#game rundown

[cts-games]

Game Rundown: Anima Prime

Not to be confused with Anima: Beyond Fantasy.

Anima: Prime is an indie game by Christian Griffen, released in 2011. It also has a free Creative Commons version.

Upfront, one of the things I really like about it is that it includes a section on player discomfort and how to deal with it, which is pretty considerable when this game predates the X-card by about 2 years, well before safety tools were considered the norm.

Overall Camlaign Structure

The game makes use of what it calls 'Seeds' which are short prompts designed to keep the gameplay focused. This is similar to "Story/Dungeon Starters" that have caught on in the PbtA scene, and are mostly a way to keep the campaign focused and interesting. Session Zero (not explicitly called that by the game, but clearly what it is) involves creating both a Setting Story Seed and a Group Story Seed.

The Setting Story Seed is essentially the major current event that is happening in the world, affecting everyone. Basically, "What has changed in the world recently?" The examples given are an invading force, water from the local river has started tasting metallic, or a massive skyscraper has appeared overnight in the middle of the city. The important thing is that this is something that doesn't ONLY affect the PCs.

The Group Story Seed is entirely player chosen, without the GM, and I'd basically a way for the PCs to say 'this is what we want out of the campaign'. It's the reason their group has come together, their motivation as a group. It helps ensure all the PCs have teamwork in mind to at least SOME degree, and are on the same page, as well as giving the GM a carrot to dangle in front of the players when needed.

Character Creation

After going through the usual parts of character creation, like name and core concept, the first mechanical step of character creation is selecting a Passion. There are 9 Passions, each of which has a different mechanical trigger that allows you to Charge your dice (see below), and your Passion can be changed once per session.

Players also create 3 Traits that describe their character, which can be marked off during character scenes where that trait came into play, and then unmarked in order to reroll dice in combat.

From there, players pick 3 Skills from a list of 20 (the list presented in the game is geared for the default setting, Ghostfield, but groups are encouraged to collaborate during session 0 to create their own, more flavorful list of skills to use). These three skills are given a value of 4, 3, and 2. While a higher number is better, having low skills is also quite valuable in the system, as they can combo with other players better.

Next, players select 9 powers they meet the prerequisites for, which is, quite frankly, far too large a number of powers to start with IMO. On my experience this is the part of character creation that overwhelms people the fastest. The game does its best to alleviate this by offering sets of 'Packages' that can be mixed and matched together. 9 'Basic' packages that cover 3 powers needed to be a vague archetype, and 12 'Specialized' packages that each have 6 thematically linked powers. Personally I think the game would have had a stronger presentation by leading with the packages, and introducing classless character building as an advanced option.

After that, players create Backgrounds and Links, which is a subsystem I find quite delightful. These are pretty standard fare, and are just a list of important things from your characters backstory. The only difference between the two, are who that piece of backstory is for. By declaring something a part of their background, it becomes something players can draw on for roleplay inspiration. Things like "Oh, my long-lost brother taught me this trick, before he vanished without a trace." These are just things to flesh out your character, but not concepts you want to fully explore. Links on the other hand are fun bits of backstory for the GM to make use of to make stakes personal for your character. If that long lost brother was a Link instead of a Background, the GM might dangle a clue about his wereabouts in front of you to keep you pushing forward.

Finally, there are Character Story Seeds. These are your characters personal goal, the thing they are trying to achieve outside of the Group Story Seed, that the GM can use to draw you forward through the campaign.

Core Gameplay

The actual gameplay of Anima: Prime is split into two types of scenes: Character Scenes, and Conflict.

Character Scenes are fairly straightforward, with the game mostly disengaged. Players roleplay out their interactions with each other and the world, and once the scene ends, players gain a single benefit from a list of options. This can be healing for yourself or a summon, refilling your Action Pool, or marking one of your traits to give you rerolls next combat.

Some powers can give additional options in character scenes, but for the most part that's as much as the game engages with out of combat scenes.

Conflict

'Tacticle Gameplay' is a bit of a buzzword in the TTRPG industry. In general, its usage is just to indicate 'This game handles combat by using minis on a map'. Anima: Prime does not handle combat by using minis on a map. I would have a very VERY hard time keeping a straight face while telling someone that conflicts in Anima: Prime are not tactical.

Enemies come in 3 flavors, Individuals, Squads, and Swarms. Some powers affect them differently (AoE abilities will typically get a bonus against Swarms, for example), but this distinction mostly matters for Manuevers.

