Present Mouse roasts Past Mouse while Future Mouse cringes

"YOU'RE EITHER BEING REALLY PERSISTENT WITH THIS TRANSPARENT RUSE, OR YOU REALLY ARE JUST THAT SAD AND INCOMPETENT."




So my local group of players are putting together a document full of gaming memories and it's been a lot of fun, walking through the good memories and putting the bad ones to rest. I'm not sharing the document until it's scrubbed of personal information and already placed publicly, but I do have more thoughts than I'm willing to clog up the document with. I'm going over every character I can remember playing in this doc and other places and putting commentary to it with the sole objective of tormenting myself. Here's the criteria. Everything's rated out of five, focused mostly on how much I regret(or not), and includes comments. There won't be any zeros out of five, because I hate when people do that... Even though there are some candidates on this list.

I'll try to provide context for these characters, but this may not be a great post if you never experienced these games. Sorry!

Concept: how much of an interesting or unique idea they were in non-mechanical concept.

Personality: How much of a personality they even had as well as how proud I am of it. 
Mechanics: How interesting, fun or unique they were to build and play.

Thorgg, Ogre Pit Fighter

Dungeons and Dragons 2e

Concept. 3/5. An ogre who was bullied by his clan for being small, but still stands at 8ft, 6 inches is a pretty good background. Considering how young I was when I designed him it's downright amazing.
Personality. 2/5. Ha ha dumb ogre funny. 
Mechanics. 3/5. No 1e or 2e character is going to get a high rating in this solely because of the systems, but you can do worse than a 2e fighter who dual wields a giant hammer and a spiked gauntlet. 

I was super young when I designed Thorgg and, while I still like him, there's not much to the character. I have a plan to reprise him some day, or at least a spiritual successor with a much more interesting story to them. 

Autonicus Jamble

Sam's Waterdeep Caravan Campaign
Dungeons and Dragons 1e

Concept. 1/5. I misspelled Autolycus from Xena. That's the whole concept. 

Personality. 1/5. Had none. 
Mechanics. 2/5. 2e wizard's pretty fun I guess.

Autonicus only has any worth in hindsight when he cameoed as a con-artist rogue/mage in one of John's games and his legacy included a flying mage tower. I don't hold anything against Sam, though. I had fun, and it is what it is. 

I'm skipping any other characters I played in Sam's games, because I'd just be saying the same thing as above. Sam wasn't that big on role playing as we understand it. 

Chief Tumbling-Dice

Against the Giants

Dungeons and Dragons 2e

Concept. 4/5. It was just LIZARD IN A TOP HAT at first, but first off that's awesome, and second off, I love the idea of a cleric of gambling and chance being so strange and wild. His name is from a slightly racist old Robin Williams joke, but he was never intended as a real parallel to a Native American.

Personality. 4/5. A joy to play for all his little quirks and how little he actually explained to the party. 

Mechanics. 3/5. 2e cleric of Tymora. Everyone knows how fun the O.G clerics were to play. 

Aah, one of the few characters I'll definitely be playing again. An actual chief of a Tymora-worshipping tribe of lizardfolk, he kept me coming back to a game that was otherwise pretty shitty because of some other players. Had a fun cameo later as the person in charge of a giant temple-casino rising out of a swamp. 

Callisto

Bug City and Anything Goes

Shadowrun 2e + 3e

Concept. 2/5. Ooh a serial killer, how original. Rises to 4/5 after I add her obsession with Christian and Jewish religion and numerology later. 

Personality. 3/5. Fun but not in any specific way. I liked the fact that she never came off as a vicious sociopath bent on sacrificing people to get closer to God. 

Mechanics. 5/5. a mage with wired reflexes and an oralchium-plated cyberspur enchanted as a power focus. Lovely build. 

A serial killer who was saved from the death penalty by the bug city breakout. Eventually retconned to be obsessed with Christian faith and a plan to perform sacrifices to bring herself closer to God. First off, I'm not digging the name. In fact, being the second one I lifted straight from Xena makes me cringe into a small puckered ball of shame. She was probably born from the massive crush I had have on Hudson Leick, but I can't hate on the character too much. Unique, and a blast to play in both games she was in. Probably not much option to play her again considering her, ah, "hobbies".

Mr. Smiley
Boston

Shadowrun 3e

Concept. 1/5. WHAT IF CLOWN BUT HURT PEOPLE

Personality. 3.5/5. A fairly fun to play but stock generically wacky/avant-garde character. 

Mechanics. 4/5. A juggling throwing adept. Fun stuff. 

Smiley was a vampire on top of everything else, and I think I'd drop that these days. I'd drop the scary clown makeup and go with something more traditional too. For as fun and memorable as he was, I honestly don't have much to say. He was, at the end of the day, a fairly stock character. 

Akuma
Forgotten Realms

Dungeons and Dragons 3e

Concept. 1/5. If I could give a zero, I would. A fiendish monk who was bullied for being different. Completely pathetic cliche crap. 

Personality. 1/5 Brooding idiot

Mechanics. 1/5 a poorly built monk further hamstrung by John never actually putting us against more than one opponent at a time.

Honestly, There's not much I can say here. Because of how badly Akuma was pushed around by the plot, I hate him in hindsight. The twist was that he was really a celestial being and he appeared demonic out of guilt and shame and...it just sucks to completely center his character and story around negative emotions. I regret doing the weeaboo honor crap too. 

Anna LaCroix

New York

Shadowrun 3e

Concept. 3.5/5. There's a fine line between a classic concept and a bad cliche, but I feel like she lands solely on the good side of it. She was a lifetime criminal and junkie who was sister to a detective.

Personality. 4.5/5. Lovely to play and fun to be one of the "contrary" opinions of the group due to life experience. Cable and Anna had criminal backgrounds which gave them a wildly different perspective than the rest of the group, who came up as government agents. 

Mechanics. 5/5 I know she's just a B&E focused Razorgirl, but she was so damn fun. Tangling people with a whipping chain, getting devastating kicks off with kid stealth legs, and having so much raw movement power is a ton of fun. 

Anna had a good story and was a lot of fun to play. She had great chemistry with her brother(played by Jason) and being the "criminal" in a group of government agents was really fun. Had especially fun interactions with Shadow Mantis, another character who was essentially only on the team due to a mid-life crisis. He went from incompetent and laughable to being able to relate to Anna in a cool way. 

Levistus

Forgotten Realms Evil Game

Dungeons and Dragons 3e

Concept. 1/5 another candidate for a zero. Drow mage who does weird stuff. 
Personality. 1.5/5. generically evil with little substance.

Mechanics. 4/5. The Blood Mage PrC was a lot of fun and he was otherwise a very well built necromancer. I liked focusing on the "life" side of it. 

As much as I used to love this character, there isn't a whole lot to say. He's a drow mage who did weird body mod type stuff and had mystic open wounds shaped like arcane runes. I cringe at his concept almost as much as I cringe at the name these days. It was diagetic, he was named after a devil prince, but who's actually going to put that together? Nobody, I just look like a loser. 

Lenore
Forgotten Realms
Dungeons and Dragons 3e

Concept. 3.5/5. She's just an homage to Tarzan, but honestly I feel like that concept has legs.

Personality. 5/5. A lot of fun playing the weird outsider druid who was focused in an animal sense, so she avoided all of the tree-hugger crap and I got to play a savage. 

Mechanics. 5/5. Master of Many Forms was fun and so was playing a combat druid with a focus on abilities and combat instead of spells. 

Lenore was a lot of fun. Great interactions with a character modeled after Samurai Jack, who she eventually settled and had children with. Her story ended up modeling Tarzan very closely as it was revealed she was a shipwrecked noble. I didn't plan that, and it was awesome that the GM(Dale) picked up on what I intended. 

Zero

Las Vegas

Shadowrun 3e

Concept. 3/5. Former CIA wetwork specialist. I could've maybe done better, but I was pretty satisfied. 

Personality. 3/5. Not noteworthy, but playing another "tired veteran" type from the opposite point of view of Anna was nice. 

Mechanics. 5/5. Movement heavy, adaptable, and had move-by-wire. I like playing athletes and she was no exception. 

Zero had a lot of story I was proud of that never came up due to the game imploding. She transitioned after leaving the CIA, so she would eventually have been put in a precarious position of having to juggle the threat of CIA operatives looking for her with not wanting to explain why she's worried that they're looking for a man. 

Cipher
A Stupid Dystopia
Mutants and Masterminds 2e

Concept. 4/5. a victim of my favorite pan-dimensional artifact, the Oblivion Lens. She had a massive shard of it embedded in her back which gave her darkness-themed powers but at the cost of it slowly possessing her. 

Personality. 3/5 a revolutionary which would've been better if she had any agency in the game she was in.

Mechanics. 3/5 a fun physical type who constantly had to take powers to counteract specific NPCs since the GM refused to offer a different fight. 

