

* When he’s in this phase, you can simply call back your own pokemon

* Reflection-Janus will likewise call his back

* If you wait long enough after you recall your pokemon, Janus will revert back to his regular appearance and throw out his next pokemon.

* This happens twice, once after his first pokemon faints and again after his second one faints

* His third pokemon, of course, is the one he dynamaxes

* Virgil’s gym, compared to the others, is very simplistic

* Instead of having a large gym, the entire town is considered the trial to obtain his badge

* You walk through the town and occasionally battle against trainers, a small crowd always there to shout encouragement and play music

* Between battles, there are stands selling merchandise and other trinkets

* Basically, it’s the small businesses taking advantage of the gym, a place where multiple trainers pass through every day, to help earn a living

* There’s even some stands selling food and pokepuffs.

* At any point while the trainer is progressing through they gym, they are welcome to grab a bite to eat or peruse the various wares

* When they finally reach Virgil, they find themselves in an outdoor stadium

* Virgil is waiting with a guitar in hand, other members of the gym and even some of his Pokémon holding instruments of their own

* Here, the trainer actually has a choice

* They obviously can just fight with their pokemon like they would any other gym

* However, they are also allowed to bring an instrument themselves

* This gives them the opportunity to attempt a different challenge for the badge:

* That’s right, folks! It’s now a jam session!

* If the trainer is able to hype up the crowd enough, or even simply impress Virgil, they earn the badge without having to fight at all

* Of course, not everyone is down for this type of gym

* There are lots of people who don’t like loud, crowded spaces like concert, whether it’s due to personal preference, or because it could cause a sensory overload, or even because it would hurt the trainer or their pokemon

* Luckily, Virgil came up with a solution to this

* As soon as the trainer enters the town, they will find a stand that has sound-proof headphones they could borrow

* They also have pins that let everyone know to tone it down when someone is wearing it

* When this trainer reaches Virgil, he instantly recognizes the pin and puts away his electric guitar

* Instead, he takes out an acoustic guitar and plays a softer piece

* Again, the trainer is welcome to either fight him normally or join in

Lmk what you guys think! I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas for this AU!

[tigerkirby215]

5e Illaoi, the Kraken Priestess build (League of Legends)

(Artwork by Riot Games)

I’ll take “Champions Everyone Hates” for $300, Larry!

Jokes aside Illaoi was a beyond obvious build with all the Unearthed Arcana subclasses being shown off. With Tasha’s Cauldron on the horizon and recent news that Illaoi is actually getting another skin it only makes sense to make a build for her.

But this is also an opportunity to make something interesting. In particular I see a lot of people online saying that the only viable melee Warlock is Hexblade, and while the Hexblade subclass certainly makes creating a melee Warlock easier it isn’t the only path you can choose. So to prove that you can play other Warlocks with a big ball to slam people with here’s a more melee focused Warlock build!

GOALS

Sheeyutu Nagakabouros - So Illaoi needs tentacles. What? Lurker in the Deep Warlock? I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Broken bones teach better lessons - Illaoi is a buff lady and I want her to crush my head between her thighs... What? Uhhh STRENGTH BUILD TIME!

Many gods ask for worship; they are weak gods - Probably the only hard part about this build is going to be ripping people’s souls out of their body... Good thing I’m honestly probably not going to do that and simply reflavor some stuff.

RACE

League of Legends has its gods and monsters, but the majority of the characters are human. Variant Humans get to start with a little bit more than the average human, but let’s get the normal things out of the way first: increase your Strength and Charisma by 1 to break bones more easily and to find more people who want you to break their bones. You also get a proficiency in a skill of your choice such as Athletics to lug a giant Kraken god head statue around all day, and a language of your choice like Deep Speech to speak to your god through your statue.

But most importantly you get a free Feat, and unfortunately this is a case of me being forced to stick feats into this build for the sake of aesthetic. Illaoi doesn’t wear armor in-game but I could make the argument that her massive arm pauldrons and general outfit could be seen as Medium armor. So even though you could get Heavy Armor “proficiency” thanks to the Eldritch Armor Invocation from the Class Feature Variants UA I’m instead going to suggest taking the Moderately Armored Feat for Medium Armor proficiency and +1 to your Strength score. Feel free to take something like Great Weapon Master instead if you’re okay with actually wearing Heavy Armor at the cost of an invocation.

ABILITY SCORES

15; STRENGTH - Eat your heart out The Last of Us 2 haters. (BTW screw everyone who’s been harassing Laura Bailey on Twitter. I know this is old news but still.)

14; DEXTERITY - Something something Medium Armor, even if Heavy Armor is an option.

13; CHARISMA - Ultimately this is a requirement for the class we’ll have to be playing, but I’m sure there’s a reason this tentacle-lover keeps showing up to ruin my soloqueue games.

12; CONSTITUTION - Illaoi is a tank in-game and while I’d love this to be higher unfortunately we need other things more.

10; WISDOM - Illaoi has knowledge of the old gods which I’d personally consider to be more Wisdom based than Intelligence.

8; INTELLIGENCE - Signing yourself off to be the priestess of some deep sea Cthulhu monster isn’t something you do when you have a high GPA.

BACKGROUND

Fun fact: you can be a priest and not be a Cleric! The Acolyte background lets you grant your service to a god, even if that god isn’t commonly accepted. You gain some Religion proficiency as well as general Insight, as well as two languages of your choice like Abyssal and Primordial to speak to all the ancient beings of Bilgewater.

Your feature Shelter of the Faithful will be a... little odd for your DM to implement. There are few temples to Nagakabouros, but if you can find followers of the Bearded Lady they will provide shelter for you and your allies, and also support you (and you alone) as their Priestess. But regardless you will still be able to find your people in your hometown, and will be able to perform sermons for your god. Even if those sermons involve cracking skulls.

(Artwork by Riot Games)

THE BUILD

LEVEL 1 - WARLOCK 1

Did you enjoy seeing the word “Fighter” a lot in my Garen build? Well you’d better be ready to see a whole lot of “Warlock” in this one. As a Warlock you get two proficiencies from the Warlock skill list so learn about the History of Nagakabouros and also take Intimidation proficiency because I’m pretty fucking intimidated when an Illaoi comes into my lane if you know what I’m saying.

But unlike most classes Warlocks get to choose their subclass at level 1 and low-and-behold we’ll be going with the Lurker in the Deep Unearthed Arcana Patron which will soon be appearing in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. One may ask why I didn’t wait for that book to come out to which I reply “I need to make content.” Regardless you get Scion of the Deep at level 1 to communicate telepathically with (almost) any creature that has an innate swimming speed that’s within 120 feet of you. The creature can understand you regardless of your shared languages and can respond telepathically. Look all I’m saying is that you’ve gotta be able to talk with Nami somehow.

But of course what you’re really here for is Grasp of the Deep. As a bonus action you create a tentacle at a point you can see within 60 feet of you. The tentacle lasts for 1 minute or until you make another tentacle. When you create the tentacle, you can make a melee spell attack against a creature within 10 feet of it. On a hit, the target takes 1d8 cold or lightning damage (your choice when it takes the damage) and its speed is reduced by 10 feet until the start of your next turn. You can also move the tentacle up to 30 feet as a bonus action on your turn and repeat the attack with said bonus action. You can summon the tentacle a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier and regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Yes I did just copy-paste the description of the ability because it’s a lot of words to say something very simple: make tentacle in 60 feet, slam people with bonus action, move it up to 30 feet per round.

But unlike in League you get more than just tentacles at level 1! You also have access to Pact Magic! You can learn two cantrips from the Warlock list: Lightning Lure lets you pull your opponent’s not-quite-soul closer towards you, and Eldritch Blast is an Eldritch Blast that lets you Eldritch Blast; I’m not going to pretend you don’t know what this cantrip is.

You also get two spells from the Warlock list and now it’s time to just take any spell that has the name “Hadar” in it. Arms of Hadar lets you strike everyone near you with tentacles; isn’t it fun to get your ultimate at level 1? For some sort-of Soul Stealing action I’m actually going to recommend Witch Bolt: after hitting an enemy with the spell you can keep hitting them from a distance and they can’t do anything about it! Truthfully though there are a lot of really great spells for this build at first level and I’m sad I can’t list them all, so if you don’t like my spell picks try out:

Hellish Rebuke (Thornmail)

Hex

Protection from Evil and Good

Thunderwave (Subclass-specific spell, otherwise known as “better Arms of Hadar that aren’t tentacles so they’re actually worse)

Yeah level 1 is always overloaded.

LEVEL 2 - WARLOCK 2

Second level Warlocks get access to Eldritch Invocations to improve their abilities, and you know what we still need? A proper ability to rip out people’s souls. Shame we won’t get that, but Grasp of Hadar will pull them closer and Lance of Lethargy will slow them for trying to escape their Test of Spirit. These invocations do stack (IE there’s no rule saying you can’t apply both at once) so you can theoretically pull someone 10 feet closer to you and make them 10 feet slower, resulting in 20 total feet of distance you’re gaining on them.

You can also learn another spell at this level and while there are plenty of good ones I’m going to suggest some Thornmail, or rather Armor of Agathys. The spell doesn’t require Concentration, gives you some bulk, and makes enemies think twice about hitting you. And it scales well too!

LEVEL 3 - WARLOCK 3

So how about we get something big to bonk our enemies with? Hello Pact of the Blade! In short you make a weapon in your hands to fight with, and I’d argue that a Maul is probably the closest to a big two-handed bludgeoning weapon.

I should mention that technically you need the Improved Pact Weapon invocation to be able to cast spells while you have a weapon in two hands, but you can get around this by using a component pouch instead of a focus. (And Illaoi seems the type to cast with squid organs.)

Oh and you can learn second level spells now! Spells like Earthbind to make sure your foes don’t take to the sky to escape the wrath of the ocean.

