#excel lookup

[codeonedigest]

Explain Excel VLookup Function with Example | #vlookupfunction Full Video Link -     https://youtu.be/1AZgX0no2tc    Check out this new video on the CodeOneDigest YouTube channel! Learn what is VLOOKUP function in Excel & How to use VLOOKUP function in excel?  #codeonedigest #vlookup #excel #microsoftexcel #excelvlookup #excellookup@codeonedigest @msexcel @MicrosoftExcel   

[excelhelps]

Use the best lookup function in Excel (XLookup)

[rk3664]

Excel - Offset and match

Right combination to lookup values Mastering Excel’s OFFSET function in tandem with MATCH can unlock dynamic data manipulation like a pro! Why Use This Combo? Dynamic Retrieval: If your data updates or expands, the formula adapts without manual adjustment. Versatility: Works for vertical and horizontal data, and even two-dimensional searches. Imagine your spreadsheet as a city grid. The…

[techguruplus]

How to use Reverse / Reciprocal Lookup in Excel

Video Tutorial  Download this File Download All Templates

[flishlish]

I don't do this for my own characters, but I've done similar for the PCs in the campaign I'm running! I don't keep track of every single stat they have, but just the ones I find most relevant to encounter building with each character as a line in a table, and then (through the power of lookup tables) I built my own little version of kobold fight club to compare them too. Its really nice because I can see at a glance how their stats compare to whatever monsters I'm intending to throw at them without opening every individual sheet.

I can def improve/built on it, for example, I'd like to calculate dpr for the monsters, and I should probably work that out for the players as well. but anyway, I <3 spreadsheets

I make and use excel spreadsheets for my TTRPG character sheets, for the most part. I like the freedom it gives me to design the sheet the way I want and have plenty of space for notes. Plus you can plug in all the formulas to make it do the math for you, and the act of putting those formulas in yourself (as opposed to using some ready made tool instead) is a good way to learn more about the mechanics.

Anyway, I recently made a sheet for 5E characters since my friend is running Curse of Strahd in that system. We leveled up the other night, and with the use of my new sheet it literally took me 3 seconds to level my character. XD

[lazeecomet]

The Story of KLogs: What happens when an Mechanical Engineer codes

Since i no longer work at Wearhouse Automation Startup (WAS for short) and havnt for many years i feel as though i should recount the tale of the most bonkers program i ever wrote, but we need to establish some background

WAS has its HQ very far away from the big customer site and i worked as a Field Service Engineer (FSE) on site. so i learned early on that if a problem needed to be solved fast, WE had to do it. we never got many updates on what was coming down the pipeline for us or what issues were being worked on. this made us very independent

As such, we got good at reading the robot logs ourselves. it took too much time to send the logs off to HQ for analysis and get back what the problem was. we can read. now GETTING the logs is another thing.

the early robots we cut our teeth on used 2.4 gHz wifi to communicate with FSE's so dumping the logs was as simple as pushing a button in a little application and it would spit out a txt file

later on our robots were upgraded to use a 2.4 mHz xbee radio to communicate with us. which was FUCKING SLOW. and log dumping became a much more tedious process. you had to connect, go to logging mode, and then the robot would vomit all the logs in the past 2 min OR the entirety of its memory bank (only 2 options) into a terminal window. you would then save the terminal window and open it in a text editor to read them. it could take up to 5 min to dump the entire log file and if you didnt dump fast enough, the ACK messages from the control server would fill up the logs and erase the error as the memory overwrote itself.

this missing logs problem was a Big Deal for software who now weren't getting every log from every error so a NEW method of saving logs was devised: the robot would just vomit the log data in real time over a DIFFERENT radio and we would save it to a KQL server. Thanks Daddy Microsoft.

now whats KQL you may be asking. why, its Microsofts very own SQL clone! its Kusto Query Language. never mind that the system uses a SQL database for daily operations. lets use this proprietary Microsoft thing because they are paying us

so yay, problem solved. we now never miss the logs. so how do we read them if they are split up line by line in a database? why with a query of course!

select * from tbLogs where RobotUID = [64CharLongString] and timestamp > [UnixTimeCode]

if this makes no sense to you, CONGRATULATIONS! you found the problem with this setup. Most FSE's were BAD at SQL which meant they didnt read logs anymore. If you do understand what the query is, CONGRATULATIONS! you see why this is Very Stupid.