Cipher might have been a lot more fun if this game wasn't a miserable, idiotic slog. It had a very stupid plot focused on objectivism or something and some of John's worst, laziest ideas. This was the game where he refused to design more than five enemies, deliberately broke rules and had people using fascist authority to make you willingly fail your will saves. I wouldn't revisit her, if only because it would remind me of that game. A new victim of the Oblivion Lens might be in the future, though. 

At this point, I played a ghoul medic then a troll scavenger in Shadowrifts. Neither are memorable enough to even rate. A mix of Shadowrun and Rifts concepts is an excellent idea, but the game didn't get off the ground enough for me to build a core memory for either of these characters.

Skag

Star Wars
SWD20 Revised

Concept. 1/5. the whole concept was Jawa.

Personality. 1/5. because he was pushed around so much he didn't have much of a personality beyond being angry. 

Mechanics. 3.5/5. a mix of tech specialist and fringer with some interesting alternate abilities like his junk-dive power. Fun stuff. 

So yeah Skag got pushed around so much that it caused me anxiety so I'm going to be brief. He's another almost-nothing of a character and I should have come up with something a lot better. I know they can't all be winners, but I hate it when my idea centers around "Oh I guess I'll play one of those."

Placed just before Ramirez is my first character from the Homeworld game, Nomad. He was so unremarkable that all I remember is that I photoshopped a picture of Canti from FLCL as a character pic. 

Cpl. Ramirez

Star Wars: Homeworld
SWD20 Revised

Concept. 2/5. A mechanic turned marine who enjoyed brawling. Could've done worse. She had golden cyberarms. Those were neat.

Personality. 2.5/5. I don't even remember. So it must not have been bad, at least.

Mechanics. 3.5/5. her class spread made for a fun mix of mechanic-driven stuff and combat. 

Ramirez was fun and more of a team player than Nomad. I liked playing someone who got into the military out of necessity but didn't hate it. 

Some Medusa Singer Lady

Social Game

D&D 3.5e

Concept. 4/5. A medusa socialite? I love it. One who's only interested in her petty revenge against a human family and getting famous is even better. 

Personality. 3/5. I enjoyed being vaguely mysterious and intimidating. 

Mechanics. 4/5. I remember she had some expert performer class from a weird D&D book that was interesting. 

So yeah this is another character soured by a shitty game. The social game she was in got off with a terrible start and it never really recovered for me. It was fun setting up a legitimate career as a singer for her, and I liked getting to build an open-air stage themed with tons of statues because of her nature. 

Hakasa
Dark Master
Pathfinder 1e

Concept. 3.5/5 An orc woman has a lot of reasons to leave orc society if you take the forgotten realms info as canon. It's another unremarkable start, but her background of being a mother made it more fun.

Personality. 4/5. It was fun mixing tough and motherly. 

Mechanics. 4/5. a basic barbarian with a lot of sense powers and Spirit Totem, which I loved using. 

The most remarkable thing about the Dark Master campaign was its well-told story and plot, so Hakasa doesn't stand out that much. She was originally from Forgotten Realms and got to interact with another plane's orcs, and that culture clash was interesting. 

Blind Mary

World of Darkness
Vampire: The Masquerade Revised

Concept. 5/5.  A gang runner turned Nun is a classic story, and it gets better after she's shovel-headed and turned into a Lasombra. 

Personality. 3/5. She ended up being a quiet leader type. Unremarkable but okay. 

Mechanics. 2.5/5. not regrettable, but basically an unremarkable Lasombra build. Ya takes the shroud, ya takes the tentacles, and ya uses them. 

Blind Mary took being embraced and finding out that Caine was real as an affirmation of her faith in God. She became a serious Noddist, but I wish I would've done more with that. The game was on the shorter side, but it was a lot of fun and had some solid character interactions. 

Icke
Revenge of the Master
Pathfinder 1e

Concept. 1/5. Another "I guess I'll play this race/class combo"

Personality. 1/5. He didn't have a personality that I can articulate in any way. He talked funny. That's not a personality.

Mechanics. 3.5/5. a small-size brawler. Fun but unremarkable. 

I was dangerously close to swapping characters most of this game and only kept playing Icke because he was mechanically compelling and I didn't want to upset anyone. Our group developed a stigma over switching characters because some former members despised it and we're only mostly over it. I don't know how to describe it other than to say he's kind of a nothing of a character among some other, far better ones in his party and it's embarrassing that I had such a failure so close in my past. I can't get over that Dean played one of his best characters to date, Occam, and I ended up stumbling into the same pothole that made Skag again. 

Vaux
Rise of the Runelords

Pathfinder 1e

Concept. 5/5. Vaux might be an alien. She could just be a tiefling. She isn't certain herself. In addition, her religion, dedicated to slowing down an all powerful consuming force, is just simple entropy philosophy. I'm proud of that.

Personality. 4/5. Vaux is weird, off-putting, and fun to play. 

Mechanics. 4.5/5. Her build is a little messy, but as a support warpriest she's a blast and extremely effective. 

I'm on hiatus from this game, and if I miss a lot of it I'm sure I'll end up reprising Vaux somewhere else. I'm very proud of her concept and story. I like putting together characters with deniable facts to them. She could be a star-spawn. It's not clear. 

@}-,-'--

So that's it for now. I want to go over my internet characters in a different post, since this one went longer than expected. If you lack context for this, I hope you at least got something out of it, even if it's to laugh at how many shitty characters I've had. 

Fallout-Related Post: The Brotherhood of Steel

 "Democracy is: Non Negotiable."

I wanted to do a lot of talking about Fallout coming up. I've been enjoying the game and have a lot to say about it. Not to bury the lede but it's a great game and I think it deserves praise people usually reserve for New Vegas. That game's got its problems too, so it's only fair to forgive Fallout 4 as much as we do NV. So, I've been taking notes while playing in preparation for doing this. 

Then I ran into a problem. It wasn't a slow realization: Talking to Paladin Danse made me realize this pretty quickly this time around. We need to talk about the nature of the Brotherhood of Steel. I think most people who aren't the deluded "NO POLITICS" type would say they're certainly not good guys, outside of Fallout 3's ill-advised attempt to turn them into wasteland paladins with Lyons. I think it's (somehow) easy for some players to miss how bad they really are, though. 

A ground rule, before I begin, is that I'm going to assume that anything in the game is deliberately written as it is and I'm only going to declare something is poorly written as a last resort. This is because I ran into quite a few things I didn't understand until my current play-through and I want to give the writers the benefit of the doubt. For as bad as the main story of the game is, they're going to need it. I'm also doing the best research I can, but keep in mind I may get some facts wrong. Fallout 4 is a big, big game. 

I've done enough beating around the bush. What I'm doing today is going over Umberto Eco's fourteen tenets of Fascism and seeing exactly how well the Brotherhood of Steel fits into the model. I've long considered them a "bad guy" in the series, but Fallout 4 swings very strongly into the direction of them being a fascist organization. I think it only gets to perpetuate itself because of the cut content surrounding Maxson. I'm not sure of the specifics but I often hear it was surrounding the Lone Wanderer relieving Maxson of command for being a crazypants. I'm not sure if this changes the nature of the BoS "ending" to the game, though, and that ending is ultimately a large part of why the BoS are villains. Some of these tenets will have to be adapted to a world that has notably different races like Synths and Super Mutants, but that's fine. 

Spoilers for Fallout Four and a small one for Fallout: New Vegas ahead.

"The Cult of Tradition", characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by Tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.

The Brotherhood of Steel certainly are dogmatic and unwilling to learn. In Fallout Four, you either agree with them that the synths need to be wiped out...or you end up having to blow up the Prydwyn. In the Minutemen ending(which is just a catch-all route in case you pissed everybody off anyway), you either work with the Brotherhood of Steel, thus wiping out the synths, or you have to kill them. 

"The Rejection of modernism", which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.

WELP. We didn't get far in before we hit a "Ha Ha Ha, oh WOW" moment. Yeah you can say the Brotherhood reject modernity all right, in that they both rule over the whole concept of technology(for our "protection") and also obviously feel like they're superior to the modern post-apocalyptic society at large. I would be shocked if the phrase "Descent into depravity" didn't literally appear in the Brotherhood dialogue somewhere.

"The Cult of Action for Action's Sake", which dictates that action is of value in itself, and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.

Wow. I probably don't have to elaborate on this one, right? Right after the Prydwyn arrives in the Commonwealth, you're given a flurry of excuses by BoS members that decisive action is necessary and good. Danse glibly refers to pre-emptive war as "Kicking down the door" and also makes veiled references to Blitzkrieg. Maxson is repeatedly described as "not the diplomacy type". 

"Disagreement Is Treason" – Fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.

