Not Great MLK Jr Day
Jan. 15th, 2024 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickI had a hard time getting to sleep last night (with my body insisting it was hot and stuffy despite it being a cold night) and woke up WAY earlier than I wanted this morning. Reason why? Turns out I was closer to my period than I thought I was -- I figured it was coming near the END of the week, but nope -- arrived this afternoon, around 5 PM. *grumbles* Now I get to deal with the entire thing over the course of the workweek, joy. . .anyway, that and some other bullshit means my day was far from perfect, but I did get some stuff done --
Tumblr: Just worked on the Victor Luvs Alice blog today, and made some decent progress – spent the time before lunch catching up on my dash and tracked tags again, then updated the “Valicer In The Dark Not Incorrect Quotes Vol III” draft with a new scene (with Smiler introducing the gang to another gang early in their careers, and cheerfully admitting when asked that their “best friends” in the crew are people they met two weeks ago), and started a new draft with some ideas for a “Valicer In The Dark vs Baldur’s Gate III” Not Incorrect Quote collection. (Again, this is BEFORE what happened when I actually tried to PLAY BG3, below.) And then, this evening, I started a draft of a reblog of my post on my ideas for a potential Valicer In The Dark-themed challenge save in Sims 4, with my idea of using For Rent to turn Alice into a landlord for an in-game Houndsditch Home so she can fulfill her obligation to the kids by keeping the place in good condition for them. Didn’t get it completed (damn period), but I got a good start, so I can finish that off tomorrow and then slot it in the queue for Wednesday, hooray! (Sensing a theme here? :p)
Baldur’s Gate III: So – after watching my OXBox video (below) and gathering up my courage, I went on NexusMods and checked my downloads to see which of the mods I’d downloaded recently had updates. Found one for “5e Spells” and downloaded that, then searched how best to update mods in this game and discovered it probably was just a case of replacing the mod in the mod folder. Tracked down the mod folder for the game (a process that, even with hidden folders visible, took longer than I wanted) and replaced the file (after making sure that the BG3 Mod Manager didn’t do automatic updates, and had no updates for itself either). Realized that I’d forgotten that Improved UI and its Assets add-on had updates as well and went and grabbed those and updated them in the folder. Checked to see that the mods were properly updated in the Mod Manager and – after a bit more searching to confirm that’s what I should be doing – updated the mod settings file. Opened Steam because my friend Squid assured me the game could be opened in Steam after you’d done the updates in the Mod Manager and it would be fine (Fallout 4 needs to be opened in Vortex using the script extender, by contrast), since I wanted to see if I could take some screenshots. Went to the game page – and discovered the following:
A) On Steam, it says the last time I played was on December 28th, 2023. I last played I believe on January 6th? *checks past entries* Yup, that’s when I restarted to put in a new mod. But ever since I started modding, I’ve been launching my game through the Mod Manager as – well, that’s what I thought I had to do as per my experiences with FO4. So I wasn’t sure what the heck was going to happen once I tried to open the game through Steam again.
B) . . .and then it turned out to be moot as I saw at the bottom that Steam had downloaded something. And when I checked the downloads, it proved to be something for Baldur’s Gate III.
They apparently released Hotfix #17 during the hour I was getting my ducks in a row when it came to mods. It’s supposedly a small patch, but Hotfix #16 – the one that was making me wonder if I’d get to play this weekend because of its mod-and-game-breaking capabilities (basically, they made it so you could retrieve quest-necessary items from anywhere, but now people are saying that they can’t get the game to recognize when they have quest-necessary items at all) – was supposed to be a small patch too.
I allowed myself a short, frustrated cry, then got out of everything and ate my afternoon cookies before I succumbed to the urge to just uninstall it all and ask Steam for a refund. I know my feelings are bigger and more dramatic at the moment because I’ve just gotten my period, so I’m going to wait until next weekend to do anything drastic. We’ll see what happens then.
Writing: Got another chunk done on “Start At The Beginning. . .Sort Of” – Victor learned that Victoria got married off to someone else just a day after he disappeared, and was sent reeling for a little bit; Alice and Smiler were shocked to discover that Victor and his intended hadn’t even met until just yesterday afternoon (insert joke about how they’re surprisingly “ride or die” for him after even LESS time knowing each other); and Emily offered her sympathies and told Victor not to joke about his parents killing him solving their problem, because being dead’s awful and she’s starting to lose herself to the madness most specters descend into. :( And Nanny’s right on the verge of dropping ANOTHER bombshell regarding Victoria’s new fiancee’s name. . .not that she realizes it’ll be a bombshell to her ghostly visitor just yet. . .
