I've been doing some high-ish quality wooden jigsaw puzzles, and I'm a bit worried about them getting damaged, so I'm using a puzzle mat. And...I hate it, so much. It's crazy hard to move completed sections around if you need to rearrange, which is often an issue since i always solve without looking at the image. This is the primary irritation, but it's significant, and there's also some secondary irritations like the board is just kinda annoying to deal with and it's itchy lol.

So, to people who do jigsaw puzzles, how do you protect your pieces? Do you use a puzzle mat? Something else? Just do it on a hard surface and all is fine?

(also meta-note: this is my first topic post here so I hope I've done this correctly, tell me if I haven't!)

I think the population of the site has likely grown to the point where we could get some multiplayer gaming going. While I don't currently have anything in mind, I figure there will come a time when I do so I thought I'd try to get things rolling.

So, what multiplayer games would you like to try but lack the people for? What is your general availability for playing? Is there anything else people need to be aware of? Interest permitting, a recurring thread may be appropriate, though the exact interval would depend on the level of interest.

Hey there! I posted this on r/magictcg a while back, but I've seen and received many new ideas for cards and I'd love to see if you have any new ones.

I had my Japanese copy of Sliver Queen in my wallet for years because my friend found it for $2 in a bargain bin, and I thought I could just buy another - not knowing it was Reserve List. Whoops. So I decided to build an Illegal Slivers EDH deck where every card is somehow not quite legitimate, with a few restrictions - no power 9, no OG duals, and if I can help it try to make as much variety between restrictions as possible, all while trying to keep it as a legitimate deck that aims to use Queen as the wincon. But I'm only about a quarter of the way there. Here's what's up:

• Cards from other games with the same or similar names are used; Swamp from Wyvern, Island from Dominion, Ancient Tomb from Pokemon, Xiahou Dun the One-eyed from Wixoss, Karoo from One Piece, Duel Masters copy of Muscle Sliver...

• I'm using relevant illegal MtG prints - World Championship decks, Mystery Booster playtests, an art copy of the Unearth Sliver I keep forgetting the name of, silver borders / acorns, etc. Also Clickslither (from Legions!) instead of Quick Sliver (from Legions!).

• I was looking for a Wheel of Fortune tarot card before I found that lööps sticker and decided to go with that.

• My favorite is that someone originally stole the shipment of Crystalline Sliver promos before they were going to give them out... So if you had a copy of it at one point, it was literally-illegal stolen goods. Eventually they retrieved them and distributed them.

I've got other ideas, and I'm trying to break each rule. Looking for:

• The best single thing from the ban list

• Lutri as companion, or one card used twice

• One ante card

• Planechase and Conspiracy

• The card Unquenchable Fury, to be confused with Unquenchable Fury

• A 30th Anniversary card

• Some oversize cards as regular-size proxies

• An AI generated Sliver as a proxy

• Some configuration of Unfinity Stickers to make a new Sliver card of my own

• A World's Smallest for something like a Night's Whisper

• An Armageddon trading card for Armageddon, a Hearthstone from WoW TCG, a Force of Will from L5R TCG, a whole bevy of cards from LotR card game... I still also need Sliv-Mizzet.

And once this is all done... Find 100 different card sleeves to wrap these in. I'd also love - LOVE - to get the Queen graded and still use it as my Commander.

So, Tildes - how else can I make this deck even worse? Thanks!

Roguelikes have a special place in my heart. When you know that your character is mortal, the stakes feel so much more real, and your progress feel so much more earned. You can’t second-guess the level design, because random, and sometimes things are simply not unfair, like when you get transformed into a cute mushroom, while your otherwise generic foe get transformed into a god. I consider unfairness, uncertaincy and chaos to be core gameplay components.

Here’s some roguelikes I liked, in no particular order:

Inscryption
Sort of like Slay the Spire with retro aestetics combined with the gritty feel of the SAW franchise. The most atmospheric and foreboding deckbuilder I've ever played. It is sort of a meta-game where you play a retro computer game in which you play a tabletop roleplaying game with a deranged dungeonmaster.

Noita
Looks like a rather generic pixelart side-view dungeoncrawl, but beneath the humble surface lurks Finnish folklore, a revolutionary physics engine and an insanely versatile magic system, likely the best in any game. The game is vast, both in sense of game world but also the numbers of monsters, spells, perks and secrets. I consider this the best roguelike, full stop.

Don't Starve
Craft to survive in an unforgiving wilderness, battling wildlife, hunger cold and insanity. Having to constantly collect resources makes this game a bit on the grindy side, but the hand-drawn artwork and a rich world to explore and unlock makes this stay fresh.

