The Best of … 2019

That time of year again.

I actually have another post to do, which I’ll plan on doing tomorrow as it is less time sensitive.

What do people want me to post about?  Maybe something to do with L5R R&K, but that’s kind of hard to write about still.  Maybe VTES if I was winning major tournaments or coming up with new deck ideas, but the former is kind of hard to write about.  I guess the latter isn’t that hard, if I was motivated to build decks.

January

Dismay

Much easier for me to focus on failure these years.  I try to analyze why my last campaign failed.  That’s fun for people to read about, right?

March

I have to dig deep to find posts that I think should be called out.  This is the problem with wanting to spew gaming philosophies – there are only so many.  More event reports would be more content.  More design posts about creating worlds, characters, decks, etc. would be more content with no necessary end.

The Agony of Victory

More negativity.  Can’t even win a competitive game and enjoy it.

Tomato Pie And Colder Than Saudi

This has no meaningful gaming content.  However, if we step back, this was itself an adventure.  I read three of my mother’s mystery paperbacks recently.  A varying factor in formulaic books is setting.  Can tell the same stories over and over and just change the sensory data.  This setting was outside of my norm.  While I’ve been to a place in the world with great natural beauty quite often, the visuals here were different enough to be … um … different.

So, one of the thoughts I have with RPGs is to not try to tell different stories but tell the same stories in different places.  Don’t need to be clever with storytelling, just entertaining.

L5R Mechanics – Sample Advancement

While hardly as important as much older posts about character building, some people still read this.  It’s obviously limited by focusing on a specific character that you all don’t care about, but that was going to be the case, and I think there are enough words to try to broaden the analysis.

May

Capture The Enrapture

You could read this low content ramble or you could glean every useful element from it if you just remember to … phaser the rocks.

Nowhere Near The Badlands

This is not a terribly important post … for you.  But, for me, I should occasionally remind myself of my own observations.  I may keep thinking my ideas will fail, but there are some ideas that could be tried anyway.

June

Origins 2019

Sure, why not?  It’s a major convention report and not much more.

Deck Dreck

I don’t think my more recent posts are better in writing or content.  But, I don’t think I can tell, anyway.  Because it’s all so familiar to me at this point in a general sense that I just kind of tune out what I say.  But, feel free to read all of my new posts lots of times with like likes and comments and shares or whatever!!

There’s a concept here that maybe deserves more exploration.  Maybe.

Wan-Ting

I started dragging my mother to things because of her mental health.  Did give me some insight into how to differentiate gamers from non-gamers.

July

Show Me The Game

Okay, this post actually should be read more.  When you observe the world around you, you can start relating things to each other in interesting ways.  Is there a way to leverage mechanics used to entertain humans in one arena to another arena?  Of course.  But, how?

Dungeons & Dissonance

I’m more invested in True Dungeon than any other pursuit these days.  So, so much can be written about the dissonance between the fundamental flaws in the model and how it seems to work great.

August

BattleTech – Arms Race 2

BattleTech – Arms Race 6

Enter The … Virtuous Rangers!

I like stories.  I like reading (some) stories.  I like experiencing (some) stories.  I like sharing stories (that some-times might be of interest).  I will play games just to pass time, things like solitaire, where there’s no story.  But, I’m a gamer because of stories.  These posts get into what I want out of BattleTech or similar games.

September

World Changing

It’s easy to make lists, if maybe not accurate ones.  I explain why these games meant something profound to me.

October

Gloomhaven – Heart Of The Matter

What does this post do for you?  I don’t know.  For me, this post makes me think I should play more Gloomhaven.

Towns & Taxes

How long do you think it takes me to come up with world creation ideas?  This is the sort of stuff I think about for a couple hours in my life.  Would I want to play this?  Probably not, especially after a game I did play that was fun but which highlighted how much I don’t get what I want out of RPG play.  Would I want to run it?  I have no idea how well it would work (with the right people playing).

Gaki & … Other Gaki

What is this post about?  Way too long to read to find out.  [Don’t say things like that.]  Oh, right, just publishing to the world our Gaki Mura campaign concept.