The Brotherhood is incredibly militaristic. They are, in fact, a military. However, the idea of obeying orders without question comes up so incredibly, ridiculously often in the BoS storyline that I feel strongly that they embody this facet as well. I don't even feel like I need to give you many examples: Literally the first time you meet Maxson he's praising his crew for their total, blind obedience.

"Fear of Difference", which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.

Synths are compared to the atomic bomb in terms of destructive power, but it's never actually explained to you why. Maxson simply tells you the Synths are evil and expects that to be the end of the argument. When Danse turns out to be a Synth you're ordered to kill him flat out, and the only way to end the quest with Danse alive is to persuade Maxson yourself. Even then, Danse is exiled from the Brotherhood of Steel. To Maxson(and the rest of the BoS) they're vicious enemy spies despite any evidence to the contrary.

"Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class", fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.

The Brotherhood constantly pays lip service to protecting the average person from threats and even has you carry out orders with that in mind. Does that count? I don't know. I don't get the impression that they see that portion of their job as very important. This is somewhat of a blind spot because they simply aren't appealing to any social group at all. They have open membership enrollment but feel no need to sway anyone of anything: Whatever they want from you, they'll happily take it by force.

"Obsession with a Plot" and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society (such as the German elite's 'fear' of the 1930s Jewish populace's businesses and well-doings; see also anti-Semitism). Eco also cites Pat Robertson's book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.

Synths are compared to the atomic bomb in terms of destructive power and Maxson states in no uncertain terms that they "have the power to completely wipe out humanity" without actually ever explaining why. He simply states that they could "replace us" if they ever outnumbered "us". There's a lot to unpack with this plot point, so I'm continuing this thought below after we're finished with the fourteen tenets. 

Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak." On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.

While they do seem to have a low opinion of some of their "enemies" such as Super Mutants and the Institute, I haven't found a good example of this specific hypocrisy. They seem to appropriately treat their enemies as dangerous, outside of the extreme generalization problem with "Synths". 

"Pacifism is Trafficking with the Enemy" because "Life is Permanent Warfare" – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to not build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.

It's all but outright stated that Maxson is declaring war in part(or even solely) to strengthen the Brotherhood of Steel and maintain his leadership. The Lyons faction of the BoS required rebuilding when he took control and was on shaky ground, both in terms of social cohesion and actual tactical position. 

"Contempt for the Weak", which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate Leader who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.

Everyone by now should be very familiar with their contempt for weakness and worship of bravery. The ridiculous notion of "Failure is not an option" is impressed upon the Lone Wanderer early upon meeting Paladin Danse. While Maxson does not openly show contempt often, he's unwavering, callous and cruel at the slightest provocation.

"Everybody is Educated to Become a Hero", which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, "the Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death."

Once again, I feel like their worship of bravery is well known. In addition to that, they throw bodies and technology almost needlessly at their problems. The preliminary scouting team that was "lost" before Danse and his team arrived was six or more members wearing power armor and several scribes. For a scouting mission. Everyone in video games marches happily to their death, but the Brotherhood of Steel seems to particularly revel in it.

"Machismo", which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold "both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality."

Unlike Caesar's Legion, there is no sexism shoehorned into the Brotherhood of Steel. Members are as likely to be male as female and the Lone Wanderer faces no indication of intolerance of nonstandard sexual habits. There is(like always) an absence of affirmation of LGBT people, but I don't feel that this can be interpreted as intolerance. 

"Selective Populism" – The People, conceived monolithically, have a Common Will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the Leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of "no longer represent[ing] the Voice of the People."

Not only do the Brotherhood of Steel think they know what's best for the rest of humanity, it's a major plot point and the whole reason they exist. Not only do they feel technology is best safeguarded away from humanity, but humanity doesn't have a say in it. In addition, they have no qualms against using that technology for their own gain. 

I have not, however, found an example of the Brotherhood of Steel delegitimizing democratic institutions beyond the small chapter in Fallout: New Vegas refusing to deal diplomatically with the NCR. It can't really be defined as a organization-wide policy and, no offense, I'm not replaying every Fallout game looking for examples of their dealings(favorably or no) with the NCR or local governments.

"Newspeak" – Fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.

I'm pretty sure they don't embody this one at all. You're told about their motto, Ad Victoriam, but that's hardly an impoverished vocabulary or tactic to limit critical reasoning. 

<<<||||>>>

I'm gonna be honest. The Brotherhood of Steel scored lower than I thought they would. However, we're not done discussing their ties to fascism. Their nature is lampshaded several times ranging from mildly clever to anvilicious. Paladin Danse glibly refers to Maxson's disdain for diplomacy as "kicking down the door" He also describes BoS tactics as an "Overwhelming show of force", a thinly veiled reference to the Nazi Germany war tactic of Blitzkrieg. Maxson is referred to as "Emperor Maxson" in some incidental dialogue and obviously worshipped as the sort of "Strong Man" leader that fascist organizations frequently love.

I don't know if this is particularly a fascist trait but the faction's hypocrisy bears mentioning. They disdain "new" technology in particular(especially the Synths) but have no qualms about building new technological wonders of their own with the Prydwyn. They feel technology is dangerous but only "in the wrong hands", meaning inexplicably they see no problem with rebuilding and re-activating Liberty Prime and call Fat Man Launchers(actual nuclear weapons) a cornerstone of their military tactics. I could rant all day about the BoS thinking they're justified in using Liberty Prime for anything, but the fact is his ridiculous, jingoistic programming is a blind spot for them: They really don't see an issue with declaring an "other" in the way the prewar US Government villainized Communism. 

I'll discuss Synths and their role in the story with way more detail later, but I can't avoid stating this outright so we can continue with our discussion: In Fallout Four's story, Synths are an analogy for minorities in general and black people in specific. They're held in slavery, their rights and even cognitive function is up for debate, and the three general options for the end of the game can be summed up as "Free the Synths", "Keep the Synths as slaves", and "Kill all of the synths". 

Remember I said we'd get back to Maxson insisting that the Synths could destroy the human race after they outnumbered it? I can't help but think this is a reference to The Great Replacement, the absurd, white supremacist notion that "whites" will be bred out of existence by minorities. After all, the Brotherhood of Steel and their "Kill the Synths" ending fill in for one of the two racist points of view in Fallout Four. 

Are the Brotherhood of Steel a fascist organization? Yes, I think so. Are they intended to be? At least in Fallout Four, I'm sure they are. Is this a good direction for the series? I believe it is. If nothing else, the point of the Fallout franchise is that these traits shared among the old-world United States government, the Enclave, and even the Brotherhood of Steel are what led to ruin and apocalypse.

While we'll be talking about the failings of the main story at length later, I think the only major failing here is the player's ability, in the end, to "side with" the Brotherhood of Steel. Fallout Four was almost certainly shoehorned into being a "faction" story thanks to New Vegas's popularity. It presents too many opportunities to entirely miss what we've been discussing and simply feel like the big strong power armor person with the laser minigun. So Cool! Bethesda's gigantic array of Brotherhood of Steel merchandise doesn't help, and neither does some telling content being cut where you confront Maxson.

You might be wondering why I did this. Well, the first reason is that it's going to be super important that you understand the nature of the Brotherhood of Steel when we eventually talk about the plot of Fallout Four. I can predict a lot of arguing or confusion when I inevitably bring up FO4's themes and call the Brotherhood of Steel one of the game's bad guys. I can either panic and post this after discussing the game's plot, or I can just get it over with now. 

The other reason is that it kinda makes me kinda sick when someone misses the point this hard and worships an organization for being "tough" or "badass". It's a superficial read of the BoS at best and I can't help but imagine someone doing the same thing with Shadowrun's Big Eight. To me, that's the level the BoS are at and how they're intended to be judged. Bethesda selling BoS merchandise probably did a lot of damage to their intended perception. I'd say the game was too subtle, but...honestly, calling Fallout Four subtle in any way would be fucking laughable. 


If this post upset you, sorry! But it was probably meant to. 

Campaigns too mean to run

"What you know you can't explain, but you can feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind: 

Driving you mad."

I'm not great at actually running campaigns, let me just come out and say that. I can't think on my feet very well and I'm not good with encounter design: Notice how you've never seen me do articles giving advice for those two things. While I'm not giving up trying to run games, it means I'll probably always have more ideas than I'll ever use. 

I do get campaign ideas all the time, too. I've had three that I ultimately decided were just too damn spiteful or unkind to actually run. What do I mean by that? Each campaign below has its own reasons, but in general...some ideas are just not very nice. I once knew someone who claimed to be running a game of mortals in the Storyteller universe, only to brutally murder the PCs one by one in the first session. 

Psyche, we're playing Wraith. 

While nothing I came up with is quite that mean, I hope it illustrates what I'm talking about. Some tricks or twists are just too nasty to pull. Maybe I'll run these games some day, for someone. However, at this point I don't mind if the players figure it out early. In fact, that would probably soften the blow enough to make them palatable. 