Jupiter Hell
This, the successor to DRL (Doom Roguelike), is the only classic roguelike I could ever get into. The top-notch visuals makes me literally forget that I'm playing a grid-based turn-based rogue-clone. Still, the game is rather lacking in variation, and there's no lore or story choices. While I think this is by design, the DOOM roots and whatnot, I'm missing the sense of exploration and wonder found in other roguelikes. But even with that, the game is cool and ever so dark, and there's quite a lot of depth despite the simple controls.

FTL
Simplistic and neat pixelart space exploration game. The meat of the game is space combat in real time with pause, between which you plan your route on a node-based overworld and make various choices. The game, while cozy, is quite intense. You're trying to escape a vastly superior fleet while fighting off incoming attacks and trying to not run out of fuel while hopefully improving your ship to survive as the stakes rises. Every choice you make feels like a life or death decision. The fights offers a lot of different tactics. There's various ships to unlock by completing various missions. The one downside is that you have seen all the different encounters way before you have everything unlocked, but the mod FTL Multiverse adds a lot of new content.

Into the Breach
Simple tactical turnbased on 8x8 fields, by the folks behind FTL. The main gimmick is that you can see how the enemies are going to attack in their turn, and try to counter it. This works surprisingly well and offers a lot of depth.

Depth of Extinction
Underwater turnbased tactical. The game feels like watching a cheap action movie from the eighties. Sometimes the missions can feel a bit samey, and the underwater setting could be more in forefront but this doesn't stop the game from being quite a lot of fun. I'm hardly an expert here, but I've heard people who prides themselves of their expertice at turn-based tactical gaming giving this one a lot of praise.

Retromancer
Arena-shooter with a very stylish retro aestetics which doesn't confuse you in the fast-paced chaos. This, combined with a RPG fantasy theme really make this stand out from the other twin-stick offerings. This is a game I consider a spiritual successor to the original twin stick shooter, Robotron 2084. Of course, you need to play the Hunter, the other characters doesn't have the Robotron-trademark mashine gun fire. There's a dash function which is quite handy when you're about to be cornered. There is not really any character building, although by scoring enough points you can unlock various pickups. I guess it is designed for local multiplayer (there's four characters to choose from) but I haven't tried this. Plays excellent with controller.

The Wrath's Den
This is basically Dungeonkeeper, but simplified into a turnbased pixelart game with keyboard controls. You use space to switch between minions, arrow keys to move them, X to do various actions. Besides the random room choices, everything follow simple strict mechanics, which sometimes requires a bit of observation to grasp. The one major downside is that you cannot save your game. Much suck! But other than that, this humble little game is quite easy to fall in love with.

I love keeping up with industry announcements and new trailers, but a lot of game news websites are too full of fluff. Is there a good videogame news aggregator or a journalism site that you like? I used to like IGN and Kotaku but I find their content more useless than not.

What have you all been playing this week?

My Saturday night games got cancelled by an impromptu family gathering, so I didn't play anything other than a couple of Unlock games with my daughter. We played the first two of Escape Adventures called The Formula and Squeek & Sausage. Definitely preferred S&S out of these two and a couple of the puzzles fitted the comic book styling very well.

Share your gaming sessions!

For Honor is having a free week(end on August 3rd) and have also released a new hero, the Ocelotl.

The Ocelotl comes equipped with a Macuahuitl club and Tepoztopilli spear, using these to have infinite chained attacks, and a few bash attacks. He is a hybrid, described as a ganker and disabled. His feats makes it so at tier 1 when he dies, he can move in spirit form and respawn wherever after 10 seconds, but with very little health. The longer you wait to respawn, the more health you have. The tier 2 is a complement to this, so the enemy that killed you is marked, and tier 3 increases attack speed and damage done, after you kill someone. Tier 4 is a spear attack, which drags an enemy towards you and inflict bleed.

I have tried the new hero out and overall, finds him relatively balanced. While his feats adds a new form of stress, his actual moveset is okay. It isn't stupidly OP, nor is it weak. It's pretty smackdabb in the middle, imo. Also, his feats are an inderect buff to heavy heroes, as boosting a zone is important, so the Ocelotl doesn't respawn in you back zones. This makes it so heavies can more easily build up renown (they gain extra renown from boosting), while also adding surprise attacks. All in all, I like playing against the Ocelotl (as I main Warlord, and like boosting) and I also like playing a Ocelotl.

I've been playing a ton of the Star Wars deckbuilder lately and love how the game flows. Want a short game? Play to 3 planets. Longer so you can get a better theme going? Play to 5. I like that it bucks the points to win trend by putting people head to head in combat and that you can attack a lot of things, even the market. Plus it feels thematic.