You could not search by robot name. each robot had some arbitrarily assigned 64 character long string as an identifier and the timestamps were not set to local time. so you had run a lookup query to find the right name and do some time zone math to figure out what part of the logs to read. oh yeah and you had to download KQL to view them. so now we had both SQL and KQL on our computers

NOBODY in the field like this.

But Daddy Microsoft comes to the rescue

see we didnt JUST get KQL with part of that deal. we got the entire Microsoft cloud suite. and some people (like me) had been automating emails and stuff with Power Automate

This is Microsoft Power Automate. its Microsoft's version of Scratch but it has hooks into everything Microsoft. SharePoint, Teams, Outlook, Excel, it can integrate with all of it. i had been using it to send an email once a day with a list of all the robots in maintenance.

this gave me an idea

and i checked

and Power Automate had hooks for KQL

KLogs is actually short for Kusto Logs

I did not know how to program in Power Automate but damn it anything is better then writing KQL queries. so i got to work. and about 2 months later i had a BEHEMOTH of a Power Automate program. it lagged the webpage and many times when i tried to edit something my changes wouldn't take and i would have to click in very specific ways to ensure none of my variables were getting nuked. i dont think this was the intended purpose of Power Automate but this is what it did

the KLogger would watch a list of Teams chats and when someone typed "klogs" or pasted a copy of an ERROR mesage, it would spring into action.

it extracted the robot name from the message and timestamp from teams

it would lookup the name in the database to find the 64 long string UID and the location that robot was assigned too

it would reply to the message in teams saying it found a robot name and was getting logs

it would run a KQL query for the database and get the control system logs then export then into a CSV

it would save the CSV with the a .xls extension into a folder in ShairPoint (it would make a new folder for each day and location if it didnt have one already)

it would send ANOTHER message in teams with a LINK to the file in SharePoint

it would then enter a loop and scour the robot logs looking for the keyword ESTOP to find the error. (it did this because Kusto was SLOWER then the xbee radio and had up to a 10 min delay on syncing)

if it found the error, it would adjust its start and end timestamps to capture it and export the robot logs book-ended from the event by ~ 1 min. if it didnt, it would use the timestamp from when it was triggered +/- 5 min

it saved THOSE logs to SharePoint the same way as before

it would send ANOTHER message in teams with a link to the files

it would then check if the error was 1 of 3 very specific type of error with the camera. if it was it extracted the base64 jpg image saved in KQL as a byte array, do the math to convert it, and save that as a jpg in SharePoint (and link it of course)

and then it would terminate. and if it encountered an error anywhere in all of this, i had logic where it would spit back an error message in Teams as plaintext explaining what step failed and the program would close gracefully

I deployed it without asking anyone at one of the sites that was struggling. i just pointed it at their chat and turned it on. it had a bit of a rocky start (spammed chat) but man did the FSE's LOVE IT.

about 6 months later software deployed their answer to reading the logs: a webpage that acted as a nice GUI to the KQL database. much better then an CSV file

it still needed you to scroll though a big drop-down of robot names and enter a timestamp, but i noticed something. all that did was just change part of the URL and refresh the webpage

SO I MADE KLOGS 2 AND HAD IT GENERATE THE URL FOR YOU AND REPLY TO YOUR MESSAGE WITH IT. (it also still did the control server and jpg stuff). Theres a non-zero chance that klogs was still in use long after i left that job

now i dont recommend anyone use power automate like this. its clunky and weird. i had to make a variable called "Carrage Return" which was a blank text box that i pressed enter one time in because it was incapable of understanding /n or generating a new line in any capacity OTHER then this (thanks support forum).

im also sure this probably is giving the actual programmer people anxiety. imagine working at a company and then some rando you've never seen but only heard about as "the FSE whos really good at root causing stuff", in a department that does not do any coding, managed to, in their spare time, build and release and entire workflow piggybacking on your work without any oversight, code review, or permission.....and everyone liked it

[talenlee]

Game Pile: For The Queers

For the Queers is a Descended from the Queen game, which is focused on developing queer relationship dynamics, at least, according to its copy text. It was produced by Scholastic Dragon Games and it’s available on itch.io and it’s in that particular category of $3 print-and-play games. Its presentation is a little ropy, it’s not exactly a looker of a game, and I don’t feel like it’s reasonable to pick on it for looking like it was made in Google Docs.