Each player gets one action per turn, typically one of the following: a manuever, a strike, an achievement, or activating an action power.

Manuevers are how you build up resources. They allow you to roll dice in your Action Pool, turning them into Charge and Strike dice, but they don't deal lasting damage. Narratively they can be used to hit members of a Squad, or take our multiple members of a Swarm, but not enough to cause lasting damage to the whole unit.

Stikes are the main way you spend those resources. These are attacks that can leave lasting Wounds on enemies, spending the dice in your Strike pool to do so. These strikes can be further modified by spending dice from the Charge pool as well, activating additional effects based on the powers you have selected.

Achievements also use Strike dice. Each conflict will typically have multiple Goals to go alongside it, which can have lasting effects on the battle. These can be things like "Damage the mechs armor plating to lower its Defense" or "Remove the soldiers gas mask to remove their Immunity from Poison"

And activating powers is just that. You typically use Charge Dice to activate your powers, and they can have a variety effects based on how you build your character.

Manuevers

Manuevers are performed by rolling your skills. You start with a number of free dice equal to your Skill level, and then 1-3 dice from your Action Pool based on the effort your character is putting in.

Dice that come up 3, 4, or 5 are added to your Strike Pool, dice that come up 6 are added to your Charge Pool, and dice that come up 1 or 2 are lost. A trait that was marked during a character scene can be unmarked to reroll all the 1's and 2's for a chance to keep them. If ALL of your dice roll 1's and 2's, you keep them in your Action Pool, unspent.

Each time you make a Manuever, you also check off the skill being used for it. If all of your skills are checked, you gain 2 bonus dice, which are sent to your Charge or Strike pools, encouraging players to make use of all of their skills instead of just whichever has the highest value.

Players can also spend their action to do a Combined Manuever, allowing them to give 1 die to another players Manuever but still checking off a skill for it, which can be a quick way to mark off a characters lower rated skills.

Strikes

Strikes are preformed by spending dice from a characters Strike pool, up to a maximum of 6. Any dice with a result of 3 or over counts as a success, and if they player rolls more successes than their target has Defense, that target takes a wound. This is multiplicative, so if an opponent has 2 Defense and you roll 4 successes, that deals 2 wounds. If you fail, the strike dice are refunded back to you. Otherwise, they all get discarded after the attack. Players can strike together, but ONLY if they have a power that let's them do so.

Achievements

Achievements and Goals are, in my opinion, the aspects of this game that really make it shine, and the entire reason I'm making this post. Mechanically, they work like a mix of a Strike and a Manuever. Players target a Goal, and grab up to 6 Strike dice, and pick a skill and get a number of bonus dice equal to its rating. Other people spend an action and mark off their skills to assist, just like with a combined manuever.

Once you roll, everything 3 or over is a success, and you compare it to the goals difficulty. If you didn't get enough successes to beat the difficulty, you refund the dice. If you did beat the difficulty, the dice are spent and the goal is completed, triggering additional effects. These can be anything from buffing or debuffing allies or opponents, to inflicting status conditions the players don't normally don't have, to entirely alternate win conditions for the Conflict.

Both players and enemies can attempt Achievements. Some Goals may be considered Player Only, some may be Enemey Only, and some may be contested between the two. In this way, Goals can VASTLY expand the utility of Conflict to be much more than just combat. A Race could be resolved by having two parallel 'chains' of Goals, one for players and one for their opponents, each trying to get to the end before the other. A tense conversation with weapons drawn, but has not escalated into full blown combat can be resolved with players trying to hit Goals to keep the other side from attacking and/or sway them over. At any time, either side can escalate the situation to combat by simply spending their dice on a Strike instead of an Achievement.

In this way, Achievments/Goals feel so much better than any other system I have seen when it comes to this type of mechanic. I've seen many games ATTEMPT to do the 'social interactions work just like combat!' thing, but Anima: Prime is the first time I've seen a game succeed at it this well, or something akin to what the Skill Challenges in DnD4e were attempting.

All of this circles back around to Manuevers. In the vast majority of games out there, the most basic action your character can take is some form of attack, with most of the game branching off of and expanding the uses for that action or how it can be applied in different ways.

Anima: Prime does not follow that standard. In Anima: Prime, your most basic fundamental action is the Manuever. The 'I do some cool anime shit while building up resources to meaningfully impact the narrative' action. From there, it branches off in two separate directions, Attacks and Achievements.

