#so basically there are two categories of player character that you either control both of

[tmae3114]

the other day, a friend of mine invited me over to testplay a paper-and-pencil storytelling game he's been working on for a while and feels like he's finally got a workable version of and one of his mentioned reasons was that "you're a fellow storyteller, I want to see what you'll do with it"

I promptly created a character which violated exactly zero (0) rules but nonetheless obliterated one of the core intended mechanical limitations of the game and I didn't even do that on purpose

after the game, when we were laughing about this, he admitted that one of his other reasons for asking me specifically to testplay was because he knew that "if there was anything that could be broken, you would find it and break it"

[riding-the-sunset-bird]

hi!! i know this depends a lot on personal taste but i thought i'd ask you because you know the game so well, which dlc do you think is the most worth it?

(note: this anon clarified in another ask that they meant all DLCs but were most interested in the Cove Step DLCs; thank you!)

Hi!

First off, gonna give you massive credit here because I think this is a super fascinating ask, so much so that I want to do a bit of a deep dive!

(skip to the end for the summarized/basic stuff)

Personal Preference

I'll begin by saying that if you just ask me this question outright and it comes down wholly to my opinion and my opinion only, then I'd say that Baxter's DLC was the most worth it to me. The actual reasons for it are a bit too extensive - I'll leave it at me simply adoring Baxter and what his DLC contributes to the story's narrative - but that would be my answer.

However, I'd really like to go into something that I find more objective. We'll do this by splitting that idea of "worth it" into different categories and going from there, because it could mean so many different things depending on player preference.

Story Relevance

This just boils down to what DLC adds the most to Our Life's story, which I'm defining as "moments/scenes that would feel natural in the base game" as opposed to a DLC that comes off like extra content but not necessary content.

For this one, I'm going to award the points to the Step 3 DLC, mostly for Reflection, Late Shift, and Serendipity. All three of these moments provide something for what already existed in the base game, to the point where I almost think it's odd for them to be DLC content.

Reflection gives both backstory to Cove's scar (something that had been talked about before but not fully explained) and closure on Cove's conflict with his parents over their divorce. It also shows character development for Cove as he moves past all of that.

Serendipity follows up on Liz meeting Shiloh in the Step 3 intro. Even if the player doesn't care about Shiloh, I think it makes sense for Liz to go searching for him even if you didn't have the DLC, and then the DLC just lets you actually see what comes from it (that's not how it works in-game but I'm just making a point).

Late Shift follows up on what the MC's job is if they chose to have one, as well as showing Cove at his job. It expands the initial choice of "job"/"no job" during the intro into an actual moment, which gives it more meaning. I'd consider it an equivalent to Charity in that way (which is impacted by whether or not the MC volunteers at ORCA).

So yeah, Step 3's DLC, no contest.

Consistency

This is what I'd imagine to be the DLC that is the most "all-around" of the DLCs; maybe not too high of highs, but not too low of lows either, just an all-around solid product.

I'm giving this one to the Step 1 DLC. While it's the shortest of the DLCs, I think the content is consistency good throughout all moments. All feature the MC just doing assorted kid things and satisfy MCs who might be Indifferent to Cove early on (all except two allow the MC to mostly ignore Cove if they'd prefer to spend time with others), whereas the Step 2 and 3 DLC can be more mixed.

For example, Reflection - while solid and emotional if you're invested in Cove's backstory - is a lot of talking and not a lot of doing, Happiness is hilariously short if you're Indifferent to Cove, and Serendipity is probably a total skip for players who aren't interested in Shiloh. For the Step 2 DLC, Soiree tends to be a standout moment that overshadows the rest and other moments are largely out of the MC's control (Escapade if the MC isn't having fun, which has little impact, and Summerwork if the MC isn't the type that would lead to the drama in said moment).

But the Step 1 DLC is the one I feel would be most consistently enjoyable throughout the whole thing, at least when keeping in mind the limitations that would naturally be placed on the MC given that they're a child. I always enjoy playing each fairly equally.

Fun Factor

This just comes down to the highest highs - the DLC that provides the most fun - and I'd say that the Step 2 DLC does that.

Mall allows you to spend roughly equal amounts of time with Derek, Lee, and Cove (both a different experience from the base game and gives the MC a new location to mess around in).

Birthday lets you engage in various games and meet with Miranda (which could be something fun for the player, either meeting Miranda early if they haven't played the full game yet or seeing younger Miranda if they have). Plus, that this is the moment where the MC can retaliate against Jeremy (dooting Jeremy into silence is one of my personal biggest non-Cove non-Baxter highlights of the game) which gives the moment worth all on its own.

Soiree being a big win whether you want to bring Cove or not and giving the MC multiple different ways to experience it (including having a dance with Baxter, regardless of whether they go down his route or not). This allows MCs who might not be Indifferent to Cove but still don't want to bring him for whatever reason the full freedom to do so (unlike Happiness), which allows for more replayability.

I've expressed points about Summerwork and Escapade already, but even disregarding the potential fun of those, I think the highs of the others outweigh the lows, which I don't think the Step 3 DLC would do with the ones I've gone on about. The Step 1 DLC is overall more consistently good and I think a player is more likely to enjoy all of the steps, but I think the Step 2 DLC is more fun.

Other Matters

These are a few details I don't want to get too much into but still wished to address. The Step 3 DLC, content-wise, is unquestionably the largest out of all of the Step DLCs (provided that you play all of the moments in each), even though all Step DLCs are the same price. Likewise, the Step 2 DLC is larger than the Step 1 DLC.

Goes without saying that quantity does not equal quality and, while not pointing to any specific target, I want to add that I don't think it's acceptable for things like CGs to not be up to par with the ones in the base game when you're paying for the DLC while not paying for the base game.

Additionally, I think it's strange for the moments that feature the alternative guys to be locked away (Mall and Summerwork for Derek, then Late Shift and Boating for Baxter; Derek won't even join the player at their house if the MC is Indifferent to Cove and Terry/Liz will jump into Cove's place in Late Shift/Boating respectively rather than the MC potentially getting Baxter). This can make Derek's proposal in particular at the end of Step 2 confusing to base game players because they will have only seen Derek in the intro and ending, thus making his crush come out of nowhere.

It doesn't change the quality of the DLCs themselves, but I just wanted to point out that both Derek and Baxter kind of have an extra price tacked onto their DLCs because most players would probably want to see more of them before buying those.

And yes, it does indeed give the Step 2 DLC a few points towards the story relevance category because Derek's proposal is there no matter what, but I thought the Step 3 DLC still outweighed it.

Just wanted to get all that out of the way.

Addressing the Cove Wedding DLC

I sometimes call this the "Wedding Planning DLC" because that's what you'll spend a large chunk of time doing. That's not a criticism if you like that, just stating an observation.

Unlike most DLCs where I can weigh the various moments' pros and cons, the Wedding DLC is just one long "moment" where you plan your wedding with Cove, have the wedding with Cove, and then have the reception.

Also, Baxter is the wedding planner, so if you hate him then prepare to hold your breath before diving into it.

I think it does well for what it's trying to do (it's a little sad that there's no CG but there are so many mini-CGs that I get it), so it really is just a matter of whether you want it or not.

The Step DLCs are $4 each and the Wedding DLC is $3, so do I think that the Wedding DLC is worth 75% of any of the Step DLCs?

Not really (I eventually got tired of the planning part to the point where Baxter giving dance lessons became the most exciting thing that happened, as it felt like there was some development going on, lol), but I can see why it'd be worth it for other people. I recommend it if people are just very dedicated to planning a wedding in addition to seeing the wedding and reception.

Derek's Story DLC and Baxter's Story DLC

These two are another case where it very heavily leans on personal preference. I've already said that I like Baxter's DLC the best, but I might as well talk about Derek's too.

My feelings on his DLC are... complicated. Basically, it's the Derek and His Family DLC and I think that's great, but when it comes to plots centered around families, my attention tends to drift (this includes the moment titled Family in Step 2, by the way). Found family holds my interest a bit more though, one example being a potential plotpoint you can go down in Derek's DLC where you consider Mr. Holden a father to you.

While I do enjoy the personalities amongst Derek's family (barring Nicolas until Step 4), I think it might end up being a problem for some because the story stops being about you and starts being about Derek due to the amount of characters exclusive to his DLC all connecting back to him and not you. You take a backseat to the plot and Derek's issues in Step 4 actually end up being resolved without you during an argument/conversation with his brothers.

Which is good if you just want to kick back, watch the plot unfold, and listen to Derek talk about his problems, especially as his major issue takes place between Step 3 and 4 so the player doesn't witness it. Me personally, I had a lot of my agency taken away during key moments, such as Siblings where I didn't think going to see Elizabeth was a good idea, nor Boardwalk where I missed out on seeing Jorge (who is my favorite Suarez) and Elizabeth's relationship develop because the game has you go with Derek, nor the ending of Step 4 where I wouldn't have just run off with Derek due to wanting to spend more time with the family.

Another awkward little detail is that Derek will crush on the player and try to get them into a marriage proposal regardless of the player's own feelings, which can lead to some awkward moments (like Nicolas wanting to see the player in a swimsuit "because that's what Derek wants").

Baxter's DLC is the opposite because his family is only mentioned occasionally and not even seen on-screen. You largely spend one-on-one time with him and characters tend to focus on the player rather than Baxter (and when they do focus on Baxter, it's often as an extension of the player's connection with him).

It's very high drama/angst for a typical Our Life story, which can naturally turn people away who prefer the slice of life nature of most moments. It's a very different feel from the rest of the game and not just because the player is spending time with someone who isn't Cove. Cove is set up as the character that the player is with for all steps and in-betweens, inevitably meaning that Derek and Baxter won't stick around after their step until their Step 4; it's just that one of them makes far bigger drama about it than the other.

The DLC also lets you meet Miranda's brother and you get a psuedo Wedding DLC mashed into Baxter's Step 4 where you're part of the wedding planning process without being one of the people the wedding is for. Miranda gets a mini-plot for herself involving her relationship with Terry in addition to already getting one of Baxter's moments centered around giving her a birthday party.

On the downside, the interest system in Our Life does not function towards going down in interest (doesn't function well in general with how Baxter's DLC works, really), so going into Baxter's Step 4 with the idea of never forgiving him or not at least becoming friends again won't work. The game assumes by the act of choosing Baxter's Step 4 that the player wants to eventually hear Baxter out and becomes friends/lovers again, otherwise they'd be doing Cove's Step 4 instead; it's just something to keep in mind.

Speaking of Cove, while Baxter's DLC gives a little more focus towards Miranda and Terry, Derek's DLC has a moment where Cove shares equal screen time with him, so you could consider both DLCs to give extra focus to separate groups of people (Cove+Mr. Holden or Miranda+Terry).

Basically, both DLCs are entirely different and I can't really give them a category because they're so different compared to the base game, so I'll give some bullet points later of who I think would enjoy the DLC rather that putting them in a box.

The only other thing left to say is that, while Derek's DLC pairs with the Step 2 DLC and Baxter's DLC pairs with the Step 3 DLC for getting that little bit of extra time with the respective character, story-wise I think the Step 2 DLC is also good for Baxter's DLC because of Birthday and Soiree.

Recap

Overall, I do believe that every DLC has its own value and anyone could think differently on which is the best to them. I felt like it'd be too cheap to just claim which one is the best, especially since I like the more controversial Baxter DLC (the Step 2 DLC is my favorite Step DLC, for the record).

So to summarize:

Step 1 DLC (for Consistency)

most consistently likable and good all around

if one moment stands out from the others, it's not by much

the "safest" choice of the DLCs, which could be seen as either a good or bad thing

Step 2 DLC (for Fun Factor)

highest highs of the Step DLCs

allows for multiple assorted character interactions

Soiree being a strong moment to lean into the MC's independence

meeting younger Miranda in Birthday and finally retaliating against Jeremy

solid addition in combination with owning the Derek DLC or Baxter DLC as an extra bit of fun

but can have a feeling of the MC being "taken along for the ride" in some moments or doing things that might not seem like something that'd happen to them

Step 3 DLC (for Story Relevance)

includes the most content that adds to the MC's/Cove's story in a meaningful way

serves as an extension of a few happenings in the Step 3 intro

heavy on emotion

works in combination with the Baxter DLC to give the player extra time with him

feels the most natural amongst the base game moments

but can be a mixed bag depending on the MC's feelings on Cove and other characters like Shiloh, potentially leaving at least one moment as a total skip

The Cove Wedding DLC is good for people who:

like the idea of planning their wedding the way people spend hours doing character customization in games

can enjoy or tolerate/put up with Baxter as the wedding planner

are cool with a low conflict/casual plot (as nothing goes wrong during the process)

are fine with having no Cove CGs, only mini CGs

The Derek's Story DLC is good for people who:

like plots centering heavily around family

enjoy young children acting like young children

want extra time with Cove and/or Mr. Holden, as well as Elizabeth (who features in two separate moments and also Step 4)

prefer sitting back on some level and watching the plot happen around them instead of directly from them

don't mind being reminded every now and then that Derek is crushing on the MC if playing a friendship-only route

And the Baxter's Story DLC is good for those who:

prefer one-on-one time with characters

want a change of scenery from the usual Our Life plotlines and a heavier dose of drama than the usual

are seeking more time/development for Miranda and Terry, as well as their relationship

like the potential option of having a fling with Baxter in their story (whether that ends with the MC romancing Baxter in the end, someone else, or no one at all)

wish to be involved in a wedding with a conflict attached, as well as the MC not being part of the couple having the wedding

Hope this answers your question!

[mneiai]

Which established characters are you hoping to see in Dreadwolf?

Obviously I think Dorian will be at least appearing and I'm hoping Maeveris ends up in an advisory role or something like that. I'd also really like that for Fenris, where he advises us and we have some sidequests with him, but his own work and ours maybe diverges a bit, to give it the feel of there being just so much going on and so many moving pieces.

I would also really like Feynriel as a companion, I think it would be a great nod to DA2 and be an interesting way to work in some great moral conundrums for us (like having the option to influence someone's mind through their dreams or the like).

From Absolution, I'm hoping either Qwydion or Tassia become companions (though Roland and Lacklon as a pre-built set would be pretty fun). Qwydion would be like a less annoying Sera sort of role, playful and silly, but very good at what she does and with a heart of gold. Tassia would also work I think in an advisory role, but I could see her as a companion (and them both as love interests). She could be a more conservative Tevinter viewpoint, but very anti-blood magic and with a Dorian-esque desire to "save" her country from itself.

Prior to the VA's bullshit, I had actually really hoped Cullen might be a companion, simply because it would get him in basically every role he could have taken in the games and because he's one of the only characters to appear in all three prior games without DLCs, so I want those parallels. Since his epilogues never actually count, he could have been in Tevinter for a year or two before starting the game--he'd fascinate the Tevinters while also having Templar abilities they wouldn't at all be ready for.

Dagna is another "older" character who would be great as a companion and give some interesting insight. I'd love to see them go deeper into lyrium/Titan lore and having someone like Dagna around (as well as Fenris and even to some extent Cullen) could add to that. There are a ton of dwarves in Minrathous, after all, who live under the city so they don't get exiled as "surface dwarves."

Krem could also be a great companion (and finally a love interest??), perhaps under an assumed name or something like that, with a side quest involving searching out his family or having to deal with being recognized, considering he's basically a fugitive.

If they're using Tevinter Nights characters, there's soooo many options. Perhaps Myrion or Strife for their Qunari invasion experiences (and Strife as a contact to the Dalish), Hollix or Mizzy already are connected to Dorian of course, Neve has great contacts in the Templars, Lucanis could give us a connection to the Crows (would absolutely love to see my fav pair from the book, Viago and Teia, appear, and through Viago we could also get a connect to the Antivan king). Philliam, a Bard! could be the comic relief character if we don't already have one, Vadis and Irian are a great all around pair with a ton of connections to different possible plotlines.