It is a challenging comparison to strike, though, because For The Queers is modelled on the storytelling pseudo-TTRPG, ‘For The Queen,’ a storytelling card game lauded for being, well, pretty solid, and for what amounts to a game of sitting around in a circle telling stories, it has a truly beautiful presentation and excellent approach. In addition to its sumptuous visuals, For the Queen is extremely well constructed in terms of its approach.

It’s built around a single deck of cards that’s set up so the first time you start the game, it’s already in order to teach you how to play the game and get you playing the game in the same fluid exchange. You just flip the cards off the top and go around reading them, in turn, for each player, until suddenly a card asks a player a question and they need to answer it. Using these questions, the players then construct a narrative, integrating the answers to one another’s questions, all building up to a dramatic conclusion to the whole narrative with a final card that, in For The Queen, is simply ‘The Queen Is Under Attack: Do you defend her?’

Everyone answers.

Game ends.

For The Queen, which is already such a simple game engine that it’s functionally impossible to control access to, has a SRD, a system reference document. You can make your own games that invoke it and use the same engine, which, like, you can do that anyway, because game rules are not copyrightable, but if you do it this way, with the SRD and invoking its branding, then you can connect your game to For The Queen, which is, you know, that’s cool. I like that, because it means that you can openly and directly show connections between games. Good stuff.

The central relationship in the story of For The Queers is that the characters are all given a central truth to their prompts: You are in the retinue of a royal, the Queen, who is ‘free of gender,’ and they are travelling with you to again, to journey to a distant land to broker an alliance, but also, this queen, they hold your heart. You are in their retinue, and they love you.

There’s a deeply different materiality to this game being a print-and-play of a paper sheet and an ordinary deck of playing cards. The game For the Queers is modelled on makes sure the deck of cards gets to be this enchanted device, a physically perfect device that controls the focus entirely. You flip a card, and that card presents the question. The art of the Queen in that game gets to be centralised and all the players are engaging with the question in front of them and only the question in front of them.

By comparison, For the Queers requires you look at the card flipped, then a lookup table, which is multiple pages long, and which has all the questions on it present ahead of time, meaning that it’s not hard for a player to mistakenly look at a question that they’re not ‘meant’ to (and isn’t even necessarily going to show up in the game), colouring their experience of the question.

It’s a testament to how a game system is not just the system but also how that system is presented. By putting the rules material in the most convenient to make form (a big a4/letter-printable sheet), the game is diminished in how it presents things that aren’t relevant to the players in the play experience. It’s hardly a real problem either — after all, there are a host of different ways you can approach this. Heck, the whole thing could be a very convenient web applet, just a website you press a ‘next card’ button on, using a simple script to randomise the prompt.

The form the game takes informs the way the game plays.

For The Queers is a For The Queen variant that promises a focus on ‘queer relationships,’ which is a really loaded place to start with things in a way that makes me pre-emptively grimace emoji. Queer relationships are massively varied; my marriage to my partner of twenty years is a queer relationship which has never been particularly in any way interesting, but so to is the relationship of one of my friends who has a literal spreadsheet to manage the intersecting commitments of their different alters’ different polycules. Capturing the breadth of those things in a game simulation of this engine runs a risk of failing to catch either end.

After all, I am one of The Queers, and reading this game’s prompts, I found myself struck by how much none of these questions invited interesting answers, or, particularly, were informed by The Queerness. Now, of course I’m not going to be a great eye level character here; after all, in a podcast about Disney movies, I routinely called out how often the narrative of every movie was a terrible relationship and everyone deserved to be guillotined, but I like to think I can suspend my sense of disbelief and personal politics easily enough to engage with the game that exists in terms of its narrative framing. This is about people who are doing something very important generally (helping the Queen on their way to trying to save the kingdom through an alliance) and very important specifically (you are travelling with someone you are in love with and the many other people that they love, and dealing with the boundaries of that).

