T w e n t y S i d e d
In this, the very first episode of Roll For Podcast, the group tries to get their footing in this whole podcasting thing.
Hosted by: Bay, Issac, and Elliot.
Episode edited by Bay
Show notes:
00:00 Introductions/Where’s Peter?Â
Who is this Elliot guy?
01:23 What is Roll For Podcast?
What is all this? What is the premise? Can any of the crew give me legal/medical advice? No.
5:59 The Weekly Peter Story
The Cream Story
10:06 What Are You Playing?
Half-Life 2 VR Mod
15:15 What Are You Playing?
Minecraft
20:25 What Are You Playing?
Phasmophobia
27:37 Natural One
The Crew tells stories about times they rolled critical failures in real life.
To send questions to the Roll For Podcast cast, Email [email protected].
Footnotes:
[1] No.
Lost Laughs in Leisure Suit Larry
Why was this classic adventure game so funny in the 80's, and why did it stop being funny?
Skylines of the Future
Cities: Skylines is bound to have a sequel sooner or later. Where can this series go next, and what changes would I like to see?
Tenpenny Tower
Bethesda felt the need to jam a morality system into Fallout 3, and they blew it. Good and evil make no sense and the moral compass points sideways.
Free Radical
The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.
Object-Disoriented Programming
C++ is a wonderful language for making horrible code.
I have absolutely nothing to say about any of this, but the zero comments notification is bugging me, so… roll for commentary.
This week I’ve mostly been playing indie turn-based strategy games, mostly Fae Tactics and Fell Seal. Fae Tactics is fun, with elemental affinities and universal spells with cooldowns, but you’ve got a very limited party, you only get three main characters, one of whom is always required, and up to three summons. Each character has exactly three abilities; one for targeting enemies, one for targeting allies, one for waiting. The other games I can think of with those limited options usually give you ten troops or so. I’m bogging down in my first playthrough comparing it to Fell Seal.
Fell Seal is more Final Fantasy Tactics/Tactics Ogre, with job classes and abilities that every character can learn. I think the stats hurt it, especially with the rubber band enemy levels; currently a single enemy will survive being hit nearly eight times, more than my entire six-man team can throw at them in a round, and I don’t know if that’s from how I leveled or if that’s by design. I’ve beaten this one before on a lower difficulty, but am bogging down again on the Chapter 2* bridge fight, the second actually hard fight in the game.
Also retrying SFD, a turn-based roguelike with Tactics Ogre LUCT-style graphics. It’s fun, and then it gets mean, and then you restart.
*(They don’t call it Chapter 2, but it’s totally Chapter 2. Of… six, I think.)
Fae Tactics is a game I wish had gotten more attention. Strategically, it’s almost more of a puzzle game at times due to its simpler presentation, and I found the limited troops of 3 leaders + 3 max generics to be rather engaging personally. It’s not perfect but enjoyed it a lot on the whole, enough to play through it a second time on the hardest difficulty.
I’ve strangely never been too much into TRPGs, perhaps I just never found the right entry point, always preferred the SRPG style more. Fae Tactics and Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume are really the only two I can think of that I’ve played, although I’m sure I’m forgetting one or two.
A hellbeast of a mosquito kind of sounds like a Crane fly, although there’s a number of other bugs it could be. Cranes are surprisingly large, and personally kind of spooky, but it helps to know they’re anatomically incapable of eating or biting anything.
It’s nice to finally have a new podcast to listen to and to continue on for the Diecast. It was a weekly ritual for me, and that spot’s been rather empty since.
I haven’t personally been playing anything this week, I’ve been too busy with work and my hands aren’t really in the shape to do so even if I had the time. I’ll try to think of something to send in to the mailbag, though.
To be honest, from the name my brain just assumed this was a TTRPG Actual Play, but I also really like the idea of a podcast! Definitely going to give it a listen once I finish work.
Great podcast, folks. If future episodes will be like this, only longer, then I’ll be tuning in every week.
I understand if not, but is Paul planning to join you? He was a big part of what made the Diecast so great.
Irrigation is def a controversial subject in some areas; disputes over water rights lead to armed conflict back in the day.