Dead Pixels in the Sky


It starts with something distant, but worrying. A small group of people notice something far in the sky. Black marks, like the sky is dying. Few at first, and more every day. Nobody else seems to notice them, or even care. More things begin to unravel. Misshapen people in suits, with blurred faces and grainy, distorted voices start to stalk the group. Eventually... they try to kill them. Something is wrong, and these monsters seem to think killing anyone who can see the sky slowly unraveling will stop it.

The players must evade The Editors, piecing together the mystery through increasingly horrible and unraveled areas, dealing with corrupted people, monsters, and artifacts. Cryptic phone calls try to guide the players toward their eventual goal: The unraveling can't be stopped and escape is the only remaining goal. To where? It can't be explained. It can only be shown. 

Because no one can be told what The Matrix is. 

After the events of the movies, a splinter group in Zion was unsatisfied with the state of the truce with the Machines. Neo had broken the cycle, but it wasn't good enough: The Matrix must be torn down, whether or not the people inside it were given a subconscious choice to leave. An EMP bomb was placed at the heart of the Matrix's servers, crippling its functionality. 

Any pod directly caught in the blast was corrupted permanently, the people inside fused to the matrix and their minds altered in permanent, horrible ways. Anyone on the edge of the blast had their connections permanently damaged, and were forced to watch their server corrupt and warp. A forced reboot was impossible while these damaged pods were still online...so Agents were sent to kill the inhabitants(the players) so the Machines could salvage the Matrix. 

~-~-~

So yeah, I could never really justify an entire campaign being secretly a movie reference turned horror. When I had this idea, I honestly started to worry that I'd be physically assaulted at the point I said the line. I did have plans to quote the movie in the game's climax. The main thing that killed this idea was that I honestly dislike Call of Cthulhu's system intensely, but secondarily to that, it relied too much on the final act being a reveal of it being fanfiction. I didn't think anyone would appreciate the ending. I mean it's either a huge anticlimax or a cool "Go back and sift through the details" moment depending entirely on if you liked The Matrix or not. 

Gallows Creek Revival


The Weird West is harsh and New Mexico doubly so, but few people down on their luck could resist the offer painted on flyers spread far and wide across the United States: Move to Gallows Creek and get your own parcel of land and fifty dollars to help you settle in. The players aren't the only ones who jumped at the offer: Gallows Creek is growing swiftly. 

The people here are distant, though. Some are even guarded. Slowly, problems start to rise. The undertaker has been robbing graves, trying to stitch together the perfect wife. The blacksmith is desperate to keep anyone from knowing she's died years ago. Former slaves hiding their identity live next to former confederate soldiers desperately trying to do the same. Hucksters, hexers, scientists, engineers and otherwise live here. A mystery starts to grow: Why's the mayor so jovial? Where'd he get so much money, and what's down beneath the town? 

And does everyone here have a damn secret?

~-~-~

Everyone in the town had a damn secret. Literally every single person. I started to put this together, back when we were young and playership was volatile. I took everyone aside individually and told them I wanted their character to have a secret to keep and gave them some bonus XP or somesuch to achieve it. I probably wasn't subtle about it.

The mayor was a prospector who found an ancient Aztec temple to a god of secrets. He built a fortune off raiding the temple and selling the gold artifacts inside...but spent too long and delved too deep. He caught the attention of the slumbering god, who forced the mayor to bring him sacrifices. Flyers hexed to attract the eye of the guilty were plastered over the Weird West to draw people full of the power it craved to the temple. The players would have had to protect their own secrets or come to terms with them while dealing with the strange, suspicious townsfolk of Gallows Creek. Eventually, they'd have to stop a God from being awoken by collapsing the temple, and the entire town with it. 

Aaah, you can probably see why I decided this one was too mean, right? I had the idea back when I thought manipulating the players was okay if you had a noble goal in mind and weren't just an asshole trying to get your rocks off to causing misfortune. I thought I was being very clever and...well, these days I hate "clever". 



Hand of the Broken King

What begins as a game of high adventure in a land of sword and sorcery soon takes a strange turn. Invaders from another world arrive in force, in massive steel ships that soar through the sky. Men in pure white armor and skull helmets begin to take control of entire cities. They begin to kidnap magic users and send their strange golems to raid magical troves. Their leader wants something that only exists in this realm, a secret he and his kind do not possess: the secret of Magic. 

~-~-~

Hey did you notice that Star Wars D20 is almost, kind of, sort of compatible with Pathfinder? I did. This is another one that's probably too cheesy for me to really run, but I liked the idea of the Empire showing up in the middle of a typical campaign because Darth Vader heard tales of a wholly different way to control The Force. 

The logistics of the game aren't hairy at all, honestly. The players could take feats to become proficient in technological weapons or spend points in Star Wars skills. Eventually I'd open up Star Wars feats as well. Tech weapons would obviously be overpowered, but they can't be enchanted easily: I was tossing around the idea of not letting the players enchant them at all, or at a heavier cost. So, it's a tradeoff. The players de-facto can't use the Force or else the entire plot doesn't work, so I don't have to worry about force sensitive or Jedi characters I'm not in direct control of. 

The problem here was primarily that I felt like a heel for not letting people do Star Wars concepts with the game, but it's contrary to the entire point of the game so I still don't think I'd be able to justify it. I dislike "GM's special toys" a lot and I think they should be used sparingly to keep a sense of fairness. However, people are gonna be naturally upset that they could have played a Jedi or something and I said no. The second the reveal happens and they realize what's going on, half the group would want to make a new character. Let's be real, though: I don't even like letting them play Jedi in the game that's supposed to have Jedi. 

It's also one of those things where I'd try to spend as much time as possible doing cutesy confusing descriptions because the players would obviously have no idea what they're looking at, and as I get older I hate sort of thing a little more each year. Forsooth, you hear a phantom voice exclaiming your position! Surely they are using clairvoyance spells and illusions to mystically shout information to their troops! Completely fuck off with that. 

@}-,-'--

Honestly, feel free to steal any of these ideas, if you want. Never say never, but I'm probably not going to use them. If nothing else, all three require me to be a tricksy little bitch and I just don't like doing that, whether or not these ideas really are too mean. Two out of three are also tied to pre-existing intellectual properties. There's nothing wrong with that necessarily, but I think you need to really knock something out of the park if you're going to do a reference and I'm not confident in my ability to do that.

WoW: Shadowlands Culinary Adventures

 "I'm not going anywhere. I hope. It's been an adventure. We took some casualties over the years. Things got broken. Things got lost. But I wouldn't have missed it for the world."

This is a weird thing to make a blog post about. Honestly, I once promised myself I'd never write a post about World of Warcraft too, but here we are. I've been having a blast with the world of Shadowlands and the expansion's gameplay, but I've noticed something about the world that's stuck with me enough that I want to talk about it. 

The food in the Shadowlands is fucking bizarre. Food in WoW has gotten steadily weirder over the years because it's hard to continually be unique. However, if every other expansion is a calm walk down a hill, Shadowlands is a leap off a cliff. I can't shake thoughts on how this stuff would taste. I'll go over the cuisine of all four zones then afterward the "meat" of the article, the player-crafted food. 

Thank god my home town Revendreth is relatively normal. I found things like "Fearstalker's Delight" which...let's face it, if the real world had Fearstalkers there'd probably be a dessert named after them here too. It had Cabbage Wrapped Minced Mite, Evernight Porridge(which I'd love to try), and various roasted local wild animals like Barbecued Dreadwing and Skullboar Chop. This is also the only place in all of Azeroth that they make Cottage Cheese. Imagine having to die then travel to a giant Transylvanian wasteland to have something to go with your sliced peaches. In the Sanctuary of the Mad you can try Batloaf, Mirecrawler Goulash, or whatever "Odorous" rice is. I have my own ideas on what they mean by odorous. None of them are good. If you're wistful for Wendy's after you die and your soul travels to a realm intended to torment you into reform, you can have a Muckfrosty, which apparently comes in five flavors: "Cold", "Chunky", "Slough", "Brown" and "Not sure which this is". This is one of the more obvious jokes in the expansion's cuisine, which makes me worry that the rest of what I've found is supposed to be serious. 

Ardenweald is like a place you'd put Republicans if you wanted to torture them. In addition to the usual fried or roasted local beasts this "twee nightmare" forest world has Wild Hunter's Stew which I'm sure is just a thing I've had in the real world, Poached Strider Eggs in a realm that has no Striders, and a wide selection of vegetarian hippy druid food like Grilled Slumbershrooms, Torchberry Bundles and Ripe Wintermelon, which again I think is just a real thing I've eaten. There's also Midnight Starpeppers. I don't care how star-shaped or beautiful your peppers are, eating a raw pepper for lunch is fucking weird. You can drink "Ardendew" which I'm a hundred percent convinced is the afterlife equivalent of Fiji water: regular water in a weird shaped bottle sold for five bucks. Desserts include "Candied Brightbark" and in this place I'm sure it's actual bark with candy coating on it. 

