Card Qualit-ies

I have barely posted about CCGs for months.  For the obvious reason that I usually post relating to what’s going on, whether that’s TV shows or some form of gaming.

In a recent design meeting for Traveller, we spent hours and produced one card.  One less than two cards.

But, my takeaway is that we really should have recorded sessions all along.  I’m only kind of a professional CCG designer/developer and realize that there are all sorts of things I could do better, but the conversations we have around philosophy of card pool are the sort of thing I would have wanted to read about.

Quality 1

What ate up a huge amount of time was trying to cost a card.  I really need to post a Dev Corner post for Traveller with different content, so I’ll not get too deep into Traveller mechanics, but we have two main attributes on a card that have nothing to do with what the card does:  cost and EV (Expense Value, aka how much money the card is worth).

Generally, lower cost = better card, higher EV = better card.  We have given really powerful/annoying effects the dreaded 0 EV and given narrow use cards 2+ EV so that people could have their cake (hosers/specialized) and eat it too (not waste deck slots on cards that don’t help you win).

We ran over different possibilities for whether the card should be 0/0 [C/EV], 1/0, 1/1, 2/1, 2/2, 3/2, and even 1/4 as I had an interesting philosophical point about how our game differs from a bunch of other games and how that changes decisionmaking, which is something we care about with our game.

Now, most of the discussion was around 1/0 and 2/1.  EV-1 is the norm in the game and dominates the card pool.

So, with N/0 values, a card can not be used for money (barring various esoteric plays).  It only produces value when played.  This is unlike other cards in the game where there’s a decision whether to use the card for money or not.  What it means, thusly, is that a 1/0 card will always be played for its effect.  It may even just be used ASAP to clear it from hand and to get some value out of it, but one of the ways to tell the skill level of a player is whether the player assesses that holding on to a card is more valuable than playing it.

Contrast with, for more extremeness, 3/2.  Now, one of the things we talk about is also the concept that cost doesn’t mean a lot in certain philosophical ways as you play a card when the cost is worth it, but that’s a concept for another time.  Here, could pay a lot to play this card or could use it for solid money.  This creates a decision and having at least some decisions in a CCG is a good thing.  (I have played games with no decisions and they are less … quality.)

But, these two values don’t just make for tactical decisions.  In CCGs, tactical decisions are whether to play a card or not with all that that entails.  In CCGs, there are strategic decisions of … dum, dum, dum … constructing your deck(s).

I kept trying to think of how 1/0 v 2/1 v 3/2 would impact how many copies of a hoser I’d run in my deck.  Traveller doesn’t seem to have much of a defined metagame, and hosers are metagame dependent to a significant degree, so it’s difficult to claim how important the effect is, but this hoser nails some interesting as well as common plays in the game.  At 1/0, it’s 0-2 copies, methinks.  At 3/2, ignoring something going to go into later because I still have 2400 more words to get to, 1-3 copies.  But, at 2/1, I think it’s more 0-1 copies.  That’s interesting, assuming you want to be a game developer.  Yet, I don’t think the 2/1 is a worse card.  And, this gets to the crux of why this is interesting – it’s not obvious how good cards are.  One would think a card that slots more often is a better card; pretty compelling argument to me which is why I claim constantly that staple effects in games are better cards than more powerful effects that go in fewer decks.

Now, what’s missing from that analysis is “How many different decks would this card go into?”  The 1/0 might see more copies in the decks it goes into, but I see it going into fewer decks.  EV-0 is not a trivial drawback; well, maybe when we have a Worlds and everyone’s decks are filled with EV-0 cards, I’ll be proved wrong, but, until then, I’m like the most successful Traveller CCG player who has ever lived (unfortunately).

Similarly, the 3/2 would go into fewer decks as there are plenty of ways to get EV-2 if that’s what you really care about.  Or, maybe not.  Maybe the effect is not good enough to justify a random card slot and 3/2 goes into more decks because EV-2 is more useful than the effect usually is, which brings us to …

Quality 2

There are a bunch of CCGs with generic cards.  By generic cards mean cards not associated to any faction in the game.  Magic has artifacts and land.  Almost everything in Traveller would fall under this definition of generic, which is why a smaller card pool can produce so many more decks, but that’s like a post for another time.