By using Manuevers as it's basic mechanic to generate resources, and having Achievements and Strikes be things you can spend those resources on, the game accomplishes a significant amount with relatively little compared to other games, and gives a lot of tactical depth to your choices for relatively low complexity.

This is why, even without miniatures and a map, I struggle to call Anima: Prime anything other than one of the most tactical games I've ever run.

[svtskneecaps]

dude i fucking love how this server has communication as its premise and built into its fucking core. i fucking love that. bc it's one thing to be like 'this server is about multilingual communication and cultural exchange!!' bc that could present in any NUMBER of ways but like. with the federation and the eggs and a common shared goal they all decided WE ARE A TEAM. and like, ok,

when baghera was sus of jaiden because of the thing when pomme died and jaiden had been the reason baghera left her side for the only time that day, i wasn't even worried. i wasn't worried bc i was like "we just wait. because i know they will TALK TO EACH OTHER." and I WAS RIGHT. TWO DAYS LATER IT WAS ALL CLEARED UP AND BAGHERA WAS HELPING HER OUT WITH CUCURUCHO

and the ordo theoritas is functionally a secret organization. it would be SO EASY to gatekeep the lore, on grounds of "the federation is always watching and anyone could be a spy" and yet the ordo theoritas says that, like bad SAYS THAT, says OUT LOUD, "anyone could be a traitor" and then turns around and goes "hey person i've had a few days' worth of conversations with, here's a detailed rundown of everything we've learned about the island's mysteries, and the secret location of the ordo base". SOFIA was supposed to be secret from everyone, and for a little bit she was. but now like, the ordo theoritas is showing her to everyone. it would be SO EASY to hide things and to gatekeep things but they just. don't do it. here's the supercomputer!!!! don't forget to grab her waystone so you can come back anytime!!!

bad learns something. "i need to tell forever/cellbit/baghera". forever figures out a new way to protect the eggs, and he gets it to everyone within days. cucurucho tries to have a secret conversation and the entire server knows about it almost instantly and there are three people buried in the walls reading the subtitles and giving each other meaningful glances

i love it. i love it. miscommunication plotlines drive me up the fucking wall and the fact that i wasn't even SCARED when jaiden and baghera could easily have angled into an angsty tangled web of that and instead just MET WITH EACH OTHER AND EXPLAINED EVERYTHING AND CLEARED THE AIR ALMOST IMMEDIATELY was so fucking breathtaking. and this is a multilingual server. this is a MULTILINGUAL SERVER. i love it. i love it so much i want to cry. it's a server for communication and people Communicate, it would have been SO EASY to slip into monolingual factions and stick to the familiar but they DIDN'T. they DIDN'T. WE GET TO HAVE A THEORY TABLE WITH SO MANY LANGUAGES SITTING AROUND IT. we get to have conspiracy walls in every language!!!! idk sometimes i forget how fucking CRAZY all this is, like the scale of what they've accomplished

so yea thank you to quackity and the qsmp admins for this, and thank you to the streamers for hearing 'this is about connections' and taking it ENTIRELY to heart, and also thank you to whoever the fuck decided to give quackity's school class the job to look after a fucking egg to learn about parenting. bc holy shit. holy shit.

[lgbtpopcult]

LGBTPOPCULT BEST OF 2023 AWARDS 🏆

Best film, drama

The Color Purple

Best film, comedy

Bottoms

Best animated film

Harley Quinn: A Very Problematic Valentine's Day Special

Best TV Series, drama

Monarch Legacy of Monsters

Best TV Series, comedy

Lucky My Love

Best animated TV series

Harley Quinn the Animated Series

Best International Series

wtFOCK

Best Reality Show

Love Allways

Best variety show or comedy special

Wanda Sykes, I'm an entertainer

Best Video Game

Little Goody Two Shoes

Best Novel

The Fiancee Farce

Best Comic book title or graphic novel

Poison Ivy

Best Song

Not My Fault, Renee Rapp

Best Music Album

REVERSA - Carol Biazin

Best Online Content Creator

Eden Morrissey

[honeybeebabs]

darts! :D

(clearly i couldn't fit everyone in there, i would have crashed my phone trying to do so LMAO-)

[cakedpie-pathologic]

I don't know who she is but she looks like my girl Grace Pathologic

[thisteaistoosweet]

Cahara but if he was a contestant of the termina festival.

(Made for an enlightened cahara au)

[princeofcyberpunk]

A wholly lawless underground town that is ruled by the criminal syndicate Cipher..

[siredisco]

do you think they've ever kissed.

