Khrux @ Khrux @ttrpg.network

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2 yr. ago

It's normally a long image thing. Because this is multiple full resolution images stitched together vertically, the hosting site compresses it's dimensions, even if it's not that large of a file.

If you're like me and this image is too compressed to read, here's the tumblr link.

This may only be an opinion I have but often I feel that narrative in RPGs is actually two slightly more distinct styles; I'll call them immersive and performative, but I presume somebody else has already named them.

I think 10 candles is one of the few systems that sets it's sights on immersive narrative play. This is, imo, the hardest thing to pull off in any TTRPG and I envy eny player who can reach this style easily. 10 candles may make you actually afraid and feel hopeless in a way few other games can.

Madness in my opinion is a performative narrative mechanic. As a player you don't feel compelled to act mad in their own fear, but are responding to a mechanic to continue to set the tone. Gumshoe in general and F.A.T.E too for that matter are top of the class for narrative TTRPGs, but they target the performative side.

I first came across this when I was playing D&D and could recognise that all my players preferred roleplaying to anything else, but when we tried F.A.T.E, it didn't gel with two of them. We'd been falling into a common pattern which was three of us would basically perform to create the immersive experience for the remaining two, in the process all getting what we all wanted. This only worked because the 5e narrative mechanics are basically three skills that are only called for at the DM's discretion, which was then being called for less for the immersed players in favour of actually just weighing their arguements. Then in F.A.T.E and gumshoe, the additional guidance for roleplay actually locks players into performative pkay.

There isn't too much in 10 candles that actually disrupts the immersive style of roleplay. Anything that is properly introduced as "who your character is" rather than "what your character is doing" can support this style of play, and is particularly strong for prompts introduced in the character creation stage. These prompts should also be few and far between, so they never limit natural choices and bring the character out of immersion. I just don't know if madness can do that.

That's all my opinion, I'm not a game designer beyond GMing my own systems, and I may be totally wrong.

All of this said, I do think my biggest issue with ten candles is that when the game is down to one candle, the tone change from "the tragic tale of the hopeless acts of humanity in an inevitably ending world" to "everyone gets killed off one by one", is solved by making the ticking clock madness.

The actual game sort of treats the ticking clock as your resolve to keep going, but that would make the final failure the moment your resolve fails and you simply give in. In reality, people often don't want to go down without a fight, so everyone's resolve flairs up at the end, just to be defeated anyway.

Madness is a more accurate mechanic for ticking towards everything going wrong, because it's expected to end dramatically. The extinguishing of candles feels more like a fuse in this situation, and when it all cumulates at the end of the game, that's the foreshadowed tonal shift being met.

Again my opinions are absolutely that of an amateur and god knows why I wrote so much about this.

I'd presume they have a few cashiers from the Philippines but at least one person managing the store.

I'm a 50/50 toss up between two reasonably different genres.

The first is coming of age films, particularly queer ones. My go to film to call my favourite is Call me By Your Name, I also love Stand By Me, Aftersun and have a huge soft spot for Kiki's delivery service.

The other 'genre' is dramas / thrillers that get pretty fixated on madness, particularly from the protagonist. There will be Blood is my go to second film to say, and I love Apocalypse Now, Perfect Blue, The Witch and The lighthouse.

I'm not as much fan of when the genres overlap however, although that may be because of how small the sample size is. There are quite a few films that have a young protagonist who is finding themselves, who may end up idolising another to the point that the film falls into being a thriller. We had Saltburn last year, which people often compare to The Talented Mr Ripley, and I do enjoy these films but I never get that milestone feeling that I've just experienced a piece of media that has profoundly impacted me. The only thing that exists in this shared space is one of my favourite novels; The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Feign death every time. Most OP spell in the game.

Temporal Shunt already narratively does this I believe, although only for a round.

I suppose they're all sent to the end of time, in a point that you're unlikely to get to naturally.

Having all creatures thrown forward in time to the end of the current month would see a lot more use than the end of time.

My friend works in their engineering department, he lost a ridiculous amount of his close colleagues today and my heart goes out to him.

That said, I'm always blown away by the incredible R&D he's up to, and the genuine passion for innovation and quality him and his team had. I genuinely think their quality good, even if they frame it as the apple of vaccums while actively pulling shit like this.