As for repeat companions from DAI...I don't know. I've seen people say Varric, but I think they're reallllly close to overdoing Varric, and also his usage in so much other material implies he may have been "released" from tight control they normally like to keep over major NPCs. Dorian would obviously be relevant, but kind of falls into the same category of being used in a decent amount of other media now. I think Cole has some great insight, but apparently he was fairly controversial, and obviously a lot of the others from player choices.

As for DAO...I'd absolutely love to have Shale back, but most of the other characters are either dead or too affected by player choices. Though Zevran could also be interesting, I'd prefer one of the newer Crow characters.

[mishkakagehishka]

Okay so back to the yandere self aware au. What if you got two characters who became self aware. But one of them just... Hated you. Like they're both your favorites and you get one that is absolutely infatuated with you while the other one just... Cannot stand you... They don't like how you treat them, how observed they feel, how you have control over basically their existence... And they can't really say anything because the only other one who could understand just... Doesn't get it... They actually enjoy it. And they're getting worse and worse about it, getting to mess with the code with maybe some of the other characters settings that you produce but not as much and are not self-aware (are they? Can they be sure of that? Doesn't their co-aware partner think of that possibility?)

So you get either one character trying to keep as much of them as close to themselves as possible or try to keep to the script, while you might get upset and if the other one notices (depending on their personality) might leave them alone (because that means more attention) or might try to get them to cooperate because they're making you upset

Or maybe they'll be able to get over their disdain to try convince you to do something about the situation. Maybe delete the game make the other one stop. But would they be willing to die? To disappear? What's worse, being trapped with you and their infatuated coworker? Or ceasing to exists? With the knowledge that that won't stop the game or other version of themself (who actually work according to the code) from existing, and you'll still be able to watch them and just play them however you want.

Ohohoho i ended up writing a bit more ab just the general of what it'd be like to have one normal and one yandere, but there's bits here and there ab the normal one also hating the player. Cut for length + the usual disclaimer that yandere is a horror trope to me and i write it as such, not to romanticise♡

I imagine it'd be really interesting if the characters in question were characters who usually had trouble seeing eye-to-eye (like, in case of early game, Hiiro being the one who hates the player and Rinne the one obsessed with them - bc Hiiro would still want Rinne to come back home, and the player is now the reason why he refuses, and why he can't go back home. The player keeps him there) or even characters who are actually close and show care for one another (like, for example, Mao or Arashi trying to convince Ritsu or Mika that the obsession is unhealthy and they need to let go of someone as unachieveable as the player - and Mao/Arashi would probably grow to resent the player because they'd see how much of a bad influence their presence is on the other). Tbh I think I could see the Amagis in the second category, too, but flipped - where Hiiro is obsessed, but Rinne hates the player, which I feel would fit his character considering the player is, well, in control of their every action. And I don't think Rinne would like that.

Anyway, the dynamic between the duo would definitely be interesting, even more so if they have a pre-existing dynamic. But it'd also be interesting to watch the different ways the character who resents the player would try to put an end to it all. I can see characters like Rinne, Natsume and Yuzuru trying to glitch out your game enough that you'd uninstall it on your own, as they'd rather the void than being part of your game. Types like Hiiro and Chiaki would probably try to talk you into it - straying from the script, sure - with Hiiro leaning more into pressure and Chiaki into convincing. Though there are those who'd also try not to make you uninstall the game, because they themselves don't want to die. This is a good majority of them. They would mostly try to use the grey rock method, especially if the yandere is violent. Especially if they have already glitched someone out of order. By keeping to their lines, and even trying to glitch themselves into staying silent, rigging the gacha so their cards don't come up, playing with your dia if their event is coming up and you want to grind etc etc, they attempt to make themselves as uninteresting to you as possible - and less of a threat to the yandere. Which won't even protect them, if the player still shows interest, or even if the yandere is just delusional, they'd still be in danger.

Those who'd try to convince the yandere to see reason are the ones most directly in harm's way, especially if paired with delusional and/or violent ones. Arashi, Tatsumi, Adonis, Chiaki... they'd try to tell the yandere that the player is not to be trusted and that they shouldn't be worshipped so much. They'd try to convince their co-aware partner that this is not a good situation at all. But the yandere might entirely go over the fact that these guys hate the player and all the player stands for, and instead accuse them of trying to steal the player for themselves... which isn't good.

In the end, a lot of them might just give up and beg you to wipe your phone when the yandere isn't looking. It might be less painful for them.

[celepeace]

A monster-taming game recommendation list for fans of Pokemon

Whether you're a pokemon fanatic obsessed with all things pokemon past and present, or a veteran fan disillusioned with GameFreak's recent adoption of monetary philosophies and strategies reminiscent of other major game publishers, or looking for a monster-taming fix as you await new Pokemon content...

I'm compiling here a post of little-known games in the genre that Pokemon fans are likely to enjoy!

Under readmore cause long, but some of these games really don’t get the attention they deserve, so if you have the time, please read!

(I am also likely to keep updating and editing this post)

First up is Temtem!

Temtem is a game made by and for Pokemon fans, from the spanish indie developer Crema. Temtem is currently in early access on Steam and PS5, and is likely to remain in early access until sometime late next year. Full launch will include a Nintendo Switch release, too. Despite this, it has plenty of content to explore before full release. The developers are active, release new content on a semi-regular basis, and are responsive to the community as a whole and individuals if you happen to come across a bug you want to report.

Temtem boasts a wide variety of monsters to collect and train. It takes place in the Airborne Archipelago, a system of floating islands that orbit their star, the Pansun. The monsters inhabiting the archipelago are called Temtem, or tem(s), for short.

As far as game mechanics go, it has many similarities to Pokemon, but also many important distinctions. The biggest one, in my opinion, is that the element of chance has been removed from battle entirely. Moves cannot miss, have the same power constantly, and status afflictions have an obviously displayed countdown to when they will wear off (for instance, sleep lasts as long as it says it will last. Not 2-4 turns). PP does not exist, either. Your tems can battle for as long as their HP holds out. In place of PP, a new system called Stamina exists. Stamina is an individual stat, like HP and Attack. Each move costs a certain amount of stamina. If you go over the amount of stamina your tem has, the deficit is detracted from your health instead, and that tem cannot move next turn. Stamina passively regenerates a certain amount each turn, and items and moves exist that can heal stamina. All battles are also double-battles, you and your opponent will typically have two tems on the field at a time. This is just a few of the differences Temtem has from Pokemon, but they're some of the biggest ones.

Temtem is also a massively multiplayer game. You complete the storyline independently (or with a friend through co-op!), but in the overworld you can see other, real players moving around and interacting with the world. There is also public and area-specific chat you can talk to other players through. Despite this, all multiplayer functions are (currently) completely optional. You do not need to interact with others to complete the game.

Overall, Temtem is suitable for the Pokemon fan who is looking for a more challenging experience. Temtem is not a walk in the park you can blaze through with a single super-strong monster. For one, individual tem strength is more well-balanced than it is in Pokemon. There are very few (if any!) completely useless tems. Even some unevolved tems have their niche in the competitive scene! Aside from that, enemy tamers are scaled quite high, and you typically cannot beat them just from the exp you get from other enemy tamers. You have to do some wild-encounter grinding if you want to progress.

Temtem is a very fun game and I've already gotten over 100 hours out of it, despite only 3/5-ish of the planned content being released!

However, I do feel obligated to warn any prospective players of one thing: the current endgame is quite inaccessible. After you complete what is currently implemented of the main storyline, there is still quite a lot left to explore and do, but much of it is locked behind putting a lot of hours into the game. You kind of have to get perfect temtem to do the current PVE (and this is also somewhat true for the PVP too). By perfect I mean you have to breed a good tem and then train it to get the preferable EVs (called TVs in temtem). This takes... well, for a whole team... tens of hours. Of boring grinding. Some people enjoy it! But I don't. Regardless, the game was still worth buying because the non-endgame content is expansive and fun.

So overall, pros & cons:

Pros

Battle system is more friendly towards a competitive scene

Cute monsters

Lots of gay characters, also you can choose pronouns (including they/them) independently from body type and voice

Less difference between the objectively bad tems and good tems than there is in Pokemon

Lots of stuff to do even in early access

Most conversations with dialog choices have the option to be a complete ass for no reason other than it’s fun

Having less type variety in your team is less punishing than in Pokemon due to the synergy system and types overall having less weaknesses and resistances

At least one major character is nonbinary

Cons

Falls prey to the issue of MMOs having in-game economies that are only accessible to diehard no-life players

Related to the above point, cosmetics are prohibitively expensive

Endgame CURRENTLY is inaccessible to most players unless you buy good monsters from other players or spend tens of hours making your own. However I must add that the grind is great if you like that kind of thing and is quite easy and painless to do while watching a show or something.

Here is their Steam page and here is their official website.

Next is Monster Hunter: Stories!

This is a spinoff game of the Monster Hunter franchise released for the 3DS in 2018. If you're anything like me, and you've played the core Monster Hunter games, you've often thought "Man, I wish I could befriend and ride these cool dragon creatures instead of killing or maiming them!"

Well now you can! In Stories, as I will be calling it, you play as a rider rather than a hunter. Riders steal monster eggs from wild nests to raise them among humans as companions and guardians. And yes, egg stealing is a whole mechanic in of itself in this game.

This game works pretty differently from most monster-collecting games. You do battle (usually) against one or two wild monsters using your own, except you fight alongside your monsters too. With swords and stuff. There's armor and weapons you can smelt to make yourself stronger. Type match-ups also kind of don't exist in this game? Except they do? But not in a way you'd expect?

The vast majority of attacking moves you and your monster use fall into categories reminiscent of rock-paper-scissors. Moves can be categorized as power, speed, or technical. Speed beats power, technical beats speed, and power beats technical. The matchup of your move vs your opponent's determines how a turn will go down. If one move beats the other in matchup, then the winner's move will get to go and the loser doesn't get to do anything. If you tie, you both get hit, but for reduced damage. There's also abilities and basic attacks, with abilities basically being the same as pokemon moves, and basic attacks just being "I hit you for normal damage within this category". Also, you don't control what your monster does all the time in battle. You can tell it to use abilities, but what kind basic attacks it carries out is determined by its species' preference. Velicidrome, for instance, prefers speed attacks, but Yian Garuga prefers technical. Stamina also exists in this game in a very similar manner to Temtem.

Overall this game carries over a lot of mechanics Monster Hunter fans will find familiar (how items and statuses work for instance). You don't have to have played a core Monster Hunter game to enjoy Stories though! It's fine and is easy to understand as a stand-alone.

The story has some likable characters and is rather long (it was actually adapted into an anime!), for those of you who enjoy a good story.

I'd really recommend this one especially. If it sounds fun to you and you can drop $30, just do it. I bought it on a whim and I got a few weeks' worth of playing almost nonstop out of it, and I didn't even get to do everything! (I got distracted by Hades, oops)

Stories is also getting a sequel later next year on the nintendo switch! How exciting!

And yes, you do ride the monsters.

Pros & cons:

Pros

Large variety of cool monsters to befriend and raise

Pretty lengthy story

Every tamable monster is also rideable

Deceptively simple combat mechanics, easy to be okay at, hard to master

Incorporates some mechanics from early turn-based party rpgs like Final Fantasy for a nice twist on the monster collecting genre

Cons

Many monsters are objectively outclassed by other ones, making what can be in an actually good team more limited than you’d expect

3DS graphics inherently means the game looks like it was made 7 years before its time

Here is the Monster Hunter Stories official 3DS product page.

And here is Monster Sanctuary!

Monster sanctuary is a game that just had its 1.0 launch- meaning it was in early access and no longer is! Although the devs say they still plan to implement a few more things into the game in future updates. It is available on Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PS4.

Monster sanctuary is a metroidvania twist on the typical monster collecting game, meaning it is also a sidescrolling platformer in which you use abilities you gain throughout the game to explore the world around you. The abilities in this case are the monsters you get! Every monster has an ability that helps you traverse the sanctuary.

Speaking of the sanctuary, the game is set in one. The monster sanctuary is a magically shielded area, cut off from the rest of the world, created by an order of monster keepers, people who befriend and protect the mystical monsters inhabiting the world. Humankind encroached too far on the natural habitat of monsters and were hostile to the native wildlife, so the keepers created an area of varied environments to safely protect and preserve the remaining monsters of the world.

Unlike many other monster collecting games, this game only has 5 types: fire, water, earth, air, and neutral. However, the types themselves do not possess resistances and weaknesses. Instead, each monster has its own assigned weaknesses and resistances. And yes, this can include things like debuffs, physical vs special attacks, and the typical elemental types.

All battles are also 3 vs 3! And unlike in pokemon, where you can only hit the enemies nearest, all monsters have the ability to hit any opponent they want. Turns also work a little differently in that speed doesn't exist, you just use 1 move per monster in your turn and then it goes to your opponent's turn. Your monsters hit in whatever order you want them to.

There is also a quite important combo system in this game, where every hit builds a damage multiplier for the next. Moves often hit multiple times per turn. Healing and buffing actions also build this combo counter. So what monsters you have move in what order really counts!

But the main mechanical difference between this and other games in the genre is how it handles levels and skills. Instead of learning a set move at a certain level, this game incorporates a skill tree, and you get to allocate points into different skills as you grow stronger. And jeez, these skill trees are really extensive. Monster sanctuary is a theorycrafter's dream. Each monster has a unique, specially tailored skill tree, making every monster truly able to have its own niche. You can make use of whatever monster you want if you just put thought into it!

And like Temtem, this game is not made to be beatable by children. I'm sure a child could beat it, but it's not made to be inherently child-friendly like pokemon. It's honestly quite difficult.

On top of that, you are actively encouraged to not just be scraping by each battle. Your performance in battle is rated by an automated system that scores your usage of various mechanics like buffs and debuffs applied, type matchups, and effective usage of combos. The rating system directly influences the rewards you get from each battle, including your likelihood of obtaining an egg from one of the wild monsters you battled (no, you don't catch wild monsters in this game, you get eggs and hatch them). If you're not paying attention to how the game works and making good, effective use of your monsters, you'll have a hard time expanding your team!

The music is also really good, it's made by nature to be able to play over and over and not get old as you explore each area, and the composer(s) really did a good job with this. Some area songs, namely the beach one, I especially enjoy, so much so I've actually played it in the background while I do work.

This is a game I would really recommend. If I made it sound intimidating, it is by no means unbeatable, you're just gonna have to put some thought into how you play. At no point did I actually feel frustrated or like something was impossible. When I hit a wall, I was able to recognize what I did wrong and how I could improve, or I could at least realize something wasn't working and experiment until I found a solution. It's challenging in a genuinely fun, rewarding way.

Pros & cons:

Pros

Extremely in-depth combat system

I genuinely don’t know if there’s an objectively bad monster in this game

Evolution exists but is completely optional, as even un-evolved monsters can be great

Entire soundtrack is full of bangers

Large and diverse variety of monsters to tame

Cons

Story is a little lackluster, but passable

That’s the only con I can think of

Here’s a link to their Steam page and the game’s website.

A kind of unorthodox recommendation is the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series!

Likelihood is that everyone reading this has heard of this series already, but just in case anyone hasn't, I thought I'd include it! I would categorize this as a hybrid between the mystery dungeon genre and the monster collecting genre, because you recruit pokemon as you play and can use those pokemon on your team!

If you're unaware, the mystery dungeon genre is a small subset of dungeon crawler games where you progress through randomly generated levels called mystery dungeons. Throughout the dungeons, there will be enemies to fight and items to collect. The challenge of these games is mostly due to the stamina aspect of them, in that you have to manage your resources as you progress through the level. If you go all out in each fight, you will inevitably lose quite quickly. You have to learn to win against enemies while balancing your use of items and PP, so you have enough for the next fight, and the fight after that.