It seems that this thread has sparked a lot of interest from the gamers of Tildes, but the forum just isn't a great place to actually get things going. To remedy this, I've created the Tildes Game Nights discord server where people who like the format of Discord can get together and play games :). I hope to foster the same sort of civility we have here, so the rules are pretty much identical to Tildes' (with a bunch of the rules being taken directly from the code of conduct). I already have some channels set up for the games that got a lot of votes in the linked thread, but I can add more if there's popular demand.

Here is the invite link :)

This is a calling for all my fellow TESV modders; hello! How are you? What mods are you running? Know of any hidden gems? When will I be satisfied with my modlist and actually play the game? Any and all modding conversations are welcome here, because I don’t want to fill ~games with identical topics lmao.

A different conversation caused me to remember how much fun it was while playing Shadow of Mordor, to shoot nests of Morgai Flies dropping them onto the residents of ork fortresses.

Disclaimer, Shadow of Mordor is far from being the best video game I have ever played, but that action in particular was very fun to do and funny to watch.

Curious to hear what the people of tildes think.

As we close in on 3 years of use with these newer consoles, what are every one’s thoughts? Has “next gen” been what you thought it’d really be or are you kinda just feeling whelmed?

I have a PS5 and I use it every now and then for pretty much the first party games. PC is my main platform but as I think back, I’ve been pretty happy with my PS5 and the games to come so far. I also really enjoy the UI (although custom backgrounds would be great).

I don’t know how the Xbox side is so I’d love to hear your thoughts to!

Thanks for taking the time to read.

Pretty much the title. We all play all sorts of games, and they generally are all good games. However, every once in a while you start a game that just hits the right notes and you hate putting your controller or device down, and you can't stop thinking about things you want to do when you get back in front of that game. I figure we could post up our current addicting games so others can search them out as well :)

My current addiction is Frostpunk. Got it on a whim from the Steam Summer sale, and my Lord am I addicted. It's a really good (to me) post civilization survival game where you try to establish and rebuild life with a new world around you. Surprisingly challenging and the scenarios are very fun. I bought it 2 weeks ago and have 63 hours into it.

Sorry Boardtiddleums, little late with the weekly thread!

Saturday I got in a couple of games of Bus!, securing a comfortable victory in the first and an even more comfortable defeat in the second. Every time I play Bus! I love it it that little bit more: central map with interesting decisions, worker placement where you choose how fast you burn through your workers, ability to lose a victory point to screw everyone else over...what's not to like?

After that we played Stockpile, which is always fun. We were a bit rusty on the rules so didn't play with any expansion material.

Finished up with a game of Cat in the Box, which a fantastic little spin on trick taking games. The deluxe edition that you can currently get is so overproduced, but in the nicest possible way.

So what have you all been busy playing this week?

I played the original PS3 version of the Last of Us, but I have never tried Factions. Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of good things about it, but at this point, I’m going to wait to try out the new multiplayer when it releases.

I’ve seen a few details floating around online: it’ll be set in San Francisco, have a new cast of characters, and have it’s own story.

I want to know, what kind of mechanics and story elements do you want to see make it into the multiplayer? If you played Factions, are there any stand out features that you want to see return? Do you care if it’s live service? Do you want it to have “seasons” that build on the story over time?

I thought it'd be fun to have our own recommendation list before the final results are announced.

Here's the link to the theme announcement video (the theme is "Role Reversed") and link to the itch.io page where you can find all the entries. The default sort is 'random' but you can also change to other Sort if you just want to quickly check out some more notable examples. Also select 'Play in browser' in 'Platform' if you're worried about having to download files.

If you participated in the jam, let us know too!

Edit: since the mountain of entries is enormous, I'm thinking a way to narrow the scope and reduce choice paralysis is this: try out 3 entries that caught your interest for whatever reason, and tell us which one among them you like most (you can recommend all of them, or try out more if you're up for it). Feel free to be as loose or selective in your recommendation as you want.

The System Shock remake thread got me thinking about it. I've played the crap out of the Dishonored series, and Prey, along with some Deathloop, and I really enjoy all of them. It's crazy how much fun it can be to just really get into it, I drop the lights and everything, sit 8 inches from my 4k monitor (ghetto VR basically), and just 'enter' the game. This is especially fun when a little THC is involved!

Any games I may have overlooked? I do prefer the First Person type games, the visuals are part of the immersion for me personally.

Three devs just made one of the best selling games this year. A throwback to when games were more about actual gameplay than story or graphics. I think it's pretty cool.

What do you think so far? What are your favorite classes/loadouts? Any sneaky/funny shenanigans you feel like sharing?

Did you know the PP19 quick mag is horribly bugged and so the gun has the lowest recoil in the game? It isn't the best weapon, but it is pretty much a laser.