I spent more than a couple of hours thinking about Gaki Mura.  But, how long do you think I spent thinking about the mechanics of town building or whatever?  I enjoy world building and I enjoy mechanics building (within an existing framework).  Most mechanics I come up with are like “let me write something down” over a few minutes of thinking about how something will work.  The town building mechanics required more than that, but they were hardly vigorously thought out … and it showed.

Still, this is actually a more useful post, methinks, from 2019.  If you want to build a campaign, this may not be how you go about it, but it should still be interesting to see how someone else went about it.

December

A single post in November?  Brutal.

Raze Of Skywalker

How is a movie (trilogy) review important?  Let’s step back (again).  What excites dicechuckers about new campaigns?  What they think it will be about.  Maybe the GM had a good pitch, maybe not.  But, players have expectations.  I’m hesitant on new RPG play similar to old because the (recent) old just isn’t as good as it should be.

We have expectations of Star Wars.  My expectations aren’t Episodes 1, 2, and 3 that I barely remember.  Nor are my expectations just 4, 5, and 6.  There’s also the Timothy Zahn, extended universe books.  This trilogy was horrendous.  Worse than the individual components because it was utterly unsatisfying in resolution.

I don’t feel any need to see another Star Wars movie.  I’d be more inclined to read a newer Anita Blake novel.

I was certainly in a review mode at the end of the year.

2019 wasn’t a good year for me.  Had my good run from middle of 2015 to like Fall of 2018 in terms of personal activity.

Why read this blog?  Early on, for VTES, then L5R 4e analysis.  Maybe something else.  Maybe even some of the philosophy.

2019 saw my 10 year anniversary of this blog existing.  I said then that I’d continue on.  I still am interested in continuing on, but there’s not a ton of reason to hear myself speak.  If you are reading this, maybe see if you know someone else who might get some value out of it.

And, on that happy note, let’s all hope 2023 is better than 2022.  I could use a good year, for a change.

Run, Franco. Run

I will talk to people about sports.  Mostly family as my friends either don’t have much interest in sports or gravitate to one particular sport.

Even family, though, isn’t well educated on my favorite players in various sports.

My favorite basketball player isn’t LeBron.  Isn’t Jordan.  Is a hall of famer but isn’t generally considered the best at his position in the history of the sport.

My favorite baseball player is known to one of my brothers, and my mother used to know who it was.  No, not Nap Lajoie.  Not even Ross Youngs.  He’s not in the hall of fame and likely never will be and he predates the steroids era, so that’s not the reason why.

My favorite hockey player is not superclear to me.

My favorite golfer has changed.  I usually stick with the old guy even when younger dudes surpass them, but Tiger is just such a unique golfer.  He’s insanely dramatic and rises above his sport.  Could argue that my previous favorite hasn’t been surpassed as Tiger has fewer majors …  But, Tiger’s dominance was absurd.  His losses could be spectacular.

My favorite billiards player is pretty obvious, even if didn’t read recent post.

My favorite tennis players are each rather notable yet not considered the best on their tours these days.

My favorite NFL player is Franco Harris.

Sure, the fame the Steelers had in general likely had a huge role in that.  Bradshaw, Swann, Stallworth, Webster, Greene, Ham, Blount, Lambert were names I was aware of.

I was in a book store.  There was a free-standing rack, I think.  Probably one that turns.  Paperbacks were on it.  At least a couple were sports books that told four players’ stories – quadbiographies.  I “bought” (my mother bought I’m sure) one that definitely had Dan Pastorini and probably had Tony Dorsett.

That Dorsett went to Pitt and Harris went to Penn State fixed Pennsylvania in my mind.  To my knowledge, I’ve never been to Pennsylvania.  While I don’t think college sports should be on television as college sports being about money and essentially professional leagues is tawdry, but my favorite college teams tend towards Pennsylvania ones.  76ers were big around then.  Pirates.