Pokemon mystery dungeon in particular is famous for its stories, the likes of which isn't seen often in Pokemon games. They are hugely story-driven games and are notable for the emotional depth they possess. It's pretty normal for the average player to cry at least once in the span of the game. There's lots of memes about that specifically.

This entry in my list is also unique for being a series. So, which one should you play first? It actually doesn't matter! Each storyline is entirely self-contained and requires no knowledge of prior entries. The quality of each entry varies and is a point of contention among fans. I say you should play all of them, because they all have their merits (though some more than others.... coughgatestoinfinitycough). They're mostly distinct for the generation of Pokemon they take place in. Rescue team is gen 3, Explorers is gen 4, Gates to Infinity is gen 5, Super Mystery Dungeon is gen 6, and Rescue Team DX is a remake of a gen 3 game but has the mechanics and moves of a gen 8 game.

My only real caution is that you play Explorers of Sky, not Darkness or Time. Sky is basically a combination of the two games with added items and content. It's an objective upgrade over its predecessors, and I honestly wouldn't waste money on the other two. 

I’m not going to include a pros and cons list for the PMD series because I’m incredibly biased and it wouldn’t be an honest review.

Next is Monster Crown!

Monster Crown is a monster collecting game that seems to take heavy inspiration from early-gen Pokemon games in particular. It is currently in early access on Steam and is not expensive. I learned about it through the developers of Monster Sanctuary, when they recommended it on their official Discord.

The game has lots of charm and interesting creature designs, and an entirely new take on monster typings as well. Instead of monster types being based off of natural elements like fire, water, electricity, etc. Monster Crown uses typings that seem to be influenced by the personalities of the monsters. For instance, Brutal, Relentless, and Will are all monster types!

It also captures a lot of the charm many of us look fondly upon in early GameBoy-era games. The music is mostly chiptune, with some more modern backing instruments at times, and the visuals are very reminiscent of games like Pokemon Crystal in particular. Monster Crown is definitely the monster collecting game for fans of the 8-bit era!

The thing that stands out the most to me about this game is the breeding system. Instead of one parent monster passing down its species to its offspring, you can create true hybrids in this game.

However, it is very early access. I would consider the current build as an alpha, not even a beta yet! So temper your expectations here. I have not encountered any major bugs, but visual glitches here and there are quite common. The game also could definitely use some polish and streamlining, and is quite limited in content currently. But the dev(s) seem quite active, so I fully expect these kinks to be worked out in time!

The reviews are rather positive, especially for being in early access. I'm all for expanding the monster collecting genre, so if you're looking to expand your horizons in that sense, I would recommend you at least give this one a look! I personally had quite a bit of fun playing Monster Crown and am going to keep an eye out for updates.

Pros & cons:

Pros

Charming artstyle, appealing monster designs

Faithful callback to a bygone era of gaming

Controls are fairly simple and easy to get the hang of (and are completely customizable!)

Cool breeding and hybridization mechanics

There's a starter for each monster type!

You can choose your pronouns, including they/them!

Cons

Inherent nature of being very early access means can be clunky and unpolished at times

Also not much content as of right now, see above

User interface could use some redesign in places

Here’s their Steam page and the official website!

Here’s an oldie but a goodie, Azure Dreams!

This is one I actually haven’t played, mostly because it’s really old and therefore only practically accessible if you play it on an emulator, unless you're one of those old game collectors. Azure Dreams was developed by Konami and released for the PS1 in 1997. My impression of it was that it either didn’t sell well or only took off in Japan, because it’s actually really hard to find any comprehensive information about it on the internet.

Azure Dreams is a monster collecting - dating sim hybrid. You can build relationships with various characters and can pursue some of them romantically, although that isn’t the main draw of the game. There is also a stripped-down version that exists for the GameBoy Color, which forgoes the dating portion of the game entirely.

Azure Dreams is kind of like a mystery dungeon game in that you progress through a randomly generated, ever-changing tower using the help of the familiars you have accrued throughout your adventure. Similarly to Monster Hunter: Stories, you yourself also take part in the fighting alongside your monsters. Each time you enter the tower, your character’s level is lowered to 1, but your familiars keep their experience. Thus, progression is made through strengthening your monsters. To obtain monsters, you collect their eggs, just like in Monster Sanctuary (which, turns out, was at least partially inspired by this game!)

Due to this game being very old and on the PS1, the visuals leave a lot to be desired... but if you can get past that, Azure Dreams has lots of replayability and customization to how you play the game. To this day, it appears it has a somewhat active speedrunning community!

If you don’t mind the effort of using an emulator, and like old games, Azure Dreams just might be that timesink you were looking for in quarantine.

Honorable mentions:

Pokemon Insurgence (or any Pokemon fangame/ROMhack, really!) is a Pokemon fangame that introduces Delta Pokemon, which are really cool type-swapped versions of existing Pokemon. It’s sufficiently challenging and has a lot of variety in what you can catch in the wild, so you can pretty much add whatever you want to your team! The story is quite good, and the main campaign is multiple times longer than a typical Pokemon game’s campaign. Download it here!

ARK: Survival Evolved is NOT a monster collecting game BUT you do get to tame and fight alongside a lot of really cool extinct species, including but not limited to the dinosaurs we all know and love. This game is genuinely fun as hell, especially with friends, but I must warn you: never play on official servers. I highly recommend singleplayer, playing on a casual private server, or making your own server. Here’s the Steam page.

[mihidecet]

Sbi&CO d&d AU: Scott Smajor Character Analysis

It’s time for our all time favourite tournament organizer!!! Strap in friends, it’s Scott Smajor loving hours thanks to @hismilw ‘s lovely request! They asked for a character analysis for Scott in the D&D AU, which is extremely good because I’d been meaning to add him to the canon for a while now!! (And now, with MCC becoming part of the story, it’s even more appropriate!)

I also want to thank @octopus-defence-squad for being able to come up with such brilliant ideas for the MCC tournament in the au! They’ve given me so much inspiration and I can’t thank them enough ahahha

So, Scott! This time, his character is inspired a bit more on his role in the story, instead of only considering his actual online persona. 

This is mainly because, in our au, Scott Major is one of the organizers for this grandiose tournament that takes place once every year in a medium sized and primarily tourist town. 

And since him, Noxite and his crew have to build the stages for the tournament every year, there’s no better class to give him other than the Wizard! 

Wizards in d&d are scholars, people that spend a lot of time studying and practicing, and while they do have a bit of “fame” for being nerds, they are also extremely strong spellcasters. 

Therefore, the idea for Scott as a mage and as the headmaster of a wizard school academy was born.

Now, wizards in d&d have got subclasses too, which are centered around a specific “school” of magic. This is because spells in d&d are all divided in different categories, sort of like types of music, and the subclasses kind of reflect that.

So, the initial concept for Scott was a version of him that would allow him to be in a fake creative mode, in order to allow him to work on builds and general organization. But the thing is, the Conjuration subclass, which is centered around making things out of thin air and summoning beings, isn’t really … that strong in my personal opinion. Yes, it is pretty good, but … since wizard subclasses don’t restrain the types of spells you can learn, they just add perks to your magic abilities, the Conjuration subclass just doesn’t hold up in comparison to others. 

[basically, if you’re curious, it gives you the ability to conjure small objects (3x3x3ft max) at second level, and teleport a limited number of times at sixth. Blink is a spell that does basically the same thing, and Scott would be able to learn it at fifth level.]

[again this is just a personal preference]

If I had to talk about what I effectively think are the strongest subclasses overall, I’d say either War Magic or Abjuration. The main problem with wizards in d&d is the fact that they are glass cannons: pretty strong, but they need to keep their distance because they go down very easily. 

War Magic is the most “attack” version of the solution to that problem, as it gives bonuses to your armour class (which is the thing that defines how hard you are to hit). It also incentivises you to be in the thick of the fight since now you have benefits to whenever you block an enemy attack. But while I do think that is very cool, I don’t really see it fitting Scott. He is a huge team player, and this is a bit of a “one man army” subclass.

Abjuration seems more fitting to me. Abjuration is mainly focused on magic that blocks, protects or banishes. Incoming arrow? Use Shield, now you’re harder to hit. An enemy caster is about to burn your pals to a crisp with Fireball? Use Counterspell, that spell is no more. There’s a demon bearing down on your whole team, with no way to run? Use Banishment, now the demon is no more. 

This subclass gives you temporary hit points (so more health), and allows you to use that additional health to absorb damage that the rest of your party takes (and more!). 

This, in my opinion, is both very good from a gameplay point of view, and very fitting for the multifaceted role that Scott plays when in a team. He can play support, he can attack, he can help keep control over the battlefield.

Now, I see Scott mainly as an elf. Elves are just very cool and elegant, and I think Scott would enjoy being an elf. It’s just what he deserves. 

From a mechanical point of view, High Elves get bonuses to both dexterity (good for avoiding attacks) and intelligence (a given for a wizard). 

They also get a bonus cantrip! Which is very good overall, even though you have access to a lot of cantrips as a wizard.

And finally, the background! While I do not like being cliché, Scott is 100% a sage. He’s a scholar, and an academic. He’s getting the sage background.

So, in summary: 

Scott Major is born from a small elven family, who are all traditionally artists and performers. Ever since his birth, he’s always displayed a penchant for the arcane, with his magical abilities appearing earlier than usual and his curiosity allowing him to learn a lot in an exceptional short time. 

Due to all this, his parents decided to let him develop his abilities in a nearby arcane academy, where he quickly proves himself as one of the most talented wizards of his times. He finishes his studies and explorations of the various arcane schools extremely at leisure pace nevertheless, taking the time to experiment with his own interests and forming friendships with other coursemates. 

With one in particular, Noxite, he shares not a dream but a project. 

The two of them leave the academic world for a while to explore and learn more about the world of adventuring, then return with enough coin to complete what they’ve set up to do. 

They take what was originally the small academy where Scott began his studies, and make it the centre of arcane knowledge in the whole region - scholars of all types and origins flock to their newly born institute, for research purposes and to teach bright faced young students. 

Then, they start building. 

And many years later, what first began as a small tournament held for only academics, so that professors could show off new abilities and students could experiment the tensions of battle in a controlled environment, became the most renown tournament in the whole material plane. 

There, adventurers and students alike can participate and display their own skills and abilities, and try to win a price that is both of fame and more material.

Scott went from taking part to the tournament to mainly overseeing the organization, but he does still sometimes compete if a team is lacking a contestant. He continues to teach, mostly taking under his wing extremely talented students that attend his academy, and his research on the effects of time and space in magic has never really stopped. 

[inventors-fair]

Mechanical Commentary: All across the spectrum

People went pretty far with this one, honestly. There were a lot of overlapping mechanics and ideas that were related, but across the board, there was a mix of flavor and pure gameplay that came together in an interesting way. 

I think that if I had to give advice for doing this contest again, I would encourage everyone to keep it SIMPLE in their card submission choices. What is the best example of your mechanic, not your card? What’s the best choice for how this mechanic can work and be grokable? Contests like this aren’t about showing off the coolest thing or the most radical notion. No, they’re about proof of concept, presenting that concept, and creating clarity above all else. Unless we’re asking for a contest in which you make a confusing card, clarity is pivotal in all things.

@cas-420 — Flayed Alive

This card by itself is very good, probably an uncommon but very good. My main concern with the mechanic is that it can either only exist on reactive instants OR be in a set where life loss is a key concept. That’s what I’m not a fan of. Losing life during your own turn doesn’t come naturally to Magic. Some mechanics require support and certain environments, like, say, modular, or constellation, but “having artifact creatures” and “playing enchantment cards” are things that more or less happen in the game already. So, I would consider this a cool one-off card, but Agonize as a mechanic feels too narrow.

@dabudder​ — Drownyard Crawler

This is the reason why Ikoria introduced ability counters, besides being a design experiment. Memory issues with this card are crazy hard. If you have multiple copies of the same creature, and one of them is viral, how do you know? Swap places like magic cups, and it becomes impossible. Conceptually and flavorfully, this ability is fine. I won’t call it reinventing the wheel, but I don’t dislike it. There are a couple wording issues. I would change “to a creature” to “to another creature,” and I would have it say “Creatures with viral have skulk and “Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, draw a card.”” in quotes. I like how this makes combat more complex.

@dancepatternalpha​ — Arkelas, Ruler of the Lost

I don’t really understand what ephemeral’s place as a mechanic is, but I think I’m seeing the set you’re trying to build around. I imagine there are a few cards that would also interact with exile? And as the game went on, the more cards exiled created more powerful effects? I can see it. Ephemeral doesn’t make me tingle with excitement, but I can’t be harsh with it. I think I understand where you’re coming from, and I feel that a common or uncommon submission might have been more favorable.

@deafeningsandwichpeach​ — Bursting Beetle

FEWER, NOT LESS. Ahem. Sorry, that was harsh. But there are a couple wording issues. “Swarm X (When this creature enters the battlefield, if you control fewer creatures than each opponent, create three tapped 1/1 green Insect creature tokens.)” Fewer words, easier to grok. Not a bad mechanic. Feels reactive, though, less of a choice and more of a “I’m gonna hold onto this card because it’s a little useless otherwise.” It’s worth tweaking, though. I love token mechanics. Maybe this card could have been five or six mana.

@demimonde-semigoddess​ — Blood Remora

Ey, a fishy! Ooh, an evil fishy. An evil fishy with one big issue: if it deals combat damage to an opponent and there are no other targets, it has to target itself. And that’s my main issue. “Whenever this creature deals combat damage to an opponent, you may attach it to target creature that player controls. It can’t attack or block as long as it’s attached this way” could work? Might have a couple memory issues, but that’s not a major issue. You can just move cards around. It’s not a bad mechanic, but it’s a little hard to parse at first glance.

@dimestoretajic​ — Strike From Above

So, this is the conflict between “simple” and “exciting.” Everything about this card is more or less exactly understandable. But the name, the mechanic name, and the flavor text don’t feel as inspired as they should be. I don’t get a sense of quality from them. It’s an intangible aspect, and I’m sorry because I know that sounds like a real jerk way of putting this, but: for future cards, consider the world, the story, and what the card would look like once you open it up. I don’t get a sense of MTG from this card yet. Instead, it feels like a concept. That’s fine for personal reasons, but as a submission, I’m not excited. Airstrike itself I wouldn’t keyword as a mechanic. This card would be better without that aspect.

@emmypupcake — Aftermarket Additions

 Great name, great flavor text, great ability name... Super limiting. The as-fan of artifact creatures in this theoretical set would have to be hella huge, like Mirrodin-block big, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing? Maybe you could batch it into “charge, haste or +1/+1 counter”s so it could interact with noncreature artifacts? Wait, this also works for vehicles. Man, this is probably a cooler mechanic than I thought originally. Call it a B- for relying on a specific sub-category of cards. A+ for badass bikers.

@fractured-infinity​ — Thunder Hammer

This mechanic was real close to being a runner-up. Quickdraw would need a bit of flash interaction to really make it worthwhile, though, and a strong equipment/aura theme as well. Could it work with auras? Would it make sense, or are you going for a wild-west-ish theme? Kind of? The card itself is good limited fodder and equipment tribal goodstuff for commander, I suppose. Not a fan of the name or flavor text personally, but it’s simple enough to make sense. Green and “thunder” don’t always go together, y’know. In my opinion. Which is not always a good one.

@ghost31415926535 — Storm Fleet Rapscallion

Plunder: a fine mechanic. I like the artifact synergy. Now, let’s go over the wording issues.

You forgot a card type in your submission. That’s a big one.