First, forgive me for I am a first time DOSbox user. My O/S is Windows 10 home 64-bit

I went to old games and grabbed Doom & Doom II. I use to play these quite a bit and remember them fondly. I did the easy setup which added DOSbox 0.74 and the game. It loads up and runs just like I remember with the keyboard, just no mouse.

I did searching online, but the only solutions seem to be making sure autolock=true in the config file, and using cntl-F10 to capture the mouse. Toggling cntl-F10 does seem to grab the mouse in that the cursor disappears, but the mouse still will not function in either full screen or windowed mode.

I seem to be missing something obvious, but for the life of me I just don't see it. I'm reasonably computer savvy, but feeling stupid at the moment.

Any advice would be appreciated. TIA

Edit: Forked over the 5 bucks and went with the Steam version. Works perfectly.
Thank you everyone for your advice.

Welcome back to the third weekly game jam thread.

Whats a game jam you may ask. Well imagine if you locked a group of game developers in a box for box for some quantity of time ranging from a few days to a few weeks and told them to compete with each other by building something around a theme and then judging whatever each other came up with, that's a game jam.

Longtime viewers AKA the 5 people to who looked at the 2 previous threads will have no doubt noticed I missed last week. During an unusually normie weekend I was busy awkwardly standing in a corner at not 1 but 2 different parties and was super tired when I got back I did not want to write this up. I hope you can forgive me. To ensure that this does not happen again I am moving this thread to Sundays which should give me more time flexibility and something to look forward to instead of sitting around dreading the upcoming work week.

Also as a bit of compensation for your troubles today I am linking 2 top quality longer games that you can really sink your teeth into this week. I am 100% cool with someone discussing games from any week in future threads so don’t sweat the time commitment and don’t feel you have to finish the whole game before returning to discuss it. Quality video games shouldn’t have an expiration date.

With that said lets get into the this weeks games

Infinimall: Dream Job!

Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android
Authors: Pandora
Genres: Visual Novel

Coming to you with love from the the folks in the the proverbial vaporwave-dreamworld-liminal-mall-urbex complex, Infinimall: Dream Job! Is a dating sim visual novel set inside a surreal mall and originally written for the NaNoRenNo 2023 Jam. Featuring the Doomer Girl like bisexual disaster Mia(I wonder if its the same Mia as Heart Beat) as she navigates a dead end job and tries to get her dead end life back on track.

According to my calculations the game has about 100 book pages worth of dialogue over all its branches which should be a breeze for the text-only titans that walk the halls of this site.

Hypnagogia

Platforms Windows
Authors: sodaraptor
Genres: Adventure

Our second game is also taking us to the dreamworld but this time its inspired by late 90s PSX aesthetics, in particular, the cult classic game LSD: Dream Emulator which is fitting given it comes from LSD Jam 2020. It centers on a gameplay loop of exploring diverse dream worlds inspired by dreams from the developers own dream diary. I think the game is best thought as a sort of drug trip or spiritual experience in the same way as something like Superliminal. Go in with an open mind and I think most people can get something from the experience. This goes double for the games sequel Hypnagogia 無限の夢 Boundless Dreams which is available without DRM on itch.io or with DRM on Steam if you are into that sort of thing.

However long it takes after you awaken from your strange dream let me know what you are thinking. Its okay I won’t die if you don’t like the same games I do though I will be sad. Its lonely walking the path of niche games but you can’t make friends if you never share.

PREVIOUS WEEK

My friend and I embarked upon a journey over the past few months to create a tabletop board game. The interesting part is that we were motivated by the emergence of generative AI and the capabilities it had in rapid prototyping concepts. On a whim we said, let's see how far we can push making a board game. We pushed Midjourney, ChatGPT, and a variety of creative tools to help build the foundation for our game. We both have design chops and are into diy, creative design, and 3d printing, and technology to help get this thing past the finish line.

We are now at the point were after many iterative sessions, we have a functional and fun to play game! Our intention is to give it away as a free downloadable that folks can 3d print and paper print all the parts so they can play too! Huzzah! We are balancing the rules and creating the instructions which is not something we are relying on AI aside sticking to the theme. We are in search of inspirato on what makes gameplay fun for folks today.

Question What are the most fun, exciting, or challenging aspects of any tabletop or board games you play? What keeps you engaged?

EDIT
I didn't give many specifics on the game itself, and figured it might help. Remember we used AI to come up with this storyline. The prompt was to write a story for a "Sci-fi Christmas Horror" board game...

The basic premise is that you are attending a party at the North pole celebrating the research of Dr. Frost on ancient Christmas magic. Predictably things go bad, and you have to find your way out before it's too late and you are killed by a troop of Christmas themed monsters.

The games objective is to work together to escape the facility by collecting sleigh parts, fighting monsters, navigating a maze in dark hallways, and visiting special rooms to solve puzzles. It's all kinds of ridiculous but fun it its own way.