Which means that the most prominent form of queerness this game forwards is polyamry and being loved by a queen who is ‘free of gender,’ and what that means is an exercise for the reader. The polyamry element as a form of queerness is, you know, fine, I’m not one of the people who thinks polyamry doesn’t count as a queerness, it’s something that heteronormativity wants to attack and disempower, they can come in under the umbrella as long as they want to be. But that’s kind of the extent of queerness in this space, and since we are also talking about a gender-unclarified queen, with literally no other world building information imposed, that’s kind of the limits of what kind of queerness the game and its story mechanics actually include.

In some ways, it feels breathtakingly sweet, that this game feels its vision of queer relationships are the natural outcome of what happens when you play this game, with these rules. It speaks to the idea of a player community where there is no need for anything but the natural outcome of these prompts to be a queer relationship, because queer relationships are that obvious and easy, but also, the queerness is not defined by any kind of norm. It is Queer, because it says it is Queer.

Like, you know, Dungeons & Dragons.

Let me be extremely clear on this game, though: For all that this game has this verbiage out of me about its challenge, about the things I think it mis-steps on mechanically to achieve its ends, and the implications of what it chooses to be about, none of this is to dismiss the game as a game for its own sake. You can get this game for $3 and play it and if you play it with a bunch of people who want to tell stories about messy queers entangled around their royal love, grappling with their feelings and despairs, you will absolutely be able to have a good time!

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[sineala]

I subscribe to the newsletter of an author I like who wrote a book about 9/11 and the War on Terror and the security state in the US and how it led to the election of Trump, and it's all very serious but apparently the author is writing an Iron Man comics series. I don't read the comics, and a lot of what I know about them comes from your fic, so I'm honestly not sure how much fanon vs canon knowledge I have. 😂 But the series sounds like it might be interesting I think? The author talked about it in his newsletter today. (This link should work. Probably.)

https://www.forever-wars.com/iron-man-how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline-succession/

I am actually really excited about this run! I try not to get excited about new Iron Man runs because chances are high that my hopes and dreams will be crushed, and I know that just because someone writes, say, stunningly excellent non-fiction, it is not a guarantee that they will be great at writing fiction at all or superhero comics specifically (cf. Ta-Nehisi Coates on Cap), but judging by everything Spencer Ackerman's been saying in interviews, his run sounds like it's going to explore a lot of interesting themes.

The post you linked links to an AIPT podcast that he was on a few days ago to talk about his new Iron Man run. For those of you who don't listen to podcasts (this is also me), the Iron Man subreddit has what seems like a fairly comprehensive summary of the interview, and I am really looking forward to the run. Issue #1 apparently hits stores on October 23.

But I will tell you why I am actually now really excited about this run. It's not relevant to anything about the comic itself. I am nonetheless very excited.

Last month, after he was announced as the new Iron Man writer, in order to hype up his run, he posted an offer on his blog: if you add the run to your pull list, and you email him proof that you're pulling his run and include a snail-mail address, he will mail you some cool Iron Man stickers.

I eventually got around to doing this last week. I was assuming he didn't actually pay attention to any of these emails so I dashed off a couple sentences about how I was looking forward to his take on Tony because he'd posted a photo of the Iron Man comics he was reading for research and several of them were among my favorites. And then I went off to get bagels.

By the time I had come back with bagels, twenty minutes later, he'd written me a very nice reply substantively engaging with the content of my extremely off-the-cuff message -- geez, if I'd known he was going to be actually reading them I would have put a lot more thought into it, you know? It was very kind and I was not expecting it.

He spelled my first name wrong in the reply, despite it being in the email header and also the name I had signed the email with.

This happens to me a lot. I have a first name that is very common in a lot of languages, but none of those languages are English. I'd say there's a 50-50 chance that a native English speaker will spell or pronounce my name wrong. This is unfortunate, because I live in the US and mostly interact with native English speakers. (My wife @lysimache immediately knew how to pronounce my name. I mean, it wasn't why I married her or anything, but I feel like it was a big plus on a personal level.)