However, Traveller has mechanical groupings.  Crew have skills.  Heroic Actions require skills.  Upgrades go into limited slots.  Connections same.  Gear has to go on crew.  All sorts of limitations that inform deckbuilding decisions.  Events, though, are just like events in Babylon 5 or whatever in a bunch of games – more genericful.

This hoser is an event.  I pointed out to our lead designer that the history of B5 saw that the proliferation of events led to severe space competition [get it, space, B5, Traveller, the final frontier] for events.  There were tons of events I wanted to put in every deck.  Meanwhile, B5 was/is a faction game, so there were a bunch of slots taken up with running the best faction cards (for your strategy).

Already, you could run an absurd number of events in Traveller because not only are they genericful, but they are all money.  There’s no such thing as a dead draw, except for the promo event with its EV-0.

As we add more such cards, the competition for slots becomes fiercer and fiercer and the trend should be to see this card less and less barring brokenness in the game, like cheesing Diverse Dynamics wins left and right.  And, yet, that’s true of every card that isn’t overpowered.

It’s very easy to design an event in isolation as it can do whatever you want and there’s some guidance in that it’s a transient effect.  But, in terms of how events fit into a card pool, that’s much more challenging if you care about seeing every card serve a purpose.

Speaking of overpowered and cards serving a purpose …

Quality 3

Why must bad cards exist?  Not to test player skill.  Not to sell cards.  Not because of IP the game is based on.

Bad cards *must* exist because it’s impossible to make cards equally useful/powerful/use-powered.

Goodness/badness, in other words, is just an inevitable byproduct of making cards that do different things.

However, I got to thinking about something that I’ve been exposed to in the past, maybe even explicitly by someone else rather than in thinking about V:TES metagames.  Metagames are dependent upon a consensus on what is good or better than good.

Metagames are a good thing … I posit, anyway.  They give analytical types a hook into investing thought into the game.  Stale metagames are, of course, crap, as play is not only boring, but there’s no reason to keep thinking about how to take advantage of the meta after a certain point.

I realized that I don’t want every single Traveller card to be just as … *sigh* … “good”.  If that were the case, then there would be zero predictability around deck construction, which means I have to ignore what opponents might do.  Furthermore, the new player is advantaged by there being guidance when it comes to deck construction, assuming of course that the new Traveller player plays it like a CCG and doesn’t just run fixed decklists all of the time.

Now, this theoretical problem of any card and any deck being equally as commonly played doesn’t exist in the real world.  We didn’t hit upon some weird magick of making a game where everything is everything and everything is nothing.

Misdirection should not be an EV-2 card.  Llaegzko’s is undercosted one way or the other.  Dwight Cain is the most discarded card e-e-e-ver, etc.  (Of course, DC can only be discarded if in a deck, so … Traveller!!)

Reason why this quality came up was thinking about how certain events are just better than others and how we want this card to have a purpose in the game even if we don’t want the card to see play all of the time.  That, plus extending the thinking beyond this card, beyond events, to the core concept of deck construction in a CCG and how to fit exactly 60 cards together (yes, 60) into a coherent whole.

On the flip side, we obviously don’t want to print coasters.  CCGs are full of coasters, and they are often offensive.  Now, some folks will play terrible cards because they are terrible or because the art is some hot chick or because the title of the card is funny or whatever, so we can make terrible cards that aren’t coasters (though Traveller is not going to have much in the way of hot chicks because we respect the IP, see one of our future games for, um, hotness).

We made some bad cards.  That was inevitable.  We talk frequently about how to make them better.  As much as Wheel of Time adding cards that started in play was a horrendous mechanic philosophically, that did end up redeeming a whole class of card in the game.  That’s where I want to go with the bad cards in the game is find a way to make them less bad because of other cards, not errata/reprint them, not write them off forever.