Bastion has the kind of food you'd expect out of the Elysian Fields since, y'know, it's just the Elysian Fields with blue people in it. Ciabatta, candied walnuts, pomegranates, fruit salad, et cetera. In fact, that's all you can eat in Bastion. Ciabatta, walnuts, pomegranates, fruit salad and spring water. I already didn't like these guys because the fridge logic of how their realm works is a little horrifying and this certainly isn't helping. At least I'd be able to have my favorite type of bread. 



Ah, Maldraxxus. I saved you for last on purpose. It has exactly what food you'd expect out of a blasted necrotic hellscape filled with undead. I found Finger Foods which are a clever play on words, and Yummy Toes which are fucking not. There's lukewarm milk from the weird skinned bisons which roam the area. Blood Oranges(GET IT?) and apparently they actually eat the weird hairlike fungus that grows out of the fleshy ground. We also have "Tea Bones" which are, disturbingly, a food. You can wash it down with a Corpini Slurry, which I'm going to assume is the rotten green stuff that comes out of a decomposing body, poured into a glass with a little crazy straw. You're welcome for that mental image. Maldraxxus also has an enormous amount of alcohol, more than any other realm. Because of course it does. 

On to the main event. The food on inkeepers and vendors is usually just world fluff and flavor. Nobody really needs it, it's just there if you need some out of combat healing in a pinch. Virtually nobody ever does, though. It also just looks nice and cute on the vendor when you're selling him all the junk you stole off dead bodies. Player-created food, on the other hand, even the average player interacts with constantly. It's cheap and provides big benefits, making it probably the most efficient consumable buffs in the game.

And this time, they're all really fucking weird. I'm going to go over them one at a time and give them a score from zero to five. Zero means I wouldn't ever even try it. For no amount of money. One is least likely to eat(but willing), and five is most likely.

Pickled Meat Smoothie. Dear diary: Today God looked the other way. This stuff is made with Aethereal meat, which I'm assuming is some kind of cheap, bad cut of meat. You also need vinegar, vegetables, a blender, and a complete lack of self respect. 
Tastiness Score: Zero.


Biscuits and Caviar. This is just something you could have in the real world if you were rich and stupid. It's one of those pregnant woman craving jokes played straight.
Tastiness Score: One.

Sweet Silvergill Sausages. Is fish sausage a thing? Is sweet fish sausage a thing? It seems like it is. Silvergill are caught in Bastion so, out of any of the fish in the Shadowlands, these ones are the most likely to taste good. It's one of the few basic, normal dishes in this entire afterlife.
Tastiness Score: Four.


Butterscotch Marinated Ribs. This is one of the things that keeps me up at night. Logically, I think "this would be disgusting" but then, when I'm in my bed, when everything's quiet...I wonder. 

Tastiness Score: Five.


Meaty Apple Dumplings. Okay so this sounded weird at first, but I did find plenty of recipes with apples and meat, usually pork. It's made with "Shadowy Shank" which sure, I can believe tastes like pork. What I can't forgive is making dumplings with shank, which is historically a tough cut of meat only suitable for stews. 
Tastiness Score: Three.


Cinnamon Bonefish Stew. Listen, I can't imagine something fished up in a necrotic wasteland called a Bonefish tastes good or has much meat on it, let alone goes with cinnamon. 
Tastiness Score: One.


Candied Amberjack Cakes. Mmmm, candied fish, doesn't that sound great? Sure is a lot of sugar in these recipes. These are made with Amberjacks which are fished up in Ardenweald and I'm sure they taste deliciously gay. It's also made with Bonefish, which means this recipe strikes me as a way to use up all your spare Bonefish without having to eat something that tastes like Bonefish. 
Tastiness Score: Two.


Banana Beef Putting. Once again this complete mistake is made with Aethereal meat. I'm sure the implication is supposed to be that it goes well with sweet things, but personally I'm taking this to mean that Aethereal meat is already kind of gross and cheap and makes chefs desperately cast about for ways to make it taste good. A valiant effort. But the answer's still no. 
Tastiness Score: Zero.

Tenebrous Crown Roast Aspic. Y'know, I'm sure Tenebrous Ribs taste at least as good as beef ribs. Taking the best meat in Shadowlands(probably) and making an aspic out of it is a crime on the level of putting ketchup on wagyu steak. I'm not normally that person when it comes to food but aspic is where I draw the line. For those of you who don't know, aspics are the second worst thing to come out of 1950s America, right after the Cold War. It's a savory gelatin suspension with bits of meat or vegetable floating inside. Yeah. If that doesn't already disgust you, I urge you to watch a few videos on classic American 1950s dining. The worst part? This stuff buffs haste. My character has to eat it. 
Tastiness Score: Zero.

Steak A La Mode. The picture implies this is some sort of steak pie, but still. WHY?! It's made with shank again but also with seraphic wings. I'm sure that's for the basket of fried wings that comes on the "side" and serves as the actual meal. 
Tastiness Score: Zero.(Fried Seraphic Wings: Four)

Iridescent Ravioli with Apple Sauce. Made with Lost Sole and Amberjacks, both fish that sound fine. Y'know what? We've been through hell. I'm giving a pass to the fish ravioli with sweet apple sauce. It's vaguely normal. Fuck it, it even sounds nice. 
Tastiness Score: Four.

Spinefin Souffle and Fries. Spinefin probably taste like crap. I'm putting that out there right now, there's no way a piranha from Soul Tormenting Vampire Translyvania is a good tasting fish. Still, it might be okay, and if nothing else? I can fill up on fries like I always do. 
Tastiness Score: Two. 

There's also Smothered Shank which is an actually decent way to cook shank, Seraph Tenders which I'm sure is what I'd be ordering ninety percent of the time, and Fried Bonefish which is probably the worst possible way to cook bonefish.

If the World of Warcraft cookbook is any indication, loads of Azeroth's meals are pretty good when you get down to it. They sound weird and exotic because Azeroth's wildlife is strange, exotic and overly large. Does that mean I'm going to make some butterscotch sauce for my next rack of ribs, though? 

Erh...you first. 

Anatomy of a Bad Ability

 "You know what my days used to be like? I just tested. Nobody murdered me. Or put me in a potato. Or fed me to birds. I had a pretty good life. 

And then you showed up. You dangerous, mute lunatic. So you know what?

You win. 

Just go. 

It's been fun. Don't come back."



Today I'll be discussing examples of powers and abilities I consider "bad" so I can hopefully impart some theorycrafting wisdom and methodology to you. I'll use several systems as examples so we can keep this to theory and avoid turning it into a single-game discussion. You won't need any system knowledge until we get to the Vampire bit. THAT game has a few too many terms to explain them all, but hopefully you can still get the gist of what I mean in that section. I will also be staying away from discussing equipment, since there's rarely an intended perfect balance in that area: Worse things do exist, whether they're cheap, old, or obsolete. 

But before we start, what do I mean by bad? I mean things you shouldn't take. That might be because something else is better at its job, but mostly I mean they're not worth what they cost. They're things you wouldn't want, even if they align with your character's theme. What I don't mean by that is abilities which are substandard but okay to take if you're going for a theme or you're okay with spending a bit more for something you think is cool. No, every system has dozens of things like those and it's a perfectly fine thing to take them. I'm discussing things everyone would want to avoid, and how to tell the difference. If you're impatient, core lessons will be at the bottom. 

Let's begin with Pathfinder since I have a previously discussed example. Ultimate Wilderness has a feat tree called Beast Hunter. Over the course of three feats(You get one feat every odd level) you get a laundry list of abilities. 

• +1 Attack

• +1 Dodge Bonus to AC

• +2 to Survival

• +4 to CMD and CMB

• +2 to Reflex Saves

• Ability to act in the surprise round

• +4 to confirming critical hits

Sounds nice. However, you can only apply these bonuses to animals, which are one size category larger than you, which are native to a specific terrain. In addition to that distinction being insanely specific, we have two more problems. The first is that this feat's biggest benefit, the bonus to CMB, is conditional. Your character may not use combat maneuvers at all. The second is that there are extremely few animals past CR 10, meaning this ability has a shelf life. Even a GM who wants you to be able to use this feat tree would struggle to challenge you with animals past level twelve or so.

Our next example is a quick one from Shadowrun. The Cool Resolve adept power gives you an extra die per level to resist the use of charisma linked social skills against you. It does not work on critter abilities, but it does work on other adept powers. Hopefully this one is obvious to you: PCs don't get social skills rolled on them. It's just inherent to the very idea of gaming that you can't do it. So, all this power does for a PC is protect him from a few adept powers. How likely you are to run into those is up to your GM...but I'm guessing the answer is "not often". 