Anyone here go through a grounded play through ? I’m trying to currently and tbh…it’s kicking my ass.

Any one here got some tips or advice for this kind of play through ?

Or just discuss the game too! I’d love to join in.

Thank you in advance!!

I used to absolutely love DayZ when it was still a mod. Even over a decade later I've yet to find a game with the sheer level of adrenaline that it could induce. I fell off the genre when it started moving towards crafting and base building since the systems just ended up feeling like busywork and detracted from the intensity of the core gameplay.

Is there anything newer that captures that experience from early DayZ, or is the Rust/Ark style gameplay loop completely ubiquitous now? I'd love something with good gunplay, a focused set of systems, and a punishing difficulty curve.

I was playing Motorstorm: Arctic Edge emulated on my Vita and realized I have literally never seen it brought up or discussed online.

Motorstorm is a dead franchise, but the console games I occasionally see talk of but never the psp version. I think it did a great job of capturing the feel of the game on the go and has a banger soundtrack too. I played it a ton back in high school on my psp and still boot it up from time to time for a quick hit of adrenaline fueled racing.

I'm sure others have similar games, maybe it's a "bad" game that you love or just an oldie lost to time.

Is anyone here playing/finished with the System Shock remake? I’d love to hear your thoughts whether you’re brand new to the series, played the original, or played System Shock 2.

• What are your thoughts on the game? What’s good and bad about it?
• How well did they pull off the remake?
• Does the game still appeal to modern sensibilities?
• Did you lose faith the game would even come out between now and when it was crowdfunded seven years ago?
• What other thoughts do you have?

Please mark any spoilers, either by warning in advance or by putting them inside of a details dropdown:

Edit: I originally miscalled it a remaster. It’s a definitely a remake.

This is a follow up to this discussion from the other day where I was getting ready to DM my first session of 5e. tl;dr from that is that I was chosen to be the DM by my group and we're playing through the Essentials Kit campaign, albeit with certain elements tweaked to give it more flavor.

Our first game was last night and I think I crushed it. Typical of our group we got a later start than intended, so we only made it through most of a single quest. But man it was so much fun. I was expecting the group to go routes I hadn't expected, but I really didn't account for them splitting the group...whoops.

Basically the first quest was to retrieve an elderly woman from a windmill. When they arrive, the windmill is under attack by a manticore. In my head the solutions were A) fight it there, B) distract it and save the woman, or C) go hunt with it for food.

The group ultimately chose all 3. One character started telling the Manticore riddles while another snuck around behind the windmill to try to get the woman out of the house. But conveniently the window was too small. It culminated in the Manticore going hunting with a Harengon alone, the rest of the group realizing what a bad idea that was and then shadowing them. And then ultimately the group jumped the Manticore and we had our first encounter. Thankfully I had nerfed the Manticore's health about 40%, so it was a pretty easy fight.

The weakest part was definitely the combat. I was never any good at that as a player, so me running it was a little rocky. But nobody died, everyone got to participate, and they defeated the Manticore at about the right speed to keep it interesting. The best was just the roleplaying. I got to play as 3 distinct characters (the starting zone guide character, the Manticore, and the old lady) and had a blast. The old lady's voice slowly slipped into a Terry Jones inspired cockney woman's voice, which is just so much fun to do.

Long story short, everything went really, really well. I know what did and didn't work, so I'll be adjusting accordingly for next session. Although very little didn't work. I was really pleased. And since we didn't even entirely finish the first quest (the turn-in part at least), I still have a quest/dungeon written up that I can use for next week.

Some brief backstory that is super common, I'm sure. I played 5e with some friends before the pandemic and that broke the group up, of course. Then our DM moved away so we've been without D&D since 2019 or so. I was recently nominated to be our DM because none of us knows how to do it and they all thought I'd be a good fit. Which is great because I love world-building, playing characters, and writing stories.

But I'm nervous because I was barely competent at playing the game to begin with (aside from getting into character), let alone DMing it. The whole group was, really. Because of the pandemic we're effectively all starting over as new players. So I've got a forgiving group to DM, that's for sure.

To help me out, I bought the Essentials Kit and am building our first couple of sessions around that, albeit it pretty heavily modified. I kept the setting and one quest, but already created a custom quest with a mini-dungeon for them. Also managed to inject my favorite played character as the central giver of quests and backstory within the game. Sir Lord Craymond Zephyrson Ponce IV, former heir to Ponce fortune and originator of the Ponce-y Scheme. Think foghorn leghorn meets 1800s railroad tycoon meets Trump. Not a nice man at all.