This card’s costing was debated as much as it was to where we produced 99 less than 100 cards in that session because we are mindful that we’ve overcosted other cards and also that we don’t want it to be too good, even if there’s an interesting philosophical point about the card being like 1/4, where the opportunity cost of using its effect is massive (well, EV-4 is diminishing returns on EV-2 or EV-3 because … Traveller!!).

How to get to 2000 words in this brilliant analysis about cards’ roles in CCGs?

Card Psychology

This should totally be a different post, so …

Discord

One of the effects of remote gaming is how prevalent Discord has become for me.  To tie this into CCGs, the Shadowfist server has gotten me more interested in ‘Fisting, though not with others since …

Hold on, before changing topics, one more comment about Discord.  Discord is fine for playing stuff.  Discord is not good for acting as a game forum.  People treat it differently from subject based forums, spending ridiculous amounts of bytes on gifs, chatting, and the like where there’s a lack of structure to how information is presented to where I can focus on what I’m interested in.  If a subject thread in a game forum is “Fantasy Football”, I can just ignore it if I want.  It is really hard to come back to conversations or find relevant information when people just spent 200 messages going into irrelevancy.

Since …

Online Flopping

Mentioned before that I don’t like flopping online.  I’m an in person flopper.  Far more than I am an in person chucker.  I’ve chucked a lot online, but I hated JOL and never grasped any app for playing CCGs with other people.

Wait, with other people?  Oh, the irony.  I was addicted to Shandalar.

I’m pretty sure that the difference is that I’m not super into competing with other people, so the less social aspects of everyone else being a user rather than a here-er removes enough of my interest that I just can’t see ‘Fisting on Lackey or whatever.  However, I’m fine with competing against myself and/or super-cheaty computer AIs such that I can solitaire my life away flop, flop, flop.

Whew.  Two grand.

Motive

I was struggling with a topic.  I had thought of something about best or preferred … something, but I didn’t know where I would go with it.

Inspired by a recent event, I thought of something that bothers me in RPGs.

IC vs OOC interpretation results

That’s an awkward header.  One could argue that there’s always a problem with distinguishing in character versus out of character under certain circumstances.  In character might be perfectly happy to drown baby Antichrist.  OOC has to process that sort of thing.

There are RPGs where your character is you, at least in terms of personality/mind.  I find that playing characters that think the way I do, including modern sensibilities, et al, work better than when I try to stretch to think like someone else.

But, okay, being a different thinker is normal.  No L5R character is going to think like I do.  It’s just a different culture and world view.

Where the seemingly worst problem occurs or, at least, where today’s worst problem occurs is when you have a roll in a game that informs how your character thinks in a way that the player would not.

As an example, the failed or, even better, botched Sense Motive roll.  Whereas an Awareness/Interrogation roll in L5R to detect lies is sticking to facts – character is lying, character doesn’t seem to be lying but it’s hard to tell, you are pretty sure character isn’t lying – and the player can make decisions based upon incomplete knowledge, rolls that are of the type “you think she’s planning a coup”, “he’s going to jump off the highest tower in T-94 seconds”, or whatever causes a player to run into the problem of trying to play towards a situation that isn’t actually believed in.

Now, one could alternatively argue to keep die rolls a secret.  Have GM make Sense Motive rolls or whatever similar skill.  Except, this rarely happens in my play, and that has it’s own burdens, such as reducing the amount of mechanics players get to fiddle with.

I have played Gullible L5R characters, where I just believe whatever the villains tell me pretty much … right up until the point that the party members say something different and I do what the party thinks is best.  If I were alone, I could get used, but that happens too rarely to matter.

What bothers me about situations where characters believe one thing and players don’t (or mostly don’t) is that it’s not just a role-playing challenge for the player who rolled poorly, it leads to party conflict.  I’m not a fan of party conflict.  Really, really not.  Others may enjoy this sort of thing.  I enjoy resolving plots and protecting honeypots and, occasionally, annihilating enemies with extreme prejudice.

May seem strange as I like soap operas.  But, I don’t like soap operas for how people mess with each other or hide things from each other for no reason.  I like soap operas for the “wait, aren’t these two lovers actually siblings/parent-child/grandparent-grandchild” or “yup, I’m a spy who works for this totally cool spy agency” or whatever.  And, anyway, the soap opera elements are ones involving NPCs, not other PCs.