LEVEL 4 - WARLOCK 4

4th level Warlocks get an Ability Score Improvement so it’s time to invest in your main stat: Strength! What was that? Charisma? No no silly Warlocks use Strength obviously, so put +2 into that.

You also learn another spell at this level, and another cantrip! For your cantrip Mage Hand will let you summon a little tentacle for you to grab smaller things at a distance. As for leveled spells Ray of Enfeeblement will let you pack Exhaust for your foes, reducing their attack damage. It’s a bit of a dirty trick but Nagakabouros doesn’t fight fair.

(Artwork by ERDJIE on DeviantArt)

LEVEL 5 - WARLOCK 5

5th level Warlocks get another Invocation so guess what we’re taking? Yup: Eldritch Smite, pretty much a given whenever I make a Pact of the Blade build. This will let you slam your foes so hard that they fall over! I’m also going to suggest you replace Lance of Lethargy with Thirsting Blade, as by this point Grasp of Hadar is already pulling them close enough thanks to two Eldritch Blasts per turn.

You can also learn another spell at this level and remember when I said we’d take any spell with the name “Hadar” in the title? Hunger of Hadar lets you make an area pitch black and summon a bunch of tentacles in that area. Basically Hadar is this world’s Nagakabouros. "Bearded Lady, Nagakabouros, names don't matter! Action does."

LEVEL 6 - WARLOCK 6

At 6th level your tentacles finally have some lifesteal! And by lifesteal I mean defensive properties. Guardian Grasp lets you use your reaction to make a tentacle shield an ally from a hit, reduce the damage they would’ve taken from an attack by half. The tentacle can shield any ally within 10 feet of it, and it disappears after defending them. Note that this works for spells too, so if someone’s having their soul ripped out of them you can use your abilities to pull it right back in!

Additionally your servitude to the Bearded Lady grants you a Fathomless Soul for the ability to breathe underwater, a swimming speed, and resistance to Cold damage.

And finally you can learn another spell like the Unearthed Arcana spell Spirit Shroud. This spell will let you slow enemies that are near you and also do extra damage.

LEVEL 7 - WARLOCK 7

7th level Warlocks get another Invocation but there’s nothing that particularly interests me. May as well get Devil’s Sight in case you’re playing against a Nocturne.

You can also learn another spell at this level and hey look more tentacles!  Evard’s Black Tentacles is a subclass-specific spell that makes tentacles that can hold people down!

LEVEL 8 - WARLOCK 8

8th level Warlocks get another Ability Score Improvement: increase your Strength by 1 and your Constitution by 1, as those are your two main stats as a Warlock. Definitely.

You can also add another spell to your list, and while there are plenty of great choices I’d opt to rid yourself of the unworthy with Banishment.

(Artwork by Diazex on DeviantArt)

LEVEL 9 - WARLOCK 9

9th level Warlocks get access to another Eldritch Invocation, but again none of these are that particularly interesting so I suppose you could grab Otherworldly Leap for the Jump spell at will?

But you get access to another spell and if you need guidance from Nagakabouros then Commune with Nature will let you gather information to aid you to spread your faith.

Now (or ideally sometime before) would also probably be a good time to replace a lot of your old spells, so depending on your DM here’s some spells you should probably swap out, and what they should be swapped to:

Arms of Hadar (RIP tentacles) with Vampiric Touch (3rd level) for some lifesteal. (Enervation at the 5th level is also a decent alternative that works at range.)

Witch Bolt with Dimension Door (4th level) for a Teleport back to lane.

Earthbind with Synaptic Static (5th level) for a Leap of Faith against your foes. (By that I mean it’s my build and I like this spell.)

Ray of Enfeeblement with Cone of Cold (5th level) for another powerful AoE spell in a teamfight.

LEVEL 10 - WARLOCK 10

At 10th level Lurker in the Deep Warlocks can feed their god’s Devouring Maw. As an action you can create a 10 foot radius sphere centered on a point you can see within 60 feet. Each creature in that area must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be restrained. And then: teeth... this feels like Pyke’s thing. Regardless any creature that starts its turn in the area takes 3d6 cold / lightning damage (your choice.)

Restrained creature can try to get out on their action, and at the start of your turn if anyone is in the area you gain temporary hit points equal to your Warlock level. You can use this ability once per short or long rest, so essentially consider it like an extra spell that’s exclusive to you and your faith.

Speaking of extra spells you don’t get another spell known but your tentacles do more damage now: 2d8 to be exact. You also get another cantrip: Minor Illusion will let you summon more small ghost tentacles, except these ones don’t do anything except for fool the enemy into thinking they’ll have a fun laning phase.

LEVEL 11 - WARLOCK 11

11th level Warlocks get their 6th level Mystic Arcanum, which is a spell you can only use once per Long Rest. Basically it’s a regular spell slot, unlike your Warlock slots which come back on a short rest. Unfortunately there really aren’t a lot of Mystic Arcanum options, and the ones at level 6 aren’t spectacular. Circle of Death is probably the best even if the lore is a little iffy.

You can also add another Pact Magic spell to your list: many say that a Dream is a window into one’s soul, so messing with people’s dreams only makes sense for you to test their souls. Oh and you get a third spell slot for your Pact Magic! Yay!

LEVEL 12 - WARLOCK 12

12th level Warlocks get an Ability Score Improvement but I’m going to instead suggest the Resilient feat for Constitution, increasing your CON to a 14 and giving you proficiency in CON saves. Constitution is one of your main stats as a Warlock after all!

You also get another Eldritch Invocation and now it’s finally time for an invocation we will keep! Lifedrinker will let you add your Charisma modifier as damage to your weapon attacks. I know it’s such a weird thing for Warlocks to have since they rarely use Charisma, but it’s still useful!

(Artwork by sharrm on DeviantArt)

LEVEL 13 - WARLOCK 13

At level 13 you get your 7th level Mystic Arcanum. To test weak souls Power Word Pain will see how much they can take before they reach their limit. If a target is at 100 HP or less they are affected by crippling pain. Their speed can be no higher than 10 feet, they have disadvantage on attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws (other than CON saves), and if the target tries to cast a spell, it must first succeed on a Constitution saving throw, or the casting fails and the spell is wasted.

A target suffering this pain can make a Constitution saving throw at the end of each of its turns. On a successful save, the pain ends. While this may seem weak this doesn’t require your concentration, and can set up for all your allies to break the nonbelievers.

You can also add another Pact Magic spell to your list like Elemental Bane. Here’s the trick: pick a damage type of your tentacles that your allies are also doing. This will make both them and your tentacles stronger!

LEVEL 14 - WARLOCK 14

14th level Lurker in the Deep Warlocks get their final ability, Unleash the Depths. As an action, you choose a point within 30 feet of you to summon a manifestation of Nagakabouros. You then have one of two options:

Transport. You and up to five willing creatures of your choice that you can see within 30 feet of the manifestation point are grasped by spectral tentacles and teleported to a point of your choice within 100 miles that you have visited within the past 24 hours.

Fury. You can direct a barrage of spectral tentacles to strike up to five creatures you can see within 30 feet of the manifestation point. Each target must make a Dexterity saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save, the creature takes 6d10 cold or lightning damage (your choice) and is knocked prone. On a successful save, it takes half as much damage and is not knocked prone. The tentacles then vanish.

You can only do this once per Long Rest, so you can essentially consider it another Mystic Arcanum of sorts.

LEVEL 15 - WARLOCK 15

15th level Warlocks get their 8th level Mystic Arcanum and to truly test one’s faith try Feeblemind. You choose a target to damage and force them to make an Intelligence save: if they fail their Intelligence and Charisma become 1 and they become unable to do most things that require thinking. (Detailed in the spell.) This spell lasts for thirty days unless healed by a specific spell, afterwards they can try to repeat the save.

But more importantly you get some more Invocations and sweet Bearded Lady we can finally get some good ones! Grab Witch Sight to know the truth behind one’s soul.

And you get one more Pact Magic spell like Sickening Radiance to exhaust the spirit... because it causes Exhaustion... the D&D status not the LoL Summoner Spell.

LEVEL 16 - WARLOCK 16

16th level means an Ability Score Improvement so it’s finally time to stop beating around the bush: get more Charisma so Lifedrinker is better. There really isn’t much other use for it.

(Artwork by Riot Games)

LEVEL 17 - WARLOCK 17

At 17th level you get your 9th level Mystic Arcanum; the strongest spell you can cast! When a soul is too weak to fight it must die: Power Word Kill will instantly kill a target with 100 health or less.

In addition you learn more Pact Magic: by this point your foes should truly Fear you (and the fact that I’m not allowed to take any spell that creates undead.) Yes most enemies by this point can resist fears, but on the bright side you finally have four spell slots for your other spells! (Or Smites.)

LEVEL 18 - WARLOCK 18

18th level Warlocks get their final Eldritch Invocation: Visions of Distant Realms will let you use the vision of the Bearded Lady to see across all of Runeterra... or at least as far as Arcane Eye lets you.

LEVEL 19 - WARLOCK 19

19th level Warlocks get our final Ability Score Improvement and yeah: Charisma for Lifedrinker... among other things.

And you get your final Pact Magic spell: take Hold Monster as the final option to keep an enemy down as you beat them into shape.

LEVEL 20 - WARLOCK 20

20th level Warlocks are Eldritch Masters. You can spend 1 minute praying to regain all your expended Pact Magic slots. Once you regain spell slots with this feature, you must finish a long rest before you can do so again.

...I mean yeah you could just spend an hour to Short Rest, but being able to get 4 more 5th level spell slots in just a minute could be useful! ...Maybe...

FINAL BUILD

PROS

They need wisdom; they don't need teeth - Even though you only have two attacks as a “casting” class you do plenty of damage thanks to Lifedrinker and your tentacles. (Assuming you’re using a Maul) you’re doing 4d6 + 10 bludgeoning, an extra 8 necrotic, and an extra 2d8 of Lightning or Cold damage with your Bonus Action. If you take the averages of those numbers you’re going to be doing about 44 damage per turn! Not to mention Eldritch Smites to truly break their spirits!