“When” should be capitalized.

“Treasure” should be capitalized.

“Tap” should have just been a symbol T followed by a comma. Was this what you meant? It wasn’t entirely clear.

There should be a period and an end-quote at the end before the paren.

@gollumni​ — Nayan Cataloguers

I kept reading this as “cartographers.” My fault, not yours. Anyway. So, I can see this is based off explore. Honestly, it doesn’t really...feel as good? Partially because it’s similar in both mechanic AND flavor, and partially because you’re forced to put the card on the bottom of your library. I would also have it say “Reveal the top card of your library. If that card’s converted mana cost is greater than this card’s, put it into your hand.” I think that groks? 

@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes​ — Dragons’ Secrets

I would not have made this spell modal. Honestly, I would have picked a simpler submission in general, but I don’t dislike this card. It feels a little cheap and it’s an insane storm enabler. What if the modes were together for both of them, and the mana echoes did the same? DM me if that doesn’t make sense. In general, mana echoes isn’t a bad ability. This card is wordy and cluttered. I like how you went for “converted mana cost.” Makes sense, good in limited, I think.

@ignorantturtlegaming​ — Underground Network

Too much. I would much rather you have submitted just a common Wurm with burrow and some flavor text instead of this card, and even then, I’m not a fan of burrow as a mechanic. Why the alternate cost, plus the counters, plus the upkeep, plus the status effect? It’s all grokable individually but together it’s too much to keep track of for one mechanic. And what does “during each player’s end step” mean? Can you do it at instant-speed? Should it be a trigger? Why is it each player’s end step instead of just yours? There are a lot of questions this card raises that I don’t think it answers satisfactorily. 

@juggernaut-is-a-metalhead — Embercoil Serpent

So out of the two cards you submitted, I felt that this one was the best designed. There are a couple questions I have. One, should mono-red be able to have this? Yes, I know it’s hybrid, but if a mono-red deck could play it, would it? It’s a pretty powerful ability, a la Scrying Sheets. Two, I assume that the number after Dig refers to the number of untapped lands you have to sacrifice, and I think that it’s pretty cool in the late game, but why not just have it be “you may cast this spell from your graveyard by sacrificing an untapped land in addition to its other costs” instead of a number? I feel it could have worked better that way. Also, Udon is adorable!

@kavinika​ — Iron Guardian

That’s a cool character asset. They should put that in a game! So, I would have made this a keyword action ability word instead of a keyword ability, personally. Like, “Craft — You may pay (4) and sacrifice an artifact and a basic land rather than pay this spell’s mana cost.” Would that have made the last ability weird? I don’t know, I don’t think so, but. Wait, no, it wouldn’t have, they had clash things in Lorwyn that worked the same way. Not a bad concept. Pretty flavorful for artifact creatures and other artifacts. 

@koth-of-the-hammerpants — Wanderwood Warden

I love alliterative names. I don’t love angels without flying, but that’s a “me” issue. So, for this card, I like obscure, but I don’t like the darkness counters. I think that the face-down stuff works well on its own. And I would change “obscured cards” to “face-down exiled cards” so it could work with other cards from Magic’s past. I do like the gist of your flavor text, and I like this card and I like obscure. I wouldn’t call this one a stellar example, and I would have submitted a more straightforward card, but that’s just me being pedantic. Speaking of pedantic, “its owner’s,” not “it’s.”

@misterstingyjack​ — Time Mage’s Teachings

I’m going to be pedantic again, yay. My issue with this card for this contest is that, well, it’s not a new mechanic. Technically, everything on this card could exist within Magic’s rules text as-is and wouldn’t add anything new to the rules. We were looking for a new NAMED mechanic. I thought that was evident, but I suppose not. This card’s great, so keep it around for that, but it technically is not eligible. Personally, I would have also made it uncommon for limited purposes.

@nicolbolas96​ — Gitaxian Surgeon

Combining Phyrexian mana, permanent control, AND infect onto a single card, two of which exist within the same mechanic? Let’s take a step back. Phyresis, besides already existing as a card, is a cool concept to bring to the table. As a mechanic, permanent control of any creature, including your own, turning it into a 5/5 with infect, is bonkers. If this existed with any number, then 1) it would be useless half the time considering it has to target things with specific mana costs and 2) it would be busted beyond belief. I think that this card would be fine with the exile cost as a singular card. I don’t think Phyresis is a mechanic worth exploring for the time being.

@nine-effing-hells​ — Phlogiston Burst

Good on you for making me look up a word I didn’t know! This card is... Definitely uncommon, that’s for sure. But hm. I don’t DISLIKE Overchannel. So, in theory, you can exile three random cards and two red cards to cast it for free? Okay, maybe it’s common, forget my previous rambling. It’s an interesting take on Delve that isn’t broken, and this one was pretty close to being a runner-up. I worry about free stuff, but the hand isn’t an infinite resource. It’s probably fine. I’ll give this card and mechanic kudos. A rare one might break a format, but remains to be seen, y’know?

@nvijork​ — Grenzo, Fist of the Queen

I love the fact that you did your own art for this! So, locks are interesting. They’re a little bit of a non-issue in the late game, but I’d have to really play with them to see just how frustrating they are. I think there’s plenty of room for exploration and I think that this card (which IMO should be rare) is a...fine example? Not blowing my socks off, and you could have shown an example of something that happened when you had multiple locks or that triggers based on locks or something. Keep this mechanic around. I like it. Bad news: in the story, Marchesa actually fired Grenzo. So is this an alternate universe, or do I have to get out my Story Correction Rod of Spanking?

@partytimesdeluxe​ — Stringplayer

Like kavinika’s crafting, this is a mechanic that definitely needed to be a keyword action ability word. “Crescendo — Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, if it has the greatest power among creatures you control, gain control of target creature.” The mechanic is probably fine, I’d love to see it played in limited, and the potential play with multiple crescendo triggers would be so much fun. Not bad, but the wording on this specific card as presented could use work.

@real-aspen-hours​ — Drag Away // Umbral Kidnapper

If your MSE is acting up, feel free to message me on Discord or Tumblr and tell me so we can help you out. So, my main concern with this card is that I’m not sure if you’re submitting abduction counters as your new mechanic, or if you’re submitting Twist as your new mechanic; I’m going with Twist. It’s not bad! Someone’s going to correct me, but I think that in this instance you would use “return” instead of “put.” Again, correct me if I’m wrong. I think that it’s a cool way to turn instants and sorceries into permanents. I won’t call it the most flavorful or mind-blowing mechanic in the world, but I like it. I don’t see why you can’t put the exile clause on the flip side instead of on Twist where it won’t really be remembered. Also, the second side should have “those spells” — see Haldan, Avid Arcanist.

@reaperfromtheabyss​ — Dark Reprise

I think it should be “This spell costs” instead of the name, but aside from that and a period at the end of the sentence, it’s fine enough. There really isn’t much to say about this card. It’s a fine example and I like how the name creates flavor without flavor text. The mechanic and card don’t excite me enough to give it a place, but I mean, this is probably the safest example you could have gone for, and you know what, I can respect it.

@shandylamb​ — Fidi, Alluring Lamia

I love the uncommon legend, heh. As a mechanic, I don’t really like siphon. I don’t like how there’s a number attached instead of just “exile it and gain 2 life.” And I don’t like how it’s only cards from a graveyard. Why can’t you siphon cards from player’s hands and libraries and the battlefield as well? It would be so cool to, like, have powerful cards that suck away hidden power and turn the world into your vampyric victims. Instead, there’s...this. It gave me inspiration, but I wouldn’t call this one a slam-dunk.

@teaxch​ — Vyne Rowe Vagrant

You know, this mechanic is making me think of Adamant, except...different. And I’m leaning a little more towards Adamant, although I can see this card’s properties. The problem that comes up is that this card doesn’t feel tailored to a limited environment, nor does it feel tailored to Commander. Dedicated feels like a mechanic based solely around constructed environments, and I don’t know if I like that? It’s a build-around-me card without the big payoff. As a card, and as a concept, again, I don’t...dislike anything about it. But the mechanical feel is off. It’s not something that I feel like I’m attaining or that I’m synergizing with. I’m not sure exactly how to explain myself here, and I’m sorry about that, but I hope that the contrast is enough to make some sense.

@tmstage​ — Precise Pikeman

Handsome feller. Lol, and he fells indeed. I think this should be a replacement effect, like, “If this would deal damage to a creature with toughness 6 or greater, it deals double that damage instead.” I’m gonna side with your own personal feelings as you submitted this one. It’s not a fantastic mechanic, because it’s just so crazy limiting in what it requires to work. I think that as a single card without Tankbuster it would be fine.

@walker-of-the-yellow-path​ — Grand Annex of Elesh Norn // Elesh Norn, Voice of New Phyrexia

Technically, and I say this being a giant ass, this isn’t a new ‘mechanic.’ It’s a new card type and it would add things to the comprehensive rules, but it’s not a mechanic. Doesn’t matter, it’s worth commenting on anyway. I don’t hate it! Every part of this card by itself is pretty cool. I personally don’t like how it only requires one creature to attack, and I don’t like how the vault abilities aren’t static like a changing enchantment could be. Y’know? It feels like a saga more than it does an artifact. Again, this card is cool and would be great in a custom cube, but I would make some changes before adding vaults to a set.

~

Thank you all for your entries! New contest tomorrow. Spooky. Or not.

[brookeblough]

Dead by TikTok

THE COMMUNITY

The community I have chosen to analyze is that of people who play the game Dead by Daylight (DBD), and specifically those who take to the app TikTok to converse with the community.

In the words of the official Dead by Daylight website, “Dead by Daylight is an asymmetrical multiplayer horror game where one player takes on the role of a brutal Killer and the other four play as Survivors,” (Game).

Because of the fact that there are two sides of the game that can be played, there are a lot of differing opinions in the community. Killer players think that survivor players should play a certain way, survivor players think that killer players should play a certain way, and those who play both mostly just wish everyone would shut up. Often, either side of the argument doesn’t even agree with their own side.

One thing that the community usually comes together on is to criticize the developers of the game. DBD is made by a fairly small independent development team, and they are still often making changes and adding updates to the game. Of course, there will likely never be a time where every person who plays the game is pleased, so this is often a topic of discussion (or more likely disagreement).

Every few months, the developers also add a new killer and/or survivor to play as, and with these come more perks as well (more about this later). This brings even more ground for discussion and disagreement as players argue over whether the killer is too strong or too weak.

I chose to play on one of the common assumptions held by players of the game in choosing one of my posts and how I captioned it. This requires a bit of background to really understand it.

In the game, there are multiple different survivors that can be chosen to play as. Each of these come with 3 of their own unique “perks” which give the survivor an ability during the match. However, as one continues to play the game, these perks become unlocked through leveling characters and then can be applied to other survivors as well. So, basically, once you have played the game for a couple of months, all survivors end up with all of the same perks and so they all can be played exactly the same.

This being said, one assumption that the community still holds is that a certain “type” of player tends to play a specific survivor. I usually play as the character Meg. “Meg players” are usually known for running around, making dumb decisions, and getting their team killed. While I would argue that this is not always the case, I found a gameplay clip of my own where I did fall into this “Meg player” stereotype.

So I decided, “why not?” and decided to play into this and post the clip to TikTok.

@_bekoorb

when you get way too confident for no reason 😅 who’s your least favorite killer? ##dbd ##dbdclips ##dbdvideos ##deadbydaylight ##streamclips ##streamer

♬ Monkeys Spinning Monkeys - Kevin MacLeod

The video shows me being saved by another player, and then running us both straight to the killer. I ended up getting away, but the other player did not.

I chose to use the caption “Your real mistake was following a Meg,” to further speak to this assumption. I thought this was a clever way to start a conversation with the community, even if it just gave them an excuse to make fun of the way I played. I believe that if the video had gotten more views, it would have been enjoyed by the community.

MY CONTRIBUTION

Over the course of posting in this community, my posts received on average about 7 views, with only 2 or 3 likes on each. None of my posts received any comments. Additionally, the comments that I left on other posts did not receive any interaction. I guess, if there was a pattern, it was that no one really saw my posts.

Having spent a lot of time on TikTok in my free time, I used my knowledge of the app to attempt to break into the algorithm. First of all, I used trending music on the app as background noise for my videos because posts with these audio sounds are more likely to be promoted.

When I say “promoted”, I mean showing up on other users For You Page. This is basically the front page of the app, and where a large majority of users spend all of their time scrolling. This is really the only way to find new content on TikTok.

Other than using trending background music, I also designed the captions of my posts to the community. I used hashtags such as #dbd, #dbdclips, and #deadbydaylight in order to cover a range of different hashtags while still covering the same topic. I also tried out adding a question into the caption so that if anyone did stumble upon my post, they would have something to respond to.

I also attempted to use up to date trends in the content of my videos posted. For my first one, I used a trend of not actually speaking but using pop up text-to-speech on the screen. This is the one that I mentioned earlier, but here it is again:

  @_bekoorb

your real mistake was following a meg ##dbd ##dbdclips ##dbdvideos ##streamer ##streamclips

♬ Elevator Music - Bohoman

 This was something that I was seeing a lot in trending videos, so I decided to try it out and see if it would be promoted, but it unfortunately did not work out how I wanted it to.

Something that I learned about this community in this process was how difficult it can be to break into it. You really have to be consistent in posting and interacting, and it is mostly left up to luck whether people end up seeing it or not.

I also learned that despite the fact that the DBD community is very opinionated, through my time analyzing this specific community I actually found that on TikTok the focus was usually not that of opinion. Most of the posts that I saw and interacted with have been funny, entertaining, or informative. Sometimes there will be posts giving tips or strategies on the gameplay, but a lot of the time the clips on TikTok are highlight videos.

Because of this, for one of my posts I decided to try to fit into the “highlight videos” category. I found a funny moment from a time that I was playing the game, and again added some trending background music to it. I also edited text on the screen so that it would pop up as I was speaking it, which I thought added a level of comedy.

@_bekoorb

when you get way too confident for no reason 😅 who’s your least favorite killer? ##dbd ##dbdclips ##dbdvideos ##deadbydaylight ##streamclips ##streamer

♬ Monkeys Spinning Monkeys - Kevin MacLeod

In this post, I also added a question to my caption so that if my post was viewed, my audience would have something to respond to. THE PLATFORM

Something interesting that I found was that TikTok users almost always use hashtags in their posts. However, I’m not sure this really accomplishes much. It’s possible that it makes the post more likely to show up on someone’s feed who often watches or likes videos with that hashtag, but something I found is that it is very difficult to find new videos using the hashtags.

In the same way that I found it difficult to find posts to comment on in order to interact with this community, others were unable to find my posts in the hashtags.

If you do search a hashtag with the intention to find new content or new users, you won’t find much. This is because the posts under a certain hashtag are listed in order according to how popular they are, and there is no way to change the order. This basically means that if you are looking for new videos, you won’t find them there. The only place to find new content is on your ‘For You Page’, and that is pretty randomized and mostly shows popular videos as well.

This means that in order to gain views and followers, most of the time you have to already have views and followers.

It’s like when an entry level job requires a year of past experience. If I can’t get hired because I don’t have experience, how am I supposed to gain the experience?

This further solidifies the fact that the TikTok algorithm favors only content that is already popular. The people with the most followers and views continue to have their videos promoted, and they basically control the format of the app from there.

 I don’t think this is all bad. Sure, the platform very much favors already popular content so it is difficult for newcomers to gain any sort of traction on the app. But on the other hand, I believe this puts less stress on trying to become “popular” and more emphasis on making posts for fun and as a creative outlet. Of course, I’d argue that there is a little part in all of us that would like our posts to become popular, but that doesn’t always have to be the point.  