As for “more interesting topics”: Host’s interests tend to matter far more than inherent interest. I’ve spent hours watching/listening to people enthusiastically discuss the most banal specialized fields. I do actually hope to hear a bit of Elliot’s agri-thoughts, and other such unique tangents.
Interesting thoughts on setting external goals in games: it def varies per person, but I’ve oddly experienced the opposite. Deep Rock Galactic added a bunch of mechanics to formally reward & encourage specific goals in game, and suddenly my self-set tiny goals that would have me popping on every so often to enjoy the atmosphere were overwhelmed with “Look at all these daily quests waiting for you”, which lead to me playing far less often. On the other hand, a friend dislikes open world games specifically because there isn’t always a well-marked, fixed goal to be working towards.
Greatly enjoying the podcast so far!
I’m not in a position to be able to listen to the podcast yet, but I see the “What Are You Playing?” question three times here, and my insane brain makes it feel like I’m being accosted by a kid who won’t shut up until I answer, so I will. I am currently playing through The Messenger a quite clever pixel art 2D platformer that in the surface looks like one of those dime-a-dozen throwback nostalgia-bait indie games that plague the Steam storefront, but in reality it’s so, so much more deep and interesting.
Thankfully, the game draws you in instantly with an intriguing premise and witty dialogue before you mistake it for one of those aforementioned cheap cash grabs and then keeps you engaged with engaging gameplay and tight controls, all the while giving you clues that you’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg. I really can’t say much more without ruining it, so I’ll just say if anyone’s interested in platformers they should give it a go.
Also, Bloons TD 6. I am always playing a tower defense game that keeps me engaged for a few months before I move on to another one. It’s the one genre of game I always have installed in my PC regardless of what else I might be in the mood for.
I’ll add my post here because I also can’t listen to the podcast yet (was the same with Diecast, I tend to visit the site at work) but I have asked about a possibility of “what are we playing” post. And to make it at least a bit relevant The Messenger is one of the many games sitting in my backlog (I think it was in the Humble monthly bundle?),
I’m playing mostly Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous much like the first one it’s very good, it’s also freaking massive. I’m over 100 hours in and I think I’m tentatively approaching the halfway point. Admittedly this is prolonged by playing turn based and by me taking breaks to talk about the game’s story, mechanics or a given choice. The “mythic paths” system is much more interesting than the good-evil playthroughs of the first game and I feel like I’d want to see the other paths (I’m on trickster which is both hilarious and very interesting mechanically) except, again, the game is just massive.
The thing that is… less great is the strategic “crusade” layer. The battles are straight out of Heroes of Might and Magic which I’m somewhat meh on (I know, blasphemy) mostly as they rely on doomstacking. Upgrading the crusade initially seems pretty cool in that, not unlike in Kingmaker, on each of the 10 levels of any of the 4 parameters you get a choice framed in a narrative way (and sometimes referencing your previous decisions) which has anywhere in range of 4 to 6 options from your advisor and companions. Sadly as cool as those narrative choices sound you’re probably going to make them based on their mechanical results anyway. I appreciate that Owlcat are trying to expand their RPGs beyond the scope of the party, and in both Wrath and Kingmaker I’ve enjoyed the narrative aspect of the management part of the game, but it does eventually feel like a veneer hiding a somewhat shallow and repetitive mechanic.
Other than that as a result of a conversation online I’m giving another X: Beyond the Frontier another try. This time approaching it as a sort of meditative game for the evening while watching a stream or a movie and just ferrying some stuff around for chump change. I’ve already gotten further than in my previous attempts since I did set up a building (and ore mine) that’s chugging along nicely and last night I came back from a trip to the neighbouring system where I spent some time ferrying batteries to a farm and flowers from a farm to a procesing facility (so same thing I’ve been doing in the first system), docked at my ore mine and found about a quarter million in pure profit (in addition to whatever I made on my own), which means I should probably take the money, gear up and start progressing the story. I’m… not sure about this game. Again, this time I seem to have, so far, hit the sweet spot of just enjoying the calm life of a space trader and I’m somewhat worried moving on will break me out of this, particularly since the game feels a little barebones, which I understand is because it’s the first instalment in the series which evolved greatly over time (I’m sure combination of space simulation and the responsive economy was bloody impressive in its day).