I'd hope we were talking about the same person and it's a small world but I think people who are targeted by extreme right views is sadly just probably common.

I've since moved to a very left wing city and I've met a lot of trans women. Most have strong political views for sure, but those views are very far left wing too.

I was at the end of school during the 2016 election and my closest friend in my Comp-Sci class who I'd known from 11 was in the far right pipeline; this person found Hillary absolute abhorrent, loved trump and was generally the 2016 Pepe style crypto-facist. We live in the UK too, so this is even less common than it probably was in the USA.

When school ended, I stopped speaking to this person, but a few years ago saw that she's come out as a trans woman. I'm happy for her and not really keen to reconnect at all, but oh boy am I nosy about the timeline of her political views. I wonder if she still holds them, was struggling with internalised issues or just had a huge realisation at some point.

I've not seen gmaps taking these kinds of routes. I'm UK based if it makes any difference at all, but I'm always grateful for my route seeming to prefer a smooth choice to the absolute fastest.

I've read quite a few anecdotes and quotes about Gygax's misogyny before but I agree with you, I don't think there is nearly enough information I these gods to extrapolate that it' embodies all powerful masculine forces as good and all feminine as evil, especially as the article mentions how this perpetuates pre-existing coomo themes in story and myth. Everything we know about Gygax would say he'd lift from myths with sexist themes without adjusting that, rather than add them with intention.

Do do think there is myriad evidence that Gygax believed femininity to be inherently inferior, but that's different from evil. It's still stupid and worth highlighting but by excessively demonising him to the point of nearly making things up, it's just fuel for people to dismiss the valid points.

I have a specific opinion about the older mario games; they expected a much more narrow game literacy than new games do, so the people who played them already had a little bit of transferable ability from other games. Nowadays, not just are precise skills less required because the games are designed to be easier, but the player base is starting the games with less skill due to their previous game being totally different.

I really enjoyed Breath of the Wild although I haven't tried Tears for the Kingdom. It really suited me but it's lack of direction is how I play every open world game anyway. I actually can't go back to other AAA open world games without getting irritated by how hand holding and limiting they are of their own medium, but it wasn't just breath of the wild that made me realise that.

I once lived and worked in a small store in rural Australia. When I left the job, I threw my box cutter in my backpack at the end of my shift without thinking.

They flew me back to the nearest city when I left, then from there I flew to Bali and back, then eventually I flew home. Every time I flew. I used that backpack as my carry on luggage. It was found when I landed after that final flight. I'd totally forgotten it was in there, and it had been scanned for all of those flights.

I think the only app I use that plays audio alongside others is my Lemmy client, and I absolutely prefer it. If I've got some music on in the background, I can still listen to some random video I stumble across here, and I really prefer that.

I'm born in 98' so I'm right down the middle but generally classed as the last of the millennials.

I feel a lot closer to zoomers, but where I'm from, I think the people who have fast-tracked adulthood with kids and mortgages are textbook millennials where as layabouts like myself share a lot more spaces with young adult zoomers.

I'm already needing to remind myself that some of the deepest internet brainrot like skibidi toilet is not a new phrase but a meme of the hour started by generation alpha and then carried by confused millennials.

Subnautica is the perfect mesh of several things that work fantastically. It is a good survival game but with it's upgrade and discovery based exploration limitations, it's closer to a metroidvania than it is to Minecraft. The thing it does so well is sneak this past you, it's a mystery driven metroidvania where the downtime is a resource gathering, based building game.

The closest game I can think of of that tried the same mystery metroidvania approach is The Forest, but this feels like one of the many many games from the post Minecraft and DayZ boom that has a certain scrappiness to it that somehow Subnautica absolutely sidesteps, and it's all from just being a really well made game. The vibrant and often tranquil art style that lends itself to awe inspiring locations, and the level design and overall plot support eachother so well.

That said, I'm not in love with the amount of resources. A 4*8 gridded inventory puts me off a game from a worry of it to getting too grindy, and subnautica is a "I need to build another storeroom" kind of game. With a full survival game like Minecraft, which is endless and about exploration and progress alone, I know my storage will be unweildy and I can forgive it, but I'd have appreciated Subnautica finding a way to require less mindless resource hunting / busywork unless itnwas optional base cosmetics or the like.