On to Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons. Here, feats are an optional choice. You get fewer of them than earlier systems, every four levels for most classes. Everyone also has a blanket option to put two points into stats instead of a feat, to a maximum of 20. This means feats really have to "pop" for you to want to take them. Only some of them achieve this, honestly. One that definitely doesn't pop, Weapon Master, is our next example of a bad ability. When you take this feat, you get +1 to STR or DEX(a concession for this being a feat with a lesser benefit) and proficiency with four weapons of your choice. Here are the problems with this. 

First, the ability score increase you're getting might potentially be useless to you. An odd stat does nothing, and the game "caps" at twenty. You can balance this out four levels later by putting a +1 in STR and also another odd stat, which you may or may not have. If you don't, then there's a +1 somewhere that's just going to go to waste. Taking another feat with a +1 is a possibility, but there aren't many of those and chances are it's not going to line up in your build.

The second problem becomes clearer when you look at 5e's weapon list. There are a smaller number of weapons than previous editions of D&D, with fewer variances in abilities and damage dice. In addition, unlike its predecessors, 5e does not multiply the STR bonus to damage of a two handed weapon: you simply get the larger die. This means two things. One is that there probably aren't four weapons on this list you really want. Remember, there's no "tripping" or "grappling" weapons, or exotic weapons with funky rules. The other is that you probably already have a proficiency in a decent enough weapon just from your class, unless you're playing a spellcaster. 

About that. Every class that gets the Extra Attack feature also gets decent weapons: Either all martial weapons for fighter/barbarian/paladin, Rapier for rogue, and punching faces for Monk. The classes which don't get decent weapons also don't get more than one weapon attack. If you're serious about wanting to take more attack actions, you'd multiclass. If you multiclass, you're going to receive some of that class's proficiencies. So the only characters who would take Weapon Master are non-martial classes who do not wish to multiclass. Basically, they're making a pretty poor decision: They're taking a minor improvement to something they'll never actually be good at. Even wizard has Quarterstaff, which can deal 1d8 damage. A greatsword isn't so much more damage that you'd waste a precious feat on it.

Can you take this for flavor? Sure. It's all it's good for, honestly. But even then, in 5e you're sacrificing a lot for flavor sometimes. Its feat and racial choices are relatively more important than in other systems.

Our final example is from Vampire: The Masquerade, and it's a controversial one. If my old LARP friends are reading this they're howling at me. That's because the Sabbat-only Thaumaturgical path "Path of Father's Vengeance" sounds really cool. It certainly sounds powerful at first glance. 

One dot lets you read psychic impressions of blood bonds in other vampires. This is, arguably, the most useful power in the path. There are plenty of situations where you would want this information, even though Sabbat are "protected" from blood bonds via the vinculum. It would be easy to use this to find traitors in your pack or city, even though it doesn't share the names of the people the target is bonded to. 

Two dots reduces a target's appearance to zero for a night and specifies that all social rolls during this time generally fail, unless it's intimidation. Basically, it turns you into a Double Nosferatu for a night. If you're mainly combating the Camarilla in your game, this is an excellent way to force a brutal break of the Masquerade without making yourself a target. Still pretty useful. 

Three dots is another curse, the Feast of Ashes. The victim of this power can't drink blood for an entire week, only eating ashes, and only being able to use "ash points" to rise. This sounds amazing and might have some edge cases for use, especially if you can briefly attack someone in a way to reduce their blood pool immediately, like Vicissitude's chest-collapse attack. If you don't, however, it's extremely likely that the victim of this is simply going to hide and/or save his blood for the inevitable fight with you. There are better ways to accomplish this that cost less experience.

Four dots is Uriel's Disfavor, which makes the target take a health level per turn of damage for every round they're exposed to light, even artificial ones. First off, the description even says most vampires hide for the entire week they're under this curse. Second, do you know what else is bright and causes health levels of damage? Fire. Thaumaturgy even has a path where all you do is shoot fire at people.

Five dots reduces the target to his original, non-diablerized generation for a week. This sounds awesome until you realize that diablerie is kinda rare when you're not playing a LARP and you're not likely to run across many foes that have done it to the point that this power is going to be worth using. Oh, and it takes three rounds to do it. 

So, most of these powers would be pretty awesome if you could do them in secret. But you very specifically can't do that. No, you have to quote Vampire Scripture and clearly state the curse to the target for it to work. It's neat flavor, but it means sneaking is out. In addition to how hard these powers are to apply effectively, this is an extremely rare discipline to learn, even among Thaumaturgy paths. The GM is encouraged by the book to make Thaumaturgy a special or monumental thing for a Sabbat player to learn. To do all that work and blow your shot on taking Path of Father's Vengeance...it's a bit sad.

@}-,-'--

So I hope you learned something, but just in case my examples confused you, here's some lessons I wanted you to take away from this discussion. 

Think about when you'll be able to apply the ability. As we saw with all of our examples today, even something that sounds awesome isn't very good if you're not able to use it often. This obviously varies from GM to GM, but some powers just plain aren't ever going to come up no matter how hard your GM tries. This is particularly true of things like Cool Resolve. You also need to keep in mind any restrictions the power has, and how often those will get in your way. 

Make sure the ability's usefulness won't fade. Some things are more useful early or late and that's fine, on some level. However, some rare few are simply useless at higher levels, and you should watch out for that if your game is likely to get to that level.


Think about what you're paying to get it. Sometimes a power plain isn't worth its cost, like Weapon Master. Other times something is defined as rare and thus will likely take some sort of laborious adventure or cost in-game to get it. Rare doesn't always mean good. Remember that, particularly if you're playing a White Wolf game. 

Analyze if everything you're getting is useful to you. The Big Game Hunter feat tree feels like a big value until you realize you're not likely to use everything it gives you. It makes you feel like you're getting more value than you really are. Character builds in even the simplest games can vary a huge amount, but some things just aren't likely to come up in tandem with each other. 

I hope that helped. This feels basic and remedial to me, but I often see people miss these judgement points and treat people who are good at analysis as wizards. We're not. Well, some of us are, in the sense that we're playing wizards. The rest are just putting these abilities through a mental wringer before deciding to take them. 

Meme Builds: Tonberry(Updated)

 "Sneaky beings that slowly creep through the darkness carrying knives and lanterns. Their incessant, innocent stare stabs through opponents, pushing them over the brink of despair."

Here's a blast from the past. Whenever I find something about my meme builds can be updated, this is how I'm going to handle it: Fixing the build and reposting it. If I simply edit the page, chances are you're not even going to know I did it. So this is better. 

The only change here is that I found out about the feat Advanced Weapon Training that leds you get Focused Weapon earlier, at five instead of nine. This eliminates what I thought the biggest disadvantage of the build was, so it's very important. I also updated some build advice.



I'm gonna do some build showcases. They're gonna be meme-y and funny, but I assure you all of them will be playable. I don't like putting together unplayable or bad characters, even as a joke. I don't want people mistaking joke builds, or builds that simply test theoretical limits, for playable ones.

The builds I'm presenting are gonna be just the core of what they need to be the thing I'm saying they are: some are gonna have a lot of free levels where you can take whatever you want. Some will have none.

Tonberry
Class: Fighter

Feats
1 Weapon Focus(Dagger)
1F
2F
3
4F Weapon Specialization(Dagger)
5 Advanced Weapon Training
6F Vital Strike
7
8F Improved Weapon Focus(Dagger)
9 Devastating Strike
10F Improved Critical(Dagger)
11 Improved Vital Strike
12F Improved Weapon Specialization(Dagger)
13 Improved Devastating Strike
14F
15
16F Greater Vital Strike
17
18F
19
20F

Weapon Training
5 Light Blades
5b Focused Weapon(Dagger)
9

13
17

This is nothing special, honestly, but I'm enamored of the idea. At its base, this is stacking a simple Vital Strike build with Focused Weapon to (eventually) get mucho damage on your attack actions. Once the build comes together, you'll be able to shuffle slowly toward your victim and hit them with Everybody's Grudge(also known as The Attack Action) for 8d8+15 before adding your Strength or weapon enhancement bonuses.

Pros. Like every vital strike build, you're super mobile. You'll hit for ruinous damage even on rounds you have to move, and you'll do even more if they're dumb enough to sit still for you to take a full attack. You're great against high-AC targets, since you can put most of your damage behind one really high attack bonus. You're using dagger, which is an easily concealed and very common weapon. You'll have a lot more luck getting a dagger into somewhere than a two handed weapon, even if you're not concealing it.


Cons. You're not really using your other hand(but see Full Memery below). If you decide to be size small to commit to the joke, you're losing a significant amount of damage because the weapon die progression from Focused Weapon will be lower. You also lose out on a weapon flag that's very important to Vital Strike characters: the weapon dice enhancing flag Impact can't be put on a light weapon. 