YouTube: Very solid day over here on the ‘Tube –
A) Started before even making my bed with “ALAN WAKE 2 - Old Gods of Asgard Musical Mission (4K) Herald of Darkness” by Dan Allen Gaming! I’ve been meaning to track down someone playing through this thing ever since hearing about it in OXBox’s “Game Of The Year” list (Andy cited it as one of the bits he really liked about Alan Wake 2), and this morning I went, “fuck it, I’m gonna look it up and watch it.” And so I did! The context in-game is that Alan (currently trapped in some other dark dimension – I don’t know or understand most of the plot of these games) was on some sort of talk show in said dimension, then everything went weird, and the level itself has him wandering around the backstage area, watching himself, the host Mr. Door, and the band Old Gods Of Asgard (played by my beloved Poets Of The Fall) on various screens throughout doing basically a giant music video to the song “Herald of Darkness” by the band, with occasional pauses to move to a new area via TVs or fight a few enemies with a flare gun. You end the level by finding the “plotting” corkboard where Alan can officially set up the climax – a big final musical number led by Alan himself, dancing with all the other people on-set (including I believe the game’s own director, being VERY goofy). It’s a strange, surreal, hard-to-describe sequence, but it’s still a lot of fun to watch, and of course the music is great. :D It’s Poets Of The Fall – why would it be anything otherwise?
B) Then, after lunch, it was time for that OXBox video that I wanted to catch up on – “5 Games We Just Can't Love No Matter How Hard We Try!” A frank discussion from the gang about those games (or, in one case, game series) that they want to love, but just can’t because something just does not click correctly when they try to play it. *sad head shake* In order, we had –
I. Luke: The Castlevania series! He espoused at length about how much he loves the concept of the series – he’s a huge fan of the anime, he listens a lot to the music, he enjoys the bugfuck bonkers monster designs throughout the series – but he’s never been able to finish a game. Mostly because he feels like there’s a LITTLE too much to keep track of in regards to upgrading your character, and he finds himself getting lost in the castle, fighting things while feeling underleveled and underequipped no matter how far he’s actually progressed. He ALMOST got to the end of one game while playing on a long flight, and even then, he was suffering against bosses able to kill him in one hit. Basically he’s just bad enough at the game that he can’t get into the gameplay loop and finish a playthrough, and that makes him sad.
II. Jane: Starfield! And here I thought she was the game’s biggest apologist (being the only one on the team still playing it), but no. Jane’s main problem with the game is that she wanted a game that gave her space exploration suffused with awe and wonder and noble ambition – especially since the whole “billionaire space race” thing going on right now is sucking that feeling out of space travel for her in real life – and the game failed to deliver. There’s not really anywhere new to explore – the places you travel to have already been mapped and populated. So, as one of the comments put it, you’re getting mundane life, just in space. Jane wanted something much more epic and in-tune with how her child self felt about space travel, and the game failed to deliver, and that makes her sad. (Not sad enough to stop playing, mind. . .)
III. Andy: Dead By Daylight! Andy is a huge horror fan, especially slasher horror, and he happily acknowledges that the game itself is excellent and has an amazing selection of movie villains (including recently Michael Myers and Chucky) and original monsters. His problem is, simply, he’s bad at the game. When he’s playing as the killer, he often spends most of his time just running around, desperately trying to find a survivor (and when he DOES find one, he only gets in one hit before they manage to run away); when he’s playing as a survivor, he either spends all of his time fixing generators without seeing the killer at all, or is surprised by the killer, stabbed, and dragged off to be put on a hook because he can’t figure out how to run away. And then he’s left by his teammates to be sucked into the void. Essentially, despite his love for the genre, he never has the experience he wants when he plays the game, and that makes him sad.
IV. Mike: Civilization VI! Mike explained that, as a kid and teenager, he was a HUGE fan of the very first Civilization game – he really loved how it was such a big game that spanned all of human history, and he enjoyed all the mechanics and stuff. So when he learned about Civ6 coming to the Switch, he thought he’d automatically love it. The problem is, he had never played ANY of the other Civilization games IN BETWEEN the two, and was thus completely blindsided by the fact that the most modern game in the series was also the most COMPLICATED. He’s annoyed by all the micromanaging and confused by the new win conditions and whatnot, and every time he’s tried to play, he’s been stomped into the ground early on. It makes him feel like he’s too thick to enjoy the game, and that makes him sad. (Although unlike the others, HE at least got an alternative in Civilization Revolutions – a Nintendo DS/XBox 360 release that had the cool modern graphics but a pared-down ruleset, meaning he gets the best of both worlds when he plays that instead. Nice.)