I understand tier lists are popular, so “irrigation component tier list”?
Irrigation done wrong can be spectacularly bad, as in “soil-destroying”. If your water is mineral-rich, this eventually builds up in the soil and makes it close to impossible for anything to grow.
This post includes the link to the RSS feed for Diecast
https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?cat=287&feed=rss2
But this episode is not in the feed, the last episode is Diecast #385 – I hope you can add this new podcast to that feed, or provide a new feed :) I am very curious about your impressions of Half Life 2 VR mod, I hope there will be more about VR on this podcast, as I am a VR buff.
I second this rss observation and idea :-)
I am happy this podcast is back! Thank-you.
An interesting consequences of manually adding this to a podcast player is getting the file’s raw metadata instead of the title, description, and publication date from the RSS feed.
The current file metadata shares title, publication date, and album information with Sunburn (https://soundcloud.com/shamusyoung/sunburn?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing)
I consider this nothing more than a fingerprint of how this was created and a peek behind the curtain.
Yeah , I was in Peter’s situation too, anxiety due to holding up the line, so instead of getting my regular cigarettes I got some weird slim ones with a golden filter.
I’m currently struggling to get a modded version of Skyrim running.
I only played Skyrim when it was launched, and over the years I’ve hard about how it’s one of the most modded games out there. So I picked up an upgraded copy and thought “Oh they’ve had years to mod this. It must be pretty straightforward by now”.
NOPE!
Bethesda recently released some tiny token update which borked most of the existing mods that I wanted to try . So I had to seek out a downgrade patch version.
Then it was the realization that the mod manager I was using was some cheapo downgraded version , that got promoted on the main moding page because of money, like finding out you’re the only one using something like “Opera for Gamers” ,when the rest of the world is out there using Chrome.
The ACTUAL mod manager that almost everyone uses has an interface that at its best can be described as “user hostile”.
Nearly 2 days later , and I’m swapping dll’s around, searching obscure reddit threads , the works.
The funniest thing is, I am doing this after 3 consecutive Elden Ring playthroughs over 3 months, and I started out thinking “Oh this is Skyrim . it’s gonna me more relaxing than this”.
But now I can safely say simply getting this thing to work has been harder than anything in any From Soft game I’ve played.
“Opera for Gamers” lol. I assume you mean Vortex? Honestly if you’re only using a few mods that thing works just fine and indeed is a hell of a lot easier to understand than uh, Mod Organizer Two.
Don’t let them get you down, Elliot; I’d listen to a podcast (well, an episode at least) about irrigation! And the internet would probably make points about things like water rights, dropping water tables, farming less water-intensive crops, and ground water contamination to make irrigation controversial. And the best and worst (and conditionally best that some people believe to be universally best) ways to accomplish it, of course. (I myself have… opinions on nutrient film hydroponics.)
I’ve always been deeply interested in permaculture, which is a topic that can frequently cross lines with the subject of irrigation. I’d 100% listen to a podcast about irrigation and real world farming.
I suppose I may be a bit of an outlier though.
Regarding irrigation, this may be of interest:
https://scriptwelder.itch.io/waterworks
Just commenting to say I enjoyed the podcast and I’m looking forward to more!
I hadn’t thought of Minecraft as a social game before. I wonder if that’s become more of a thing in recent years – for me it was almost always singleplayer, and as such quickly became boring. I never got into the modding scene and as someone who’s always played singleplayer games mostly for the story (hence my long time readership of this blog) I never really felt the urge to add more non-story stuff to do; Minecraft for me always lacked a sense of purpose after surviving to the point of self-sufficiency. But it’s interesting to hear a little about the appeal of modded MC & multiplayer MC.
I’ve been listening to the archive of the Diecast episodes from the beginning, one episode every Monday.
It will be nice to have more than one show to listen to going forward.
How is the keyboard?!? I hope you succeed on your saving throws. I appreciate the idea of memento like a tool you both use, instead of pictures and paper. Thanks for sharing.
oh my god Isaac you sound so much like your dad! I had to pause the podcast for a moment to recover.