Blessed is motion - Your AC shouldn’t be terrible with Medium Armor, but the real strength is in Guardian Grasp. Being able to reduce the damage of an attack by half is universally useful. Above-average HP (thanks to a good CON mod) definitely helps too.

I am a teacher; Bilgewater will learn - Despite your weak mental stats you have a good amount of utility with proficiency in a number of skills and spells to gather information like Arcane Eye, Commune With Nature, and Dream. Not to mention Witch Sight which will see through any illusions or shapeshifting. This means you’re a fighter who can see through invisibility!

CONS

If I hate something, I destroy it - Illaoi is a big lady, and while her physical abilities may be strong her mental capabilities are a little lacking. Your Wisdom saves are fine enough thanks to Proficiency but your Intelligence and Dexterity saves are rather subpar, and as mentioned earlier your Ability Checks aren’t going to be great thanks to your low mental.

My god is not love; it is a kick in the pants - All the memeing I did in this build aside the focus on Strength over Charisma was probably not the brightest, especially considering that the hit chance of your tentacles is based on your Charisma. See if you can get Point Buy for this build instead to max out Strength and Charisma: Medium Armor was taken more for cosmetic than anything, and Heavy Armor would probably be a better choice. And of course feel free to take Charisma ASIs early if you think you need them.

Something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens - Truthfully while 9th level spells an extra invocations are nice this build would’ve probably benefited a lot more from some Fighter or Paladin levels to get a Fighting Style and subclass features. I built this build Warlock-exclusive partially for flavor and partially to show that melee Warlocks are possible outside of Hexblade, but 5 levels into Fighter or Paladin would get you Extra Attack (so you wouldn’t need Thirsting Blade) along with other class features. And starting as Fighter or Paladin would let you take armor proficiency too, so you wouldn’t need a feat for it! (You could grab something like Great Weapon Master instead!)

But here you have it: a level 20 Warlock build, a melee Warlock that isn’t Hexblade, a devout character with no Cleric levels, a Tasha’s build before Tasha’s comes out, and a powerful melee fighter with good use of their Bonus Action and plenty of utility through spellcasting. As long as you live life to its fullest and grab every combat by the reigns then Nagakabouros shall be pleased. Test the nonbelievers and strike at the heart of corruption! For it is her way... to get camped all game by the jungler... and still get double kills.

(Artwork by epimeral on DeviantArt)

[racingtoaredlight]

THE DEGENERATE’S GUIDE TO COLLEGE FOOTBALL TV WATCH ‘EM UPS 2021: WEEK THREE: THE END OF THE BEGINNING OF THE END

We’re still really in the early middle of the year. Sure, Oregon looked powerful against Ohio State but it’s possible Ohio State just hasn’t found it’s footing yet and the Ducks just peaked. Shit happens like that every year, more or less. You can pretty much count on Bama to win 10 and not much else. That only applies to football. The continued stratification of social classes, the accelerating collapse of natural systems that support human life, the complete lack of representation the average American in our freedom loving democracy- you can count on those things. Football is different, though: wilder but more ordered while somehow being better and stupider than real life all at the same time. It’ll be fun to all more or less die together, I think. So let’s get to the games!

I forget the business reason for having more major OOC games that actually stay on the schedule but we’re reaping the rewards for now. You know the rules: eastern times, average vegas odds at the time of writing, prediction abilities are bad on a good day, there’s supposed to be a weekly RTARLsman post but I haven’t done a real one in about 21 months, formatting errors up to and including listing the teams incorrectly aren’t worth pointing out because nobody’s coming to fix them anyway. I don’t expect professionalism out of you so don’t ask it out of me.

Saturday, September 18

Matchup                      Time (ET)        TV/Mobile

NIU at 25 Michigan     12:00pm            BTN

It’s easy to say Michigan is due for a self-inflicted dick kick the trick is to predict ahead of time when exactly the embarrassing, season-unraveling loss will come. I don’t think it’s today but I also don’t have a lot of faith in Michigan to cover a 27-point spread.

UAlbany at Syracuse     12:00pm        ACCN

I find it hard to believe Albany’s football program is in such disrepair that they don’t even warrant a line against Syracuse. I think we’ve had five 1AA-over 1A upsets so far this season. I couldn’t possibly watch this game but I’ll keep an eye out for it on the ticker. Syracuse is bad enough to lose anywhere to anybody.

  Tennessee Tech at Tennessee   12:00pm    ESPN+/SECN+

I should probably find a site that lists the good games at the top of each time slot instead of this free for all.

Western Michigan at Pitt     12:00pm    RSN/ESPN3

Pitt has actually looked pretty good so far but they don’t have an AP ranking yet. I can’t say much for this matchup so I just assume the Panthers cover the -14.5 and get a little number next to their name next week.

15 Virginia Tech at West Virginia     12:00pm    FS1

This is actually of some interest to me. Virginia Tech is ranked 15 on account of beating UNC but it’s not hard to imagine that neither the Hokies nor the Heels are actually worthy of a ranking. WFV is favored at home but still might trigger some couch burning and “upset” talk with a win. The Mountaineers are this week’s new collection from Homefield Apparel so expect some magic!

Boston College at Temple        12:00pm     ESPNU

Old Big East rivalry game. Nobody can look away.

Chattanooga at Kentucky         12:00pm     ESPN+/SECN+

I thought Chattanooga had moved up to 1A but there’s no line listed for this game so I guess not.

8 Cincinnati at Indiana           12:00pm            ESPN

Indiana was good last year and maybe that was just a once-in-a-generation fluke but I’ve still got visions of the Hoosiers toppling Cincy and ruining their theoretically possible playoff run. I’m assuming the Bearcats won’t play anybody else better than IU this year but that’s just a guess backed by historical precedent which isn’t a thing you should really use to gamble on college football.

16 Coastal Carolina at Buffalo    12:00pm      ESPN2

Chanticleers vs. Bulls, the eternal struggle writ in football. I don’t think the CSUNY school is particularly good this year but Coastal being favorited by 14 points in an early kickoff road games still feels like a trap to this sharp.

Michigan State at 24 Miami (FL)     12:00pm    ABC

Surprisingly to me, this is the fifth all-time meeting of these two schools. Just as surprising to me, Miami has never before lost to Michigan State. Weird but makes sense if you think about it, this will be the fourth out of five matchups played in Miami. As near as I can tell, Sparty tried to use the Canes the same way Notre Dame used to as an in-season bowl game but bailed on the idea when they kept losing. To be fair, Sparty’s record in bowl games isn’t that much better than their 0-4 against Miami. The last time these two met was 1989 when Percy Snow was on his way to the Butkus Award and Miami was on their way to a third National Championship. The Hurricanes team was pretty well-stacked but is probably the least remembered of their title teams. It did feature future Hall of Famer Cortez Kennedy and a freshman OL that would go on to be September 2021′s hottest head coach in cfb, Mario Cristobal. This year’s Miami roster might look good in 30 years but right now they’re a little messy. D’Eriq King is only 8 months removed from ACL surgery (if you watch the game you will hear about this several hundred time) and has so far looked bad on his throws and a touch slower than he has in the past. Which makes sense given the timeframe but does not generally bode well for Miami’s prospects for this season.

Nebraska at 3 Oklahoma         12:00pm         FOX

If Oklahoma is a real title contender they are gonna lay Nebraska the fuck out. I’m scared of the 22.5-point line just because I don’t think the Sooners defense could stop Bishop Sycamore but it’s not crazy to think Nebraska can saw their own dicks off to the tune of a four-score loss.

New Mexico at 7 Texas A&M     12:00pm       SECN

Fuck. Jimbo must be stopped. I hate this Aggies team. UNM isn’t the team to do it but somebody along the way has to throttle aTm or this season is going to become a plague the likes of which we haven’t seen since... well, now, I guess.

UConn at Army                 12:00pm         CBSSN

Reading this matchup aloud five times in a mirror will kill college football.

Southeast Missouri at Missouri      12:00pm       ESPN+/SECN+

The southeastern part of the state will travel to within the bounds of the state for a classic football game somewhere within the borders of the state.

Minnesota at Colorado            1:00pm         P12N

I’m not completely disinterested. It’s weird and doesn’t have any national impact. Not much more you can ask for in a game you probably can’t find on your TV.

Nevada at Kansas State          2:05pm          ESPN+

Hell yeah, this is trash. Nevada is a road favorite! Take KState all the way.

Purdue at 12 Notre Dame         2:30pm          NBC

Notre Dame has looked a little bit of a mess so far but they’ve won both of their games. Not the worst position to be in. Purdue has also won both of their games. I don’t want to get my hopes up just yet but it seems like the Irish are riding the razor’s edge just asking to be pushed off. Keep an eye on this score, maybe the good people of the world will have something to celebrate in the late afternoon/early evening.

Kent State at 5 Iowa                 3:30pm         BTN

Iowa’s fifth? It’s too fucking early for this shit.

Florida State at Wake Forest     3:30pm         ESPN

0-2 Florida State goes on the road as a 4-point underdog to face 2-0 Wake Forest. Mike Norvell is really out on a plank right now and I am not sure he can safely find his way back to the deck.

Georgia Tech at 6 Clemson        3:30pm          ABC

Clemson’s got talent all over and Georgia Tech sucks but I’m still not sold on DJ Uigalelei as an NFL savior type of player. Or a national championship winner for that matter. He reminds me of EJ Manuel.

Baylor at Kansas                    3:30pm             ESPN+

Baylor is not good but the betting public is getting hip to the “bet against Kansas every chance you get” strategy so the line has jumped four points already this week and I wouldn’t be surprised if it makes it another couple before kickoff to get to 20+. Which is still probably too kind to the Jayhawks.