Honestly I started modifying the pre-built way quicker than I expected. My original plan was to play it by the book for the first couple of nights, but ideas kept popping in my head and I just ran with it. Then I started creating a windmill out of popsicle sticks and tiny rocks. I think DMing might be a gateway drug to greater creativity expressed through arts and crafts!

Our first session is tomorrow night and I've been feverishly writing complicated notes in OneNote. I've got a notebook for each session. Then a section for The main outline, quests, NPCs, locations, encounters. Then pages for each individual item under that category. Then I'm using the nifty "Link to Paragraph" tool to let me quickly jump between pages. Here's a screenshot to show what I've put together -- https://imgur.com/a/yA6IYUJ I think eventually, after a few sessions, the notes will be more condensed, giving way to more improvisational storytelling. Between chatGPT and old fashioned generator sites that can crank out NPCs, dungeons, encounters, etc. I think it'll be a lot easier if I can work toward just having a simple outline for a given session and let the tooling and my imagination do the rest on the fly.

Anyway, any general advice for a new DM?

Tabletildians,

Which games have you all been playing this week? Time to share and compare.

Personally, my group and I played a game of Racoon Tycoon, a simple but enjoyable little trading, auction and set collection game. We didn't do any auctions for quite some time at the beginning and I was starting to think the game was going to be a bit dull, but the auction really transformed it, and it was actually really quite enjoyable.

After that we played Iberian Railways. I wasn't too impressed with the board, as it looked bleached out like it had been left in the window of a shop. But the game was fun, marking routes with cubes, taking loans and claiming business contracts. Interestingly you're trying to earn money to buy the routes but you're measured equally on other criteria, like longest route, most cities, &c. It amusingly (read: disappointingly) ended in a three-way tie, with no tie-breakers. Don't think I can recommend this one, due mainly to the scoring.

Finally we played a few games of Cat in the Box. Absolutely fantastic trick-taking game where your cards have numbers but no suits and you decide the suit of each card as you play it, marking off that colour and suit combination on a board. Thus the gamut of possibilities for your remaining cards shrinks as cards are played. Really recommend this one, it was great fun.

Hi there,

I enjoy writing! I find all formats fun to play with from short stories to screenplays. One thing I've never really written for is video games. I love the idea though. All the world building, lore notes, dialogue, weapon descriptions, codecs, bestiaries and on and on. There's all sorts of ways to tell a story through a video game and I want to try my hand at it!

Problem being though, I'm not particularly interested in game design. I'm not NOT interested, but it's not where my passion is. I am willing to learn what I need to, so don't shy away from suggestions that would require me to learn some on the design side.

Really the only ideas I've come up with are using the mod creator in Neverwinter Nights 1/2 or something like RPG Maker? Are these overwhelmingly difficult to get started in? Could I write in all the things I mentioned from dialogue to weapon descriptions?

Or perhaps trying to find someone NOT interested in the storytelling side? Someone who wants to focus on design but would love some storytelling in their project and would welcome the addition?

Or even starting with TTRPG modules maybe. Video Games and TTRPG modules seem to have some similar storytelling elements.

Does anyone in the profession have thoughts? Does anyone not in the profession have thoughts?

anyways, bye love you

I game a lot, and I have many ear piercings (the troublesome ones are industrial and cartilage and for ear buds, both tragus, but I'm looking for just normal headsets). Most headsets make my ears ache after 20-45 minutes. I can almost pick out how much they're going to hurt when I try them on, and nothing at my local Best Buy has anything available that feels right. Additionally, many are heavy and sit on the top of my head like a brick - before I completed my ear decorations, that was usually my peeve.

Currently, the only headset I adore is SteelSeries Siberia (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002SN9RN8). I can wear them for hours. Sadly, I cannot get a replacement. I tried their Arctis 5 and immediately sent it back. The Siberia does not have a mic, so that's basically the only reason I am wanting to get another set.

If anyone can recommend something with the following characteristics, I'd be willing to drop a pretty penny on them... not that I can afford to, but it'll be an investment if it lasts as long as these Siberia have!

• Preferably cloth ear surface texture;
• Preferably something that doesn't sit heavily on the head - though the ones I've tried that clamped for staying on my ears would give me headaches as well;
• Must be wired. No bluetooth. Caveat: if it has a usb dongle, could be doable. (My computer does not have BT capabilities.) I hate things running out of battery though, so it will have to be good;
• Must have extendable head band up top, if its method is not gripping on your ears without head support;

I'm sure I've missed something, but if there's a fellow ear-pierced gamer whose had issues with many headsets but found the perfect one, please recommend! Thanks!

I have fond memories of trying to solve HTML/text-based riddles on sites like WeffRiddles when I was growing up in the mid-late 2000s. The premise of the site is usually pretty simple: the landing page represents "level 1", and you had to find the correct URL to get to level 2, 3, and so on. The "puzzle/riddle" aspect usually involves inspecting the underlying HTML and looking through clues given in the source code, then using those clues to piece together the URL for the next stage.

