Get your game on!

2 Likes

I’m planning to solo some classic tabletop adventures. I’m using existing quick encounters rules to avoid round-by-round resolution, and trying to use a card draw to decide on complications. I’ve already written up card draws for party actions.

2 Likes

Also, not sure which, if any of these are accessible:

I know Baldur’s Gate isn’t with my photosensitivity. Neverwinter Night I is, more or less, and the Shadowrun Trilogy is barely accessible for me. Ultima isn’t. Don’t know about the older DnD games.

2 Likes

Played through Flower over the last week or so… very pretty, and very relaxing. It was a good cool-down game when I just didn’t want to think or worry about time limits or anything.

And, entirely unrelated…

Since picking KSP back up, I’ve been struck by just how hard the career mode has felt… I don’t remember having quite so much trouble building small ships to get to orbit or the Mun, and I’ve had a lot of issues with the tech tree (particularly with unlocking one useful item and realizing that I need a couple of other unlocks before it’s actually going to be usable for me). I think it’s just a combination of changes to how the atmosphere works and reshufflings of the tech tree, but it’s been a pain re-learning things I thought I knew.

But… today I finally made a Mun landing!

…and then shortly after this picture, I discovered that my ladders, which had worked perfectly in a full test of the mission I’d done before this, this time weren’t going to let me reach the module to get back in. :man_facepalming: And try as I might, I couldn’t work out a way to get there with the Kerbals’ RCS packs and board. So, I did the only remaining thing I could think of:


I used RCS to fly a Kerbal at the side of the craft as hard as I could, and knocked it over so the door was reachable (this only took, uh… ten or twenty attempts or so…). And then fired up the engine and very carefully scrrrraaaaaaped the ship across a broad swath of the landscape until I found a crater lip with enough of a dropoff on the other side that I could build up some speed and ramp off it to get back to space.

Made it back home and landed without incident, though I was rather short on fuel after all of that and had to do quite a large number of aerobraking passes in order to make it down.

9 Likes

I’m working on a homebrew set of narrative rules for Savage Worlds. Manly because I want to solo some classic campaigns, and don’t want to take too long converting opponents and creatures, fighting miniatures battles w/ homemade counters, and the rest.

But because it began with miniatures rules, I’m going through a list of edges, and saying, yeah, this, this, this, and this convert to a +2 on fighting…

Sample:

Combat

These rules use a more detailed 5-step system for combat. This should give leaders an opportunity for good tactics, and then give everyone a chance to fight, or try to avoid getting hurt. This should also give each party an even chance against evenly-matched opponents.

Step 1: Describing the scene.

Step 2: Leadership Rolls.

Step 3: Initial Action Rolls.

Step 4: Delayed Action Rolls.

Step 5: Aftermath.

Describing the Scene

The gamemaster should describe the scene. Where the heroes are, whom they are facing, and so on. The gamemaster should draw a card from a regular deck for the tactical situation. She may also want to draw a card from The Gamemaster’s Apprentice, the Mythic Gamemaster Deck, or a similar deck, to add more detail or surprises.

Opponents

The heroes and their allies will need one leadership success, and a varying number of fighting successes, to defeat their opponents. See typical target numbers, above, for appropriate target numbers.

  • 1 leadership check. The extra check means the heroes will have an equal chance against equally-matched opponents.

  • 1 fighting check for every 2 small or normal-sized opponents. Feel free to round up or round down.

  • 1 fighting check for every 1 large opponent.

  • 2 fighting checks for every 1 huge opponent.

  • 3 fighting checks for every 1 gargantuan opponent.

Situation

The card drawn from the regular deck can help define the tactical situation.

JOKER: Pass out bennies, shuffle, and draw again.

KING: Truce. Honorable characters will stop to offer a chance to surrender. Arrogant ones will boast. This may stop combat, otherwise continue with the leadership roll.

QUEEN: Everyone roll stealth to surprise. Anyone who succeeds is at (+2) to their following rolls.

JACK: Everyone roll notice to avoid being surprised. Anyone who fails is at (-2) to their following rolls.

ACE to 10: Apply modifiers and decide situation.

-2 if the encounter is inside or underground.

-2 if the encounter is at night or in the dark.

0 if the other side is better at melee than ranged attacks, and the heroes are mounted.

-2 if the other side is better at melee than ranged attacks, and neither side or both are mounted.

-4 if the other side is better at melee than ranged attacks, and the other side is mounted.

+2 if the encounter is outside.

+2 if the encounter is in daylight.

0 if the other side is better at ranged than melee attacks, and the heroes are mounted.

+2 if the other side is better at ranged than melee attacks, and neither side or both are mounted.

+4 if the other side is better at ranged than melee attacks, and the other side is mounted.

If the result is 1 or less, no ranged attacks are allowed.

If the result is 10 or more, no melee attacks are allowed.

4 Likes

Not too much new on the games front-- still playing I Love Hue and Shadow of Death. I Love Hue is still fun, and I’m close to completing the hexagon levels, and progressing to the triangle puzzles. SOD is, as usual, another matter…

For the most part, I do enjoy the game, or I wouldn’t still be playing it. The graphics are still amazing, new content shows up every few months, and you can play it as simple brainless fun, or get deeper into gear and strategy… and I like that flexibility. But when it glitches… :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: And this one’s a doozy.

Most Weapons, Armor and Accessories can be upgraded via Soul (lesser in-game currency), and then again through Awakening them (sacrificing other objects to increase their power.) In addition, items can be modified through reforging them with Ore Runes, which can improve, make no difference, or weaken the object.