This also has an effect on how communication happens (or doesn’t) on the app. When the posts being shown on peoples feed is often from the same handful of creators, there is not much opportunity to see a variety of opinions or discussion.

Works Cited

“Game.” Dead by Daylight, deadbydaylight.com/en/game.

[cyberramblings]

Ex-CoD Kid’s Thoughts on the New One

I wanna talk about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. This is 2019′s Call of Duty game (there is one every year). This is a little confusing because it is a reboot of the Modern Warfare sub-series that started with 2007′s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The first three Call of Duty games were set in World War II, which is funny since the whole series is now associated with a modern or near-future setting in most of the games, to the point where 2017′s Call of Duty: WWII stood out by being set in World War II again, which hadn’t been done since 2008′s Call of Duty: World at War (which was the first one to ditch the numbers and also the first one I got into as a kid).

Anyways, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (the 2019 game, which I will now call MW) is one of the biggest leaps the series has taken in a while. These games are kind of notorious for not changing much from entry to entry. The Call of Duty franchise is also kind of notorious for alternating between three different developers in order to crank out a game every year. This gets a little weird because obviously the franchise as a whole shares a lot of traits and code in common, but for example, the Modern Warfare subseries and its corresponding characters can only be touched by one of the three developers, while another of the developers has exclusive rights to the Black Ops subseries and its characters. All this to say that yes, a new Call of Duty game, but the folks (Infinity Ward) who make it only get to make a new one every third year (formerly every other year until the PS4/Xbox One era).

Well, I guess what I mean to say here is that the Call of Duty games tend to be two steps forward, one step back. There’s actually relatively little consensus on which features to include or throw away between games. 2018′s Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 got rid of regenerating health, only for 2019′s MW to bring it back, but also bring back Black Ops 4′s healthkit item. Imagine that times a hundred every year. Even Call of Duty fans usually don’t agree on which features should return or not.

So with that all being said, MW introduces the most new features that I can recall in a Call of Duty going all the way back to its namesake (CoD4) which either invented or popularized the modern model for picking a loadout and unlocking new items for it. I want to run through a few of them and why I like them.

1 - Attachments Reborn

Call of Duty has long featured attachments for guns as an integral part of multiplayer gameplay. At first, you would have to pick between a scope or a silencer or more bullets. The red dot sights were so popular that some of the games introduced ways to have multiple attachments, but at the cost of other parts of your loadout, such as forgoing grenades. MW finally, gloriously allows you to have up to five attachments on your gun with no tradeoff.

It also features far more attachments than before, up to 70 on some guns as opposed to the dozen or so maximum before. This is because there are multiple subvariants of suppressor, stock, laser, nearly two dozen scopes even if they mostly fall under a handful of categories. This also means that attachments are less of a pure upgrade and more of a trade off, but this means you can transform almost every gun into more of a short range weapon or long range weapon. It’s really satisfying to transform a gun into something it’s not, especially when you need to for...

2 - Camo Challenges

Call of Duty the last decade has featured unlockable camouflage patterns as a reward. At first, they were an incentive to get headshots with each weapon, then later special camo challenges would be unlocked after getting all the headshot-based camos. MW skips that first step and has you unlocking  ten categories of camo challenges, each with ten camos each as you complete the specific task. At first, the challenges are things like getting kills, getting headshots, getting kills while crouching, but later they become getting 3 kills in a row, getting kills from far away, etc.

What this essentially means is that every single gun in the game has 100 little milestones of progress and each of those milestones has a tangible cosmetic reward that even other players can see. After getting all 100 camos for a gun, you get the 101st camo: Gold! But it gets better: getting Gold for every gun one of a certain type (assault rifle, pistol, etc.) unlocks Platinum for all guns of that type! One step further: getting Platinum for every gun type (and thus Gold for every gun) unlocks Damascus (named after Damascus Steel), which is a cool multicolored camo. More importantly, it shows that you spent a lot of time getting these challenges done. And most importantly, it basically means that you can “beat” the multiplayer of MW.

I really like this because it gives me a goal to work towards, even if I don’t stand much of a chance of ever actually completing. It was really cool to pick a gun as my favorite right off the bat then use it at close range, long range, etc. as I completed all the milestones and unlocked all 100 camos for it, which let me “beat” that gun and move on to the next one. On one hand, I can see how the game becomes less fun when it is just a grind for these camos, but on the other hand, it is really cool to have a goal to work towards, and I have never felt as attached to the unlocks in a Call of Duty since I was a kid. I’ve almost never played Hardcore mode (a Call of Duty staple that takes away your crosshair and minimap and reduces everyone’s health) but it has become my go-to for getting some of these challenges done, and now I really have a taste for it.

3 - The Rest

MW has a bunch of other little new features that aren’t as life changing, but I wanted to mention anyways. The visuals, animation, and sound design are much improved and much more realistic. The gun sways so much more realistically as you walk forward, for example. The nighvision missions of the single player mode particularly look realistic since they’re just green. The campaign itself is much better than other recent Call of Duty’s, but it is still ultimately forgettable at the end of the day if slightly more enjoyable. I did appreciate that it gives you rewards for the multiplayer mode instead of expecting you to play it just to play it. MW also brings back the Spec Ops coop mode from prior games but with unlocks and XP tied to multiplayer, which is nice, but I’d rather just play multiplayer.

Speaking of, MW lets you toggle which modes you do or don’t want to play online instead of having to pick one mode to play, which is nice because otherwise, certain modes never get played online, especially as the game ages. Also this CoD features special “Missions” that you have to commit to focusing on one at a time that unlock free gun cosmetics (slightly different looking attachments and versions of guns) that offer yet another way to be rewarded for just playing the game, while also helping to make me experience different playstyles.

Of course, this CoD also features a free battle royale mode that seems to be a big success, and I enjyo it fairly well, but it can’t compare to the nonstop action of normal multiplayer. Also this CoD features crossplay sorted by controller typer, so I can get matched with Xbox players or PC players but only if they’re using a controller rather than a mouse and keyboard. This is great because it lets me play the free battle royale mode with my dad on my PC while he is on the PS4, so we can each have our own screen.

Also I appreciate that this game offers splitscreen at all, even if it can’t be used in battle royale, Spec Ops coop mode, or even the larger multiplayer maps such as the brand new Ground War, which features big maps, vehicles, and selectable spawn points just like the FPS competitor Battlefield. It feels a little janky, but it is nice to have the option when I need to blow up vehicles or shoot people from very far away for a challenge.

Oh, you can also reload while aiming down the sights. That’s new. Plus you can mount your gun on a waist high surface to reduce recoil, but it just ends up being annoying since you are forced to do it for challenges. Also this is minor, but certain weak killstreaks or overpowered perks have been turned into “field upgrades”, a usable ability with a cooldown. I like this because they’re not quite like an “ultimate ability” in Overwatch or Black Ops 3/4, but they add a tiny bit of a skill ceiling and agency.

Oh! This is also the first CoD in a long time to not feature a 50 dollar season pass that just provides a little over a dozen multiplayer maps. For context, the other big shooters (Rainbow Six, Counter Strike, Overwatch, Paladins, Battlefield) don’t charge for maps and haven’t in years, since it just divides the playerbase and makes matchmaking harder.

This CoD also doesn’t lock new guns behind lootboxes, which had become a big problem for the last several games. Furthermore, this game doesn’t feature lootboxes at all, which is a new development in the right direction. Instead, this game has pricey (10-20 bucks) cosmetic bundles in the style of Fortnite and a battle pass (again like Fortnite, but almost every game has this now).

Conclusion

So what’s the takeaway? Well, I know Call of Duty is a very popular game that doesn’t need defending, but I really think this new one is special and very much pro-consumer. I refused to get excited for it before release after years of microtransaction-riddled cash grabs, but this one is a real breath of fresh air. There is a lot of content here, and they provide more for free. You get to play all the new maps and modes for free and unlock the new guns for free. The battle royale and normal multiplayer are both getting a lot of support and constant content. I just hope this game doesn’t drive off the edge of a cliff when this year’s new game comes out, but that is a whole other topic (there are rumors, but nothing has been confirmed about this year’s Call of Duty if there even is one. It would need to come out pretty soon, despite no information about it existing. If there isn’t one, it would be the first year since 2004 without one, but this most recent game has been pretty exceptional in my opinion and Corona couldn’t be predicted).

[detective-salt]

So, I have a Queen Roleplay Discord Server ...

So ...

First and foremost, I suppose I should explain the server's basic Roleplay features. In this server, you can choose play up to two available characters - though it would be preferable to start with one character and request another a little later. You can ask to switch characters at any time, but please do not change them frequently.

Regarding the Universe around this server, in the 1900s, Queen will be Roleplayed, but the BoRhap Boys can be included, sort of like an AU, but not in the AU Category ! Queen can obviously be Roleplayed there without the BoRhap Boys to keep it Canonical as well.

In the 2000s, if you want to add Queen to a BoRhap Boys Roleplay, you have the choice on whether you would like to make Queen the same age as the BoRhap Boys or their present day ages.

The server is split into categories,

Out of Character ( Which is self explanatory ), the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s and 2010s ( Which are all for Canonical Roleplay ) and the Alternate Universes ( Which again is self explanatory ). We also have Event Specific Roleplays ! There is also a NSFW options on each category, just in case we get some sinners - Oh ! We also have a Social Media category !! Which is also Roleplay. It's for the Modern AU, where Queen and the BoRhap Boys are the same age. There are groupchats and ( imitations of ) Social Media platforms like Instagram and Twitter.

We also have a few rules, which I'll put here for convenience.

1. First and foremost - simply respect each other. Bullying will not be tolerated. Hate the character, not the player. Really, this should go without saying. If anyone in the server is purposely being made uncomfortable inside or outside of the server, this should be brought to the attention of one of the Admins ( with screenshots or some kind of proof ). It will be discussed in a private, temporary chat with whoever the conflict I between and at least four Admins. You'll be given a warning if you're caught doing this.

2. Yes, NSFW content is allowed, but that is not the focus of this server, and if it is seen outside of its designated chat you will be warned if there are further disruptions.

3. Please read the rules before you start to roleplay. It's nice to follow the established universe so people don't get confused and everyone is on the same page.

5. You can swear, obviously, but please don't start using this freedom to bully other roleplayers.

6. There is no expiry to problems both in and out of the roleplay. It doesn't matter if you're caught a year later, you're still caught, and can still be punished.

7. Please do not advertise servers in any chat without permission from one of the Admins It's pretty rude and disruptive, and will probably be allowed if you just ask !

8. Please make your reply at least three sentences long, this is a Semi-Literate server. You won't explicitly be given warnings for this, but if it continues for, let's say a day, you will politely be asked to either try to write in this manor or to leave the server.

9. Don't bring your own personal drama into the Roleplay. If there is an issue, like I said in the first rule, please bring it up to an Admin and it will be discussed in a private chat.

10. Don't control other people's characters. There are exceptions, of course ( minor actions like hugging or pulling a character's arm, etc. ) and assumptions can be made if there has not been a reply ( assuming the character themself hasn't replied, assuming the character follows the rest of them if they leave an area, etc. )

11. Original Characters are absolutely allowed ! Just please keep them somewhat realistic ! ( Of course in any AUs, they can be changed however you want. )

I'll also put the current Roles on here for convenience - but I may be slow to update this.

• Freddie Mercury - Taken

• Brian May - Taken

• Roger Taylor - Taken

• John Deacon - Taken

• Mary Austin - Taken

• Jim Hutton - ( open )

• Paul Prenter - Taken

• Jim "Miami" Beach - Taken

• John Reid - ( open )

• Ray Foster - ( open )

• Peter "Pheobe" Freestone - Taken

• Kashmira Bulsara - Taken

• Jer Bulsara - ( open )

• Bomi Bulsara - Taken

• Veronica Tetzlaff - ( open )

• Dominique Beyrand - Taken

• Debbie Leng - ( open )

• sErInA pOtGiEtEr - ( open )

• Chrissie Mullen - ( open )

• Anita Dobson - ( open )

• Rami Malek - Taken

• Joe Mazzello - Taken

• Ben Hardy - ( open )

• Gwilym Lee - ( open )

• Lucy Boynton - Taken

If there's somebody else you want to be that I've missed then you're completely welcome to just ask and I'll have the role up !

And that should be it ! If you're interested, please Direct Message me with which character you want and I'll give you the link !!!

[battlersexual]

Board Game Showcase #3: Sentinels of the Multiverse

Introduction:

I mentioned in my introduction post for this series that my love of board games only really blossomed when I joined my college’s board game club. This game in particular was actually one of the major reasons why.

Sentinels of the Multiverse is a game about superheroes, but it’s not like any of the multitude of superhero-based board games on the market. Most of those just license actual Marvel or DC superheroes and put them on some other game, like Monopoly or a generic deckbuilder skeleton. Sentinels is something very different: It’s a totally original superhero game, (admittedly very much based on the Marvel-DC characters in a lot of ways) and it’s incredibly fun. Let’s talk about it!

Story:

I’m going to give you the broad strokes here, because trying to tell you the full story of Sentinels would be kind of like trying to summarize the plot of Magic: The Gathering in a single text post. Even with that, this will probably be the longest story segment I write.

In an alternate universe, instead of the Marvel and DC we’re familiar with, the comics publisher that came out on top was Sentinel Comics. Within the world of Sentinel Comics, the stories followed a similar trajectory to ours: the Golden Age where superheroes fought ordinary criminals and nazis, the Silver age with its wacky space shenanigans and superscience nonsense, the more restrained Bronze age where comics started to tackle more serious issues, a brief Dark age where everything was gritty and EXTREEEEEME, and the Modern age, where writers tried to take the best of everything that came before and just tell good stories (perhaps with mixed results, but I’m not a comic critic, so I’ll leave it at that.) The actual card game can best be described as a licensed game set in the Modern age of Sentinel Comics, which just so happens to have fallen through a time portal to our universe.

Overall, the story follows the Freedom Five, an Avengers-esque superhero team working together against all manner of villains, from the moustache-twirling to the downright terrifying. The villains in the game are all structured like crisis crossovers, with a team of supers going up against them. Each expansion to the game introduced part of the ongoing struggle as the comics progressed, culminating in the OblivAeon crisis and the end of the multiverse as we know it.

Obviously there’s more to it, but I want to move on and talk about individual characters later.

Mechanics and more under the cut.

Mechanics:

Sentinels is, technically speaking, a card game instead of a board game. That said, it still falls into the nebulous category of “Tabletop game” and most board game fans consider them board games anyway.

The game is technically 3-5 players, but can easily support 1 and 2 player games by having each player control multiple characters. Each player will pick a hero from the box, along with their deck. For example...

(Legacy is in some ways the most basic hero, so I’ll be using him as an example often.)

Each hero has a character card that gives them an HP value and a base power (In this case, Galvanize). This means the hero always has something they can do no matter which cards they get. Each hero has a unique deck of cards that focuses on their particular niche, Legacy’s being buffing the team and tanking damage.

Heroes generally work on their own, but often excel by teaming up with other heroes and complementing their own powers. Each turn, a player does three things: Play, Power, Draw, in that order. Play a card from their hand, use a power (either their innate power or one listed on an ongoing card) and draw a card. You can skip both play and power to draw two cards instead. If a hero is reduced to 0 HP, they’re not out of the fight yet: the flip side of their card has “Incapacitated abilities” that help the other team members.

(I couldn’t find a good image of Legacy’s incap side, this is from one of the other characters, Fanatic).

Sentinels is a cooperative game: the heroes work together to defeat a villain.

Each villain has their own deck, which acts as a rudimentary AI. Before the heroes get their turn, they flip over the top card of the villain deck and do whatever the card says. Villain cards are often extremely powerful, and can seriously screw over the heroes’ efforts.