It was always fun hanging out on forums and sharing clues about how to solve the level that everyone was stuck on. Also, being a kid back then, frankly I felt like a Hackerman™️ whenever I'd have to inspect the page source, paste it into Windows Notepad, then set font size to 1pt because I thought there was an ASCII art pattern hidden in the HTML. Good times.

Sometimes I get the urge to play these things again, but besides WeffRiddles which I know by name, I don't really know what this type of game is called. The closest "modern" example I can think of is /dev/esc, which is more like an online escape room than a long-form riddle site.

Does this ring a bell for you? Any other fun ones that you remember playing? And what the hell do I type into Google to find more of these?

Currently going down a rabbit hole of out of bound areas in games. I’ve always loved seeing what we aren’t supposed to and how the devs make it work.

I was curious on what you guys thought were some fun experiences you’ve had out of of bounds? Share below!

I'm currently reading over and learning Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e I'm moving more and more away from D&D and Pathfinder games towards others due to different mechanics, fantastic design, etc.

I've seen much conversation about WFRP 4e online and how it's not as good as 2e, or too complex, or other arguments. I'm not looking to start edition warring, but how many of these arguments still hold true in 2023 with the newer rules from Up in Arms and Winds of Magic?

If there are complexities/gaps in 4e, what variant rules, house rules, or homebrew are you using to fix those things or fill them out?

I'm looking for more recent games that are reminiscent of the original Doom, Quake, and shooters of that era. Preferably on PC, but also on the Xbox.

I am, of course, aware of the most recent Doom games, but I gotta be honest, I'm not a big fan. They don't feel old-school to me.

1990s shooters have a simplicity that I crave.

I have no intention to play online, so a good campaign is a requirement.

Thanks!

I'm not especially creative, but I love having props at the table for games. Some games seem like a better fit for props than others - for example, Call of Cthulhu's focus on investigation makes having prop newspaper clippings, diaries and journals, maps and other ephemera feel natural and rewarding. It's made that much easier when the publisher provides them with a scenario, which is what Chaosium does for Cthulhu - the starter set handouts are freely available at their site.

Recently, I've added a mix of etsy and more premium products to various games:

• a fun set of inn menus, maps and store price list handouts for Lost Mine of Phandelver (link)
• I'm waiting for the Silver edition of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist to release from Beadle and Grimm (link)
• For the introductory Cthulhu adventure 'The Haunting', I found some really nice non-combat maps on DTRPG (link) and added the handouts from the HPLHS Classic Game Prop Set (link)

I'm curious to know how other people use props at the table, if you make your own, or have found something on etsy or elsewhere that you'd recommend.

I was talking with a friend not too long ago about this, and I'm curious what others have to say. For me there were a few, specific games that ended up playing a big role in my personal history, but one in particular that I can say had an immense impact on who I am today.

The game was STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. In 2007, I graduated high school and got a new laptop. Prior to that, I had a WinXP desktop from...at least 5 years ago, which was never really built for playing games. I really didn't know anything about computers in general, besides some basic maintenance - I genuinely just didn't comprehend "hardware requirements". With the new laptop, I guessed (somewhat correctly) that I could play new things, so I went out and bought a bunch of games I'd always intended to play. Among those, was STALKER.

I didn't know about that game at all, at the time. I saw it in a Walmart, looked at the back of the box, and it was so neat and strange that I figured I had to try it, not knowing at all whether my computer could even do it. Turns out, it couldn't, or rather, it could, but performance was really poor. ~10-15fps when trying to play in any of the dx9 rendering options. The game worked great in an unlit, dx8 mode, but it looked terrible, so I was determined to see that game the way it was intended.

Thing was, I had no background knowledge. What do I do? I trial-and-error'd my way through some of the graphics options, but couldn't really connect the dots on which settings did what/how to go about targeting better performance. I started exploring the computer itself, learning the basics of how games work on a PC (the real basics, I mean - as in, what does a gpu do, why does RAM matter, etc). Through that I landed on a first step.

That was to do a RAM upgrade. I had never done that before, but looked up what all I'd need/how to do it, and from there started really getting in deep to figure out what I could do to get the game to work. I trawled forums and asked folks - what does [this setting] do? Can I change it in the game's files? Which setting has the biggest effect? What effects could I live without?

That experience, over the course of that last grade-school summer, set up knowledge and skills I would use pretty much all throughout my life from then on. I learned so much, about what different rendering options did, the effects of different things on system performance, how to optimize windows itself a bit for playing games - I explored every avenue. I don't remember the hardware exactly, but the machine I had was not a gaming machine - a Dell Inspiron, it had a 40gb hdd (2007, mind you, low end even for then), and some sort of AMD integrated chip.