It’s interesting how this problem only occurs in certain games.  In L5R, really just ferreting out facts without rolls giving conclusions, at least in my play.  Obviously, D20 has a skill called, um, Sense Motive where the GM can make up whatever, though botches aren’t always a thing, so can leave things at “you don’t get any sense”.

Now, players can be loons.  Best a game can do is not produce mechanics that feed into the lunacy, but that isn’t on the game system.

That was pretty much it.  I know, like 400 words shy of another devil getting her wings.  I mean, I should point out that GMs can anticipate the problem of characters thinking nonsense when players don’t and try to stick to factual statements rather than feed speculation.

So, True Dungeon transmuting …

Ghosts

Theme for today is quite à propos of recent events.  Whether it’s interesting I’m not so sure.

Saturday evening was session one of new RPG endeavor.  Why not call it a campaign?  I’m not sure it’s intended to last past a few sessions.

Witch Doctors.

Name of mystery is … wait for it … stay on target … Ghosts.

Boom goes the mic.

Session one was strange, not because we are playing modern supernatural but because it was dominated by a NPC appearance.  Everyone was discombobulated, including the GM, as the game became far more soap opera-y than planned.  I think there was general agreement that the scene would have made more sense if there were fewer PCs, only ones that even knew who the NPC even was, or if the NPC was a major villain or rival to the entire group or if the scene had come later in play, after there had been more setup.

I finally did something magickal in WD.  It didn’t screw me.

So, what’s a general principle that can come from the specific?

With more players, there needs to be more immediate action.  One of the reasons I got to embracing combat more was because our local L5R group got so large that combat gave some activity for everyone to engage with at the same time.

I’m a fan of soap opera, but I don’t feel like our characters have been defined enough to get into interpersonal relationship drama when that’s not the intent of the game.  This is part and parcel of why I prefer starting play, then defining character rather than trying to determine who everyone is before they start interacting.  We don’t have any context to know how our characters should interact with each other.  Three of them are family and those players worked on the family dynamic, so that may be fine.

The daughter in that family was the one who bothered to let me know there was an adventure afoot, and she talked to me like I was a business acquaintance of her parents.  That seemed weird to me.  I don’t normally call my parents’ friends Mr. X.

Just very awkward.  Whereas, in my Gen Con game, it was hardly ever awkward.  I noted to the GM afterwards that I find that campaign play just has such different features to one-shot play.  While this sort of occurrence might not be a good example of those differences, the ability to eat up time on unproductive activity is a feature of campaign play.  So much less urgency causes getting bogged down in … stuff some people don’t care about.

Switching gears, played V1b yesterday.

True Dungeon V1b, that is.  Virtual True Dungeon’s first dungeon in its second incarnation.

We talked about doing 15 token builds at Nightmare.  That was my plan for a group of five or more players.  Looked we were going to end up with four for a while, so we switched to 18 token builds under the theory that, if you exclude treasure enhancers, a 15 token build with five players is really 60 token decisions, so four players times 15 plus three, leads to 18 token builds.

We ended up with five players.  We had five … wait for it … course correct, course correct … ghosts.

Boom Chaka Laka.

The fifth player had never played TD before.  So, we made her suffer through trying to do the puzzles we already knew by herself for as long as possible.  Our first combat was pointless as we equipped a token that made it impossible for the monster to hurt us.  We still d(r)owned her in the first round … because NM is not actually that hard.

The second and last fight proved challenging for us to win because we weren’t terribly efficient.  Still, it was just eating damage that was manageable.  Andy was using my rogue legendary, and he kept dealing exactly 68 damage with crits in combats, which worked well for murder.

I ran Iktomi’s as druid, so I kept polymorphing into elementals, even in puzzle rooms as the puzzle rooms were dealing typed damage for a change.  Maybe the intent was to make tokens matter more in puzzle rooms?