V. Ellen: Assassin’s Creed Valhalla! Ellen is a huge fan of the Assassin’s Creed series as a whole, but felt like in this one, Ubisoft strayed too far from its roots, instead bloating the game with every mechanic that had worked for them in their other games at the time. The advertised open world meant that she spent a lot more time riding around on her horse rather than doing the parkour the game is known for (and let’s face it, it’s a lot harder to do that parkour in general in civilizations without a lot of tall buildings anyway), and she really didn’t like the raid missions, as she always liked the Assassins being more of the “underdogs fighting for justice and freedom” and – well, stealing from monasteries, even if they weren’t killing the monks, felt counter to that somehow. Add in that she felt the main character, Eivor, was rather one-note (just “grr angry” all the time) and that the cool stuff that was added, like drinking contests and old-timey rap battles, was just sprinkles on a bad cake, and it all added up to a game that put her off one of her favorite series. And that makes her sad.
C) And finally, tonight we had the daily GrayStillPlays video – “Jumping the whole map but chaos happens every minute in GTA 5!” Another Alex Torture Board, this one saw Gray having to jump cars off a mega-ramp at one end of the map to see which one could make it all the way across to the other side. Any car that couldn’t had to complete one of the challenges Alex had set up around the map to earn Gray ten points, which then could be traded in at the starting platform to get a new, randomized car to start the whole process over again. BUT, as indicated by the title, Alex’s special brand of chaos mod was running the entire time to make life harder for Gray. At any point, he could be shucked into first person mode or overhead GTA 2 mode; be sucked into a black hole; lose all his gravity; have the earth insist on giving him a hug; have the entire map disappear around him; have his screen be partially obscured by black bars or a bouncing DVD screensaver block or random in-game Netflix shows; be spun into a kickflip; or even just teleported a few meters. Gray, as usual, persevered despite the madness and managed to land his first car in a particular parking space Alex had set up for him (weirdly enough, being forced into the GTA 2 overhead view actually HELPED him land it); dunk the second car in the designated spot in the reservoir; put the third car through a flaming hoop next to the Mays Bank; land the fourth car on TOP of the Mays Bank; use a chaos that gave the fifth car the ability to spawn ramps to help with jumps to leap onto an island Alex had designated as a landing area (it’s not cheating if the chaos helps you!); and finally take the sixth car all the way to the other end of the board – and then bail out of it and skydive through the win circle as he kept overshooting it with the actual car. XD Hey, as the comments said, if Alex wanted Gray to stay in the car, he should have stuck a contextual teleporter around the win. XD
Workout: Back on the bike this afternoon, and back to Oxventure: Deadlands and its first episode (which I forgot to name yesterday) “Running Them Down!” I picked up with Garnet trying to squeeze some more information about their eventual targets out of Victoria before she committed to the job – Victoria reiterated that they were people who’d done her a great wrong, and while they’d previously worked as a gang, they were all now independent, which probably made their odds regarding taking them down better. Though she did warn that they were still VERY dangerous. But she confirmed to Garnet that they were a) bad people and b) she was willing to pay a LOT to have them taken out, and that brought Garnet on board. Edie also confirmed that she’d be joining the gang (though she objected to Victoria describing the bounty hunt as “getting bad guys to take out bad guys,” as she is very firm in her conviction that she works to make the world a better place – Victoria apologized and said she just meant “bad” as in “tough”) –
And with that, talk turned to their “test” job – the great museum train robbery! Victoria, now rather excited to have a bunch of bounty hunters at her disposal, told them that how they did the job was totally up to them, and that she was fine with either being involved or left out. Nate proposed that, rather than outright robbing the train, they instead stop it via nonviolent means, like a tree on the tracks or a confused old man (him) or youngster (Delacey) wandering around as a distraction. Silas pointed out that the train was sure to be guarded, but everyone seemed to agree Nate’s plan WAS a good start. . .
The main problem was, nobody knew where or on what line the train was coming from. The most information anyone had was that it was going East to West – it appeared the people taking care of the train had been careful to keep its itinerary a secret to prevent robbers from knowing its whereabouts too soon. A few common knowledge rolls were made by various members to try and guess what track it might be on – Garnet had no idea; Edie had a few possibilities in mind (having traveled the rails a lot), but nothing solid; and Nate got distracted trying to triangulate North from their current position. On the plus side, he earned a “benny” when he successfully did so (aka Johnny rolled well enough to succeed), allowing him to reroll some future poor roll, nice. :p The gang eventually decided that if you wanted to learn about trains, you went to the train depot, so they said their goodbyes to Victoria and made their way over to Croyt’s Wrath’s depot. At the ticket window, they found a man named Arlo, and Silas began trying to casually question him about any trains going to the West Coast, examining him to determine how corruptible he was (aka how easily he could be bribed).