Finishing the Character. There are a few "X times a day, save vs. an effect" feats that go with Vital Strike. Those aren't too bad. Staggering someone in particular with Staggering Blow can sometimes save your(or someone else's) butt from a full attack action. If you're taking that one, you should probably do so at level ten and put off taking Improved Critical a while.  Power Attack can basically be used on every attack since you're really likely to hit, and there are a few ways to stack Vital Strike with cleave that I saw. Vital Strike also goes amazingly well with Sunder, melting through a weapon(or armor) in one strike. You could also take movement related feats, but be careful: Spring Attack does not work with Vital Strike. AC or defensive feats could also be on the table since you're probably using a shield to make use of that other hand.

In addition, anything that increases your weapon die type disproportionately buffs your damage compared to other people. Enlarge Person isn't very in-line with the theme, but it's a good spell. A wonderful spell for you to slap onto an item is called Lead Blades. It's a level one, but it's a ranger only spell, so you might expect the GM to put you on a quest to find an enchanter who can do it. I'd suggest doing that quest, because it's your best buff.

Finally, a note on basic building. This is a character that could multiclass if they wanted to. Easily. You could even make them into a Weapon Finesse character since you don't get as big a benefit from STR than a traditional fighter: You're only ever making one attack, and with a one-handed weapon to boot.


For Full Memery. Hide your armor under your robe, or buy glamered armor. Ask if you can reflavor a shield to a lantern. If they say no, you can still enchant your shield with a +1 weapon bonus(so it's a magic weapon) then put the Glamered weapon flag on it. Since it only goes away when you attack with the weapon, it'll look like a lantern(and function as a shield) the entire fight. Caution, though. If your GM is a stickler, he's not gonna like how you got around his decision. He might declare something un-fun like blocking an attack with the shield reveals the glamour.


If You Hate Fun. The cool thing about this build is that it can be taken to be a "weapon master". You can pick any of those cool but useless weapons out of the equipment guide and declare your character is the master of it, unparalleled at its use. You'd basically be right. Focused Weapon can also turn mediocre weapons into great ones, and you can use that to leverage the strengths those weapons have, like kusari-gama's reach and trip bonus.

NON-TTRPG: Terraria, a post-game dissection.

"This is going to be a terrible night..."


Hello and welcome to our first post that's not about tabletop gaming. I said I might do this a long time ago, but none of my ideas were ever so compelling that I wanted to urgently get them down on (digital) paper. I decided to finally put the game Terraria to bed after they released its final content patch. Not to bury the lede, but I used to call this my favorite game however I'd never beaten its final boss on my own. I was excited for Journey Mode anyway, so I went on one last ridiculously complete run through the game. Now that I feel I'm completely done, I have a lot, a lot of thoughts on the game. After almost nine hundred hours, it's probably more than I'd care to put in a basic review.

In fact, I want to put a Steam-style review here before we start. Terraria is a lot of fun, especially given its price tag. I certainly didn't put all those hours into a game I hate. It's even more fun with friends. Despite what I might say about their design philosophies and intentions in the following paragraphs, Re-Logic went above and beyond and deserves respect for creating such a dense and interesting game.

That's probably enough Ado.


The Good

So this is a creative voxel-style exploration game with platforming. The key gameplay elements are collecting weapons, armor and accessories which all alter your gameplay style. That's a solid start. The game has a lot of "grind" to it, such as farming consumable materials or things with low drop rates. That's okay on some level. It's the game. I have more to say about consumables later, but the idea of them is fun.

Here's the part where I gush about Journey Mode. Basically, thanks to allowing you to "learn" and duplicate items, it does two things. The first is that it allows you to be as creative as you want without having to farm up a ton of resources. I've made plenty of bases over the years which are boring, stock standard wood towers full of rooms because I'm under pressure to get something, anything up. Thanks to creative mode's duplication, time-locking and other stuff, I was able to spend several glorious hours designing a huge mansion that I'll put at the bottom of this post for you to see.

The other is that it softens the game's need for farming and grinding. Again, I'm not a hundred percent against having to farm. Coming back for my 10th or greater playthrough, though, it was nice to be able to avoid it. I can lock or speed up time, raise the enemy spawn rate, or duplicate gold and consumables all to avoid long grinds. In addition, being an exploration-based voxel game with hundreds of weapons and accessories, it has an even greater need for item sorting than Minecraft or similar games. Journey Mode is particularly great for people who hate doing that. All with still being able to play on higher difficulties and earn everything from those a normal player would. If you feel bad that Journey is "Making the game easy", go ahead and jack the difficulty slider up to Master.

The two new bosses in the latest update are fine. Very well designed, and The Empress of Light is a downright gorgeous fight. I was impressed. They're both optional, though. I won't say that's absolutely a strike against them, but unless you're playing on expert difficulty, they don't really give you anything important. 

More broadly, the game marries explorative creative gameplay with platformers. I dunno guys, I was just destined to enjoy this on some level. The gear is all fun, there's a ton of self expression, and the bosses all have cool, crazy designs. Procedurally generated worlds being corrupted by a spreading "sickness" like the Corruption, or even later the Hallow is a great idea. Distinct areas and the ability to break the sequence of natural progression if you're good is great design.


The Bad


Here's the thing, though. A lot of Terraria's design feels unfocused, like it was based on what they thought was "cool" instead of a coherent philosophy, or worse...in response to players approaching the game "wrong". More on that later. Let me explain what I mean.

Consumables are at a point in this game where a full "load" of helpful consumes is almost half of my inventory. Are they necessary? Well, that depends on what you're doing. You take a shitload of damage on expert or master difficulty. Defensive consumes are a must, and offensive consumes can even make up for taking more defensive accessories or armor, turning them into ad-hoc defenses in themselves. Consumes are a very important part of this game, to the point that some popular mods add a "potion belt" where you can put up to ten stacks of them. Ten is sometimes not enough.

I need to make a point here, so let's go over what you carried all of the time at various stages in this game. I gotta stress that, this is only potions you always wanted to use. When I'm talking about "too many potions", rare conditional utility potions like gravitation or obsidian skin don't count.

During the vanilla release, you had this stuff.

Restorative: Health and Mana potions.
Helpful: Featherfall, Swiftness, Night Owl, Shine, Danger Sense, Spelunker, and Hunter.
Combat: Ironskin, Regeneration, Archery, Magic Power, food buff, and Mana Regeneration.

Obviously, depending on the weapons you use you can skip some of that. I want to point out that while nobody will want danger sense, spelunker or hunter during a boss fight, these potions are outright vital if you're still searching for things in the world.

The Fishing patch added more of them, mostly combat potions.

It added Ammo Conservation, Endurance, Life force, Rage, Wrath, Summoning, and flasks.

Keep in mind I trimmed this list down and left out a few potions some people would find useful like Thorns, Heart Reach, or Titan. My point is, for serious excursions, players will feel the need to carry sixteen stacks of potions, more if they're a magic user. For reference, you have forty inventory slots and ten hotbar slots. Many of these potions require fishing to make, which is much more time spent than the relatively passive herb growing of the vanilla release potions. This means, of course, that those potions in question(particularly endurance, life force, rage and wrath) are intended as "seldom use" potions for bosses or hard areas.

Shame that turning the difficulty above "normal" ends in you dying like a fucking stink bug, then, huh?

Let's get back to fishing later in our next section and instead talk about farming some more. After The Crimson was added, it was impossible to get the "opposite" sickness's items in your world. You get what you get, either Corruption enemies or Crimson. The problem is that the stuff is notably different, and in some cases, extremely unbalanced when compared to one another. For example, many items related to The Crimson(including the super important Flask of Ichor) reduce defense stat. This is very good. The equivalent items for The Corruption cause a DoT called Cursed Flames. It's not bad, exactly. But it's way worse, comparatively. In addition to that, there are many items you may want from exploration and none of them are guaranteed. You're very likely to get one of each, but it's not a promise. This is particularly true of water chests.

This means that sometimes, it's ideal for you to create another world, bring your character into it, and generally fuck it up(with dynamite) and farm what you want out of it. This is perfectly acceptable to me, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel like it was...an exploit. With the final patch, they made it possible for you to build an artificial biome of the opposite sickness. Slowly and with great effort. This still doesn't help with certain items you may find vital like Flesh Knuckles. It feels like a "single world playthrough" is a challenge.

Finally for this section I want to talk about boss AI specifically. Usually, it's okay. I think little things like having to "trick" Plantera and juke her to dodge is neat. The knowledge that she always follows you a certain way helps you fight her. But. There are a few too many bosses who are soundly defeated by flying circles around them. Literally, the best way to dodge in this game is in wide circles, even the Moon Lord. Especially the Moon Lord. I don't know what Re-Logic could have done to combat this, but given the game's difficulty curve I'm almost glad it exists.