1 Alabama at 11 Florida           3:30pm           CBS

Bama has only had a couple of practice games against lower division opponents but they look as complete as any team I can remember from a talent/scheme perspective. This is a pretty good test and the 15-point line seems a little over-confident on the road in the Swamp. If the Bammers really do overwhelm the Gators then you can pretty much start planning on their return to the CFB Playoffs.

Tulsa at 9 Ohio State                3:30pm            FS1

Every week of every year I struggle to keep Tulsa and Toledo straight. Toledo is the one that almost beat Notre Dame last week. Tulsa is the one that lost to UC-Davis in week 1. Ohio State may be troubled on defense but that only matters against other top-tier teams. Having the line moving in Tulsa’s direction is absolute lunacy. If the Buckeyes can’t cover 25 points then they’re in real trouble. For now my guess is that Oregon is just better than we realized and OSU is going to be fine.

SMU at Louisiana Tech             3:30pm         CBSSN

This is my kind of counter-programming if nothing else is close. Not sure if there are some ponies down to have points shifting towards the Karl Malones but I think SMU is up to a two-score win.

LIU at Miami (Ohio)                    3:30pm          ESPN+

Sure, whatever you say.

USC at Washington State         3:30pm            FOX

At first I thought this was USC-UW and I was ready to emotionally invest in the drama but it’s just Wazzou. USC giving up on a playoff spot in week two to sit around and wait for Urban Meyer is going to be fucking hilarious when the Trojans end up getting jilted at the altar.

Idaho at Oregon State                3:30pm           P12N Oregon

Pac-12 Network Oregon. This implies the existence of a P12N Washington. I’ve seen the main network on TV before. It was fine if a little bit too “featuring Matt Leinart” for my tastes but seeing the weird way they’ve splintered their content is giving me a deeper understanding of west coast football fans that absolutely hate the Pac-12 Network.

Bryant at Akron                           3:30pm           ESPN3

Tune in to see some guy named Bryant touring around Akron.

Elon at Appalachian State          3:30pm           ESPN+

I hope App State runs this grifter out of their campus on a rail. The more bad stuff happens to Elon Musk the better off all of humanity will be.

Delaware at Rutgers                   3:30pm             BTN

Fuck me, this is just all the pain in the world masquerading as a sporting event.

Eastern Michigan at UMass         3:30pm          FloFootball/NESN+

I don’t have much interest in this game but seeing that it’s available on the Nintendo Entertainment System Network is intriguing.

Colorado State at Toledo              4:00pm           ESPNU

Toledo blew a huge opportunity last week so they’re ripe for a letdown but all signs point to Colorado State being incredibly bad at football this year.

Sacramento State at California    4:00pm          P12N Bay Area

P12N Bay Area probably reaches cable subscribers in like Vallejo and nowhere else in the entire world. When I put it that way it seems like exactly where this game belongs but it’s still not a thing that should exist. I mean the network but it’s true for the game also.

Northwestern at Duke              4:00pm              ACCN

Disgusting.

Mississippi State at Memphis        4:00pm          ESPN2

I think Memphis can knock down the SEC’s middle tier but I haven’t gotten a clear idea of either of these teams yet.

Georgia Southern at 20 Arkansas       4:00pm      SECN

Arkansas rose up last week because of the weird insistence by Lice Dad that playing a middling Texas team was the biggest game in school history. Arkansas has played in the SEC CG more than once. They’ve won a national championship. How does a guy that’s paid to be an SEC homer even make such a dumb statement and keep his job?

Ball State at Wyoming                  4:00pm             Stadium

I watched the CFB 150 episode about the Black 14 this week so now it’s all I can think about for Wyoming football.

Arkansas State at Washington       4:15pm            P12N

What the hell happened to UDub to fall back to this lowly spot? Did Chris Peterson just fall on his ass in recruiting?

Murray State at Bowling Green       5:00pm           ESPN3

This sounds like a sixties movie title for a spy agency thriller that could be mistaken for a comedy when not viewed through a then-contemporary lens.

East Carolina at Marshall                 6:00pm         Facebook

ECU is looking like a doormat and Marshall might be really good again but I would never in good conscience ever contribute to facebook’s good fortunes wittingly.

Fordham at Florida Atlantic             6:00pm             ESPN3

I want to love this game but I actually hate it.

Old Dominion at Liberty                    6:00pm           ESPN3

There is going to be so much COVID passed around this stadium.

Middle Tennessee at UTSA                6:00pm          ESPN+

Beautiful, horrible, unwatchable mess. This is where you go to feel like you are alone in the universe.

Troy at Southern Miss                        7:00pm             ESPN+

There’s also this.

Grambling State at Houston               7:00pm             ESPN+

And this one.

Utah at San Diego State                      7:00pm            CBSSN

This is real entertainment. Twitter will be all over the next listing so I’ll be FOMO’d into watching that for a while but SDSU-Utah on CBS SN might be where I first dreamt up the concept of degenerate football. It was either that or a UFL game featuring a QB duel between Daunte Culpepper and Jeff Garcia.

South Carolina at 2 Georgia               7:00pm             ESPN

I’m waiting for Georgia to bumble. I’m counting on it. Georgia-Clemson was a classic early season game that somehow helps both teams in the rankings all year but ends up actually being a showcase of how shitty their offense are rather than a referendum on great defense.

UIW at Texas State                             7:00pm              ESPN3

I think UIW is a union trade school or something. So I guess I’m rooting for them.

Charlotte at Georgia State                 7:00pm              ESPN+

Charlotte’s semester in Atlanta would shape her life in ways that nobody could have envisioned when she left her family’s home in the late summer following her failed attempt to run a bakeshop.

FIU at Texas Tech                              7:00pm             ESPN+

Maybe I actually hate college football.

Florida A&M at USF                           7:00pm             ESPN+

USF could lose this. Worth checking on if you see an upset alert.

Furman at NC State                          7:30pm            RSN/ESPN3

Body bag game.

Utah State at Air Force                     7:30pm             FS2

Kind of neat degenerate game but, depending on the uniform choices, could be a bit monotone and tough to follow.

Virginia at 21 North Carolina             7:30pm             ACCN

The South’s Oldest Rivalry! Like most of the previous 125 meetings of these two school’s, this year’s game will mainly decide who sucks worse. Of course in the ACC Coastal being slightly less bad than your opponents is the winningest strategy of all. Go Hoos!

Stony Brook at 4 Oregon                   7:30pm            P12N

Great scheduling to follow up an emotional game with a body bag. I’m not being facetious, this is right where you need these games.

UAB at North Texas                          7:30pm           Stadium

Not gonna open an app or whatever to watch this but I bet it’s fun for off-brand college football.

Central Michigan at LSU                  7:30pm             SECN

LSU at home at night is supposed to be the best atmosphere in college football. Way better than a 19.5-point line against Central Michigan. What stage of LSU’s life cycle are we in right now?

22 Auburn at 10 Penn State               7:30pm            ABC

War goddamn Eagle, baby. Penn State is doing that stupid white out thing which, correct if I’m wrong again, only goes for the people in the stands. So they’ll all be dressed up in pretty much Auburn’s road colors to watch Auburn. I hate Auburn but I really hate Penn State.

Alcorn State at South Alabama          8:00pm           ESPN3

Things are looking rough for the rest of the docket.

Rice at Texas                                      8:00pm            LHN

A battle of equals.

Stanford at Vanderbilt                        8:00pm           ESPNU

Look at this American aristocracy horse shit. Fuck these schools and the teams of horses that carried them in.

Tulane at 17 Mississippi                      8:00pm              ESPN2

The racist south may just have the nation’s best QB. It’s a good year for Matt Corral to show off his arm strength because 2022 is not looking like a bumper crop of QB draftees at this far off date. He’s small for the position but Kyler Murray, Baker Mayfield and Russell Wilson are all smaller. If the arm talent is real he could go #1 overall.

Jackson State at ULM                         8:00pm              ESPN3

Nope.

SC State at New Mexico State            8:00pm           FloFootball / CW El Paso

Sorry.

Oklahoma State at Boise State              9:00pm          FS1

Whoa whoa whoa. This is uniform heaven. And on the blue turf? Your eyes will burn. Embrace that feeling.

Northern Arizona at Arizona                  10:00pm          P12N AZ

P12N AZ. Holy shit. What the hell were these people thinking? This has to be the smallest demo ever targeted by a network.

19 Arizona State at 23 BYU                     10:15pm          ESPN

Seeing these teams face off as ranked opponents is very weird. Real late 80s vibe here. It’s titillating in its way. Might not even be the most fun game in the late night region.

14 Iowa State at UNLV                           10:30pm           CBSSN

UNLV is an absolute wasteland of a program. It’s kind of stupid, really. They aren’t in an unsellable spot and they don’t play the most rugged schedule but year after year after year they lose 9 or more games. Makes more sense than not having a good baseball program but there should be some G5 magic in Vegas. Iowa State is going to roll.

Fresno State at 13 UCLA                       10:45pm            P12N

Chip Kelly having UCLA as the premier program in L.A. is something I couldn’t have seen coming just last week but we’re there now. And Fresno State plays some wild offense that could/should make this the late night hangout spot. If you can find it. If you have this channel. That shouldn’t be a question! Fuckin’ a, Pac-12, what are you doing?

San Jose State at Hawaii                      12:30am            FS1

Technically a Sunday game but I cut the header because if you’re watching this there is an implicit understanding that it’s still Saturday. Not sure what’s going on with the kick time, though. I was under the impression that Hawaii games had to kick off by 11:59pm Eastern to count with the rest of the week’s games. Very odd. That’s really all I have to say about this game.

[ciathyzareposts]

Game 351: Morton’s Fork (1981)

The copyright date on the main screen would seem to refer to the Maces and Magic engine, not to this specific game, which all evidence agrees was released in 1981.