If I have to give my name for something, I will reflexively spell it. The second-to-last time I voted, they'd switched voter lookup to you giving them your name rather than you giving your street address, which was a surprise that filled me with dread. My wife was in line ahead of me and she was completely finished voting by the time the poll workers had finished correctly spelling my name. (The last time I voted, I just handed them my ID, which is not required in my state, but I really wanted this to go faster.) I went to the doctor last week, and when they called my name in the waiting room, they said it wrong. I corrected them. They said it differently wrong a couple minutes later. I corrected them again. They said it wrong again. At that point I gave up.

(If I could think of a name I liked better that I was absolutely sure that most people could spell and pronounce, I would change my name. I still have not found one.)

So, you know, I'm used to it. It happens. Frequently. I was not at all surprised that he spelled it wrong.

He then emailed me again to apologize for spelling my name wrong. Like, immediately. One minute later. He said he was sorry and he knew a lot of people with a similar name.

Dude. Nobody does that. Nobody actually apologizes. Especially not in an email to a rando like me. He did not need to do that. At all. I was not expecting him to do that. He did that. I was honestly touched. No one bothers to do that. But he did.

I got my stickers in the mail yesterday.

I have redacted the portion of the note that has my name in it, but he absolutely spelled my name correctly.

Mr. Ackerman, sir, I hope your comic sells a million copies.

[finniestoncrane]

About Me Tag Game!

tagged by wonderful @comicsbi-thebook! tagging: @march-harrigan @letshaveadepressionparty @riddle-me-ri @nelson-and-murdock @joyjoy-the-troll @it-is-i-zim

last song: the moon of love by showaddywadddy (we couldn't remember what the fuck they sang lmao)

favorite color: green and pink pleaseeeeee in most shades!!

last book: i am still slogging through "i am legend" by richard matheson

last movie: alien: romulus

last tv show: chewin' the fat (we're on a nostalgia kick)

sweet/savory/spicy: savory!!

relationship status: married u-u

last google: "how to do lookups in excel" because my boss asked if i knew what they were and i did not but i'll figure it out thanks

looking forward to: therapy tonight omggggggg and in the long term the inevitable collapse of society as we know it because at least then i won't have to work

[pennavnprojects]

50 Dead Words

Have you ever heard of "Dead Words"? Dead Words are phrases or words that have become so overused in writing and everyday language that they have lost their impact.

Here are the top ten "Dead Words" and some alternatives to use instead!

Very. Instead, use: Extremely, Exceptionally, Remarkably, Profoundly

Things Instead, use: Objects, Items, Belongings, Artifacts

Good Instead, use: Excellent, Superb, Outstanding, Impressive

Bad Instead, use: Terrible, Horrible, Dreadful, Atrocious

Said Instead, use: Whispered, Exclaimed, Murmured, Uttered

Walk Instead, use: Stroll, March, Stride, Saunter

Look Instead, use: Gaze, Glance, Peek, Stare, Observe

Happy Instead, use: Joyful, Elated, Content, Ecstatic

Sad Instead, use: Mournful, Heartbroken, Despondent, Melancholic

Nice Instead, use: Pleasant, Delightful, Charming, Amiable

Thank you to Writing Beginner for the great resource! https://www.writingbeginner.com/dead-words/

Do a quick lookup to see how many times you use each of these words in your own writing. I was staggered to see my own!

[blackout-galaxy]

Have some…. Battle depot agents. I’m too sleepy to add any more stuff to this rn.

I may or may not have made my own Pokémon type lookup-by-number in excel for this. I was having a strange time. If you really really want statistics on these guys’ pokemon types for some reason just shoot me an ask or something lol.