And when that didn’t work, he just grabbed the cage in front of the window and startled rattling it, trying to intimidate Arlo into giving up the goods about the museum train while claiming to be a patron of the arts. XD Arlo was like, “Oh, don’t worry, I can be bribed, I’ve got expensive tastes” – but his offer of $100 for the information was a little steep for Silas’s taste, so – after Arlo closed the shade on him, he went around and – despite a -4 penalty on his roll – managed to kick a decent-sized hole in the deadbolted door at the back of the office. Arlo promptly dropped the price to $20 and asked for someone else to talk to. XD Edie stepped in as a friendlier face, and Arlo told her three things: One, that the train would be going slower than normal on the bumpy tracks around this area of the world because the people behind it wouldn’t want the treasures jostled. Two, that the train would be stopping at Brittle Brook to do a guard changeover – the downside being that, while the train was stopped, it would have twice as many guards on it. And three, that there was a little bend just outside Brittle Brook where the train COULD be stopped if necessary. Silas paid the man his cash, and then ended up wrenching the entire glass case containing the train station map off the wall so they could get a look at the map (once he realized that he should have just smashed the glass, he dropped it and picked the map out of the wreckage; Arlo made sure to whistle very loudly while counting his bribe money as to not hear this). Consulting the map got them the location of Brittle Brook –
But then the question became, how did they get there? This place seemed to be a literal one-horse town. Silas immediately said he’d walk (scared of horses, remember?), then suggested stealing the train that was currently stopped on the tracks to get there – Nate was like “You want to take a train robbery to another train robbery??” XD The group decided there HAD to be some sort of stable in the town and went up the other side past the saloon, where they did indeed find just that, along with an NPC getting ready to close up for the night –
And a whole stagecoach! Garnet took point for this conversation (with Silas glowering in the background) and asked the stablehand what the cost of renting the stagecoach for a day and a night would be, indicating that they would pay extra for his discretion. The stablehand, Bill, indicated that would be ten dollars – Garnet forked over the money, with Silas wondering if they should pay extra for horse insurance or rustproofing. XD With the stagecoach thus acquired, the question THEN became “who’s gonna drive this thing?” Afraid-Of-Horses Silas was out; Edie admitted she normally travels the rails and thus doesn’t have much experience; Garnet was READY to do it but then realized “oh, shit, right, me knowing how to handle horses was on my OLD character sheet;” and Nate never volunteered, having climbed directly into the coach and fallen asleep. Leaving the only candidate –
As DELACEY. The thirteen-year-old boy who didn’t know how to ride or drive a coach, but had too much pride to ADMIT that. Andy decided to be nice and say that driving a stagecoach was easy enough that Delacey wouldn’t be penalized for it, and had Luke roll –
Failure. Luke paid a benny (the players all start with a few, and Delacey had an extra one on account of him being a child) and rerolled – failure. Another benny, and another reroll –
And this time he managed “a success with a raise,” as per Andy! I guess that’s the Deadlands version of a crit? At any rate, what this meant is that Delacey fell off the stagecoach twice, but suddenly turned into an expert once he was finally in the seat, doing doughnuts outside the stables to show off his skills (well, probably the HORSES’ skills, I think they were doing most of the work). XD Silas promptly took the seat on the back, looking away from the horses and nursing the bottle of whiskey he took off Delacey; Garnet climbed on top to keep watch from up there; and Edie joined Nate inside. I left it with them on the road (metaphorically), with Garnet unsuccessfully trying to get Silas to open up about why he is afraid of horses and Delacey asking Garnet about herself (with her explaining that she’s a bounty hunter and card dealer, and Jane asking everyone to imagine her doing a cool trick XD). We’ll see what happens when they reach Brittle Brook and start putting their train heist in motion tomorrow!
Other: Since I didn’t game today, I played around with my stylus and the sketchbook app on my phone while listening to some music – and, as I was listening to “Halloween”-themed Nintendo music, with a video featuring a Boo ghost from the Mario series, I ended up drawing a couple of Boos myself – one totally free-handed, the other made using the shapes tool and the symmetry tool to make things more even. As you might imagine, the latter came out looking better. XD I’ve actually been doing a lot of drawing at work – mostly importing images onto my canvas and “tracing” over them using layers to build up a picture – and I’ve been having fun with it! It’s nice to indulge my more artistic side – and while I’m definitely an amateur, I’m pretty happy with some of the stuff I’ve made. Have to find a way to import it from my app’s gallery onto the computer to show you guys at some point!