         Morton’s Fork

United States Chameleon Software (developer and original publisher); Adventure International (later publisher)

Released 1981 for TRS-80 and Apple II

Date Started: 9 January 2020

Date Ended: 9 January 2020

Total Hours: 4

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

Morton’s Fork is the third game in the series generally called Maces & Magic, after Dungeon (1979; later called Balrog or Balrog Sampler) and Stone of Sisyphus (links to my coverage). It’s been difficulty to reconstruct the history of the company even though I spoke to one of its principals, Richard Bumgarner, back in 2013. Chameleon was the moonlighting gig of three Indianapolis-based medical professionals, including x-ray technician Bumgarner. From what I can figure, they conceived of the series in the late 1970s and may have produced and marketed all three games before they struck a publishing deal with Scott Adams’ Adventure International. The first game was originally called Dungeon but later acquired the (nonsensical) Balrog or Balrog Sampler names from AI. Adventure International also seems to be the source of the Maces & Magic series name, although it appears nowhere except on the game packaging. AI also gussied up the title screens a bit, removing the jokes that the creators had placed and (of course) adding the AI name and logo.

         A later version of the main screen, from the Apple II edition.

          I’ve spent years trying to find a working version of Morton’s Fork–all three games are notoriously unstable–and the one I was finally able to play lacks the AI logo on the title screen. It’s possible that all three games were produced and marketed as early as 1979 and that the 1981 date is from when they were re-distributed by AI, but so far I haven’t been able to find any magazine evidence of Chameleon selling the second two games directly.

           A 1981 ad for the Adventure International releases of the three titles.

         Even if Morton’s Fork had a 1981 release date, its technology is essentially the same as the first game in the series. All three games play exactly the same way, just with different scenarios and puzzles. All three are RPG/text adventure hybrids in which the goal is to collect a fixed number of treasures in a large environment and then find your way out of the game. A mutable hero and wandering monsters are blended with fixed landscapes and unchanging puzzles. The hero could theoretically be swapped between games as if they were “modules” in a traditional RPG experience. The games are thus somewhat like Eamon (1980) but without the central “hub” disk.

             A leaflet in the game encourages the player to buy the other games.

            All three start the same way. The player creates a character and the game rolls for strength, luck, dexterity, intelligence, constitution, and charisma. The character is assumed to be a warrior, or a warrior/thief, as there is no magic in the game. After creation, the player is given a chance to purchase weapons and armor from a very long list of obscure terms, apparently created by a doctor who had an encyclopedia or something. You are limited in what you buy by gold and encumbrance.

Dungeon and Stone of Sisyphus had the player explore dungeons with pan-cultural themes, including a hippodrome, an Egyptian room, and an Arabian desert. Fork moves the action to a large castle. The box says that it’s a “wizard’s castle,” but in-game there’s no hint of a wizard. The goal is simply to loot it of as much treasure as possible.

            All of the Maces & Magic games feature absurdly detailed weapon and armor lists.

          Morton’s Fork begins a bit differently from the other titles by including a “good luck” screen as the game begins. Although it seems full of cliches, it is in fact full of hints. For instance, the advice to “lift your spirits; you may pry some of the secrets loose” is a hint to drink with an NPC in the castle’s cellar. “Keys to hidden riches may take many forms” is a clue to use a hairpin as a lockpick. “You must know when to hide your light and when to let it spring forth” refers to a section of game where you have to light a torch to navigate a dark hallway, but then extinguish it to avoid getting attacked by bats. “Paint a rosy future for yourself and doors may open” is the clue needed for the endgame.

           A pre-game text screen full of spoilers.

          The game eases you into its journey with a long path leading to the castle. You find a token, and then on the next screen a pedestal with a slot. This lowers the drawbridge. You find an iron bar and then a rock with a bunch of scratches; prying the bar reveals a passcode that you must give to the butler when you first arrive. Once you reach the castle’s entry, the game opens up and you can flexibly explore and acquire treasures.

       An early puzzle. The number is randomized for each new game.

           The text quality is good, if not as verbose as Infocom games of the period. Inputs are also much more limited. On any given screen, the game gives you numeric inputs for what you can do and where you can go, so you never waste a lot of time typing verbs and nouns that have no effect. The only exception is that on any screen, you can use an item from your inventory, typing a simple (and usually obvious) keyword to specify what you want to do. Thus, you enter a dark room. In addition to following the game’s suggestions to (1) leave or (2) feel your way down the corridor, you can also hit “P” to open your pack, choose the torch, and type LIGHT or IGNITE or any of several synonyms. Most of the game’s puzzles are about using the right inventory item in the right place.

            A typical text screen with numbered choices.

          There are fixed combats with certain enemies as well as random combats with guards that roam the corridors. Combat is executed automatically, with your attributes and weapon strengths aggregated into a single combat score and then pitted against your enemy’s. Opponents lose hit points (constitution) each round until one of them dies. 

          Combat with some castle guards.

         It’s relatively easy to roll a character too weak to win any of the game’s combats, or too poor to afford enough protection to do well. Some of the enemies are, I believe, out of the reach of any first-round character and would have to be fought by a player who escaped a first attempt with a bunch of treasure and used it to buy much better equipment. 

The game follows its predecessors by offering a lot of choices but not being necessarily very logical or “fair” in the execution of those choices. For instance, in a den, you’re faced with a fireplace with three levers. One opens a hidden niche and reveals a valuable coin collection. The second causes the fire to roar into the room and kill you. The third releases a “smoke monster” that you have to battle. There really is no way of determining the good from the bad when making your choice.

                 This is funny, but I’m not sure it’s a logical outcome of taking a glass of punch at a party.

           They aren’t really “role-playing” choices, either. If you find your way into the torture room, you have options to attack the torture troll and thus free his prisoner or help the torture troll crank the wheel that operates the rack. If you attack the troll, you face a near-impossible battle and if you manage to kill him, the prisoner just gruffly wanders away. If you help torture the prisoner, you get valuable intelligence about how to enter the throne room.

Finally, there are an awful lot of instant death situations that are hardly fair. Just wandering into the wrong room can kill you. I suspect these are in place to artificially bolster the game’s replay value. Otherwise, I can’t see how any player would take one month to finish it, which the box says is the average.

        All I did was pull on a rope.

All I did was pull a lever.

All I did was walk into a room.

            Overall, though, the castle is a fun place to explore. It’s a living place, with guards roaming the halls and shooting craps in their off-duty room, a butler guarding the entryway, and guests dancing the night away in a ballroom. The game isn’t obvious about it, but I suspect your success or failure as you navigate the halls is based partly on your attributes. For instance, if you visit the ballroom you can try to pickpocket the guests. Not only is success based (I suspect) on dexterity, but your ability to even enter and stay in the room has something to do with your charisma.

Your ultimate goal is to assemble a group of treasures. I didn’t find them all, but I found almost all of them:

          A ruby necklace, pickpocketed from the guests in the ballroom.

A large gold figure. It’s found in its “small gold figure” form in a room with piles of objects and a large purple flame. By looking at the objects, you can figure out that throwing items into the flame makes them bigger, so tossing in the “small gold figure” gives you the large one. You also have the option to jump in the flames yourself for a permanent boost to strength and constitution, although you kill yourself if you try it a second time.

         The one bit of “character development” in the game.

         A coin collection, found in a hidden niche in the den’s fireplace.

A silver tea service, found by picking the lock of a cabinet with a hairpin.

An emerald orb, found in a dresser that opens when you strike a tuning fork in the room.

Gold cookies, looted after you kill a “cookie monster” in the pantry off the kitchen. That’s not right.

A diamond stickpin, simply found in one of the rooms.

A multi-jeweled crown, found in the throne room, which you reach after a long sequence of puzzles. You have to walk over a pit and pass a swarm of bats by strategically lighting and extinguishing a torch, pass a large dragon by pouring “shrinking powder” on him, and get by a guard monster by giving him a password that you got by steaming open an envelope. 

        One of the more memorable sequences in the game, though I never did find any use for the dragon dung.

         The platinum chameleon, found at the top of a tower that requires a lot of inventory puzzles to successfully climb.

       The most difficult puzzle of all is getting out of the castle. I wouldn’t have solved it if I hadn’t figured out that the welcome screen was full of hints. Eventually, you find a couple of rooms that link to a chute. If you climb in the chute, you end up tumbling into a non-descript room with no exits. It’s only from that opening screen that you get the hint to use a bucket of paint (found in a “many-colored room”) to PAINT DOOR on the wall. This causes your door to swing upon and reveal “the corporate headquarters of Chameleon Software,” where “astonished programmers” help you carry your treasures out of the dungeon.

              Might and Magic would draw from this ending years later.

           You’re then given your final experience score (from the monsters that you killed) and your final point total from the treasures that you acquired. After a few runs at the game, I was able to achieve 1,340 out of a possible 1,492 points.

          I’m going to call this a “win.”

           There were some rooms that I didn’t solve that might have held the additional treasures. There’s a closet off the top of a staircase with a “closet monster” who was always too powerful for me. If you’re unlucky enough to wander your way into the gym, you get picked on by three buff guards. Insulting them causes them to attack you, and I couldn’t defeat them. The other options all lead to negative outcomes. Also, I suspect there was something I was supposed to do with a crystal chandelier.

          None of these options leads to anything good.

         Theoretically, you’re supposed to be able to save the character and then re-enter the game, using the riches from your first adventure to purchase better equipment and try again. Unfortunately, for none of the three games have I managed to get a character to survive the transition from game disk to save disk and back again. It’s a miracle when the program runs right at all instead of crashing with vague errors, failing to load the weapon and armor tables, suddenly deciding my character has no inventory, or a host of other problems.

In a GIMLET, Morton’s Fork gets a 17 compared to Dungeon‘s 20. Fork has fewer opportunities for character development, fewer interesting encounters, and a smaller game world than the first game in the series.  

         My map of the game.