The two puzzles we weren’t familiar with proved pretty straightforward once we got over the awkwardness of trying to interact with the physical objects through our golem.  It’s perfectly fine to me to have half the puzzles be easy for me, especially if they aren’t easy for everyone, but I didn’t think any puzzle in V1 was difficult.  I was expecting Nightmare to make puzzles more challenging to complete, with only maybe one of them possibly requiring more effort than at a lower difficulty.

Of course, we are way overtokened for NM.  Need to come up with even more constraining limitations when playing NM.  But, Epic is apparently available in VTD going forward, so we are gonna be Epic next time.

Speaking of next time.  I only did one run of 1a and one run of 1b even though the cost really isn’t that high.  I’m just not that much of a fan of the dungeon.  The puzzles would be boring to do again.  The first combat was okay on 1a, but I have no interest in any of the combats.  They don’t look that good (even the first one due to lighting, angle, resolution, etc.) and don’t have particularly interesting decisions.  I suppose we could make the combats more interesting with weird builds, like we did on our Blowgun Run.

I’m hoping the aesthetics, at least, of V2 are better.  Also, maybe a more coherent story as the switch to high tech stuff made zero sense to me in V1.  Puzzles are constrained by our inability to physically manipulate anything.  Combat is made worse by lack of physically sliding, and I’m not sure how that gets overcome.  I imagine the first combat in V1 would have been way more interesting in person, though I imagine it might also not have been done in person for obvious reasons.

Ghosts

Do ghosts make for good challenges in L5R?

Ghosts, normally, are unremovable through combat.  You have to roleplay a way out of the problem.  That seems like it could be good or could be bad.  I often find puzzles to be failures in RPG play because they are too easy or too hard and not really a particularly interesting group activity.  Challenges like a ghost can end up being too puzzlelike.

Or, maybe not.  Maybe my RPG play is so conditioned to not thinking through challenges and just dicing through them that it’s the players’ fault for not coming up with better solutions.

This is an area Witch Doctors can educate.  WD is intended to be low-roll.  Rolling is often dangerous as the thresholds for best outcomes are high.  You don’t roll Diplomacy to talk to somebody, you just talk to them, kind of like the old days before systems had skill lists or today with systems that lack skill lists.  (WD has skills, though.)

Other times when ghosts appeared in RPGs?

I can’t think of a lot.  Sure, there are cut scenes with ghosts.  But, actually interacting with them is not particularly common.  Of course, I’ve played Wraith and Orpheus, but that was in the long, long ago when my mind was in better shape.

Feng Shui, you can be a ghost PC pretty easily.  Not that interesting to me, though I could see a cool story arc being some other template, dying, then coming back as a butt-kicking ghost.  I’m sure other people have done that in their play.

Ghost Rider – sometimes cool, sometimes silly.

Ghost in the Shell – not that interesting to me.

Ghost Peppers – I don’t like chilis because I like having a hard time eating food, I like chilis for providing a more interesting taste to food.  I actually don’t know what a Ghost Pepper tastes like.  My latest kick is to use Anaheims more than Serranos, while wishing I could get Fresno Chilis from my preferred grocery store.

Well, I’m sure I’m missing some other ghost things to comment upon, but, hey, it’s not even like close to Halloween, where this would have been ultratimey.

Legendary

So, it’s not that I haven’t been doing gaming things, it’s that it’s really hard to focus these days.

I’m typically pretty bad about advertising Kickstarters I back, but here’s the latest:

Legends of Avallen

I didn’t do much playtesting, but I didn’t see any reason not to back it.

Keeping with the theme, I actually own far more True Dungeon Legendary tokens than I ever thought I would.  Here’s something I considered for instant classic status, but whatever:

So, my expectations and the payoffs on them for class transmutes:

Bard:

I expected bard to have bardsong bonus and any action while bardsonging. Bonus was temporarily higher, which got pared down to minimum it could have been while still making any sense. In terms of printing my expectations, met them just about, ignoring that there’s also the saves ability, an ability I’m okay with in theory.

In practice? In practice, WLL just comes across as grossly overpowered as it feels like there’s zero cost to it. If anyone wants one, btw, I have one. Of course, might as well wait a couple days to see what eBay prices it at.