So yeah -- major disappointment with the BG3 stuff (and I actually just looked up Steam refunds -- I'm outside the return window, so I'm stuck with the game no matter what I do), and not great focus on some of the other things, but at least I did get everything I wanted to watch on YouTube watched, and my Valicer In The Dark stuff is going well. And now it's time for me to go to bed and prepare to brave the icky weather tomorrow. Bleeh. >( Night all!
Tumblr: Just worked on the Victor Luvs Alice blog today, and made some decent progress – spent the time before lunch catching up on my dash and tracked tags again, then updated the “Valicer In The Dark Not Incorrect Quotes Vol III” draft with a new scene (with Smiler introducing the gang to another gang early in their careers, and cheerfully admitting when asked that their “best friends” in the crew are people they met two weeks ago), and started a new draft with some ideas for a “Valicer In The Dark vs Baldur’s Gate III” Not Incorrect Quote collection. (Again, this is BEFORE what happened when I actually tried to PLAY BG3, below.) And then, this evening, I started a draft of a reblog of my post on my ideas for a potential Valicer In The Dark-themed challenge save in Sims 4, with my idea of using For Rent to turn Alice into a landlord for an in-game Houndsditch Home so she can fulfill her obligation to the kids by keeping the place in good condition for them. Didn’t get it completed (damn period), but I got a good start, so I can finish that off tomorrow and then slot it in the queue for Wednesday, hooray! (Sensing a theme here? :p)
Baldur’s Gate III: So – after watching my OXBox video (below) and gathering up my courage, I went on NexusMods and checked my downloads to see which of the mods I’d downloaded recently had updates. Found one for “5e Spells” and downloaded that, then searched how best to update mods in this game and discovered it probably was just a case of replacing the mod in the mod folder. Tracked down the mod folder for the game (a process that, even with hidden folders visible, took longer than I wanted) and replaced the file (after making sure that the BG3 Mod Manager didn’t do automatic updates, and had no updates for itself either). Realized that I’d forgotten that Improved UI and its Assets add-on had updates as well and went and grabbed those and updated them in the folder. Checked to see that the mods were properly updated in the Mod Manager and – after a bit more searching to confirm that’s what I should be doing – updated the mod settings file. Opened Steam because my friend Squid assured me the game could be opened in Steam after you’d done the updates in the Mod Manager and it would be fine (Fallout 4 needs to be opened in Vortex using the script extender, by contrast), since I wanted to see if I could take some screenshots. Went to the game page – and discovered the following:
A) On Steam, it says the last time I played was on December 28th, 2023. I last played I believe on January 6th? *checks past entries* Yup, that’s when I restarted to put in a new mod. But ever since I started modding, I’ve been launching my game through the Mod Manager as – well, that’s what I thought I had to do as per my experiences with FO4. So I wasn’t sure what the heck was going to happen once I tried to open the game through Steam again.
B) . . .and then it turned out to be moot as I saw at the bottom that Steam had downloaded something. And when I checked the downloads, it proved to be something for Baldur’s Gate III.
They apparently released Hotfix #17 during the hour I was getting my ducks in a row when it came to mods. It’s supposedly a small patch, but Hotfix #16 – the one that was making me wonder if I’d get to play this weekend because of its mod-and-game-breaking capabilities (basically, they made it so you could retrieve quest-necessary items from anywhere, but now people are saying that they can’t get the game to recognize when they have quest-necessary items at all) – was supposed to be a small patch too.
I allowed myself a short, frustrated cry, then got out of everything and ate my afternoon cookies before I succumbed to the urge to just uninstall it all and ask Steam for a refund. I know my feelings are bigger and more dramatic at the moment because I’ve just gotten my period, so I’m going to wait until next weekend to do anything drastic. We’ll see what happens then.
Writing: Got another chunk done on “Start At The Beginning. . .Sort Of” – Victor learned that Victoria got married off to someone else just a day after he disappeared, and was sent reeling for a little bit; Alice and Smiler were shocked to discover that Victor and his intended hadn’t even met until just yesterday afternoon (insert joke about how they’re surprisingly “ride or die” for him after even LESS time knowing each other); and Emily offered her sympathies and told Victor not to joke about his parents killing him solving their problem, because being dead’s awful and she’s starting to lose herself to the madness most specters descend into. :( And Nanny’s right on the verge of dropping ANOTHER bombshell regarding Victoria’s new fiancee’s name. . .not that she realizes it’ll be a bombshell to her ghostly visitor just yet. . .