        Before we go, we should discuss the name of the game. A “Morton’s fork” is described by The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms as “a situation in which there are two choices or alternatives whose consequences are equally unpleasant.” It is traced back to John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England under Henry VII. He is said to have argued that a man living ostentatiously could clearly afford higher taxes while a man living frugally must be saving his money–and could thus afford higher taxes. The “water test” for witches (if you float, you’re a witch and you’re executed; if you sink and drown, you’re innocent) is often given as an example of a Morton’s Fork.

        An in-game Morton’s fork. You die in a fire no matter what option you choose.

        It’s a curious title for a game, particularly since the only “fork” in the game is a tuning fork, and it’s hardly a centerpiece. But like Stone of Sisyphus, which references a process of doing the same thankless task repeatedly, I think the creators were making a commentary on adventure games and perhaps even “choose your own adventure”-style books, in which multiple options lead to the same outcome. There’s one notable moment in the game in which you’re given three ways to escape from a fire, and none of them work. 

Were they critiquing themselves? Making fun of their own players, who paid $29.95 for the game only to presumably lose three consecutive characters to the same fire? We can’t say. All we know is that the creators chose a title that ostensibly pokes fun at the laziest of adventure game tropes–and then they stocked the game with actual examples.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-351-mortons-fork-1981/

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: Letang vs. T.O., Offer Sheet Nonsense, and More Hockey Bloopers

Three stars of comedy

The third star: Kris Letang vs. Terrell Owens. I wonder how this hockey player can do on turf against an NFL great? Yeah, it goes about as well as you might expect.

(It didn't go any better for Lars Eller, either.)

The second star: Darnell Nurse vs. Eric Gryba. Look, neither one of these are especially good roasts. I just like the idea that even NHL players fall back on the whole "your vs. you're" thing when they don't have a good comeback on Twitter.

Now I want to see Nurse move on to the next round to face Owens, just for the moment when his uncle shows up with a folding chair.

The first star: Kris Letang vs. Montreal. Hey, look at Letang grabbing two spots on this week's list. This time, he comes away with a clear win.

Normally we'd subtract points for sucker-punching a fan base that's already down, but… it's Montreal.

Outrage of the week

The issue: Once again, we're headed to an off-season where nobody signs an offer sheet, even though there appear to be obvious cases where one would make sense.

The outrage: This is stupid. If NHL teams were really trying to win, they'd be using this tool to improve instead of worrying about hurt feelings or whatever other excuses they come up with.

Is it justified: Yes, but only for Leon Draisaitl.

Settle down, Oiler fans. I'll explain.

It's true that the lack of offer sheets sure feels like a case of collusion, with everyone agreeing to leave one another's players alone. That doesn't actually do anything to keep salaries low—players get 50 percent of hockey revenues no matter what, remember—but it does make life marginally easier for GMs around the league who have to deal with unsigned players.

On the flip side, signing a player to an offer sheet is almost always futile, because they're basically always matched. In the last 20 off-seasons, there's been one unmatched offer sheet (Dustin Penner in 2007). That's it. Matching offer sheets is so automatic these days that teams make a public promise to do so in advance.

So even if you can get a player to agree to sign one—people seem to forget that part—you're basically going to make an enemy of another GM, temporarily tie up your own cap space, and create the small but non-zero possibility that your own RFAs become a target for retaliation. And all for a player that you won't end up getting, because again, the other team is going to match every time. You lose something, and gain nothing.

So what's the point?

Well, as many have argued, teams do benefit by creating cap headaches for each other. This is supposed to be a competition, after all, and making things tougher on an opponent should be fair game. But that's more of a theoretical gain than anything. Sure, the team you target might end up with a cap crunch that forces them to part with some other player at a discount, but who's going to get that player? Probably not you, and maybe a team you're fighting for a playoff spot.

So in a world where matching is automatic, signing an offer sheet is basically a waste of time. There's no point.

Except for Draisaistl and the Oilers. They're the one case where using an offer sheet to screw over another team really would make sense, and the reason is simple. The Oilers are really good.

They have the best player in the league in Connor McDavid. History tells us that means they're probably going to win a Cup, and probably soon. They already made big strides last year. Their championship window is open right now, and it's going to stay that way for at least a decade.

This was a rare chance for other teams to throw a wrench into the title-winning machine the Oilers are steadily building. Throw a $9 million offer at Draisaitl, force the Oilers to match it, and then let Peter Chiarelli deal with the roughly $3 million salary cap headache you've just given him.

I don't want to sound defeatist here, Western Conference teams, but there's a good chance that the salary cap is pretty much all that's going to keep the Oilers from running over you for years to come. The Draisaitl contract is a rare chance for you to step in and tighten its grip on them. Some Western team with cap space and hopes of winning a Cup themselves someday—like, say, the Flames or the Sharks or the Wild—should be looking for any opportunity to derail the inevitable. (Nashville, too, but David Poile has the other top RFA in Ryan Johansen to worry about, so we'll give him a pass.)

We've seen this before. Do you think anyone wishes they'd made life harder on the Crosby/Malkin Penguins back in 2007 or so? Think anyone would like to go back and launch a preemptive strike at the Kane/Toews Blackhawks in 2009?

It won't happen—again, these GMs are all pals and don't want to make life difficult for one another—but for once, it should. When the Oilers are skating around with the Cup in a year or two, don't say you weren't warned, or that you didn't have a chance to make it harder for them.

Obscure former player of the week

It now seems all but official: NHL players won't be going to the 2018 Olympics. Even though the league made that announcement months ago, many fans were still holding out hope, especially after it emerged that the 2017-18 schedule seemed to have been designed with some wiggle room in mind.

But alas, no such luck. Bill Daly shot down the schedule talk, and with Canada finally announcing a non-NHL coach and GM this week, it appears that everyone is moving on.

That means we'll be back to the old way of filling out a national roster: with a mix of amateurs, minor leaguers, and NHL players who aren't in the NHL that year for whatever reason. ( Cough, Iggy.) So today, let's bestow Obscure Player honors on a guy who didn't have much of an NHL career, but got to represent Canada at the Olympics three times: Wally Schreiber.

Schreiber, a winger, had a big year in the WHL in 1981-82. The Caps took him in the eighth round of that year's draft, a few picks ahead of Obscure Player alumni Todd Okerlund. Schreiber never made it to the Capitals, but had some success (including a 50-goal season) in the IHL. He joined the Canadian national team in 1986, and in 1987 he signed as a free agent with the North Stars.

Schreiber played in his first Olympics in 1988, scoring once in eight games. Canada had home ice that year but failed to medal, instead finishing fourth. Schreiber would make his NHL debut a month later, scoring in his first game for the North Stars and going on to score six goals in 16 games. He'd get part-time duty the next season, but managed just two goals in 25 games. That would turn out to be the last action of his NHL career.

He headed to Germany in 1989, where he'd play professionally for another decade, but he returned to the Canadian national team for the 1992 Olympics, scoring twice to help Canada win silver. And he was back again in 1994, earning silver again as Team Canada lost to Sweden in the infamous Peter Forsberg shootout.

All in all, Schreiber played 24 Olympic games for Team Canada—still among the nation's all-time leaders—scoring four times and earning two medals in the process. At press time, there was no word on whether a 55-year-old Schreiber was prepping for a comeback in 2018.

Trivial annoyance of the week

This week's trivial annoyance has been bugging me for years. It's going to bug you, too, so consider this fair warning: Feel free to skip this section. Seriously, I need to get this off my chest but you'll be happier if you go through life without having this question shoved into your brain. No hard feelings. Just head down and meet the rest of us in the YouTube section.

No? Fine, you had your chance. Here we go.

Why do we have two separate penalties for "holding" and "holding the stick", but slashing and slashing the stick are both just "slashing"?

Look, I warned you.

It's weird, right? There's no good reason I can come up with to have separate categories for one type of foul but not the other. You can't hold. You can't slash. You can't do either to an opponent's stick. So why treat them differently?

For what it's worth, the two types of holding are technically violations of the same rule, 54.2, but that rules specifies that holding the stick should be announced as such, and gives it a separate hand signal (it's actually the only penalty in the rulebook that has a two-part signal.) So this isn't just something that referees started doing on their own. Somebody felt the need to write it down.

Meanwhile, the rulebook just defines slashing as hitting an opponent's body or stick. That's it. One call, one signal, and we're done with it. The way the rule is actually called is kind of dumb, but that's beside the point. It's one call, end of story.

Anyway, this is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night when it's almost August, and now it can do the same for you. Enjoy eventually forgetting all about it, having it nestle into your subconscious for a few months, and then suddenly having it burst out the first time you see a "holding the stick" penalty get called in October and it makes you irrationally angry.

Classic YouTube clip breakdown

Much like pop music, the NHL sounded a lot better in 1990 than it does today. For proof, let's blow the dust off of the old VHS collection.

This segment comes to us from the immortal Super Dooper Hockey Bloopers, which every kid got for Christmas in 1990 if your parents loved you. We've featured it in this space before, including its John Davidson-hosted musical interlude.

Look, I don't say this lightly: Super Dooper Hockey Bloopers is one of the five best hockey films of all time. I don't even think that's up for debate. I have the rankings as: 1. Slapshot 2. Super Dooper Hockey Bloopers on VHS 3. Youngblood 4. Hockey: The Lighter Side on VHS 5. Any footage of copies of The Love Guru being fed into a bonfire.

This bit is fairly simple. They're going to take a handful of highlights and slap some funny sound effects on them. But it was made with footage from the late 80s, so you can pretty much guess what we're going to get: dirty hits, ridiculous clutch-and-grab, and somebody getting a concussion that we all make fun of. Roll the tape.

We get a quick intro, highlighted by an "Oh yeah, Scott Stevens used to play for the Capitals" moment in which he sends Ken Daneyko airborne with a hip check. I'm going to go ahead and assume that this moment was extremely conflicting for this guy.

Next, we get an extended look at the Bruins doing, well, something. I'm not actually sure what's going on here, but Bob Sweeney is cranking his stick into something or other. Our funny sound effect is wood cracking and… wait, is that a baby crying? What are they implying here? This is disturbing, let's keep moving.