It doesn’t offend me because it was logical how it would work. It doesn’t enthuse me (admittedly, this may be a shock, but enthusiasm isn’t really my thing). It’s just +4/+4 all of the time on every run that has a bard, as I can always loan mine out if people I play with don’t have one.

Druid:

Not any particular expectations. I would like to play druid more than I do, but the competition is too fierce, so I didn’t worry about what it did.

End result? I find being able to unpolymorph undermines the theme. Otherwise, Shaman’s Belt, GSN, Iktomi’s are the only class transmutes I really like. I think they are far cooler than everything else because they at least try to do something different rather than just increasing power. Btw, I probably don’t need Greater anymore given that I have Iktomi’s, which I don’t think I’ve gotten to use, yet. Of course, narrow use with druid is very different because druid is already my favorite class to play.

Rogue:

No personal expectations as I have no interest in playing rogue unless playing True Grind, and TG is too hard to plan for. Sneak Attack mastery seems the obvious way to go. Began my not even bothering to comment on some of these tokens as it didn’t matter to me how it turned out.

End result seems to be fine. Solved a bunch of taxes rogues have to pay for sneak attack. Probably does too much damage, but … to paraphrase myself … I just don’t care how much damage is done at BiS play. Nighmare is pathetically easy where I expect I could solo it, so the only play where BiS is even a consideration is Epic or TG, and I hear that it’s not much of a consideration there, either. I also have one of these … to lend out to my friends who like rogue way, way more than I do, and, yet, neither of my friends has run it, either.

Barbarian:

I have a like/dislike with barbarian. What I mostly dislike is that I don’t care that much about smash face. One of my favorite runs of all time was N2, where I finally got to slide my woodie +1 Quarterstaff to prove the point that any 2h weapon is absurd with barbarian (note that I have a +3 Deathcleaver I sometimes play). What I wanted was more focus on Damage Reduction and less on crushy crush because anyone can crushy crush where DR is interesting.

End result? I have none of UR, Relic, nor Legendary. I would use them if I had them, but I have zero interest in acquiring any of them. All they do is add damage. I no longer care about adding damage.

Monk:

No expectations. I actually learned to really enjoy monk … ranged monk. I use my whatever +2 crossbow and shoot things with 50+ Dex and I don’t have to carry more than one token through the dungeon. Number of other people who play monk this way appears to approach zero. I mean, I was sure the monk stuff would be grossly overpowered because it would somehow increase damage, but whatever.

I do own Ring of the Drake. Of the 2020 standard URs, there is precisely one mechanic I like. If you read this far, you can surmise that the only good UR effect in 2020 standard URs in my mind is Shurikens Returning. In my mind, a “perfect UR” is “When attacking with shurikens, gain +2 to hit, +2 to damage, crit 19-20, your shurikens have Returning.” That is a distinct build, where I crave variety and not power. I couldn’t care less what the relic and legendary do – they can summon a pony who tramples the actor playing a monster in the dungeon for all I care. Now, if you give me super crossbow monk bonuses, I’ll … consider that awful because the whole point of shooting things with my crossbow monks is to not do good things. It’s to consider whether to bother running with a 60 Dex or not or, probably by next year, 70 Dex.

Paladin:

Expected the best one handed weapon available to paladin. Wanted to stay in theme and have nonattack mechanic. Of paladin abilities, I like Sacrifice the most and, of course, will always use Lay on Hands. I find Guarding to be largely useless to where I was on a run where the rest of the party suggested I equip anything else as they didn’t care if they got attacked. Still, in 2020, every run I’ve made has involved Amulet of Guarding, and it has done precisely nothing. Rant aside, having a sword do something with Guard was unnecessary because I don’t feel like these tokens have to do everything. A wrist/hands/fingers/back/feet/bead/whoever cares slot token someday in the future can make Guard better.

I have Ava’s. As I have no intention of trading it or selling it, one could say I value it at about $1000. I don’t like that it adds to Lay on Hands because that’s a thematic fail. I would value it the same if it lost that ability. Grace is good enough for me, as my saves idea was awkward to implement.