YouTube: Very solid day over here on the ‘Tube –
A) Started before even making my bed with “ALAN WAKE 2 - Old Gods of Asgard Musical Mission (4K) Herald of Darkness” by Dan Allen Gaming! I’ve been meaning to track down someone playing through this thing ever since hearing about it in OXBox’s “Game Of The Year” list (Andy cited it as one of the bits he really liked about Alan Wake 2), and this morning I went, “fuck it, I’m gonna look it up and watch it.” And so I did! The context in-game is that Alan (currently trapped in some other dark dimension – I don’t know or understand most of the plot of these games) was on some sort of talk show in said dimension, then everything went weird, and the level itself has him wandering around the backstage area, watching himself, the host Mr. Door, and the band Old Gods Of Asgard (played by my beloved Poets Of The Fall) on various screens throughout doing basically a giant music video to the song “Herald of Darkness” by the band, with occasional pauses to move to a new area via TVs or fight a few enemies with a flare gun. You end the level by finding the “plotting” corkboard where Alan can officially set up the climax – a big final musical number led by Alan himself, dancing with all the other people on-set (including I believe the game’s own director, being VERY goofy). It’s a strange, surreal, hard-to-describe sequence, but it’s still a lot of fun to watch, and of course the music is great. :D It’s Poets Of The Fall – why would it be anything otherwise?
B) Then, after lunch, it was time for that OXBox video that I wanted to catch up on – “5 Games We Just Can't Love No Matter How Hard We Try!” A frank discussion from the gang about those games (or, in one case, game series) that they want to love, but just can’t because something just does not click correctly when they try to play it. *sad head shake* In order, we had –
I. Luke: The Castlevania series! He espoused at length about how much he loves the concept of the series – he’s a huge fan of the anime, he listens a lot to the music, he enjoys the bugfuck bonkers monster designs throughout the series – but he’s never been able to finish a game. Mostly because he feels like there’s a LITTLE too much to keep track of in regards to upgrading your character, and he finds himself getting lost in the castle, fighting things while feeling underleveled and underequipped no matter how far he’s actually progressed. He ALMOST got to the end of one game while playing on a long flight, and even then, he was suffering against bosses able to kill him in one hit. Basically he’s just bad enough at the game that he can’t get into the gameplay loop and finish a playthrough, and that makes him sad.
II. Jane: Starfield! And here I thought she was the game’s biggest apologist (being the only one on the team still playing it), but no. Jane’s main problem with the game is that she wanted a game that gave her space exploration suffused with awe and wonder and noble ambition – especially since the whole “billionaire space race” thing going on right now is sucking that feeling out of space travel for her in real life – and the game failed to deliver. There’s not really anywhere new to explore – the places you travel to have already been mapped and populated. So, as one of the comments put it, you’re getting mundane life, just in space. Jane wanted something much more epic and in-tune with how her child self felt about space travel, and the game failed to deliver, and that makes her sad. (Not sad enough to stop playing, mind. . .)
III. Andy: Dead By Daylight! Andy is a huge horror fan, especially slasher horror, and he happily acknowledges that the game itself is excellent and has an amazing selection of movie villains (including recently Michael Myers and Chucky) and original monsters. His problem is, simply, he’s bad at the game. When he’s playing as the killer, he often spends most of his time just running around, desperately trying to find a survivor (and when he DOES find one, he only gets in one hit before they manage to run away); when he’s playing as a survivor, he either spends all of his time fixing generators without seeing the killer at all, or is surprised by the killer, stabbed, and dragged off to be put on a hook because he can’t figure out how to run away. And then he’s left by his teammates to be sucked into the void. Essentially, despite his love for the genre, he never has the experience he wants when he plays the game, and that makes him sad.
IV. Mike: Civilization VI! Mike explained that, as a kid and teenager, he was a HUGE fan of the very first Civilization game – he really loved how it was such a big game that spanned all of human history, and he enjoyed all the mechanics and stuff. So when he learned about Civ6 coming to the Switch, he thought he’d automatically love it. The problem is, he had never played ANY of the other Civilization games IN BETWEEN the two, and was thus completely blindsided by the fact that the most modern game in the series was also the most COMPLICATED. He’s annoyed by all the micromanaging and confused by the new win conditions and whatnot, and every time he’s tried to play, he’s been stomped into the ground early on. It makes him feel like he’s too thick to enjoy the game, and that makes him sad. (Although unlike the others, HE at least got an alternative in Civilization Revolutions – a Nintendo DS/XBox 360 release that had the cool modern graphics but a pared-down ruleset, meaning he gets the best of both worlds when he plays that instead. Nice.)