By the way, nine-year-old me will never stop thinking that having a guy named Asselstine is hilarious.

Hey, it's an Allan Bester sighting! Bester was fantastic. He was listed as 5'7" and 155 pounds, and I think that was overselling it. He also played for the terrible Ballard-era Maple Leafs, which led to Don Cherry's immortal line: "Allan Bester sees more rubber than a dead skunk on the Trans-Canada Highway."

Next comes my favorite moment of the entire clip: somebody playing "defense" against Wayne Gretzky. This being the late 80s, defense means just grabbing him and hanging on while he drags you around the ice, in this case accompanied by horsey sounds. We all laughed and then forgot about it, because that's just how teams like the Nordiques played defense in those days.

Seriously, that may not have even been a penalty back then. This is your periodic reminder that anyone who tries to tell you there's too much clutching and grabbing in today's NHL has only been watching hockey for a few years.

We get the requisite car crash effect for a pileup, a shot of Lou Franceschetti hitting himself in the head for some reason, and Derek King playing with his stick. Then comes what looks like it's going to be a standard Cam Neely body check, until—wait for it—yep, solid work by the rink crew in Buffalo as always. Bonus points to the cameraman for immediately panning down for the closeup of Neely's remains.

We get another hit, this one sending Benoit Hogue airborne, and I'm honestly not sure if the sound effect at 0:58 is supposed to be what I think it is. If it's a commentary on the late-80s Sabres playoff record, it might be a little too on the nose.

Huh, guess I was wrong. With only a few seconds left, we made it all the way through the clip without making fun of anyone suffering a head injury and… Nope, there it is. Pete Peeters take a shot right on the button, and he's down for the count. It goes without saying that we get some cuckoo-clock sound effects to accompany the moment, because we were all terrible people back then.

And that does it for our clip. Again, the entire production is a masterpiece, from the truly weird opening sequence to the various bits like the Dubious Distinction Awards. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com . DGB Grab Bag: Letang vs. T.O., Offer Sheet Nonsense, and More Hockey Bloopers published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[junker-town]

The Knicks are committing crimes against basketball

The Knicks are an even bigger disaster than we imagined.

The Knicks are even worse than the memes suggest.

On media day, New York Knicks team president Steve Mills declared the team’s offseason was actually executed as planned. And it wasn’t hard for anyone to call bullshit.

Just three months earlier, Mills issued a statement pleading for fans to keep faith after not landing Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. Of course it wasn’t the plan to instead ink anyone who’d accept a ballooned, short-term salary, positions or skill sets be damned. Mills was lying, or at least engaging in strategic delusion in the name of self-preservation.

Yet somehow, that reading gives Mills and the rest of the organization too much credit. It doesn’t take long watching this team to realize things are a whole lot worse than even the most reductive Knicks jokes suggest.

Those jokes are true, to be clear. Nothing will change until toxic ownership is removed. The Knicks did sign too many power forwards this summer. This roster is impossible to coach while still giving Mills and general manager Scott Perry enough plausible deniability to suggest head coach David Fizdale is the biggest problem. The young players on the roster are a tad overrated and aren’t fulfilling their draft potential. The product really is the result of years of yo-yoing between plans, all while selling fans on endless pivots and possibilities that never come to fruition.

This team is actually so much worse than all of that. The roster Mills and Perry assembled is an endless black hole of self-interest and misaligned incentives that nudges every player to his worst instinct. It belongs in a Breaking Madden experiment, not actual reality. It’s a roster of mediocrity that adds up to a tiny fraction of the sum of its parts. It’s such a disaster that it’s impossible to blame any single factor for its dysfunction, which is ideal for a Teflon team president whose only skill is tossing others under the bus to save himself.

The Knicks’ “marquee” free agent signing this summer is the most fitting on-court avatar for all of this. Once upon a time, Julius Randle was a top prospect with a bright NBA future. But after spending his formative NBA years mired in the Lakers’ dysfunction, then a season on a lost New Orleans team where he put up numbers with no impact on winning, Randle has mastered the art of appearing to play hard while not actually playing hard in a constructive way.

So far, Randle has imported all of his bad habits and none of the shot-making he displayed in New Orleans. He catches the ball and holds it, triple-threating any potential opportunity away to scan a defense that should’ve already been tilted for him. Even on TV, you can feel the energy sucked out of the other four Knicks players as they stand helplessly waiting for Randle to make a play. No big man in the league averages more seconds or dribbles per touch.

What do the Knicks get from all that standing around? Usually, those plays are multiple-dribble moves into traffic that fail to work out.’

Or, contested three-pointers that never seem to go in. (Randle is shooting 21 percent on three-and-a-half three-point attempts a game. You’re open for a reason, my man).

Randle is a powerful driver at his best and completes enough of those plays to make you think he’s a force of nature. However, all the starting and stopping he does negates that power.

A more decisive version of Randle should be able execute a quality dribble-handoff, using screening angles that takes his partner’s defender out of the play and reacting from there. But Randle instead plays far too upright, so he fails to make contact on screens he sets. Poor screening means no separation for him or his teammates, which further kills the flow of the offense and/or sets him up for another one of those battering-ram drives into traffic.

Theoretically, Randle’s speed and strength can be weapons he deploys in conjunction with non-stop movement. In reality, though, Randle only activates the engine when he gets the ball, and by then it’s too late to create anything efficient for himself or a teammate.

Any offense with this type of player using the most possessions is committing a basketball crime. The Knicks’ half-court offense is averaging just 81.4 points per 100 possessions through the first 11 games this season, according to Cleaning The Glass. The gap between them and the second-worst half-court offense is wider than the gap between second-worst and 10th-worst. In fact, no team has been below 82 points per 100 possessions on half-court possessions since the Process era 76ers of 2014-15.

Worse, half-court plays account for nearly 78 percent of the Knicks’ possessions, third-highest in the league. That means you get a whole lot of this:

But even though Randle is an undersized, inefficient scorer who vacuums shots away from teammates and won’t set a screen or space the floor to help someone else thrive, the Knicks’ on-court issues can’t be laid at his feet. That’s because all of Randle’s worst instincts are compounded by the rest of the roster.

That includes Marcus Morris Sr., a stretch power forward masquerading as a small forward. Morris thrived in Boston last year because he got to finish plays, not start them. Sixty-nine percent of his buckets were assisted, and nearly 51 percent of his shots attempts came after zero dribbles. Less has always been more for him on either end.

He’s been forced to do more this year, which isn’t helping anyone. Only 35 percent of his shots came off zero dribbles this year, which is about as many as off three or more dribbles (34 percent). He’s averaging twice as many assists as turnovers, and watching him run pick-and-roll is excruciating.

Young big man Mitchell Robinson’s absence with a concussion means we’re getting a lot of Bobby Portis, a player adept at shooting, but nothing else. Portis’ screens are just slip opportunities for him to get off his own shot, the rest of the court be damned. He occasionally gets hot, but usually he’s running around aimlessly without offering anything defensively.

The same could be said of second-year wing Kevin Knox, who also lacks critical basketball instincts. His shooting has improved and he’s athletic, but he reads the game so slowly that he misses opportunities to put himself in position to get better attempts off.

Point guards Elfrid Payton and Dennis Smith Jr., meanwhile, have similar weaknesses at different stages of their basketball lives. Both function best with the ball in their hands, but that “best” isn’t particularly inspiring and they lack the skill or intelligence to fare well without it. (It’s worth noting Smith has dealt with horrible personal tragedy this season that would affect anyone’s play).

Frank Ntilikina is a better off-ball player and seems to have more confidence after a summer in France. But opponents still help off him when he doesn’t have the ball, which is often because the Knicks have so many other mouths to feed.

That includes R.J. Barrett, the Knicks’ prized rookie who must feel like he’s playing against 10 defenders whenever he touches the ball. Barrett’s a tough driver and has flashed more of a three-point shot off the dribble than I expected, but it’s hard to generate good looks when the floor looks like this on his pick-and-rolls:

There’s a common denominator on this roster: players who know how to function when they have the ball and either won’t or can’t when they don’t. That might improve slightly if Reggie Bullock returns from a back issue and Wayne Ellington overcomes the curse that zapped his talent. Sage big man Taj Gibson possesses some useful good habits, though he’s well past his prime. Young wing Damyean Dotson may deserve more of a look: he actually shoots threes on the move, defends his position decently, and can shift Barrett to small forward, where he’ll have more space to drive.

But rotation tweaks here and there won’t do much to create a style of play that actually works for the collective. The roster Fizdale’s been been given and the short-term contracts that brought many of those players to New York are unstoppable forces meeting immovable objects. He hasn’t done everything right, but no coach can thrive in this environment. Even if a new coach finds a root cause explaining the team’s failure, there are too many dominos that must fall for significant change.

This is a perfect way to facilitate endless whataboutism in an attempt to uncover scapegoats for the Knicks’ problems. And you wonder how Mills has survived Garden politics for nearly two decades.

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: Letang vs. T.O., Offer Sheet Nonsense, and More Hockey Bloopers

Three stars of comedy

The third star: Kris Letang vs. Terrell Owens. I wonder how this hockey player can do on turf against an NFL great? Yeah, it goes about as well as you might expect.

(It didn't go any better for Lars Eller, either.)

The second star: Darnell Nurse vs. Eric Gryba. Look, neither one of these are especially good roasts. I just like the idea that even NHL players fall back on the whole "your vs. you're" thing when they don't have a good comeback on Twitter.

Now I want to see Nurse move on to the next round to face Owens, just for the moment when his uncle shows up with a folding chair.

The first star: Kris Letang vs. Montreal. Hey, look at Letang grabbing two spots on this week's list. This time, he comes away with a clear win.

Normally we'd subtract points for sucker-punching a fan base that's already down, but… it's Montreal.

Outrage of the week

The issue: Once again, we're headed to an off-season where nobody signs an offer sheet, even though there appear to be obvious cases where one would make sense.