I used an Ore Rune to Grow one character’s Accessory, which had been maxed out. It improved its capability, but as a result, it was no longer maxed out. (It dropped from ā˜†+20 to ā˜†+18.) So I bought (with more in-game currency) more Accessories and maxed it out again (back up to ā˜†+20.) Then I attempt to complete the Raid Boss Quest, and what do I get?

What I did was perfectly legal. I’d done it once before, with another character’s Accessory, and had no problems. I don’t even begin to know how to illegally manipulate the character data. I just play, fair and square, a little bit almost every day since last October. I’m not the best-- far from it. But I’m stubborn, and I’ve earned every bit of my progress. I don’t cheat. So yeah, I’m mad as hell.

On top of that, they want to do customer service over Facebook?!? I do have an account, but I only use it for a family Group (and not much of that, given how often an… opinionated uncle of mine airs some disagreeable-to-me political views.) If I can contact them without posting it to the Group, that would be okay… but I don’t know how. So I’ve sent an email, but I’m not sure I’m going to get a response.

And I’m not sure if the game auto-saved or not. There are two Saves-- one saves to your device, another to the server. I suspect the game did a device-save, which happens automatically. So it might be fixable if I do a Load from the server… maybe.

Grrrrr.

Edited to add: I figured out how to FB Message customer service, I think. (I’m not dumb, I just don’t use Facebook much. Don’t want to, either.)

6 Likes

I received a response from the FB Message, and they fixed it (though it took a few hours before the ban was lifted.) So while this was frustrating, it got corrected more quickly than I’d anticipated. Yay!

I still don’t know why it happened, so I’ll try not to use any Ore Runes until the next update. But I’ve got to give the game staff kudos for a quick response and a favorable resolution. :laughing:

3 Likes

I really don’t know much about RPGs, but this sounds intriguing! :heart_eyes:

3 Likes

Though I have no experience with SOD, I’ve plenty of experience with customer service and that is excellent.

The FB requirement would stop me cold though.

4 Likes

I hear you, and I’m not happy about having to use FB either. But if I stop to look at it rationally… FB is a major platform, popular, with contact systems already in place. It’s probably a lot easier and less time-consuming for the CS staff to use it than to code an interface of their own. (I suspect it’s a smaller company, too.) I’d prefer email or another way of talking to them… but considering how well using Messenger worked out, it’s hard to argue against it.

But I still don’t like it.

(I did mention I’m stubborn, right? :rofl: )

3 Likes

Aside from the surveillance issues, and the far-right ties, there’s the discriminatory RealName policy.

5 Likes

My current FB account skirts this-- since its only purpose is to join in the family group, I used my grandmother’s maiden name as my last name for that account. (There’s still an account out there with my real last name, but I’ve not only lost the password, I’ve lost the password to the email account it’s linked to; otherwise I’d nuke it from orbit. I haven’t accessed it in something like 8 years… ) But I completely agree that FB is horrible, and I hate even using it as little as I do now.

3 Likes

Got a little time to play with KSP today, and I figured I’d learn something new and take care of an annoyance at the same time. Ended up setting up my first geosynchronous (well, kerbosynchronous) communication network:


(The triangle is the network - there’s a few extra lines there due to planet-scanning satellites in polar orbit and one old satellite that I yeeted into a long-range orbit early on for a contract and don’t have enough fuel to de-orbit. I did toss relay antennas on one of the polar scanning sats as an initial test to learn how things worked, though, so it ends up helping the network too)

I’ve seen mention of other ground stations you can use to not need to do some of this, but haven’t figured out how that game mechanic works yet…

Also played a little of ā€œSnake Passā€, which I think I got for free as part of a promotion a little while back.

Interesting game, you play as a snake and have to move around by slithering on the ground and wrapping yourself around bamboo poles to climb around. You have to swing the snake’s head around with the joystick (though I believe there’s keyboard/mouse control also) and hold down buttons to do things like grip tighter or lift the head up, which is neat, but is also rather finicky and easy to lose control of. Holding down the buttons while repeatedly trying the more difficult moves can get tiring, too.

3 Likes

In the difficulty settings (I think in the advanced tab), click ā€œallow additional groundstationsā€ and you’ll get KSC-equivalent ground antennas distributed around the planet.

3 Likes

I’m vaguely considering buying Hearts of Iron IV. Any players here to give a review?

2 Likes

I probably should have mentioned I’m using a mod that changes up the comms system a little. Not a lot (it mainly adds the ability to create channels that antennas can be set to), but…

I think I’ve figured it out, though. I had ground stations enabled, but I guess the ā€œCommNet Constellationā€ mod disables them to start with - they show up as red "x"s on the map view. It looks like you have to upgrade them in order to get signal - 100k cost for a small antenna, and then further upgrades up. I’m assuming this is all due to the mod… last time I played, the only communications in the game were ones you added with mods, so I haven’t really seen any of how it plays with the new communications network unmolested by mods. :wink:

2 Likes

Looks like a more focused and more detailed adaptation of History of the World:

1 Like

User name checks out.

2 Likes

Playing Apollo again. Perfect mission for Apollo 8. Had S-IC explode at seperation, successful LES abort for Apollo 10. Had failed LOI for Apollo 11, failed CSM burn to return, successful LM burn allowed a return to Earth. Hoping Apollo 12 will make it to the moon.

Would like a little more control over the situation, but the original astronauts didn’t have enough to avoid these problems either.

5 Likes

I spent three hours getting homebrewed stuff running so I can play Morrowind. Hope it’s worth it.

4 Likes