I like these guys they’re funny and ill probably post their shenanigans soon enough

[meret118]

Experts fear Trump’s 'legitimately frightening' new order to turn US military into police

Trump's new order, which is entitled "Strengthening and Unleashing America's Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens," makes various declarations about the administration's commitment to supporting law enforcement professionals in the opening paragraphs. However, one section further down specifically mentions the U.S. military and the administration's intent to have enlisted service members participate in civilian law enforcement actions.

https://www.alternet.org/trump-order-military-police/

Trump Has Ordered Safeguards Stripped From Procurement As Pentagon Prepares To Spend $1 Trillion

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-procurement-executive-orders-defense

DOGE employees gain accounts on classified networks holding nuclear secrets

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/28/nx-s1-5378684/doge-energy-department-nuclear-secrets-access

American Panopticon The Trump administration is pooling data on Americans. Experts fear what comes next.

In March, President Trump issued an executive order aiming to eliminate the data silos that keep everything separate. Historically, much of the data collected by the government had been heavily compartmentalized and secured; even for those legally authorized to see sensitive data, requesting access for use by another government agency is typically a painful process that requires justifying what you need, why you need it, and proving that it is used for those purposes only. Not so under Trump.

. . .

A worst-case scenario is easy to imagine. Some of this information could be useful simply for blackmail—medical diagnoses and notes, federal taxes paid, cancellation of debt. In a kleptocracy, such data could be used against members of Congress and governors, or anyone disfavored by the state. Think of it as a domesticated, systemetized version of kompromat—like opposition research on steroids: Hey, Wisconsin is considering legislation that would be harmful to us. There are four legislators on the fence. Query the database; tell me what we’ve got on them.

Say you want to arrest or detain somebody—activists, journalists, anyone seen as a political enemy—even if just to intimidate them. An endless data set is an excellent way to find some retroactive justification. Meyer told us that the CFPB keeps detailed data on consumer complaints—which could also double as a fantastic list of the citizens already successfully targeted for scams, or people whose financial problems could help bad actors compromise them or recruit them for dirty work.

Similarly, FTC, SEC, or CFPB data, which include subpoenaed trade secrets gathered during long investigations, could offer the ability for motivated actors to conduct insider trading at previously unthinkable scale. The world’s richest man may now have access to that information.

An authoritarian, surveillance-control state could be supercharged by mating exfiltrated, cleaned, and correlated government information with data from private stores, corporations who share their own data willingly or by force, data brokers, or other sources.

What kind of actions could the government perform if it could combine, say, license plates seen at specific locations, airline passenger records, purchase histories from supermarket or drug-store loyalty cards, health-care patient records, DNS-lookup histories showing a person’s online activities, and tax-return data?

It could, for example, target for harassment people who deducted charitable contributions to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, drove or parked near mosques, and bought Halal-certified shampoos. It could intimidate citizens who reported income from Trump-antagonistic competitors or visited queer pornography websites.

It could identify people who have traveled to Ukraine and also rely on prescription insulin, and then lean on insurance companies to deny their claims. These examples are all speculative and hypothetical, but they help demonstrate why Americans should care deeply about how the government intends to manage their private data.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/04/american-panopticon/682616/

Trump Administration to Judges: ‘We Will Find You’ The attorney general’s message to the judiciary is clear.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/04/trump-administration-initimidates-judges/682620/

ETA: Its latest effort to bring the press to heel came on April 25, when news leaked of the Justice Department’s intention to aggressively pursue journalists who receive leaked information from confidential government sources.

The Guardian reports that Bondi “has revoked a Biden administration-era policy that restricted subpoenas of reporters’ phone records in criminal investigations

https://www.salon.com/2025/04/29/looking-to-trumps-next-100-days-doj-tees-up-process-for-jailing-journalists/

[my-hobby-is-finding-the-source]

could we get a lookup on this excellent image whenever you can? thank you :)

DO NOT — @pixycake

[modoreadsttrpgs]

Game Reactions: Cycles of the Eye (Citizen Sleeper Solo TTRPG)

Link: https://www.lostincult.co.uk/shop/p/citizendeluxe

Summary

In short - I like the game. I already love Citizen Sleeper, and I think that does a lot of the heavy lifting here. The prompting is extremely open-ended, and I think I would’ve struggled to come up with ideas if I hadn’t played the video game. If you’re a fan though, it can capture the vibes nicely.