After much time, much trial and error, and even some game modding, I finally got STALKER to run at what I then could consider a playable framerate - a solid 24 lol. At the time, learning about framerate, I came to learn that's what movies run at, so I figured if I could hit that mark it would be good enough. I had saves set up to place me in the most intense areas I could find, and worked to try to get it to 24 in those areas. The end result was something akin to a portable version - lower resolution, some effects disabled, but generally the same look, same game. And in learning how to mod it a bit, I also got to tweak the game a bit to suit my preferences.

From there I started tinkering with every game I could, and with that computer. Even got to the point of making modified drivers for the integrated GPU - how exactly I couldn't tell you today, but I did squeeze out another 1 or 2 fps doing that (who knows what I must have borked deep down lol). The skills I picked up trying to get this game to run on my computer, opened up the whole world of computers to me, and so this game has a very special place in my memory.

Do you have a game like this, for you? One which ended up playing a big role for you? Or on a different track, is there a game which to your mind could serve this sort of purpose for a lot of people? I'm curious what you've seen and what you think.

I have a huge problem with playing games until I finish them and I don't know how to change that. It's a rare ocurrence for me to finish the game because I usually get distracted with other games, so I make break and after the break I don't remember plot or how to play properly which discourages me to pick it up back again especially if I was already like 20 hours in the game. I want to enjoy games like I did 20 years ago where getting a new game was special but now the amount of cool games and their availability makes me feel that I am missing out therefore I usually switch from game to game just to try it.

Sorry if all of the above looks like a some kind of babble but I am not a native speaker :D

Bevy just released their version 0.11, so I figured it would be a nice opportunity to ask the Tildes gamedevs if they were using it :)

Bevy is a rust game engine - more like a set of libraries actually - that's been gaining popularity the last few years. It has become the de facto toolset if you want to make a game in rust. It is very opinionated towards Entity-Component-System (ECS), and uses the pattern to facilitate parallelism and multi-threading.

Personally, I'm using the bevy-ecs lib (not the whole engine) to write a roguelike and hone my skills in rust. I enjoy it but it's not really beginner-friendly. The official docs are lacking, and you'll have to dig in the auto-generated api docs to make the most out of it. However, I appreciate that each release not only brings new features, but also refines existing ones. The engine is getting better - not only bigger - release after release.

I've seen how some people love when games like Hi-Fi Rush just shadow drop instead of being revealed at some kind of gaming presentation (like a Nintendo Direct or The Game Awards) with a proper trailer and a release date set for some point in the future. I personally prefer the latter, since it lets games give me the first impression they want to, while with shadow drops, the first impression can be a big spoiler or some meme or really anything. It also helps me mentally prepare for the game to release, in a sense. So many games release every year, it's useful to know when they're coming out for budget and schedule reasons for many people.

What do you guys think? Do you have a preference?

I've been out of the game for years. I left midway through Legion, early into BfA, and then finally SLs burnt out any lingering love I had for the world and its lore. Apparently DF is better, but it's not a world that interests me anymore. Alternatively, Classic was neat, but it's a solved game and mostly a time capsule.

So I'm surprised how much I look forward to playing classic hardcore when my daughter goes to sleep and I have a bit of time to myself. I'm never bored; even boring walks might have stealthed panthers or stuff, so I have to pay my full attention. Whenever a bag drops, or I get an upgrade, it's the best feeling in the world. Leaving a kobold cave alive is such a rush. Watching your hearthstone finish casting in the middle of an enemy camp and letting out that breath that you're holding is incredible.

It absolutely sucks when you die, but then it also makes me more likely to try out classes and races that I usually steered away from, because why not?

Is anyone else on the same boat, or looking forward to the official servers?

We all know it. The boss/area/section of any of your favorite games/well liked games that gives you pause whenever you consider replaying it. An area or boss that sucks so much to go through that you may even reconsider entirely. Who/what hurt you?

For me it'd have to be either Pontiff Sulyvahn from Dark souls 3, or Nyx from Persona 3. Pontiff just straight up sucks to fight. Unless you're a parry god, it's just nonstop aggression with seemingly few windows, and then the second phase kicks in and you're just skewered endlessly. I can't hack it. Did it once, never again. For Nyx, besides being a long and grueling fight, it loves to pull out the ol' Marin Karin making you pull out the ol' Diarahan. Can't do it. There's a reason I emulated it. Thank god for save states.

The idea is to get a console to play raging in complexity from the NES, SNES, up to Nintendo DS and PSP. Anything above that is not a priority or a necessity. But it would be nice to have a screen large enough to handle DS games in some form. Can I find anything decent in that price range?

Thanks :)