[queenlua]

are there any Final Fantasy 16 enjoyers among my followers here? how we feelin about Final Fantasy 16, gang?

i ask because, ngl, i am cringing pretty hard at how excessively/on-the-nose-ly/tediously the game keeps driving home the "[Fantasy] Slavery Is Bad" theme. i understand is kind of ridiculous of me, given i've written many hundreds of thousands of words of fanfiction about The Other Video Game With A Cringey Fantasy-Slavery Theme, like, surely i'd be inured against this kind of cringe by now, but, hmmm. at least fire emblem por/rd didn't have 18 different sidequests all hitting the EXACT SAME "you help someone and they call you a bunch of slurs" beats over and over, yaknow

anyway! i'm hoping the game eventually assumes i got the message on Slavery Is Bad and moves on to explore other themes, i'm VERY interested in learning more about Cid's whole deal, but who knows

also i've only seen like 0.8 seconds of Dion so far which seems improbable given how much fanart i've seen of the gentleman. hope we see more of him at some point

[houndfaker]

what they dont know is that im a marie p4 enjoyer. heres her in me and the besties timeskip au i dont feel like giving the context for

[geekynightowl1997]

I know I already made a comment about The Rundown Job: but I just- I-I just want to talk about a particular scene. (This sucks, because I'm making posts on my phone because I don't have a laptop. AND because I'm not tech savvy enough to figure out how to make gifs and memes!) But the scene. It's in my top five favorite scenes. The scene?

Just after Eliot calls Vance- and then it switches to Eliot talking to him. Leading up to shaking hands Parker is nervous. Rightfully so. There's too many FBI agents. Too many cops. Too many people who can catch them. Still. Parker and Hardison folllow Eliot. They stay by him and when Eliot realizes what's gonna happen? That Vance is going to arrest them?

They circle each other. Eliot has his back to Hardison and Parker. Parker's back to Eliot and Hardisons. Hardison's back to Parker and Eliot. They trust each other enough to flank. Guys. These people are thieves, hackers, and hitters. Only one of them is professional trained.

They know they can't take them all. Still Parker and Hardison don't run. Despite being trapped. They don't give each other up. Parker and Hardison know that Eliot isn't dumb and that Eliot won't let them get hurt. He's rather die than allow them to get hurt. In the same way Parker and Hardison won't let Eliot get hurt.

And (this I know had been stated!) when they are put into the back of the prison truck- and Parker falls asleep. (Even if it's pretend,) she still trusts Hardison and Eliot. Not to mention Hardison doesn't question Eliot. Doesn't ask him how he could have gotten it all wrong- he just sits and listens.

Hardison and Parker know Eliot. I think more than Eliot realizes.

This is just another reason why I believe they are soulmates.

[elendsessor]

one of the worst nocturne takes i’ve ever heard is that the game “has no direction” and that you don’t have any motivation when it’s like

did you play the opening

did. did you. did you fuckin. actually read the dialogue. because kagutsuchi tells you your goal. you’re supposed to discover the legacy of your existence aka what side you end up taking. you’re presented all these scenarios and are asked which direction do you want to take because you can’t conceive your own reason individually. if you could, that would ruin what the game is trying to do.

in general you can’t go into nocturne treating it like a traditional turn based jrpg. how it presents itself is so different that you really need to ditch how you view normal jrpg story structures. it keeps basic stuff because it’s writing 101 but fun fact not every game has a long slow burn prologue.

[lancrewizzard]

Uhhh context for the vampire tragedy pls??

Okay, I will try. The vampire tragedy in question is the game series Legacy of Kain. It has a fantastic overarching story about fate and free will, and is the best constructed time travel narrative I've ever encountered. It's also pretty old and large chunks of it are bad to play.

The very basic bare bones plot is that a nobleman called Kain gets turned into a vampire and sent off on a quest to save the land of Nosgoth by restoring these magical pillars that are tied to the health of the land, fisher kingdom style, by killing the mages tied to each pillar. Then instead of the heroic sacrifice he should have made, he said "sod this, I'm going to become the vampiric emperor of the world."

A millennium later, his eldest son Raziel gets killed over Kain's ego, comes back as an angry little blue guy, and goes on a quest to kick Kain's head in. This leads to him chasing Kain far into Nosgoth's past, learning that he's supposedly a prophecised hero of a lost vampire culture, making an enemy of God (who is a dick) and breaking many many things, including the fabric of timespace and also my heart.

It is convoluted. It is messy. It is almost impossible to summarise succinctly and coherently. It is not whatever the fuck this lunatic described.

