chummer

I can only speak from my experience, but finding something that brings peace and practicing it when necessary is a relief. I like driving at night with the windows down and music up b/c I'm a dork from Southern California. I'm also getting into learning about hair care and using coconut oil. Maybe you can find peace in exercising, mindfulness/ guided meditation, creative expression, enjoying art, etc. Or maybe you need to do something that makes you feel powerful like learning to shoot a gun or taking a judo class? Pain is going to happen, that's unavoidable, but make sure to take of yourself while taking care of others and find people in your life that will take of you as well- people that will make you feel not alone.

Was interested in that Game Maker update and apparently it's Game Maker Studio 2. Here's the vid I think Jake was talking about: looks neat!

i like the symmetry going on here.

actually, Mario's garbled voice is saying "Islam is the light." also, Lin Manuel Miranda could absolutely play a live action version of WaLuigi, which is what i can only imagine his contextless tweet meant.

figuring out how to word this. the shocking thing isn't that this e-mail story thing happened, but that so many stories about Trump's explicit racism and misogyny got airtime and people were still fine voting for him with that information. people imagined that this would be a repudiation of his ideas, but instead this was an affirmation of them. (though to be clear, for many people, this was merely the subtext of America brought forward and not a shock, though still disappointing.)

Austin put out a good affirmation of the site's mission statement. I can't help but think of the all the game outlets that were silent when GG rolled around. To be clear, I don't think Game Informer or Kotaku responding would've stopped the conservative creep that seems to be a worldwide phenomenon, but I remember their silence and I'm glad Austin Walker has a platform and power.

i couldn't not know.

they were playing Chess 2.

"Dunwall is save now."

Diablo 2 is a dad game: confirmed.

Was trying to figure out how I found out about Idle Thumbs, and it was through another gaming podcast called 4 Player Podcast around '09(?) where one of the hosts referenced Nick's 'turret brigade' joke. The floating font is incredibly ominous.

there's only this one static image on the DLC Chris was playing, and I can understand his confusion

Shenmue is a fantastic game that I would never recommend to anybody. I'm curious to hear what Vinny thinks of Shenmue when talking about it in the context of Deadly Premonition, which he also did an Endurance Run for. Deadly Premonition sometimes feels like Capcom decided to make a clone of Shenmue in 2002.

While I think the Matrix moves themselves are definitely a little much, almost every mission I've experienced in my Sprawl game has us splitting up at some point so that there's effectively 2-3 scenes happening concurrently. The cyberspace layer just feels like another one of those scenes happening with a different fictional theming.

Haven't read the Once-Cat playbook, but the Driver can pick the Drone Jockey move at character creation and you could basically create a mind-controlled cat.

Anyone here been watching the Shenmue Endurance Run? I've been enjoying it and while it reminds me of all the worst parts of Shenmue, it also reminded me of why I really liked it then and still find it appealing now. It also seems like the pressure of playing it as a performance places them in a bad spot where they just can't take it slow and explore the spaces, which is where that game excels. For instance they bopped into the convenience store once, but didn't see that you could buy tapes and some other doodads, or that Ryo's desk has a tape player in it. I also think they haven't run into the dojo to do the sparring practice stuff. To be fair though, the ratio of content to empty space is weighted to the latter- for instance the way in which you can knock on almost every door but most have nothing behind them- and this is definitely one of the game's weaknesses.

it's an insight i thought was novel until i discovered it wasn't. also i think the real life analogue for living with the ruins of an ancient empire might be the remnants of Rome throughout Europe, tough i haven't looked into Medieval Europeans' perceptions of that stuff. with all that said, it would be interesting to play a campaign that takes place in the upswing or height of a mythical empire's golden age. there was a time where i was watching Hell On Wheels and reading up on Roman road construction that got me thinking about how a setting where the players are members of an empire's transcontinental road project would allow for some really neat situations and goals.

Doesn't have to be, though most every fantasy takes place in post-post apocalyptic worlds where a grander age has finished? Dragon Age has the Tevinters, Elder Scrolls has the Ayleids, Game of Thrones has Valyria, and Lord of the Rings is dotted with abandoned architectural marvels. It provides an easy setup for dungeons with traps and hyper-powerful magic objects. The system is called Powered by the Apocalypse but you don't have to deal with apocalypses at all, it's just the name that came out of the game that first used the system. In fact the system's strength is how much freedom it allows you to deal with whatever themes and settings you want, which is why it has been exported to so many other genres.

Post-outro bit:

The talk on how tabletops RPGs handle failure had me thinking of how good the Powered by the Apocalypse system is. Die rolls are broken down into 'strong hits' where the player gets what they want, a 'weak hit' where they get mostly what they want with strings attached, or a 'miss' where the GM 'makes a move.' What's neat is that on a 'miss' roll, it doesn't necessarily meant that you don't get what you want, but that the GM takes control of the narrative and gets to decide what's the most interesting thing to do for the story. It's a system that requires a lot of trust on both sides because there aren't a lot of granular rules (for instance there's no movement speed or initiative rolls) so it has a strong feeling of improvisation, but it's been the system I've enjoyed playing most.

i've managed to play 11 hours of this already. it's really fun!

austin's particular talent wasn't just that he was smart and thoughtful, but that he was able to coax and interrogate the rest of the crew and create great discussions out of that (i think chris plays a similar role in the Thumbs cast). it seems that dan's preferred way of being is intentionally antagonistic or thoughtless (his thoughts on Quadrilateral Cowboy on a recent Bombcast illustrate this). it's unfortunate b/c i don't think it's as entertaining as he thinks it is (maybe he jumbles attention w/ positivity?) and also b/c i think dan can actually be insightful when he makes an effort. i'm not sure what effect he'll have on the Beastcast but i don't countering him is the way to go. i think Jeff and Jason counter him on the Bombcast and it just winds up being antagonistic. ideally you'd have someone that invites him in a way so that he adds to conversation instead of just steamrolls it.

kept hearing "azure cool blob" as "as your cool blob," which made a very different impression in my mind. i was playing the Sims 3 while listening to this in the background and half-paying attention, so every repeat of "homunculus" had me checking to see if the track wasn't accidentally looping.

also, Thumbs are ahead of the curve yet again as now the world of CSGO skins is getting embroiled in scandal with Youtubers endorsing their weird lottery companies without disclosing ownership. that dude also made Teletrooper, which was a really fun top down shooter where you pilot what is essentially an Arwing.

Really loved that question about how magic in video games works versus magic in other media! Got me thinking about a lot of things. - I think the reader (Chris?) hit the nail on the head by identifying 'mystery' as the main thing that makes magic wondrous. Because so many video game designs are focused on player empowerment/control there's an obvious tension there that people need to design outside of that paradigm. What a wonderful problem to think about. - Not sure how arcane words worked in Colossal Cave as I've never played it, but the IF game Suveh Nux does an incredibly good job of mechanically using words as mysterious objects that you have to learn how to use. Using deduction and inference, you'll eventually have a really strong grasp of how to wield magic, but it serves as a fantastically great piece that emulates the path from apprentice to journeyman wizard. I can't praise that game enough. - The description of that pen and paper RPG reminded me of a game that I think was made for a Wizard Jam where the player draws runes/glyphs as the main mechanic; it felt like the start of what could be a bigger thing. - Riffing off of Danielle's thought about technology being magic, I actually think glitches in video games are magical. They're mysterious and break the rules of the digital spaces we inhabit. The strongest example of this that comes to mind is the swing set glitch in GTA IV. People knew how to invoke it and what results it caused, but they could never control those results. Again, great email. Going to be thinking about this a lot now.