On the subject of bosses, I said a while ago that some things in Terraria felt like they were designed in response to players instead of trying to make a complete game. In the beginning, people would build arenas to fight bosses in. I mean, this is a creativity-driven voxel game, why wouldn't you? It made them notably easier. So, the first time a new boss was added, it was The Wall of Flesh, a boss who steadily traveled toward you, not stopping, and would kill you if you got behind him. Players built a long road in Hell to kill him. The Mechanicals were next and seemed to be more of the same, but all needed quite wide areas to fight, and the new 'meta' was using wings to fly and dodge. A brief respite from this seemingly grudge-driven design philosophy. Next added was Plantera, a boss who's extremely hard, if not impossible to get to an arena: She follows you constantly and thus needs to be kited in very wide circles. That, and you can't control where you're summoning her: You have to find randomly spawned "Plantera Bulbs" and destroy them. Then came The Golem, a boss who you fight in his own specific arena which you can't change until after you kill him. Then the Lunar Pillars which spawn in semi-random places and the Moon Lord, who constantly moves to stay in a certain position in relation to you.

Do you see what I'm saying? It feels as if the game's design has been half, or more, trying to force players to approach it in a single intended way. Maybe I'm wrong and this design philosophy was just an attempt to shake things up. I hope it was and any of the malice I attributed to it was misplaced. Still, I consistently feel boxed-in by this.

There are eighteen pre-hardmode NPCs, six hardmode NPCs, one seasonal NPC, and three optional pets. Re-Logic must have realized this was a problem, because they introduced a system where you benefit from placing them in small bases all over the map. While this is admittedly a good system, it doesn't really fix the problem of like five of six of these motherfuckers needing to go. I don't have a problem with "fun" NPCs like the Zoologist, Golfer or Party Girl. Honest. They're neat. What I have a problem with are NPCs like the Tax Collector, the Truffle or the fucking Pirate Captain who barely do anything for you...or in the case of the Pirate, almost literally nothing. NPCs who only bring one little thing like the Cyborg and Steampunker don't feel great, either.

It would be one thing if they were just in the game somewhere, but thanks to the creative nature of the game and the high damage they take, you're basically forced to care for them. I remember having to deal with bases constructed carelessly by other players and several NPCs dying per night. On my most recent play-through, I even skipped earning several NPCs. If you know me at all, you can probably tell that's a very serious decision.

The Ugly

This is going to be a short, brutal section filled with what I consider the game's worst stuff. Before now, my talking points were pretty broad. These are not. These are very specific. 

Fishing, and The Angler. First off, it's cruel to put a slow fishing subgame in a broader game where you're spammed with enemies near 24/7 in most areas. That would be true even if it weren't strictly necessary for the game's most important potions. It's also slower than the already-slow cast-and-wait gameplay seems, because you need to find a good fishing pole, farm good bait, farm sonar and fishing potions, and deal with the Angler.

Speaking of him. I already don't like fishing minigames. This guy makes it a lot worse. For good fishing gear and to complete the game's best informational item, you need to do his quests. Once a day, he'll ask for a quest fish from a certain biome. Something you can't just stock up on. you bring it back and he gives you a randomized reward. Of these, there are six extremely important ones: Three fishing accessories, and three informational accessories. Here's the problem.

One: It's once a day. If this were just the fact that he always had one quest it would be bad enough, but he makes you wait a pointlessly arbitrary amount of time, exacerbating the issue of already having to grind a ton of these stupid missions for what you want. Oh, and by the way? You couldn't use beds to speed up time passing until the most recent patch.

Two: The six accessories you want are very rare rewards, and until the most recent patch, you could get duplicates. You want the Weather Radio, Sextant and the Pocket Guide so you can finally finish the extremely long-winded cell phone item? Too bad, here's twelve sextants.

Three: Everything else you'll get is basically garbage. The rest of the rewards are either decorative(which you might not want) or fishing consumables, which you're already spending to even do this. It feels wonderful to pop a sonar potion to make this easier and your reward is...a sonar potion. 

On top of that, this kid consistently cops an awful fucking attitude with you. That might not seem like a problem to some people, but it's irritating and demoralizing to be forced into dealing with someone who has contempt for you. Ya'll are into Tabletop RPGs, I presume, and you hopefully know the damage a forced interaction with an extremely negative NPC can do.

Healing. So at some point, along with the Golem I believe, they added another tier of armor to attain. Good stuff. Beetle armor for melee, Shroomite armor for ranged, and for magic users? It was spectre armor. Each of these sets came with multiple pieces so you could change around your "sub spec" and the spectre armor had a version with an extremely interesting set bonus: You could heal via your magic damage. In addition to "tanking" and "threat" items recently being added, it felt a lot like the game was adding a trinity of sorts, one that wasn't strictly required, but could enrich multiplayer a lot.

Maybe Spectre Armor was too powerful when it came in. Maybe. However, Re-Logic basically did everything they could to bury the entire concept of healing. Spectre Armor was nerfed no less than twice, the entire concept of magic-based damage was redesigned(needlessly, in my opinion) and the final strike was that the Moon Lord causes a severe debuff to healing received.

Regenerative armor like the Valhalla chest and leg pieces were not only untouched, but remain the easiest way to kill the Moon Lord. 

Speaking of Valhalla, the Old One's Army event(a crossover with Dungeon Defender) is miserable and dumb and I hate it. GETTING those pieces includes a pretty severe grind of having to play a tower defense minigame which I find wholly unwelcome. You must approach this game on its terms and its terms only, especially if you're alone. You have to grind seals to get better stuff to grind seals with, and the worst part of it is that you probably really want those Valhalla pieces I just mentioned, and some of the third tier boss's gear is quite nice. I mean, not to be rude but if I wanted to play Dungeon Defender...I'd play Dungeon Defender. trying to recreate it on a 2d plane just flat out doesn't work.

Base Defense. So at some point they decided mobs should be able to bash doors in, with some fucking mobs even removing the door's placement entirely. This pointless stupidity was implemented to add a certain amount of danger to random events(see below) but all it serves to do is restrict your creativity. Now, we have to place doors in weird areas and make dumb looking floating bases. I love my mansion and I consider it the best thing I've built in Terraria, but the fact that it's not safe because I wanted to make a normal looking house drives me up a fucking wall.

It would help if traps and devices were useful, but after you get to hard mode, not even the special traps from the Golem's temple do enough damage.

Speaking of events where your door gets bashed in, Most bosses have some form of chance to spawn randomly if you haven't defeated them yet. Notably, the Eye of Cthulhu and the Mechanicals. I like this. It keeps you on your toes. There's also the Blood Moon and later the Solar Eclipse, which are...fine. I said my piece about door-bashing, and in general these events can mean you're outside dealing with them for the entire time they're active. There's also the Goblin Army, which is important to do once, and the Pirate Invasion, which is worthless, dumb and deserves to be removed from the game. These two events can keep happening after you finish them, and aside from being an enormous waste of your time, can string together along with blood moon and solar eclipse to keep you fighting dumb bullshit that won't go away for 20+ minutes.

The Goblin Army brings the goblin tinkerer into the world. It means you're excited to beat it the first time. After the first, it shouldn't spawn again unless you use an item. In the very least, it shouldn't happen during Hard Mode at all, because the only thing different is a single hard enemy, and the rest die like cannon fodder around him. Just make the Goblin Summoner a rare mob somewhere.

The Pirate Invasion brings the Pirate Captain who, like I said, barely does anything at all. It doesn't drop anything you're very excited to get, aside from the extremely rare discount card. It serves as an annoyance at best, something to distract you from other things you'd rather be doing. It should be removed and its unique items added elsewhere.

I've danced around explaining the difficulty of the game, so we might as well explain it fully in my final section. The good aspect to this is that bosses have better, different AI in Expert/Master and drop unique loot. Normal enemies also drop more loot more frequently. They can cause additional debuffs as well. This is fun. The problem is everything else. 

Mostly, extra difficulty is just everything has more health and does more damage. Defense stat is more effective to compensate, but frankly this is almost like a wish on a monkey's paw. It means that, if you want to play a difficult game of Terraria while solo, you're no longer playing a game that has fun, varied specs. It means you're either a god of dodging or you're putting on the gear you need to survive. It means magic characters, who are already squishy, have an amplified disadvantage.

This is hardly the only game which does difficulty like this, so maybe I shouldn't be so hard on it. It's just depressing to have the thought of finally playing a magic-based character in Terraria and ending up in Melee a tenth time because I'm taking so much damage and dying so often.


So that's it. I hope you noticed how often I said "Until the latest update" , because I wanted to stress that Re-Logic did, in fact, try to address some of my issues. Not every fix they added is a great one, but I'm glad they did and I'm thankful that they're trying, even if I didn't always feel their design was always coherent.

So in summation? If you like platformers or voxel games, give it a try. It's not like it's very expensive. Maybe being warned about the bad stuff will help. My advice? Definitely get some friends together...and maybe don't worry about completing the Cell Phone.