Maybe being on a champion rather than Pastorini made me care more about the half-Italian.  Maybe I just cared more back then about rushing numbers because 1000 yard seasons were more notable than whatever passing numbers were back then.

When telling people’s stories, going to bring up the adversity they encounter in life.  After all, how many people don’t have adversity in life.  If someone wants to tell my life story, I’ll … okay, no one will do that.  I read about his struggles.  After all, Rocky Bleier could have been the bigger star if things had turned out somewhat differently.

Jim Brown didn’t mean anything to me back then.  I still don’t feel much for Jim Brown, even if I do like being able to identify the greatest of the greats – GOTGs.  I like Payton more than Smith, where my likes and dislikes when it comes to athletes is extremely arbitrary.

I’m not sad in the way that others are sad.  So many famous-to-me folks have died in recent years.  My favorite music writer/producer, for instance.  A singer who sang many of his songs.  Kind of numb to people of that generation dying, even if he seemed in pretty good health (for someone who played in the NFL where dying young is rather common).

So, how can I tie this to gaming?

Having something besides the best being one’s favorite is rather common.  Ultimate Combat! may be the best playing CCG in my experience, but it’s not the best CCG in a total sense.  The theme is too limited compared to Magic, the art is nothing compared to Magic, the intelligence built into the game is both derivative of Magic and inferior even if it did improve on stuff from Magic like in card draw and putting rarity indicators on cards.  I suppose my favorite RPG would have to be L5R 3r.  It’s not perfect.  The theme is limiting and adapting the mechanics to other stuff requires real effort.

He wasn’t the best running back.  He may be better in other areas as so many people consider him a great person, not just a great athlete.

He was Superbowl MVP only once.  Great play comes from working well with others and not just being a great individual.  Even in golf or tennis or whatever, the players have coaches and people who support them.  But, sure, can draw this analogy as group RPG play requires groups to work well together where solo RPG play can have someone without great teammates.

But, whatever.  The point wasn’t to say something interesting about gaming.  It just would have felt weird not to say something about Franco Harris at this point in time.

I should still have that book.  Buried in some box from when I moved into my current place.  Much like so many things, when time passes, interests change, priorities change.  I’m more invested in circular plastic with metal slugs these days then when I used to practice putting into a hole I dug in my yard, threw a tennis ball against my front steps while wearing a baseball glove to catch the rebounds, set up trash bins on chairs in the living room and shot into them with a tennis ball, threw small plastic footballs or NERF footballs into a tree to make them harder to catch when they came down, broke garage windows hitting tennis balls against garage doors, shot hoops on my elementary school’s baskets using anything from a superball to a soccer ball to a tennis ball to even basketballs, bought the shortest wooden bats I could even though I never played Little League (was usually visiting family in the Summer), have my own bowling ball and got up to the ability to bowl in the 200s in my teens, and the like.

Hopefully, I dig it out before I get too much older.  Rediscover who that fourth player was.

To Fail Or Not To Fail

I’m happy for Messi.

I’m not an Argentina fan, though I don’t dislike them.  I’d like to root for Uruguay, except they are saddled with Luis “The Vampire” Suárez.

I’m not even a Messi fan.  I find the “best ever” stuff grating.  I am much more of a fan of Pelé.  I just hate watching people suffer, and Messi is fine.

I had another reason not to want France to win.  While I’m also not a Brazil fan (except I appreciate their style of play) and I’ve wanted France to win a prior World Cup that they lost, I didn’t want the first repeat champion in 60 years.

What am I a fan of?

Sports in general.  I watched the 30 for 30 about Jeanette Lee (who I *am* a fan of … for obvious reasons) and knew who she was because I watched a lot of billiards on ESPN while living in China, where snooker and Formula 1 were on all of the time.  I should have been a sabermetrician … who moved on to other sports after baseball stats became too esoteric even for me.