In addition to heroes and villains, each game of Sentinels has an Environment. This is a third type of deck that works similarly to the villain deck, but tends to be neutral: I.E. it helps or hurts both the heroes and the villain. The environments range from the city of Megalopolis to the far-off planet Dok’Thorath to the town of Silver Gulch in the year 1883 to a far-future post-apocalyptic earth, each with unique mechanics. The turn order goes villain, heroes, environment before repeating until either the villain or all the heroes are defeated.

Flavor:

An AMAZING amount. You might have noticed that Legacy’s cards have quotes on the bottom referencing a comic he was in. Every card in the game has this, and it’s a joy to piece it all together and figure out what happened in the extensive storyline of Sentinel Comics. The game itself also presents an exciting puzzle where you try to figure out how to get past the villain’s defenses before they kill you. Each hero feels unique and interesting, and once you find your favorite, you’re all set. (Mine is Chrono-Ranger, the time-traveling cowboy).

I do have another particular favorite in terms of flavor, but I... don’t want to mention him. (Too late.) He might show up, and that’s not going to be good for anyone (Hey!) so let’s just move on.

Expansions:

The base game includes ten heroes, four villains, and four environments. This is a pretty good number, but honestly a lot of the most fun heroes arrived in the expansions. I find every new deck to be fun and interesting, so I can blanket-recommend all the expansions, but there’s a lot of them, both big boxes and mini-expansions consisting of a single deck (Like me!), so I’m not going to talk about them individually like before (WHAT?), so let’s just move on to-

No no no no NO! What kind of cop-out is that? You’re just going to tell people that expansions exist and then not explain anything? You make me SICK.

Oh no.

Oh YEAH! That’s right, I’m here to take over this showcase, so why don’t you just sit down in that corner and watch a REAL pro do his job?

Get off my post, Guise.

Not gonna happen! Take this! And this! And some a THESE!

...There we go. Hello, reader! Yep, I’m talking to you, the one reading this now. My name’s Guise, and I’m the best hero in the whole game!

Ha, I love that picture. ANYWAY, since that idiot couldn’t be bothered to cover the expansions properly, I’ll be doing that for him, just for all of you! Aren’t I the greatest? Well, let’s hop to it!

Ahhh, good old Rook City. Nice place, if you like giant mutant rats and government corruption. Which I do, because that stuff is totally X-TREEEEEEEEME!!!

Rook City was originally its own expansion, but the developers released a box that combined it with the next expansion, Infernal Relics! What nice people. Rook City includes two heroes who are almost as X-TREEEEEEEEME!!! as me, as well as two environments and four, count ‘em, FOUR dastardly villains!

Infernal Relics has plenty of spooooooky magic at play, and features another four villains, two environments, and two heroes, one of which is my good friend the Argent Adept! Here, look at this picture of us!

Ha ha, good times.

They did it again! Shattered Timelines and Wrath of the Cosmos, all in one box. How can you turn that down? If you like time travel and space adventures, these are gonna be your jam, with a total of four heroes, eight villains, and four environments, two of which are IN SPACE! Everything’s better in SPACE! Here’s a picture of me, IIIIIIINNNNNNNN SPAAAAAAAAAAAACE!

Oh, and the Shattered Timelines expansion is where that cowboy that the dumb nerd who started this post likes comes from. You know, if you cared. Which you don’t, because you’re cool! Like me! I can tell.

Vengeance added five new heroes, and introduced the TOTALLY AWESOME team villain variant, where instead of fighting one strong villain, you fight a team of weaker villains! This one can get pretty crazy. The set includes the VENGEFUL FIVE, who you can see on the box, and their decks come with all sorts of bit villains and lackeys to torment the heroes! I took a picture with my nemesis, Argentium!

Whooo, that was one tough customer! Luckily, I got him to chill out. Get it? Chill out? Because I froze him, ha ha! I’m hilarious. And awesome!

And then they did more team villains! Villains of the Multiverse has ten new villains for the team mode, four environments, and NO HEROES AT ALL! Well, lucky thing you can still use the ones from the other expansions, hey? I took a picture with a villain to commemorate this one too, but I can’t seem to find it...

Oh, there it is!

And the last major expansion is... OblivAeon! (Dun dun DUUUUUUUUN!) This one adds five heroes (formerly villains! Oooh, exciting!), five environments, and OBLIVAEON himself, with a new game mode centered around fighting him! Not to mention, you get to see ME take center stage as the big hero that saves the multiverse!

(Uh, not really, it was mostly Luminary who-)

Hey, quiet! Don’t go badmouthing me in front of my adoring fans!

Anyway, I’d love to show you my cool new form in this expansion, but that might be a liiiiitle spoiler-y, so I’ll just say I look like THIS, but WAY sexier!

Well, those are all the big expansions, but we’re not done yet! There’s a bunch of mini-expansions, little individual decks you can buy to add one hero, villain, or environment to the game. I’d cover them all, but there’s really only one you need...

That’s right, ME! Hell, you don’t even need the other big expansions when I’m so much better! Not only do you get my awesome character card, you get all the cards I’ve shown you from my deck, as well as the best card ever! No, really, that’s what it’s called!

I mean, come on! You don’t even need the base game! Just buy me, and you’ll have the best part of Sentinels of the Multiverse, all for the low low price of- hey, get off me! Ow! Stop that! HEY!

All right, that’s ENOUGH. Get OUT of my house.

...Whew, he’s finally gone. All right, let’s get on with things.

Replayability:

Sentinels is pretty darn replayable. You’re almost never going to get the same experience, even if you pick the exact same heroes, environment, and villain. If you have all the expansions, you not only get over 60 heroes and 45 villains, but you can get Variants, which replace all the hero cards (and some villains!) with new versions of the characters that have different powers. I’ve never played a game of Sentinels and felt like I’d seen it before. In addition, you can play it alone, so if you can’t have friends over regularly it’s still a good purchase.

Criticisms:

It runs into a similar problem to Cosmic Encounter where the game is SO spread out over so many expansions that the full experience ends up being an expensive and space-consuming prospect. It’s also a very fiddly game, with tons of counters and cards, so it can be a chore to play some of the more complicated characters. Both of these problems have solutions, however.

Availability:

Sentinels is still being sold, as far as I’m aware. It’s also totally available as a mod on Tabletop Sim, although this doesn’t fix the problem with fiddly counters and running out of space for cards, and in fact makes it worse. But there’s another option.

Sentinels of the Multiverse: The Video Game is an official online version of the card game. It includes every expansion as dlc, heavily marked down from its price as a physical item, and takes care of all the tedious bookkeeping for you. It also lets you earn the variant cards by doing challenges in-game, which is super fun, although you don’t HAVE to to unlock them that way. There are weekly challenge games that pit a certain team against a specific villain and environment, which often act as a cool little puzzle, (and you get to hear my amazing voice!) Shut up, Guise. I very occasionally stream games of SotM on my twitch channel, so if there’s enough interest I can show off more of the game. In general, I recommend the video game even if you already own the board game: it’s really well-done and fun to play.

Creators:

This is kind of a special segment. I normally don’t talk about the creators of these games, because they’re usually irrelevant to the final product. However, artist Adam Rebottaro and writer Christopher Badell are incredibly active in the community around their own game, and they have a podcast where they talk about the lore of the game and answer viewer questions about the characters and universe.

It’s a ton of fun, they’re really engaging and you can feel their creativity and love for comics radiating from their voices whenever they talk. They’re super funny, too.

(And if you want more of ME- ah, what am I saying, of course you do! - you can tune in to this episode right here, where I make a special guest appearance to talk about myself!)

Get OUT, Guise!

Ugh, what a pain. Anyway...

Conclusion:

I know superhero stuff is kind of over-saturated right now, but even if you’re sick of superheroes - give Sentinels a try. It’s a celebration of comics more than superheroes in particular, and despite taking a lot of cues from existing superheroes, everything about Sentinels is fresh and fun. It’s one of my favorite co-op games ever, and its story is so well-told that I genuinely feel like I need to go read the comics, which I remind you don’t exist. Sentinels of the Multiverse is brilliant and just plain FUN.

Seriously, go play it, and make sure to use all my cards!

Didn’t I tell you to get out of my house?

[centaurianthropology]

The Magnus Archives ‘The Puppeteer’ (S04E16) Analysis

A solid little creepy tale about a character you might not remember that you’ve met before.  Which, honestly, is just so in keeping with the theme of his power.  Come on in to hear my thoughts on ‘The Puppeteer’.

Holy shit, one of these assholes has the good sense to see a therapist?  Good on Melanie for taking that step.  She needs an independent ear to help her out (although I REALLY hope this isn’t the therapist that Peter Lukas recommended, because I don’t trust that person not to be another Lukas family member out to isolate and torment people).  And although she’s rightfully reticent to trust any old therapist, trying to find one is good.  And insisting that the sessions not be recorded?  Probably even better.  

The statement itself is a Web statement, which automatically makes thing a bit more convoluted, and delightfully so.  I also really appreciate that Jonny Sims continues to write a very diverse cast of narrators, including ones we don’t get to hear from often.  Having the narrator be a woman who had a successful career, but because of an unplanned pregnancy and the ridiculous demands of her industry, found herself without a job, is not only a great set-up for a horror protagonist, but also a very real sort of character that is very rarely featured in a lot of fiction.  

As for our other main player in the statement, a quick spot of research tells me, although in this universe Neil Lagorio worked with John Carpenter (real horror director), in our universe Neil Lagorio doesn’t exist, nor do any of his movies.  I suppose that someone who was alive and working in the ‘70s might be a bit too recent to turn into a character in a horror podcast the way Jonny has with other real figures like Robert Smirke.  Particularly as there are strong hints that the Puppeteer, Neil Lagorio, was a proper avatar of the Web.  

Not only that, but he partnered with another avatar, this one of the Spiral, the Worker-in-Clay Gabe on his early Claymation.  They eventually split, but it’s fascinating to see that two avatars of different powers might come together and work together because they wanted to work on creative endeavors.  

It brings up questions of free will.  We know Jon works with others, has interests and cares.  We could see him partner with another avatar so long as they had aligned interest and morals.  And it seems the same case with Gabe and Lagorio.  It might not have worked for long (Gabe had his ritual to attempt, and Lagorio had other matters that needed looked after), but when it wasn’t about trying to remake the world, they were happy enough to be creative together. And I really like that, horrible as they inevitably were together.

And like the easter-egg appearance of Gabe, this is also not the first appearance of Mr. Lagorio.  He did the special effects work for Dexter Banks in ‘Creature Feature’ on his (never-finished) film Widow’s Weave about a giant spider and the entire town of people who calmly fed themselves to it.  All based on a movie and/or book that didn’t seem to have existed.  Not only were many of the actors fed to the supposedly animatronic spider that Lagorio built, but Banks himself eventually was consumed as well.  Given what we heard about how he treated those who he didn’t like, but who did interest him, I think this is entirely in line with Lagorio’s character to have arranged for both, and for the Web to have been running a very long game in regards to Dexter Banks.  It’s also notable that, in that episode, Lagorio seemed far more in the background, with Banks the mastermind of the plot to feed people to the giant spider. But then again, that’s also a very Web thing to do, using someone flashy as a front for the true schemer in the background.

That the avatar of the Web is called the Puppeteer isn’t at all surprising, although I wonder if the Stranger felt as though it had been ripped off afterwards.  But the Puppeteer himself did seem to be the very embodiment the Web.  He was very cold, almost emotionless, and people either interested him (those he liked or hated both fell into this category) or they may as well not have existed to him.  That’s the Web all over, uninterested entirely unless it can wrap someone into its schemes.

I also find it interesting that his powers seem to have turned on him in the end.  While he started out being able to control others, he eventually lost control of himself.  I wonder if eventually the power that is being conducted through any avatar burns them out.  Even the ones who aren’t killed through other means will eventually fail because the human body can’t process that sort of power for that long.  

But even in that the Puppeteer was brought joy by turning himself into a puppet in his own house, using a web of ropes and pulleys, and created a parody of normal movement for himself.  And he enjoyed his retirement right up until the Web replaced him with Anabel Caine, and she came to finally kill him.  It doesn’t seem like he was sad or frightened to see it happen either.

And then there was the end. If someone would have told me that Daisy would get a lot more Welsh and a lot more practical after being trapped in that coffin, I would have laughed.  But I loved her talk with Jon.  I loved her leveling that whether he was a monster or not, moping around was pointless.  He can’t wallow and he can’t blame everything bad that happens to everyone around him on himself.

I do like that he basically defaulted to I’m-alone-because-Martin-won’t-talk-to-me, and I sort of wanted Daisy to point out that Martin was not only not dead, but also being influenced by a being of the Lonely. Maybe a bit of persistence on Jon’s part in talking to him wouldn’t go amiss.

Either way, Daisy may be one of the few who really gets Jon at this point.  She’s also been a monster, been taken over by a power, only to have it supplanted by another.  And somehow, that has created a sense of balance in her.  No, she’s not overtly strong anymore, but what Basira seems to fail to realize is that Daisy now has real emotional strength.  She survived the coffin.  She reclaimed her dreams by signing a contract with the Institute.  Even as Basira is finding her a burden, Daisy is forging her own path.

And dragging Jon out of his own head for drinks seems like one of the most practical solutions at this point.  I’m really hoping that she might even be able to do it for Martin (she’s certainly stubborn enough, and after the coffin, I don’t think Peter Lukas would scare her much) and Melanie.

And honestly, I hope Basira begins to recognize the strength and the level-headedness that is Daisy. This season really has been about turning the tables between major pairs.  Martin is now the distant one and Jon is pining away in the most obvious fashion possible.  Basira is stronger and taking risks and running errands for Elias while Daisy is in the archives being practical and making certain everyone around her doesn’t go insane due to the powers saturating the place.  The people who seemed the most down-to-earth now seem lost, and those who were lost are making genuine efforts to be better people.

I’ll admit that Daisy has never been one of my favorite characters.  The whole cop-who-abuses-her-power thing is just not a good look.  But having a Daisy who’s finally at least more in control of herself, who has slipped the leash of the Hunt by getting tied to the Buried and the Eye?  By finding a balance between powers rather than an unhealthy devotion to one?

I think this Daisy is awesome.  Not only that, but I think Daisy may have inadvertently done what I’ve only seen a few other characters do: find a perfect balance in which she is herself and maintains control over herself.  Robert Smirke spent his entire life trying to create an almost supersymmetric balance between the powers, and is the only non-aligned character I can think of with crazy powers.  It’s not clear if he managed it right up to his death, but that’s what makes Smirke so interesting to me.  I think he realized that the powers might cancel one another out if ones allegiance was split between multiple parties.  Leitner did the same, and managed to wield an amazing power in that balance as well.

And now we have Daisy who is balanced between the Hunt, the Buried, and the Eye.  Because it was unintentional, I don’t know if she can keep it up, but in this balance she’s found a peace and a stability I’ve never heard in her before.

And that strangely leaves me hopeful about Martin as well.  Because I think he may be intentionally balancing multiple powers. He’s stringing Peter Lukas along, clearly not the terrified and mindless thrall that Lukas was thinking this poor innocent boy was going to be.  And I think he can do that because he’s been previously balanced between the Eye and the Web.  And honestly, a Martin who forges a deliberate balance is one that interests me a lot.  Martin has always been such a passive character that seeing him become passive aggressive with both Elias and Peter has been heartening.  Now, honestly, I want him to get even more proactive.  I really want a Martin who is using Peter far more than Peter is using him, and because of his connections with the Web, Peter doesn’t even know it’s happening.  I want a Martin who comes out the other side of this plotline having created a unique balance between his own fear of being alone, his desire for knowledge, and his desire for control and slight tendency toward manipulation.  Any of the powers on its own destroys those it claims (every avatar who truly embraces their powers is evidence of that, and Lagorio is just a very overt example of being ultimately consumed by his own power), but those who manage the balance may be the only people who can actually achieve a degree of mental well-being and real, independent power in the entire show.