The Full Cycle

Cycles of the Eye is a solo, tarot-based game based on the video game Citizen Sleeper. I have actually played through a full run of this, which I finished early this year. Normally I’ll post about games I’ve only just read, but I figured it would be fun to revisit this game, especially as I’m not sure how many people bought it, with the way it was released as part of a deluxe kit.

I was a huge fan of the game, and jumped at the chance to spend a frankly embarrassing amount of money on the deluxe package from Lost in Cult that included a design book, the TTRPG, a tarot deck, dice, and some other goodies. You can see it all layed out above. Below is the box lined up with some other games on my shelves. It was expensive, I want to share photos of how cool it looks!

For those familiar with the video game, Cycles of the Eye casts you as a sleeper arriving on Erlin’s Eye, the station from the first game. It repeats the premise of the game, and includes a cast of characters from the base game and the excellent DLC. 

If you’re not familiar, this is a sci-fi setting with themes of gig work, exploitation, and community. You play as an escaped sleeper, a mechanical body with the implanted consciousness of a real human, and a built-in obsolescence that means you’re reliant on a specific substance to stay alive. The purpose being to keep you under the control of the corporation that ‘owns’ your body.

Cycles of the Eye itself is a journaling, prompt-driven game. It uses a tarot deck to create three decks of cards. Each one becomes a ‘thread’, literally a story thread. At any given time you will have three ongoing storylines that you can choose to spend resources on, completing tasks, which will allow you to reveal the next card in the deck, using that to prompt story development based on the suit and number. Major arcana represent key characters who affect your story in specific ways, and may or may not become a regular part of your life on the station. You can see below how the play space looks mid-game.

There’s quite a lot going on - the tray I’m using here is one I bought while I was playing this game, because I realised I needed a dedicated space for the game that I could put away and get out again without packing the cards away. Though to be honest, I’m currently playing Koriko and it has an extremely similar setup, so maybe this is just standard for a tarot-based solo game. I hadn’t played one before Cycles so I’m not sure. It did feel pretty fussy to play though, especially early on as I’m grasping the various piles of cards and flicking through a rulebook and a separate lookup reference book.

When you resolve a thread, you’re encouraged to journal about how that storyline closes. You’ll then need to set up a new thread - determining what the drive (objective) is, and interpret each new challenge it throws up within that storyline. There are prompts within this process, but it’s very open-ended. Each suit is associated with a specific skillset (interface, intuit, endure, engineer), and there is a page per suit with a handful of prompts and questions to help come up with drives and rewards. It’s not a lot of information though, and you’re left with a very wide possibility space. I relied on my experience with the video game, without which I’m fairly certain I would’ve had a difficult time generating satisfying stories.

To begin with I also found it strange that there are no pass/fail mechanics, maybe I’m still shaking off that D&D baggage. As I progressed though, I found myself comfortably complicating things and building a nuanced story regardless, without the game having to push back on me or force me to do it. 

On the physical object, the books themselves are nice, small and an unusual landscape orientation, but easy enough to use and well layed out. The dice are great, feeling like the video game has come to life. The tarot deck is extremely fancy, with a nice box, the awesome art on the major arcana, and a gorgeous foil effect on the red. It’s my first tarot deck, and aside from the suits not actually being named on the cards, I’m really excited to use these for other games, as I am doing with Koriko currently!

If you’re not already a fan of the video game, this is probably a tough sell, but also you probably aren’t too interested anyway. For anyone who is a fan, this is worth trying out. Despite some of my issues with it, I came out with a really meaningful and memorable story that fits the game’s themes perfectly, which is a win in my book.

[yuesya]

Since you play Genshin, do you also play Honkai Star Rail or at least familiar with it?

I'm asking because I feel like Shiki would be the exact kind of person IX (Aeon of Nihility) would gaze at. Makes me wonder if she has the potential to become their Emanator.

I do, actually! I picked it up again recently (free five star character...) and ended up playing through the Luofu storyline. During my first attempt I barely made it to Belobog haha.

Did a wiki lookup of IX and. Possibly?? Although, Gojo Shiki isn't someone who believes existence to be meaningless. The mysterious third personality of Ryougi Shiki, however, seems like an excellent fit for this line of thought haha.