V. Ellen: Assassin’s Creed Valhalla! Ellen is a huge fan of the Assassin’s Creed series as a whole, but felt like in this one, Ubisoft strayed too far from its roots, instead bloating the game with every mechanic that had worked for them in their other games at the time. The advertised open world meant that she spent a lot more time riding around on her horse rather than doing the parkour the game is known for (and let’s face it, it’s a lot harder to do that parkour in general in civilizations without a lot of tall buildings anyway), and she really didn’t like the raid missions, as she always liked the Assassins being more of the “underdogs fighting for justice and freedom” and – well, stealing from monasteries, even if they weren’t killing the monks, felt counter to that somehow. Add in that she felt the main character, Eivor, was rather one-note (just “grr angry” all the time) and that the cool stuff that was added, like drinking contests and old-timey rap battles, was just sprinkles on a bad cake, and it all added up to a game that put her off one of her favorite series. And that makes her sad.
C) And finally, tonight we had the daily GrayStillPlays video – “Jumping the whole map but chaos happens every minute in GTA 5!” Another Alex Torture Board, this one saw Gray having to jump cars off a mega-ramp at one end of the map to see which one could make it all the way across to the other side. Any car that couldn’t had to complete one of the challenges Alex had set up around the map to earn Gray ten points, which then could be traded in at the starting platform to get a new, randomized car to start the whole process over again. BUT, as indicated by the title, Alex’s special brand of chaos mod was running the entire time to make life harder for Gray. At any point, he could be shucked into first person mode or overhead GTA 2 mode; be sucked into a black hole; lose all his gravity; have the earth insist on giving him a hug; have the entire map disappear around him; have his screen be partially obscured by black bars or a bouncing DVD screensaver block or random in-game Netflix shows; be spun into a kickflip; or even just teleported a few meters. Gray, as usual, persevered despite the madness and managed to land his first car in a particular parking space Alex had set up for him (weirdly enough, being forced into the GTA 2 overhead view actually HELPED him land it); dunk the second car in the designated spot in the reservoir; put the third car through a flaming hoop next to the Mays Bank; land the fourth car on TOP of the Mays Bank; use a chaos that gave the fifth car the ability to spawn ramps to help with jumps to leap onto an island Alex had designated as a landing area (it’s not cheating if the chaos helps you!); and finally take the sixth car all the way to the other end of the board – and then bail out of it and skydive through the win circle as he kept overshooting it with the actual car. XD Hey, as the comments said, if Alex wanted Gray to stay in the car, he should have stuck a contextual teleporter around the win. XD
Workout: Back on the bike this afternoon, and back to Oxventure: Deadlands and its first episode (which I forgot to name yesterday) “Running Them Down!” I picked up with Garnet trying to squeeze some more information about their eventual targets out of Victoria before she committed to the job – Victoria reiterated that they were people who’d done her a great wrong, and while they’d previously worked as a gang, they were all now independent, which probably made their odds regarding taking them down better. Though she did warn that they were still VERY dangerous. But she confirmed to Garnet that they were a) bad people and b) she was willing to pay a LOT to have them taken out, and that brought Garnet on board. Edie also confirmed that she’d be joining the gang (though she objected to Victoria describing the bounty hunt as “getting bad guys to take out bad guys,” as she is very firm in her conviction that she works to make the world a better place – Victoria apologized and said she just meant “bad” as in “tough”) –
And with that, talk turned to their “test” job – the great museum train robbery! Victoria, now rather excited to have a bunch of bounty hunters at her disposal, told them that how they did the job was totally up to them, and that she was fine with either being involved or left out. Nate proposed that, rather than outright robbing the train, they instead stop it via nonviolent means, like a tree on the tracks or a confused old man (him) or youngster (Delacey) wandering around as a distraction. Silas pointed out that the train was sure to be guarded, but everyone seemed to agree Nate’s plan WAS a good start. . .
The main problem was, nobody knew where or on what line the train was coming from. The most information anyone had was that it was going East to West – it appeared the people taking care of the train had been careful to keep its itinerary a secret to prevent robbers from knowing its whereabouts too soon. A few common knowledge rolls were made by various members to try and guess what track it might be on – Garnet had no idea; Edie had a few possibilities in mind (having traveled the rails a lot), but nothing solid; and Nate got distracted trying to triangulate North from their current position. On the plus side, he earned a “benny” when he successfully did so (aka Johnny rolled well enough to succeed), allowing him to reroll some future poor roll, nice. :p The gang eventually decided that if you wanted to learn about trains, you went to the train depot, so they said their goodbyes to Victoria and made their way over to Croyt’s Wrath’s depot. At the ticket window, they found a man named Arlo, and Silas began trying to casually question him about any trains going to the West Coast, examining him to determine how corruptible he was (aka how easily he could be bribed).