And as an aside, Soul Reaver has exactly one female character and she's dead. Super dead. She's a ghost and has one story relevant cutscene, plus a few optional lines directing the player to the next destination. I love the hell out of the series, but it is by no stretch a feminist narrative.

[lgbtpopcult]

October 2024 wlw entertainment rundown

TV

Lucky My Love, First episode drops October 28th on YouTube

Everything Now, Netflix, October 5

The Fall of the House of Usher, October 12, 2023

Movies

Tripped Up, October 20,

Books, Games, Music etc.

In A World Of Our Own: Chasing Dreams And Love

Sophia Miller, an openly lesbian supermodel, enjoys her solitary life in the bustling heart of New York City. But when her gay millionaire best friend, Chris Anderson, requests her to play his pretend girlfriend for a family gathering in Texas, she can't refuse. After all, Chris is on the brink of becoming the CEO of the billion-dollar Anderson Corp.

Enter Alissa Anderson, the Oxford and Cambridge-educated, closeted lesbian daughter of the conservative and formidable Henry Anderson. With the CEO position at Anderson Corp now up for grabs, Alissa finds herself in a fierce rivalry with her own brother. Ascending to the top of the family business and shattering traditional gender roles has always been her ultimate dream. However, her well-laid plans begin to unravel when she encounters her brother's "girlfriend" at a pivotal family gathering on their Texas ranch.

When Sophia and Alissa's worlds collide at the Anderson estate, everything is on the line: the coveted CEO position, concealed sexual identities, a sham relationship, and a burgeoning real one that threatens to bloom amidst the chaos.

“Sushi for Empress Setsuko” is a cozy and comedic point & click adventure game and yuri dating sim set in a fantastical Japan-inspired land. Follow Mizumi Nagashima as she travels around the Empire, seeing gorgeous views, catching delicious fish, and charming beautiful women.

RELEASE DATE:

3 Oct, 2023

Iris Kelly Doesn't Date

A fake relationship after a horrible one-night stand is anything but an act in this witty and heartfelt new romantic comedy by Ashley Herring Blake.

Everyone around Iris Kelly is in love. Her best friends are all coupled up, her siblings have partners that are perfect for them, and her parents are still blissfully married. And she’s happy for all of them, truly. Iris doesn’t want any of that—dating, love, romance. She’ll stick to her commitment-free hookups, thanks very much, except no one in her life will just let her be. Everyone wants to see her settled down, but she holds firmly to her no dating rule. There’s only one problem—Iris is a romance author facing an imminent deadline for her second book, and she’s completely out of ideas.

Perfectly happy to ignore her problems as per usual, Iris goes to a bar in Portland and meets a sexy stranger, Stefania, and a night of dancing and making out turns into the worst one-night stand Iris has had in her life. To get her mind off everything, Iris tries out for the lead role in a local play, a queer retelling of Much Ado About Nothing, but comes face-to-face with Stefania, whose real name turns out to be Stevie. Desperate to save face in front of her friends, Stevie asks Iris to play along as her girlfriend. Iris is shocked, but when she realizes the arrangement might provide her with some much-needed romantic content for her book, she agrees. As the two women play the part of a happy couple, lines start to blur, and they’re left wondering who will make the real first move....

Moonlight in Garland is a cozy open-ended life-sim video game that sees you making a new life in the bustling metropolis of Garland. Find an apartment and make it perfectly yours, befriend your neighbours, grow your urban garden, solve community problems and experience all the weirdly wonderful stuff that city living offers.

Of course, city life isn’t all farmers markets and fancy coffee. Will you step in to stop the heritage building from being torn down and preserve a piece of history? Look after the neighbourhood so more residents stick around? Figure out which jerk is stealing packages from the mail room? Be swept up in a whirlwind romance along the way?

[imasallstars]

GAME MECHANICS UPDATE

Designed by Suzuko Hara (Hijiri), a new pose labelled “Drawing A Rainbow” has been added! You are now able to view this pose in the Photo Studio or the Location Shooting

[kwonhochi]

thank u for the tag @jeonwon-wonwoo 💕💕💕!!!

not a single svt song there which is CRAZY probsbly the only time thiswill ever hsppen.. as u can see ive been in my lucy & superband feels 😞🫶

tagging @xumoonhao @ashmp3 @ambivartence @meowonhao @spaecgirl @junranghae @pineapple-frenzy @arwensundomiels @irlvernon feel free to ignore or do whenever<3