Underdogs and perpetual losers.  Sure, I’ll root for greatness; I used to watch WGN just to watch Bulls games and wanted LeBron to win more than one in Cleveland, maybe even win a third in Miami.  I’m not a Cubs fan, but I was that year.  I wanted Morocco over France.  I was pro Cameroon when they made their initial splash.  Give me a South Korea run.  This World Cup was pretty neat – I should have watched more.

I should be a Croatia fan, both because they are knocking on the door and because Croatia was good to me the one time I visited.  So was Sweden, so I should root more for them, I guess.  If I ever get to Peru, Paraguay, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and/or Brazil, maybe I’ll become more fannish for one or more of them.

So, while for every champion there are a bunch of losers and Argentina was hardly an underdog, preferred that result.  Also, Maradona was an ass, so leveling the field between him and Messi is a positive.

On another side topic, I realized today yet another reason I disdain shugenja in L5R 4e play.  So much of what they do doesn’t feel like they are achieving something.  Commune is just a cheat code where it takes zero effort to Commune, though some people can’t seem to form useful questions, though that sort of stuff is also obnoxious at this point.  Other spells also routinely feel like “roll some dice, okay, bad guys lose because of some feature of the world”.  That may be on theme as shugenja are summoners, but it just feels cheap.  Maybe it wouldn’t if spells weren’t so overpowered, but moving on …

There was a Shadowfist Kickstarter this month.  It failed.  I didn’t like the previous Kickstarter’s, A Better Tomorrow, cards.  The art was atrocious.  It had a hoser mentality.  It felt very mechanical.  I’m not into postapocalyptic anything.  But, I backed it at a high level.  I didn’t back this Kickstarter.  I wanted it to fail.

Now, other Shadowfist players (I am actually a SF player even if I will only play in person and prioritize other stuff at Origins/Gen Con) had much more of a reason to hate this set.  I hated the new layout, which was bizarre when their own promos aren’t in their hideous new layout.  But, that wasn’t the only thing.  The lack of professionalism in development, marketing, graphic design just displayed a lack of, uh, professionalism.  This isn’t a new game.  I can forgive mistakes in new games far more.  Sure, Traveller card game isn’t perfect.  But, there were so many basic mistakes with these SF cards, including the promos that were spoiled before the KS started.

I actually liked the art, well, at least, far more than I like most SF art.  Except, I don’t really care about art on cards.  Ultimate Combat! is the best CCG to me, after all.

So, what now?  Who knows?  SF has plenty of cards.  Like most CCGs after a certain point, the better thing to do for play environment isn’t to add more cards but to remove existing cards.  Kill Killdeer.  Imprison Imprisoned!.  Etc.  I get why people want new cards.  I get why companies can’t really make money off of not producing new content.

There are certainly things I’d like to see with Shadowfist.  I’m in favor of Architects coming back.  I’m more in favor of more Syndicate cards as they just don’t have enough options, especially a good 3c4f character.  I’d really like to see more multifaction cards and easier ways to play multifaction.  However, how many I want isn’t clear to me.  Too many could be a problem with removing any reason to play monofaction and end up losing thematic flavor.  While the factions can cooperate in the setting, they aren’t suited to it.  The factions mostly are about a single way of thinking how the world should be with the Dragons there to stop them from becoming too powerful.  When Lotus/Hand decks become commonplace, just thematic fail.

Then, I can multifaction in ways that others won’t currently because it tends to be challenging.  When anyone can easily multifaction, I’m just doing stuff other people do.  Sure, in the details, I’ll do goofy things just to be different.

It very well may be that no new SF cards will get made or that some of these cards will get made.  It’s already hard to get people together to play.  Could end up being dead for me as other CCGs died on me.  That’s suboptimal.  But, sometimes failing is the better result.

VTD 9B

So, last weekend was end of 2022 Virtual True Dungeon, which was also end of True Dungeon for the year.

I suppose I could wait until I get my treasure to post this, not that I’ve done that in the past, but because the treasure is a hybrid of 2022 and 2023, with other folks getting excited by new, new, new.

I did three runs.