Either way, I’m very excited to have not one but two characters who may be intentionally or unintentionally dabbling in the balance between multiple powers.  Daisy is getting more and more interesting, and through her I’m getting interested in what Martin might do as a parallel.  And that’s a solid place to be.

Conclusions

Robert Smirke has been my favorite and most intriguing background character since his introduction. His whole balance-and-fear thing is such a different approach to the powers than any of the avatars or other worshippers have attempted.  I have to imagine that achieving that balance is incredibly difficult, and maintaining it without being torn apart must be even harder.  But he managed it.  Leitner managed it.  And now both Daisy and Martin might be managing it.  It all may end terribly, but I am really excited that we’ve possibly got two characters trying to find that balance.

[rousedwhisperingdawn]

Player motivations

TL;DR If you want to talk about what sort of content a developer should focus on in a MMO, go read this first.

One of the perennial flashpoints I see in discussions of player types in FFXIV, and indeed MMO players in general, is the division between "casual" and "hardcore", and acting as though this is the only categorization that matters. This is so prevalent, and yet still so wrong that I cannot understand why it has spread so much.

It would be much more helpful if everyone involved knew about the other models for player motivations and behaviour, because at least then we could have some variety in our discussions, rather than simply a dichotomy between "cares a lot about mechanical achievements" and "doesn't care at all about mechanical achievements".

As usual, the standard warnings apply: the map is not the territory (ie don't assume that the theory describes the truth in all its details), and use the right tool for the job (ie don't force everything into the pre-conceived notions of how Things Should Be, no matter how ill-fitting or irrelevant).

Chances are you've heard about Richard Bartle's Taxonomy Of Player Types. It's the well-known four categories of players in MUDs, also applicable to MMOs. Bartle has proposed a slightly expanded eight categories, basically further dividing each of the original four categories into "explicit" and "implicit", but I don't think it's as well-known, because it didn't get turned into a popular online questionnaire. (I'm not going to go into the expanded categories because I'm not as familiar with them.)

Personally, I don't agree with some of Bartle's conclusions, but for a very basic starting point into what I'm trying to say in this post, it works out, and is certainly simpler than Nick Yee's theories, which I agree far more with. It's certainly more nuanced than "casuals vs hardcore".

The four categories are:

Achievers: Likes to obtain "points" or "levels" or some such concrete measurement of "success" in a game. This is probably what most people mean when they talk about the "hardcore" side. Raiders who raid for the sense of accomplishment, or to get the gear, or for the prestige of having cleared the raid, or any combination of the above: a UCoB or UwU raider who just wants the titles and weapon glamours is firmly in this category.

Explorers: Wants to learn all there is to learn about a game, be it mechanics or lore. The theorycrafters who do so for the sake of doing so, rather than because they want to get an advantage out of it fall into this category, as do the loremasters.

Socializers: Plays multiplayer games for the other people. These include roleplayers and "social" FCs and linkshells. Also tends to get attached to NPCs who they like, and often gather like-minded people to discuss them and the game. Generally the meat of the "community", and certainly the ones who seek out and make said communities in social networks. This is usually what people mean when they say "casual".

Killers: Probably better named "competitors". Which is a more descriptive term, since they like competition with other players, both friendly and otherwise. PvP is the obvious one, but marketboard control is another common activity. They're not content to just be the top, they want to be better than you (speaking of a general "you").

Readers who are paying attention might have noticed a drawback to these categorizations: they're categories, which means that under this model, a player is a Socializer or an Achiever or whatnot, and they are defined as being a Socializer or Achiever. Bartle claimed that a player is generally only one primary category, and all other motivations are secondary. Most online tests at least allow for the possibility of, say, 70% Achiever and 30% Socializer, but it's still awkward trying to fit multiple motivations into this model, especially since they allocate a fixed number of maximum "points" or "percentages" to be spread over all the categories. A pie chart, rather than a bar graph. I suspect this is because MMORPG playstyles are different enough from MUD playstyles for this to be an issue.

Hence, I'm far more inclined to Nick Yee's paper on Motivations Of Play In MMORPGs, where he suggests a component model rather than a category model. In other words, you can have multiple different motivations in playing the game, and a given player can have any and all combinations of components.

There are ten components, which may seem like a lot, but I find it useful to divide them (as Yee does) into three main components and ten subcomponents: Achievement (three subcomponents), Social (three subcomponents), and Immersion (four subcomponents). While I'll be summarizing the components here, it's probably much easier and simpler to go read Yee's paper, since he describes it well enough.

Achievement

Advancement: The "Bartle Achiever" type. Wants to accumulate points and power and prestige, whether explicit in terms of gear or gil, or implicit in the social acknowledgement from having a rare glamour. Yee mentions that this can come from both the Skinner Box micro-rewards of the grind, or the desire to reach an "end goal".

Mechanics: Half of the "Bartle Explorer" type, this time focusing on the mechanics part of it; Yee mentions that he couldn't find a "pure Explorer" in his research, but when he split it into two, suddenly they're everywhere. People who calculate Best In Slot and materia melds and the exact thresholds for stats.

Competition: As mentioned, competing with other players, either in fair and sanctioned matches, or unprovoked and impromptu attacks. Again, the primary idea is to "beat" and "defeat" another player.

Social

Socializing: More specific than the "Bartle Socializer" type, these players like to meet and chat with other players, usually in large and varied communities. "Social FC" and "casual friendly linkshell" advertisements are usually aimed at these players. In more pronounced cases, the MMO is a fancy chatroom with a game attached to it.

Relationship: More in-depth than the Socializing component, as players looking for Relationships are, well, looking for relationships, long-term and sustained and meaningful. Friends who act as a static duo or trio or light party, for example. Sometimes these are people whose relationships with their friends are carried over from other games and communities, eg RL friends or partnered streamers.

Teamwork: They just want to play together in group content. Players who like Teamwork want to do content in a party, be it a static or a PUG. Probably easier to illustrate with the opposite, ie low Teamwork component, who are the much-discussed soloers in MMOs.

Immersion

Discovery: The lore half of the "Bartle Explorer". Loremasters, map explorers, those interested in the setting and story and the world as a world, rather than simply as a game server with enemies to hit.

Roleplaying: Wanting to have their character be a character in the world, rather than merely a user avatar. They want to have their characters fit into the world setting, and create a backstory and story for their characters. The actual act of roleplaying in-game might not even be that prominent, since the Roleplaying component can manifest in fanfics of their character on other sites.

Customization: Glamour is the true endgame. Which I think sums up this component neatly.

Escapism: RL is stressful and annoying, and so they play the game to relax and forget about their worries for a while.

As can be seen, it's much easier to combine different components in any amount, rather than simply "you must be focused on Achievement or Social, but not both". There are probably much more refined and in-depth studies out there that fit the current state of MMO players more, but I haven't learned of any yet.

So what does this all mean? I am posting this because I want players to stop dividing activities and interests into "casual vs hardcore". A player can be interested in both "casual" activities like roleplaying, and "hardcore" activities like trying to maximize DPS uptime as a Healer or Tank. It's possible to be a player who likes chatting about the game to friends and acquaintances, and also knows the best way to optimize rotations.

However, the fact that any combination of components is possible means, tautologically, that any combination of components is possible. And so trying to force a playstyle into another will just appeal to people who have that specific combination and levels of those components, while alienating people who don't have them.

The usual example is in suggesting story content be put into Savage raids. The reasoning often given is from the viewpoint of the Achievement main component, in that they are trying to "convince" "casual" (ie Immersion component) players to "get good" enough to clear Savage, just so they can see the story, and in the meantime provide a larger pool to draw Savage raiders from. This will piss off players who have little interest in the Achievement component, while not actually doing much for the players who have little interest in the Immersion component. The equivalent would be to force players to be in a FC of a certain size (Social component) before they can even enter Savage raids (Achievement component). Players can meet the requirements, but they're not going to be happy about it, and most will try to find a way to circumvent the spirit of the rules.

These classifications are all descriptive, not prescriptive, as both Bartle and Yee (and others) warn many times in their presentations. If you create content that is aimed at players who score high in both Achievement and Immersion, and then the content is played by players who score high in both Achievement and Immersion, this doesn't mean your playerbase is entirely Achievement and Immersion; it just means you self-selected for those traits, and everyone else who isn't interested have gone away.

I want players to understand that there are many different motivations of play, and not just assume that what they are playing for is what everyone plays for, or should be playing for. I want players to understand that this is not a "them vs us" debate, where players must be one or the other. I want players to understand that just because someone scores high in a given subcomponent, this does not mean they will score high in every other subcomponent, or that they will inherently score low in an "opposing" component.

This is a hope that everyone will have some insight into why another player may not like all the same things they do, and yet still share some of the same interests.

[piracytheorist]

Writing a one-handed musician Killian Jones for your AUs

or, How to avoid erasing his disability 101

So. You want to write an AU where Killian is a musician. Awesome! Go for it! As a professional musician myself, I’m gonna suggest a few ways you can do that without erasing his disability.

Because against what most people may think, you can be a musician even if you’re disabled. The sky’s the limit and if you’re willing to broaden your horizons, you can find a million choices to choose from.

This is a non-exhaustive list, only a post to give you ideas. It’s your world, so it’s your choice what to include in it. All you need to do is do some basic homework on music performance and respect disabled people.

You want him to be a rock musician? We got you!

Guitar

This guy is an amputee who first used his prosthesis (hook) to strum a guitar’s strings, and then obtained a specific attachment to hold a pick so he can play.

Here’s the video of him talking about it.

I know Killian in canon lost his left hand. So in your AU, you can either have him lose his right hand, or simply have him learn left-handed guitar.

(x)

Same goes for electric bass.

It goes without saying, that without an extremely expensive prosthesis he'll only be able to play anything that can be played with a pick - but all rock guitars are played with a pick, so you’re covered.

Piano

Oh yes, believe it or not, you can be a one-handed pianist. Maurice Ravel wrote a Piano Concerto for the Left Hand for Paul Wittgenstein, a pianist who lost his right hand in WWI. 

So, if someone can play a freaking concerto with just one hand (some of those parts are hard to play with two hands, let alone one) you can definitely have your character play rock piano with just one hand. There are tons of possibilities.

You don’t want to write a rock musician? You want Killian to be in a classic orchestra?

Scrap the strings, they’re too mainstream.

I can’t say much on woodwinds. It could probably work, possibly with him being filthy rich, enough to be able to afford an (again) extremely expensive prosthesis that gives him full finger movement - and still I’m not sure it’ll do the job as well, unless you want to use dispension of disbelief! I won’t blame ya ;)

Percussion is a bit tricky. As with other instruments, you need both wrist and finger control, and I’m not sure about prostheses that can mimic that. Of course, you can do some research, or again, use dispension of disbelief.

What’s left? Oh right... Brass instruments.

Trumpet

(x)

A friend of mine who plays trumpet once joked how he could easily turn pages with one hand, since he could hold and play the instrument with the other. The above image is an example of a player with a special prosthesis that helps balance the trumpet on it, while the right hand does its normal job. So all your one-handed Killian would need is a prosthesis of that kind.

Trombone

The logic is similar to playing the trumpet. A prosthesis to balance the instrument on and then his good hand will do the job. (Video)

French Horn

(x)

I couldn’t find any pictures with people with prostheses. But it’s important to note that the french horn is played with the left hand, while the right one enters the bell to “mute” the sound, or simply hold the instrument. I personally asked a french horn player about all this, and she also told me that one can use a normal mute, if they can’t use their hand.

(x)

So again, either have him keep his left hand instead of the right one, or have him play a right-handed horn. I’m not sure how often those are used though. But it’s your fic, so your world, so you can do whatever you want! No french horn player will feel insulted if you have someone in your fic play with the other hand (as long as you’ve done a bit of research, of course).

Tuba

(x)

My very quick search told me that the middle way of holding the tuba is favored in the US, while the left one in the UK. It’s up to you to choose. In any case, as you can see, the player pushes the keys with his right hand, while the left one helps hold the instrument - mind you that’s it’s a heavy one. Again, a prosthesis that will help him hold it in place, and he’s ready. But also again, I couldn’t find a picture of a tuba player with a prosthesis.

Now to be realistic, most professional orchestras wouldn’t hire a one-handed player easily, no matter how good they are. But it’s your story, and you can write about that special orchestra that hired a one-handed player. Or you can make it non-professional, or whatever.

Other than that, there are tons of instruments you could have Killian play with one hand (just the keyboard part of an accordion, for example), all you’d need to do is research and, honestly, how many rockstar!Killians do we need?

Heck, there are examples of people with no arms at all playing guitar. Do some research. Broaden your horizons. Respect disabled people. Try to not write something that’s been written a million times for a million fandoms.

Last but certainly not least, one category not many would think of:

Singing

Oh yes, yes, yes. People who only master their singing and not any other instrument (like yours truly) are considered musicians, quelle surprise.

Be it opera singing, rock singing, country singing, or -wait for it- choir singing (my biases show) or any other kind of singing, homeboy ain’t needing two hands to do it. If he’s holding a binder with sheet music with his hand, you’ll have to figure out how he’ll turn the pages (With just his stump? With a simple prosthesis similar to his hook? It’s up to you!), but that’s an extremely minor issue.

So there you go. Ideas how to write a one-handed musician!Killian Jones, without erasing his disability, and instead actually promoting the idea that disabled people can play music. You have no idea what power this can have to disabled people.

[jmsebastian]

Project Zero 2: Wii Edition and the Remake Dilemma

I’m a firm believer that remakes are typically losing propositions. There are cases that buck this trend as there always are (Resident Evil comes to mind), but when it comes to games that can be considered landmark titles in their respective genres, or just superbly made games, the benefit of a remake is limited to its availability on new platforms. This is something a port could accomplish with significantly less risk of messing with the integrity and intent of the original creation. Sometimes, though, games are completely overhauled for one reason or another. Project Zero 2: Wii Edition falls into this category.

A remake of the 2003 PlayStation 2 and Xbox release, known in the US as Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly, Project Zero 2: Wii Edition uses two basic templates from which it forms its mold. The first is the original game. Fatal Frame II was a pretty big step forward from its predecessor. It maintained the basic underpinnings of exploring haunted old buildings and fighting ghosts by taking pictures of them with a magic camera, but it added some significant and interesting changes. In Crimson Butterfly you don’t go through the whole house of horrors alone. Your twin sister often tags along as your AI companion. This means she can alert you to the location of ghosts, and can also become the target of their attacks. The mechanics of camera combat are tweaked as well, where your proximity to ghosts is used to scale your damage up more than the time multiplier used in the first game. Because of this, ghosts often have jittery animations that make getting close to them risky and capturing them with combo inducing fatal frames difficult. The explorable area is also expanded out to several sometimes connected buildings and the space between those buildings in a small village compared to the single mansion that made up the first game.

Wii Edition borrows Crimson Butterfly’s structural framework practically wholesale. The level design in almost unchanged, the combat parameters are pretty much the same, and your AI sister manages to get in your way just about as often. What’s different is everything else. Shedding the fixed camera angles so common in survival horror games, Project Zero 2 takes its presentation from its console release cousin, Zero: Tsukihami no Kamen. Released four years earlier in 2008, Tsukihami no Kamen completely shifted how the Fatal Frame games were presented to players and how players interacted with them. The camera went from fixed and set tracking to being pulled in over the player character’s shoulder. It became dynamic, the player could direct it with a certain amount of freedom to focus on what they wanted to in the environment. Motion control was also introduced to more accurately convey the feeling of aiming a flashlight and camera around. It was a complete break from what the series had been doing up until that point, and Project Zero 2: Wii Edition fully embraces these changes.