And when that didn’t work, he just grabbed the cage in front of the window and startled rattling it, trying to intimidate Arlo into giving up the goods about the museum train while claiming to be a patron of the arts. XD Arlo was like, “Oh, don’t worry, I can be bribed, I’ve got expensive tastes” – but his offer of $100 for the information was a little steep for Silas’s taste, so – after Arlo closed the shade on him, he went around and – despite a -4 penalty on his roll – managed to kick a decent-sized hole in the deadbolted door at the back of the office. Arlo promptly dropped the price to $20 and asked for someone else to talk to. XD Edie stepped in as a friendlier face, and Arlo told her three things: One, that the train would be going slower than normal on the bumpy tracks around this area of the world because the people behind it wouldn’t want the treasures jostled. Two, that the train would be stopping at Brittle Brook to do a guard changeover – the downside being that, while the train was stopped, it would have twice as many guards on it. And three, that there was a little bend just outside Brittle Brook where the train COULD be stopped if necessary. Silas paid the man his cash, and then ended up wrenching the entire glass case containing the train station map off the wall so they could get a look at the map (once he realized that he should have just smashed the glass, he dropped it and picked the map out of the wreckage; Arlo made sure to whistle very loudly while counting his bribe money as to not hear this). Consulting the map got them the location of Brittle Brook –
But then the question became, how did they get there? This place seemed to be a literal one-horse town. Silas immediately said he’d walk (scared of horses, remember?), then suggested stealing the train that was currently stopped on the tracks to get there – Nate was like “You want to take a train robbery to another train robbery??” XD The group decided there HAD to be some sort of stable in the town and went up the other side past the saloon, where they did indeed find just that, along with an NPC getting ready to close up for the night –
And a whole stagecoach! Garnet took point for this conversation (with Silas glowering in the background) and asked the stablehand what the cost of renting the stagecoach for a day and a night would be, indicating that they would pay extra for his discretion. The stablehand, Bill, indicated that would be ten dollars – Garnet forked over the money, with Silas wondering if they should pay extra for horse insurance or rustproofing. XD With the stagecoach thus acquired, the question THEN became “who’s gonna drive this thing?” Afraid-Of-Horses Silas was out; Edie admitted she normally travels the rails and thus doesn’t have much experience; Garnet was READY to do it but then realized “oh, shit, right, me knowing how to handle horses was on my OLD character sheet;” and Nate never volunteered, having climbed directly into the coach and fallen asleep. Leaving the only candidate –
As DELACEY. The thirteen-year-old boy who didn’t know how to ride or drive a coach, but had too much pride to ADMIT that. Andy decided to be nice and say that driving a stagecoach was easy enough that Delacey wouldn’t be penalized for it, and had Luke roll –
Failure. Luke paid a benny (the players all start with a few, and Delacey had an extra one on account of him being a child) and rerolled – failure. Another benny, and another reroll –
And this time he managed “a success with a raise,” as per Andy! I guess that’s the Deadlands version of a crit? At any rate, what this meant is that Delacey fell off the stagecoach twice, but suddenly turned into an expert once he was finally in the seat, doing doughnuts outside the stables to show off his skills (well, probably the HORSES’ skills, I think they were doing most of the work). XD Silas promptly took the seat on the back, looking away from the horses and nursing the bottle of whiskey he took off Delacey; Garnet climbed on top to keep watch from up there; and Edie joined Nate inside. I left it with them on the road (metaphorically), with Garnet unsuccessfully trying to get Silas to open up about why he is afraid of horses and Delacey asking Garnet about herself (with her explaining that she’s a bounty hunter and card dealer, and Jane asking everyone to imagine her doing a cool trick XD). We’ll see what happens when they reach Brittle Brook and start putting their train heist in motion tomorrow!
Other: Since I didn’t game today, I played around with my stylus and the sketchbook app on my phone while listening to some music – and, as I was listening to “Halloween”-themed Nintendo music, with a video featuring a Boo ghost from the Mario series, I ended up drawing a couple of Boos myself – one totally free-handed, the other made using the shapes tool and the symmetry tool to make things more even. As you might imagine, the latter came out looking better. XD I’ve actually been doing a lot of drawing at work – mostly importing images onto my canvas and “tracing” over them using layers to build up a picture – and I’ve been having fun with it! It’s nice to indulge my more artistic side – and while I’m definitely an amateur, I’m pretty happy with some of the stuff I’ve made. Have to find a way to import it from my app’s gallery onto the computer to show you guys at some point!
So yeah -- major disappointment with the BG3 stuff (and I actually just looked up Steam refunds -- I'm outside the return window, so I'm stuck with the game no matter what I do), and not great focus on some of the other things, but at least I did get everything I wanted to watch on YouTube watched, and my Valicer In The Dark stuff is going well. And now it's time for me to go to bed and prepare to brave the icky weather tomorrow. Bleeh. >( Night all!