Saturday 12:24PM

This was our only team run.  We did Epic.  We lacked our usual bard, where I had done a bard build for someone to run, but forgot due to conversations around who was playing ranger.  Because it was the end of the year, I used my last alt class voucher to play Templar.  Normally, when I go to play Templar, I look for high damage bonus to physical attacks and just hope for sweet, sweet crit action.  This time, I went with a ranged build that had +47 spell damage.

Templar is not actually bad at burn, which was something I discovered with this build.

Two of the team had done the dungeon already, something quite unusual that I wasn’t one of the folks to do the dungeon earlier.  We tried to focus on damage, but I should really push to hit bonuses on physical attackers for Epic to as high as possible, even if we do have bard and Prayer (which Templar doesn’t have).  Figure boss monster AC will be 35, so should have adjusted to hit bonus of +33 to only miss on natural 1.

Room one was the same undead dinosaur on the beach fight.  I critted it – Templar achievement checked off.  I Turned it – Templar achievement unlocked.  Destroyed it in three rounds.

Room two was same puzzle but not live NPC.  The puzzle is too easy, which makes it only worse on replay.

Room three was same winged serpent with high Initiative.  Took us two rounds.

Room four was just giant scorpion in for hook horror.  Hook horror looked scarier.  Two rounds.

Room five was new puzzle.  We figured it out.  I didn’t think it was hard to know what you were supposed to spell, but the movement of getting there required someone to just start moving around the grid.

Room six was same totem guardian fight, maybe less weird than 9A.  Six rounds.

Room seven.  Room seven was different in that you got three rounds in order to deal enough damage to take out a goddess.  In three rounds, we maybe got halfway.  Barbarian was prevented from attacking one round.  Monk and ranger, normally most consistent damage producers in game, missed … every single time.  Oops.  I did Turn the evil outsider, but I did it in a dumb way, and I didn’t make best use of room effects.

The one advantage of only having three rounds to do your thing is plenty of time (since we aren’t slow, full parties) to make sure you do all of your effects.

The more I thought about this mechanic, though, the less I thought of it.  The game already incentivizes doing as much damage as possible.  There’s no reason to push people even further down that banal path, even if my builds were kind of interesting because I don’t worship at the altar of max DPS.  Then, any group that could succeed at dealing enough damage for the difficulty played at was going to annihilate earlier fights, which makes those less interesting.  It’s all end-heavy.  Now, it interests me on how to meta room 7’s, so I didn’t think as much of it as others did, but it’s still just poor dungeon construction.

I’d like to see a dungeon that just incentivized survival over damage output, a room 7 monster fight where you didn’t need to kill the monster but just survive it/them.

Saturday 6:12PM

Epic, full party, forum run.  I got on to this weeks ago because I wanted another challenging run.

We came up 110 damage short on Epic.  I played barbarian and didn’t hold back, though I wasn’t quite optimized for this dungeon as I didn’t quite embrace nothing but to hit/damage as important.  I did 486 damage in three rounds – Fury 160, Fury 160, Flanked crit 156, Reaver 10.

Sunday 10:24AM

Anti-Cabal run on Nightmare.  I played dwarf, as usual, but two-handed build with +53 damage bonus this time around as I finally began to worship.  Actually, I quite like the build as it has a decent AC, good Fort save.  We figured this was going to be rough as smaller parties don’t get more rounds.  We only did 900 damage in three rounds, 400 less than what we needed for NM (NM was even harder earlier in the weekend).

I had fun, but it was not a particularly fun dungeon.  9A was my favorite of the A’s, where getting out on an island was a nice change from being on a ship and the combats encouraged doing certain things, and I soloed the dungeon as room 7 was a puzzle in A version.

B version favorite?  8B?  7B had Pillage.  10B had One Boot Billy, who I couldn’t care less about.  11B had more OBB.

In general, the changes with B’s made them feel fresh, though VTD 2022 just was nowhere near as good as 2021.  Not having the Cube with 7B was weird, as it was one of the highlights of the year, where the fight was part puzzle.  Its replacement was dull and looked too similar to other animated monsters.