Ranger:

I was happy that the decision went to push ranged ranger. Sure, I prefer ranged ranger as I don’t care a lot about sliding (and, yet, own Charm of Shadow Shot). But, it seemed a path to keep ranger OPness in check, where ranged monk … would have never *flown* [ha, haha]. I was not expecting Con bonus. I thought making Favored Enemy mean something would justify the ability existing at all, but it has the same problem Turn Undead has – irrelevance.

I find the Con bonus clunky. I neither like Animal Companion from the standpoint of second slide as that just makes it a variant of CoSS, which I already don’t really care about, nor from the standpoint of consuming polymorph potions, even though I don’t really need to horde them. Overall, I have the relic and would use it, have some interest in legendary just because I enjoy ranged builds and want to build that Dex 100 ranger build in two years. Scrolls not that interesting to me compared to expanding upon spell use, but, really, it would make more sense for paladins to cast spells than rangers, so I never expected spell benefits. I even told myself to remember to start combat by casting with my ranger build and I forgot I had spells.

Overall:

I just see it natural that people’s expectations would only needlessly build. Being the best possible token you could run was not going to be enough, had to be the best possible token for the class until the Sun goes red. I’m most happy with Iktomi’s. Ava’s next, I suppose, though the dropoff is pretty far. I’m not surprised by what people want and what they get not matching, so I’m not surprised by the massive level of negativity to the process and the results.

One of my friends will probably be enthused by cleric stuff – after all, he has the advantage of, one, not caring what gets made, and, two, not seeing what could have been made. I would be fine running wizard stuff, but I don’t know if I’ll make any effort besides offering Widseth’s for the legendary if I don’t get rid of it any sooner. Fighter actually kind of interests me simply because my take on fighter is, predictably, not like anyone else’s (who comments). I want to run a 14 token, 4th level fighter build with the legendary on a private run where people don’t care if I goof off.

Why post something here that I posted on the TD forums when probably anyone who reads here interested in TD is likely to read the forums?

I’m supposed to be developing for Traveller.  I spent more cycles commenting on TD token development for 2021 tokens recently than on Traveller.  That seems nature’s loser of me.

While it is, there are two reasons.  First, I could really use being entertained rather than doing anything like work – I have no real responsibility to make True Dungeon better, but I’m struggling with nailing down mechanics for how to make Traveller better, sooner.

Second, I would go back to how openendedness with creation is bad.  Sure, I mentioned this just recently, but this is another example.  TD token development is in a pretty narrow design/development space.  Most of what I comment upon is actually technical fixes on tokens rather than trying to promote my own ideas for tokens.  If a token is particularly OP or useless, I will throw out alternative ideas.

Traveller is much more open for me.  That just makes making decisions more difficult.  Sure, a lot of what we do now is within the context of a game that exists (it does, it really does), so that can help with focus.  But, we come up with far more mechanics ideas than we use.

Not sure how I tie playing HoR4 into my theme.  My character is hardly legendary.  The last mod was fine, had some good structure in one way but with some thematic weirdness.  We had fallout from the prior mod that was … different.  Just got to move on.

Gloomhaven.  No, I haven’t been playing online.  An old friend found this blog by searching for Gloomhaven thoughts, which is totally legendary – that my few thoughts on a game that other people talk way more about were noticed.  Actually, I have my Frosthaven box.  I assume I’m only getting one.  I haven’t actually opened it seeing as I don’t tend to make much use of my Kickstarter rewards and I have no one else to play with in person where physical product matters.

We caught up quite a bit.  I contacted another old friend I hadn’t talked to in years.  Text messages, there.

Speaking of virtual product, couple things coming up this weekend, including our second run of Virtual True Dungeon.  I might run a legendary I haven’t played with, yet.

Sports being back is weird.  The Needle is still what I’m most interested in, but he’s sucking.  I should be finding NBA interesting, but it’s not penetrating as it usually does in terms of the story lines.  Even finding it hard to tie this into gaming, somehow, more a state of mind thing.

Let’s see:  anything else recent?  Not so much.  No VTES, no Shadowfist, no looking back at something ancient nor unboxing something new I won’t do anything with.  Mostly True Dungeon rearing its Madness.