The mix of classic Fatal Frame level design with modern Fatal Frame camera angles and control schemes produces mixed results. For lack of a better term, the game is clumsy. This manifests itself in some interesting ways. First is the unoptimized menu navigation. As you explore the Lost Village, you come across a variety of objects that reveal lore. Most of these are paper documents of various types. Picking one up will open the article so you can read it. To close it, you first press B on the Wii remote to stop reading, then press A to close the text. This might not sound so bad, not adjusting the purpose of a single button to match player intent in context-sensitive ways makes quickly navigating the menu both confusing to learn and quite difficult to do quickly. While the backstory to the Fatal Frame games is interesting and worth taking the time to investigate, repeat playthroughs don’t always require that you read a seven-page journal entry again. The menu system actively works against playing quickly or efficiently. Considering how much time players have to spend in menus, missteps here can add up to some significant time loss.

Time lost to players doesn’t seem to have been a concern for Koei Tecmo when developing this game as it also features unskippable cutscenes. Wii Edition is not a game that is overwhelmed by its pre-rendered scenes, but they are frequent enough that they disrupt play in regular intervals. For first time players, they probably aren’t something you’d want to gloss over as they provide guidance on what to do next but they are far, far less important for those who have played the game before. Not being able to skip these scenes is especially odd considering the odds that many people playing the remake of Crimson Butterfly also played the original and are familiar with the story already. Forcing players to watch cutscenes always ends up feeling like the player is having control taken away from them, and it’s especially painful here due to the more general issues with player control.

Perhaps the easiest target with regard to player control is how it feels to move the player character around. Unfortunately, Mio and Mayu feel very slow. Slow movement on its own is not a problem, but the game does not feel balanced around the movement speed. A prime example is the sluggishness of the quick turn. What was a snappy animation that turned you around 180 degrees in Tsukihami no Kamen became a set piece of animation reorienting the character that feels as if it’s playing back in slow motion. The animation itself isn’t even particularly slow, but the built-in delay to the starting of that animation makes the whole thing feel unnaturally labored. It’s a much less useful technique because of this. Timing it right during combat becomes more a test of how well you anticipate a ghost’s actions rather than how quickly you can react, which is unfair to ask of players when ghosts spend so much of their time hidden from player view.

The slow movement might have been the result of the game taking place in such tight quarters, a problem created when spaces aren’t redesigned to match the other changes. The slow animations feel like a safeguard against players running themselves into walls constantly or rushing past something they were supposed to pay attention to. This is taken to an extreme in one particular room where the player can walk through a pair of hanging curtains. Going through them triggers an especially aggravating animation of Mio nervously pushing the curtain back before stepping forward. These animations are triggered by proximity to the curtain rather than the on-screen prompt to press A like in nearly every other interaction in the game. It’s a particularly bad moment. If you just to happen to be ambushed by a ghost while doing this, suddenly you can rush through the curtains at full running speed with no issue, demonstrating the arbitrary nature of Mio’s movement limitations. Unfortunately, the forced pace feels like it creates more problems than it solves. Players just have to suffer through everything taking a bit longer than it probably should, with backtracking or getting temporarily lost compounding the problem.

Getting ambushed here is about as dirty a trick as the game can play.

Combat also suffers some unexpected clunkiness. All Fatal Frame games are a bit clunky when it comes to wielding the Camera Obscura, though this has the express purpose of making the game both challenging and tapping into the fear of the player, who might perform the wrong action due to a panicked state. In Zero: Tsukihami no Kamen, the imprecise motion controls of the Wii were mitigated by the lock on mechanic. One could argue this made the game a bit too easy, but Project Zero 2 for Wii goes very far in the other direction. The lock on keeps your camera in the vicinity of your nearest target, and the player must adjust their aim within the lock by rolling the Wii remote to either side or pointing it up or down. Locking on happens quickly and is accompanied by a satisfying shink sound that provides the player with positive feedback. Hearing it, you get the sense that the hard part is over and now it’s just a matter of waiting for a fatal frame chance.

Really, your photo album efforts are just beginning as the ghosts can easily disappear out of your lock on, reducing your spirit energy levels back to nothing. What you’re supposed to do is lock on, then diligently follow along, making minute adjustments to the position of the Wii remote in order to keep the ghost centered in the viewfinder. This is no easy feat, especially if your Wii remote calibration is off or you have a less than ideal location for the sensor bar. The semi-automated lock on and precision aiming feel at odds with one another. Adding in the analog stick of the nunchuck on top of that for turning your character around and you have three methods of controlling the aim of the Camera Obscura, all of which just get in each other’s way. Its lack of complementary components is all the more surprising since it had worked so much better in the previous Wii effort. While Tsukihami no Kamen’s combat could certainly have used some fine tuning, Wii Edition reduced that complete package back down to its individual pieces without remembering how they were supposed to fit back together.

The game really forces you to upgrade as much as possible since your basic film does very little damage and getting fatal frame combos is quite difficult compared to the other games in the series.

A quirkier addition for combat scenarios is the blacking out of the screen during certain encounters. There you are, tracking a ghost as it glides around the room while you charge your spirit meter, when suddenly the room goes completely dark. You lose the ability of your filament to point you toward the ghost’s position right along with the ability to see anything. It’s supposed to add tension, maybe even give you a fright. The first time it happens, it gets close to accomplishing that. At the very least you’ll be surprised. That raising of the stakes fails to deliver once you figure out that the underhanded tactic of your spectral enemy goes away after a few seconds and in the meantime, you can just run around to avoid getting caught unaware. It’s a fun new trick to see once, but it doesn’t force the player to reassess their predicament or use new strategies to deal damage to ghosts. The same exact methods of evasion work just as well, you simply have to wait until the lights come back on to hurt your foe.

Since the game was released in PAL regions, it did receive localized voice acting in English. What might be a surprise to those of us in North America is that the dub was done with English voice actors, meaning it differs wildly from the original English language dub that was produced for North America and PAL regions. For those familiar with the original game, it’s quite off-putting to hear these new voices. For a game so rooted in being Japanese, non-Japanese voice acting always felt a little strange. To their credit, the actors who worked on Project Zero: Wii Edition did a fantastic job, and once you’ve become accustomed to it, I find that it often outshines the original English dub. Sadly, the English dub is the only one you can choose from despite its release in multiple European countries and featuring several language options for the subtitles and menus (I played the Italian release, complete with box art and manual, printed in Italian). The Japanese audio isn’t even available, which is a real shame, as it would have been nice to give the characters their presumed native language to give it that much more coherency. Of course, multi-language tracks were still uncommon in 2012, so you take what you can get.

Aside from getting an English dub, the greatest thing about the PAL release of Wii Edition is that it made the game available to a wider audience. If you only happen to have a North American Wii, however, you face the same kinds of problems trying to play this game as you do trying to play the fourth game. Without a PAL or Japanese console, you can’t simply pop a disc in and start playing. If you don’t want to invest in another console for a single game, then the easy answer is emulation. Wii emulation is in a very good state, so the game is easily playable on PC, though you are likely to get some audio stuttering and maybe a bit of slowdown. You can even get a USB sensor bar and pair your Wii remote with your computer to replicate the control scheme exactly. If you want to play on your North American console, you can also do that thanks to the robust homebrew community for the console. Bypassing the region lockout using sideloaded applications means you can play the game on actual hardware exactly as one would expect, and it works flawlessly. If you really want to, you can also track down an undubbed version of the game which features the original Japanese audio with the texts of the various PAL region languages.

With so many available options to play it, the question really becomes whether or not it’s worth playing. For anyone who loves Fatal Frame, the answer is easy enough. Yes. It’s interesting to see the game redesigned for a completely different perspective. It’s fun to hear the extremely different voice acting, and at its core, it’s very much the same type of game that all the games in the series are. You can’t really go wrong with it in that regard. For those who might be coming late to the series, I’d have to recommend the original over this version. Crimson Butterfly is readily available, can be played digitally in HD via the PlayStation 3, and simply holds up better as an overall package. If you love motion controls but only have room in your life for one Fatal Frame game to try, then you’re better off going with Zero: Tsukihami no Kamen. It’s more responsive animations, more appropriately designed locales, and tighter Camera Obscura mechanics make it the obvious choice. It also incorporates the Wii’s motion control gimmicks in interesting and surprising ways that truly enhance the experience, something Project Zero 2: Wii Edition curiously omits. For a remake, Wii Edition doesn’t make much of a case for itself being the definitive version. It acts more as a companion piece to the original, a super new game plus, almost. It’s one to come back to only once you’ve made your way through the rest of the series and still want more 

[ayanoinpurple]

Saeran Rant

Okay, so I finished V’s route last week and I have quite a few things to get off my chest. So, like a rational human being, I berated my friends to some extent, but that wasn’t enough so now I’m here. V’s route was not something that I really enjoyed, and I find a LOT of problems with it. 

I’m not saying that the route isn’t well done, because it is. It’s spectacularly written and it played every heartstring I had. The VA’s were amazing at their jobs as usual, and all the hard work payed off into this beautifully tragic story. 

However, as a person whose favorite character from the game is Saeran, a number of things angered me. Time and time again Saeran has been treated by the fandom like someone they could just dump all the problems on, and throw him away at the end. They treat him as if he has only one dimension, which as we learn from the other routes and endings that isn’t the case at all. He’s been written in such a way that a lot of players have either taken the “Cute blushy bad boi uwu” or “he’s fucking creepy and abusive no” approach. 

These opposing views are both ways that he can be interpreted. But the way I read him, as an author who has experience in writing characters who’ve been through trauma, and have issues that they don’t know how to deal with, I think both of these fall short of the true essence of his character. 

When examining Saeran you have to acknowledge both of his alters, along with his character as a child, and his character in the secret endings. You can’t just pick one aspect of his personality, even if it seems to be the dominant one, and label him with it. Personality changes all the time, and so it is an unreliable source of information when it comes to the true soul of a person. We see this most evidently in Seven’s rapid change of personality in his route. 

This means that when it comes down to it, Saeran Choi, the person, is both “Cute and blushy” and “Creepy and Abusive”, and yet neither. This is where evaluating his personality over time can lead us to uncover his true character. 

When he was a child, Saeran was very loving and attached to Saeyoung, his trust in him almost boundless. This is why being told he was abandoned was so traumatic even at 17. And having been kept away from the outside world since birth would mean that even at that age he was still very much like a child much younger. I would compare young Saeran mostly to Ray, which is why I think Ray was derived from his innocent side, but we’ll get to that in a moment. Because of the way he was raised it was very easy for Rika to manipulate him, to turn him into her loyal servant. He would become attached to her in very much the same way as he was to Saeyoung, but on a much stronger scale. 

However, as a result of the torture, the trauma and brainwashing Rika put him through to get to that point caused him to split into two alters. Now, when examining DID it is so common for people to categorize the alters as one “true identity” with another or more “alters” that share the mind and body. While this can be true in some cases, that isn’t exactly the most helpful mindset to have of the disorder as a whole. Each case is unique, and I think that can also be said for Saeran. 

I would argue that while both Ray and Unknown (because if I refer to him as Saeran this will get confusing) acknowledge each other as separate entities, and act as if they are, it isn’t exactly true. In the end, both Ray and Unknown are Saeran, just different versions of himself, aspects of him that split off in order to fulfill what he needed at certain times to be able to process what was happening to him. 

Ray is Saeran’s innocence, his kindness, his heart basically. He needs Ray to feel loyalty, to feel loved and supported. Ray is the scared little boy that didn’t want to believe his brother left him behind. 

Unknown is Saeran’s anger, his vengefulness, his head. He needs Unknown to protect himself from those that would seek to hurt him, which is why he’s so aggressive. He does whatever he thinks will keep him safe and “happy”. Unknown is the furious brother strangling Seven because he put him in danger, betrayed him, and broke him. 

Now trying to put this into categories and generalize these two alters who are so much more complex than I could even explain is problematic, but it is helpful to help you see what I’m getting at. Neither one of them is “Saeran” or the true personality, because both of them have to combine in order to form Saeran. When Ray and Unknown hate each other it appears to be two people who hate each other, but really it seems to be Saeran’s internal monologue of hate on the parts of himself he himself dislikes. 

We never see the juxtaposition between Ray and Unknown in any other route but V’s, and that leads me to think that by that time and under repetitive torture and drugs that the innocent side of him, the one that housed his undying loyalty was crushed and pushed into the back of his mind. He gives in to his own pain and blocks his heart to stop from hurting. It’s with this mentality of “stopping the pain” that he’s so willing to die in the other routes. “I have nowhere else to go” and “Anything that will stop the pain” are two COMPLETELY DIFFERENT reasons for self destructive tendencies. And seeing how that changes over time shows the very deep amount of pain he has been through. 

Which is why this route made me so angry at the way he’s been treated. Saeran is extremely loyal, protective, devoted, and kind upon closer evaluation. It is only the things that have happened to him that corrupted and fractured that. However, in the after endings we see that he’s able to start recovering and these traits are still there. Corrupt or Recovered these stay the same and are evident throughout. 

Seeing people generalize him or hate on him because of the things he’s done or insinuated makes me so furious because it’s clear they’re focusing more on how dangerous he is rather than the fact that he’s just as much, if not even MORE the victim than V. I agree that mental illness doesn’t get you a complete pass, but I think that with all the evidence pointing towards how Saeran isn’t bad by nature he’s been dealt the worse card. 

V is a wonderful person and deserved to be saved, I agree with that statement wholeheartedly. However, I don’t think that by focusing on his big heart and love for the RFA and Rika that he should just get a pass for the things he’s done. Telling him that things aren’t his fault may help him heal in the long run, but it isn’t exactly true. Sure, Rika’s problems weren’t his fault, but his obsession did lead in some way to her falling deeper and deeper into them. And it’s because of his selfishness and thinking that what he thinks is best for everyone else that Seven sat there fighting against his own brother unknowingly leading to his brother’s defeat and demise. 

Not telling Saeyoung about Saeran may have kept Saeyoung’s loyalty and friendship for a short time, but do you think that he won’t eventually find out about what really happened? How is he going to react then? If he had at least known, he might have been able to rescue Saeran, even at the last minute. And the SECOND that he started showing self destructive tendencies someone should have tried to help him, to get him away from Mint Eye, or at least to convince him that he wasn’t unloved. But there wasn’t even an option for that. He was just ignored and left to die as a last show of loyalty. 

Not at all unlike V throwing himself in front of that bullet meant for Rika. 

And yet because Saeran’s problems are his aggressiveness he doesn’t seem to get much sympathy. He’s labelled as the “crazy creepy bad guy” and people abhor him. If V isn’t the bad guy even after his contributions, then why is Saeran? Why even is Rika? If you look into it, you see that none of them are the true antagonist in this game. Saeran is NOT the bad guy. He is not solely creepy or a bad boy. He’s just a victim. So is Rika. They’re written that way, but sometimes it’s hard to look at them that way when compared with the things that they’ve done, but it’s true all the same. None of them deserve what happened to them because in the end they weren’t fully in control, and they all recognize that. They were prisoners to their own minds. 

The true antagonist of this game is Mental Illness.  

I don’t want a Saeran route because I’m attracted to the dyed hair, leather jacket bad boy type or because I think he’s the cutest thing on planet earth. I want a Saeran route because it would make up for all this misunderstanding. It would explain what it’s like to struggle with these issues. It wouldn’t be easy, and it would be genuinely horrifying as it would be scary to delve into his dark and tortured mind. But most importantly, it would show this poor tortured boy that even though he’s cracked and broken that he’s still a beautiful character and deserves love. 

I’m just so tired of seeing people hate him for something he can’t control, and shoving him into a corner he doesn’t belong in. 

He deserves to be saved.