The outrage: This is stupid. If NHL teams were really trying to win, they'd be using this tool to improve instead of worrying about hurt feelings or whatever other excuses they come up with.

Is it justified: Yes, but only for Leon Draisaitl.

Settle down, Oiler fans. I'll explain.

It's true that the lack of offer sheets sure feels like a case of collusion, with everyone agreeing to leave one another's players alone. That doesn't actually do anything to keep salaries low—players get 50 percent of hockey revenues no matter what, remember—but it does make life marginally easier for GMs around the league who have to deal with unsigned players.

On the flip side, signing a player to an offer sheet is almost always futile, because they're basically always matched. In the last 20 off-seasons, there's been one unmatched offer sheet (Dustin Penner in 2007). That's it. Matching offer sheets is so automatic these days that teams make a public promise to do so in advance.

So even if you can get a player to agree to sign one—people seem to forget that part—you're basically going to make an enemy of another GM, temporarily tie up your own cap space, and create the small but non-zero possibility that your own RFAs become a target for retaliation. And all for a player that you won't end up getting, because again, the other team is going to match every time. You lose something, and gain nothing.

So what's the point?

Well, as many have argued, teams do benefit by creating cap headaches for each other. This is supposed to be a competition, after all, and making things tougher on an opponent should be fair game. But that's more of a theoretical gain than anything. Sure, the team you target might end up with a cap crunch that forces them to part with some other player at a discount, but who's going to get that player? Probably not you, and maybe a team you're fighting for a playoff spot.

So in a world where matching is automatic, signing an offer sheet is basically a waste of time. There's no point.

Except for Draisaistl and the Oilers. They're the one case where using an offer sheet to screw over another team really would make sense, and the reason is simple. The Oilers are really good.

They have the best player in the league in Connor McDavid. History tells us that means they're probably going to win a Cup, and probably soon. They already made big strides last year. Their championship window is open right now, and it's going to stay that way for at least a decade.

This was a rare chance for other teams to throw a wrench into the title-winning machine the Oilers are steadily building. Throw a $9 million offer at Draisaitl, force the Oilers to match it, and then let Peter Chiarelli deal with the roughly $3 million salary cap headache you've just given him.

I don't want to sound defeatist here, Western Conference teams, but there's a good chance that the salary cap is pretty much all that's going to keep the Oilers from running over you for years to come. The Draisaitl contract is a rare chance for you to step in and tighten its grip on them. Some Western team with cap space and hopes of winning a Cup themselves someday—like, say, the Flames or the Sharks or the Wild—should be looking for any opportunity to derail the inevitable. (Nashville, too, but David Poile has the other top RFA in Ryan Johansen to worry about, so we'll give him a pass.)

We've seen this before. Do you think anyone wishes they'd made life harder on the Crosby/Malkin Penguins back in 2007 or so? Think anyone would like to go back and launch a preemptive strike at the Kane/Toews Blackhawks in 2009?

It won't happen—again, these GMs are all pals and don't want to make life difficult for one another—but for once, it should. When the Oilers are skating around with the Cup in a year or two, don't say you weren't warned, or that you didn't have a chance to make it harder for them.

Obscure former player of the week

It now seems all but official: NHL players won't be going to the 2018 Olympics. Even though the league made that announcement months ago, many fans were still holding out hope, especially after it emerged that the 2017-18 schedule seemed to have been designed with some wiggle room in mind.

But alas, no such luck. Bill Daly shot down the schedule talk, and with Canada finally announcing a non-NHL coach and GM this week, it appears that everyone is moving on.

That means we'll be back to the old way of filling out a national roster: with a mix of amateurs, minor leaguers, and NHL players who aren't in the NHL that year for whatever reason. ( Cough, Iggy.) So today, let's bestow Obscure Player honors on a guy who didn't have much of an NHL career, but got to represent Canada at the Olympics three times: Wally Schreiber.

Schreiber, a winger, had a big year in the WHL in 1981-82. The Caps took him in the eighth round of that year's draft, a few picks ahead of Obscure Player alumni Todd Okerlund. Schreiber never made it to the Capitals, but had some success (including a 50-goal season) in the IHL. He joined the Canadian national team in 1986, and in 1987 he signed as a free agent with the North Stars.

Schreiber played in his first Olympics in 1988, scoring once in eight games. Canada had home ice that year but failed to medal, instead finishing fourth. Schreiber would make his NHL debut a month later, scoring in his first game for the North Stars and going on to score six goals in 16 games. He'd get part-time duty the next season, but managed just two goals in 25 games. That would turn out to be the last action of his NHL career.

He headed to Germany in 1989, where he'd play professionally for another decade, but he returned to the Canadian national team for the 1992 Olympics, scoring twice to help Canada win silver. And he was back again in 1994, earning silver again as Team Canada lost to Sweden in the infamous Peter Forsberg shootout.

All in all, Schreiber played 24 Olympic games for Team Canada—still among the nation's all-time leaders—scoring four times and earning two medals in the process. At press time, there was no word on whether a 55-year-old Schreiber was prepping for a comeback in 2018.

Trivial annoyance of the week

This week's trivial annoyance has been bugging me for years. It's going to bug you, too, so consider this fair warning: Feel free to skip this section. Seriously, I need to get this off my chest but you'll be happier if you go through life without having this question shoved into your brain. No hard feelings. Just head down and meet the rest of us in the YouTube section.

No? Fine, you had your chance. Here we go.

Why do we have two separate penalties for "holding" and "holding the stick", but slashing and slashing the stick are both just "slashing"?

Look, I warned you.

It's weird, right? There's no good reason I can come up with to have separate categories for one type of foul but not the other. You can't hold. You can't slash. You can't do either to an opponent's stick. So why treat them differently?

For what it's worth, the two types of holding are technically violations of the same rule, 54.2, but that rules specifies that holding the stick should be announced as such, and gives it a separate hand signal (it's actually the only penalty in the rulebook that has a two-part signal.) So this isn't just something that referees started doing on their own. Somebody felt the need to write it down.

Meanwhile, the rulebook just defines slashing as hitting an opponent's body or stick. That's it. One call, one signal, and we're done with it. The way the rule is actually called is kind of dumb, but that's beside the point. It's one call, end of story.

Anyway, this is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night when it's almost August, and now it can do the same for you. Enjoy eventually forgetting all about it, having it nestle into your subconscious for a few months, and then suddenly having it burst out the first time you see a "holding the stick" penalty get called in October and it makes you irrationally angry.

Classic YouTube clip breakdown

Much like pop music, the NHL sounded a lot better in 1990 than it does today. For proof, let's blow the dust off of the old VHS collection.

This segment comes to us from the immortal Super Dooper Hockey Bloopers, which every kid got for Christmas in 1990 if your parents loved you. We've featured it in this space before, including its John Davidson-hosted musical interlude.

Look, I don't say this lightly: Super Dooper Hockey Bloopers is one of the five best hockey films of all time. I don't even think that's up for debate. I have the rankings as: 1. Slapshot 2. Super Dooper Hockey Bloopers on VHS 3. Youngblood 4. Hockey: The Lighter Side on VHS 5. Any footage of copies of The Love Guru being fed into a bonfire.

This bit is fairly simple. They're going to take a handful of highlights and slap some funny sound effects on them. But it was made with footage from the late 80s, so you can pretty much guess what we're going to get: dirty hits, ridiculous clutch-and-grab, and somebody getting a concussion that we all make fun of. Roll the tape.

We get a quick intro, highlighted by an "Oh yeah, Scott Stevens used to play for the Capitals" moment in which he sends Ken Daneyko airborne with a hip check. I'm going to go ahead and assume that this moment was extremely conflicting for this guy.

Next, we get an extended look at the Bruins doing, well, something. I'm not actually sure what's going on here, but Bob Sweeney is cranking his stick into something or other. Our funny sound effect is wood cracking and… wait, is that a baby crying? What are they implying here? This is disturbing, let's keep moving.

By the way, nine-year-old me will never stop thinking that having a guy named Asselstine is hilarious.

Hey, it's an Allan Bester sighting! Bester was fantastic. He was listed as 5'7" and 155 pounds, and I think that was overselling it. He also played for the terrible Ballard-era Maple Leafs, which led to Don Cherry's immortal line: "Allan Bester sees more rubber than a dead skunk on the Trans-Canada Highway."

Next comes my favorite moment of the entire clip: somebody playing "defense" against Wayne Gretzky. This being the late 80s, defense means just grabbing him and hanging on while he drags you around the ice, in this case accompanied by horsey sounds. We all laughed and then forgot about it, because that's just how teams like the Nordiques played defense in those days.

Seriously, that may not have even been a penalty back then. This is your periodic reminder that anyone who tries to tell you there's too much clutching and grabbing in today's NHL has only been watching hockey for a few years.

We get the requisite car crash effect for a pileup, a shot of Lou Franceschetti hitting himself in the head for some reason, and Derek King playing with his stick. Then comes what looks like it's going to be a standard Cam Neely body check, until—wait for it—yep, solid work by the rink crew in Buffalo as always. Bonus points to the cameraman for immediately panning down for the closeup of Neely's remains.

We get another hit, this one sending Benoit Hogue airborne, and I'm honestly not sure if the sound effect at 0:58 is supposed to be what I think it is. If it's a commentary on the late-80s Sabres playoff record, it might be a little too on the nose.

Huh, guess I was wrong. With only a few seconds left, we made it all the way through the clip without making fun of anyone suffering a head injury and… Nope, there it is. Pete Peeters take a shot right on the button, and he's down for the count. It goes without saying that we get some cuckoo-clock sound effects to accompany the moment, because we were all terrible people back then.

And that does it for our clip. Again, the entire production is a masterpiece, from the truly weird opening sequence to the various bits like the Dubious Distinction Awards. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com . DGB Grab Bag: Letang vs. T.O., Offer Sheet Nonsense, and More Hockey Bloopers published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv