My own suggestion for the 4.0 edition rules: Anyone who quotes Holy Grail during a session should be made to eat their own character sheet.
– Shamus, Wednesday Oct 4, 2006
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “DM of the Rings Remaster XIII: Let’s Not go There”
So, I have a Sims 4 Overthinking post written and ready for screenshots and posting, but EA has chosen now to force me to ‘upgrade’ to their new EA App (and politely uninstall Origin for me in the process.) I can’t help but picture the purchase screen for a new appliance, like a washing machine, where they offer to haul your old one away if you give them $80. But, instead of charging me $80, they’re just breaking into my house and taking it by force. Gee, thanks.
I’ve known this was coming for awhile, but I had bypassed it in the program files hoping I could put it off. It seems EA is onto this, however, because the bypass I did, and the one many other Sims players were using is no longer functional.
This would usually be a pretty quick thing. I’d be angry for half an hour and try to bypass it, then, once I realized I couldn’t, I’d just sigh and accept my fate, download it and move on. The problem is, my install is a bit special. Most of it is totally fine, but some of my files are a cracked version that it’s going to take me and my husband a week to figure out how to make work with the new launcher.
If I’m not very, very careful, and go slow, I could end up breaking my save games, including, you know, the one I’m working on for this funky thing I get to tell people I do for a ‘job’ now. Thank you guys for sticking around and reading this trash, it’s super cool to be able to tell people I do anything for work. So many years of doctors appointments and going to the bank where I just had to go ‘Uhhh…’ when asked what I do for work, but, no longer! Now I write for the internet! Ha! Huh. Maybe that’s more a ‘gotcha’ in my head.
Anyway, I guess I have a week of shaking my fist angrily at the corporate overlords to look forward to. Oh goody.
So, it’s been nine months since Dad’s been gone, and about seven since I began writing here. This has offered a lot of time to mope and brood, or, you know, ‘think’, whatever you want to call it. In that time, I’ve had a lot of writing ideas. Everything from games I’ve had thoughts on, to projects I’ve been working on; D&D, commentary, Minecraft, you name it. I’ve had enough material that I could likely kick the site back into at least three or four posts a week, but…Houston, we have a problem.
See, there’s sort of an elephant-in-the-room issue that makes talking about, well, anything feel redundant and repetitive. I want to talk about my love-hate relationship with Stardew Valley, my reasoning for having a thousand ‘smart’ devices, my favorite children’s MMO, and every issue I have with Wizards of the Coast. But, at the end of the day, what I have to say about all those things has a common denominator which would get old to write about very, very fast.
Everything is a monopoly, and every creative decision I want to talk about boils down to money, not actual people. People are interesting, they make independent decisions and sometimes bonkers bad ones. Nuance and storytelling, ignorance and narrow world views, those are things we can talk about. Why CEO #34 made a piss-poor decision that will only really hurt employees and consumers and land him with a four week paid holiday isn’t fun and snappy conversation, it’s fucking depressing.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Money”
Some notes about writing a campaign:
- It’s great that you took the time to come up with “Count Devron Masuvius Beldamor the III, High Magester of the Realms of Greeenwood”, but you need to realize that the players are just going to refer to him as “that wizard guy”, or simply, “Mister fancy-pants”.
- If you send along a high-level NPC of great majesty and power to accompany the party, you need to realize that the players will treat this character like a bazooka: The NPC will become a weapon used to solve a problem in the bloodiest and most expedient manner possible, and then discarded without ceremony.
- You may be a group of unsightly men sitting around a card table on a Friday night, but your players will still be looking for chances to meet girls.
– Shamus, Monday Oct 2, 2006
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “DM of the Rings Remaster XII: NPC Non Grata”
Alright, finally. The year is still 2001, where we’ve been stuck for the past three episodes. Why have we been sticking around a single year, you may ask? Well, mostly because of Kelly’s pregnancy. Not much really happens, in most cases, over a course of five years to a person. They might move, start a new job, get a dog, experience a breakup, but all of that can be explained and told very quickly. In our case, telling this particular story, the most important details are the things that happen to the house. If Kelly lived in the house, and had a plan for what to do when the baby was born, this would all fly by very quickly. Interpersonal drama is fun, but not the point of the series. The problem is, she and Michael don’t have a plan, not yet, anyway.
Their indecision has created a bottleneck of sorts. In a way, we have to zoom in. We need to see every little factor and decision along the way, because right now, the unknown is slowing us down. Babies change everything, and if Lorretta is honest with herself, that is exactly why she’s suddenly been working overtime on the house.
She would have been doing projects, sure, it’s her house and she needs to make it livable. We would have been looking at the alterations she’s making over the next three years while she slowly fixes it up. But, the looming possibility of a baby on the way has given her a time constraint. Kelly doesn’t want to stay with her because of the fumes, so Lorretta is doing everything in her power to get rid of them as quickly as possible, just in case. Kelly and her mom don’t have a good relationship, and Lorretta is trying not to kid herself about that, but, if they need somewhere…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sims 4 Overthinking: The Sunk Cost”
Alright, so I have a confession to make; I have been doing the big procrastinations on this website. I could argue that it’s the grief, which is partly true, and a pretty easy ‘get out of jail free’ card. But, if I’m honest with myself, it’s not enough of the truth to just write it off. Like, yes, working on the site makes me miss my dad, and more than that makes me want to shake both him and the universe by the shoulders, because working on a dead man’s code is a fool’s errand Why does it work like that?! Why?! Tell me, god damn it!.
But, really, even if he were alive today, he likely wouldn’t be able to tell me. I can imagine the conversation very vividly as it’s one I’ve had with him before.
I’d bring him the issue, explaining that the image I’m uploading isn’t working, or the color I’m inputting isn’t being picked up by the server despite the fact that according to the inspect element, it’s exactly where it should be. He says I’ve done it wrong, since it clearly says that’s where it’s pulled from, and then, he goes down the exact same rabbit hole I just did, and confirms exactly what I just told him.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Hah! Fixed!”
– Shamus, Friday Sep 29, 2006
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “DM of the Rings Remaster XI: Failure to Communicate”
Obviously they are. Right? Actually, is this another one of those sneaky hard-to-define things?
Why are RPG economies so bad? Why are shopkeepers so mercenary, why are the prices so crazy, and why do you always end up a gazillionaire by the end of the game? Can't we just have a sensible balanced economy?
C++ is a wonderful language for making horrible code.
Here is how I'd conquer the game-publishing business. (Hint: NOT by copying EA, 2K, Activision, Take-Two, or Ubisoft.)
Who is this imbecile and why is he wandering around Europe unsupervised?
No, brutal, soul-sucking, marriage-destroying crunch mode in game development isn't a privilege or an opportunity. It's idiocy.
Just how big IS No Man's Sky? What if you made a map of all of its landmass? How big would it be?
Do you like electronic music? Do you like free stuff? Are you okay with amateur music from someone who's learning? Yes? Because that's what this is.
Since we're rebooting everything, MASH will probably come up eventually. Here are some casting suggestions.
Why Google sucks, and what made me switch to crowdfunding for this site.
T w e n t y S i d e d