I don’t like that 2023 VTD will all be single weekends.  The fun way to do VTD is two months in a row with Easter Eggs, side rooms, choose your own path (room by room), and, of course, without the dice roller.

I guess that’s it.  Not doing a second run with team was suboptimal, but these tickets are expensive.  I do need to play around with Templar more, as it’s so much less boring than regular cleric.  Retribution players got a lot out of running Dwarf Defender, which is cool as half the alt classes are just irrelevant.

Oh, we did have a Troubadour on Saturday night run and Assassin on A-C run.  Assassin never assassinated a monster.  Some paladins did one-shot the evil outsider, where I had some interest in an Epic two-person run with paladin and rogue to just flank fish for the Ava’s kill.  Paladin gets rogue to room 7 with Guard.

VTES 20221118

Yes, VTES.

More than a week ago.

And, I’m only now writing about it.

Went up to Berkeley on Friday.  Tried to do work up there to avoid traffic, but I didn’t realize how different parking is on weekdays versus weekend, so it was a very involved trip that accomplished much less than I thought it would.

Reason I didn’t write about playing for first time in year was that my friend arrived Monday, and we flew out day before Thanksgiving to spend Thanksgiving where volcanoes erupt for first time in 38 years.  Since being back, lots to do, including True Dungeon, but that’s a post for, uh, maybe tomorrow.

So, we played two games.  Both four players.  Same seating order each time.

I had built two new decks, well, sort of.  I took a couple cards out of my Latin Malk precon.  I took a couple library cards out of my Latin Ventrue precon and changed the crypt so that I could run Mithras, as I now own Mithrai (I only proxy for playtesting).

I played the “Mithras” deck in first game, going first I believe.  As is standard with Ventrue vote/bleed, path of the salmon!  My first victim, um, predator was new Nos.  I didn’t hugely care about him offensively, but he had intercept at times.  My second victim, um, predator was Samedi rush.  My final victim was more Nos, I’m pretty sure.

I did get Mithras in play.  He did bleed for 7 and 8.  I did set up my second predator for death with Ancilla Empowerment as he really needed to die, but his allies could stop my one Daring the Dawn or I would have played differently and maybe got 3 VPs instead.

Second game, I went last.  I wasn’t that interested in playing boring cards even if they were in Latin, so I played an old deck.  Giovanni Horseshoes.  I put Dis Pater in play in like first three turns and used it once all game.  For, the obvious way to win with Giovanni Horseshoes is, of course, the path of the salmon!

My first victim was somebody I was perfectly fine with being around.  The unnamed, just not an unnamed that did much to me.  Second victim never should have been.  His HoS Legionnaire deck was in a dominant position, just weirdly ate a bunch of bleeds.  My final victim was new Gangrel.  I kept making anarchs even though anarchdom wasn’t actually good for me as none of my effects needed anarchdom.

I got Tension in the Ranks in play early enough for it to hurt everybody.  I pitched Burning Wrath.  I threw at least one Gate.  My prey had gotten weakened more so from going forward.  In the endgame, I did Immortal Grapple with a Mighty Grapple to put a Gangrel down, and my final victim scooped.

Someday, I will learn how to not oust my predators first, some day.

I didn’t forget how to play.  It was quite a trek to play, though, one that I’m not sure I can do regularly even though I want to play more.  I also need to try my hand at building decks not in Latin, though I’m not sure I have the deckbuilding skill to do that at this point.  That’s not exactly a joke.  I’m so antibeentheredonethat with decks I think about that playing some simple Malk stealth bleed deck is far more likely to be successful as I can actually oust people with cards like Conditioning and, um, Conditioning, and … whatever.

Even though I didn’t do anything particularly interesting, just playing against other people’s new decks varied the experience.  I guess winning 100% of the time also made it seem like I was doing something productive even if I was playing cards I’ve played many times before.

Problem is that Saturdays don’t work for others.  Sundays don’t really work for me, normally.

Well, anyway, I might play more this year, and I’m trying to figure out how to play in 2023 more than some casual foursies.