So our little group gained an extra player and after our last session two people were going away for sometime (married couple) so our DM came up with a fantastic way to introduce our new person, our DM asked all of us to come up with a backstory for our characters and what he did was very creative.
We are playing The lost mine of Phandelver, our last session we had run into a Nothic not long after we had a long rest. So our DM set the scene that our married couple would watch over us while the rest of us went to sleep, this is where the backstories we created came up. We all had reoccurring nightmares about the worst moment in our lives and had to change the pivotal point of the dream, as each of us changed the dream they would pop up into the next person to help along the way. Once the dreams were all complete we found ourselves in a 5th dream with an unknown Gnome wizard who fought a necromancer and became cursed and was the Nothic, once we broke that spell our new member joined the party.
I should add this was the first time our DM tried anything like this and since we are all rather new to the world of table top RPG it was really great.

So how was your last session? anything fun or not so fun happen?

This thread talks about Discord is trying to become Steam just as Steam is trying to become Discord.

Deimos and others said

This feels like the beginning of Discord flailing around in search of a business model.

But I really like this comment from Krael,

It's a Slack/Ventrilo hybrid that requires almost zero technical knowledge to set up or join. It's nothing groundbreaking by ANY stretch of the imagination, but there's a reason it took off the way it did.

Discord is at its heart is the same as Skype/Slack/Teamspeak/IRC but the UI/UX is leagues above everything else. Using Discord is so much easier than most alternatives and with just enough integrations that if they coughed off the "gaming" mantra they would be able to attract so many more users. Perhaps enough to get the amount of Nitro subs to stay afloat.

Does anyone play Monster Hunter around here?

The game comes out tomorrow, and I'm so stoked. I pre-ordered it for $45 here . I'm so excited to be able to play it online with so many friends that didn't have consoles. I'm so excited to be able to stream it. I'm so excited for the more "open world" aspect of it, with minimal loading screens. The graphics look so nice.

So who else plays it? What weapon do you main? What monster are you most excited to get killed by?

EDIT: I think I'm going to go hammer this time around. In the past I've use the greatsword, bow, switchaxe, and chargeblade.

Rogue like elements are used by lots of games. I'm interested to know which ones you think work, which ones you think don't work, and why.

Feel free to interpret rogue-like however you want. In my mind I have procedural generation, perma-death option, and some kind of turn-based strategy.

Hello ~games!

Like most of us, I spend way too much time gaming. Lately i've been playing Islands of the Nyne because PUBG hasn't been fun the past few patches. I normally play one genre at a time such as RTS, BR, MMO etc until i move onto a whole new genre of games.

What games or genre's have you been playing lately? Anything to recommend?

For me, that'd be a multiplayer war sandbox. Take a big map, plop down resources, population centers and factories, spawn a lot of players who then have to organize to fight a war.

• To add espionage, you'd not hard-code a lot about the way teams organize(think removing the guild mechanics from WoW), so one could sign up with one side, then run to a different side (who do not know you already signed up with the first) and do ye olde double agent.
• Research could be modelled as being done by NPC civilians, which produces documents detailing the results. These documents must be on-site whenever the research is being used (i.e. present at factories), so it could be stolen.
• No need to go factorio on the production chains. Their purpose is mostly to enforce cooperation to reach better hardware for the guys in the field.

So, what's your crazy dream game that's never going to be built?

I've played a few games on Android that are bizarre and wonderful, and nobody else seems to know them. Philipp Stollenmeyer makes nice, tactile, casual puzzle games with a clear and chunky aesthetic and great sound. Verticow, Zip Zap, Burger, and Okay? are four I can recommend. His art is very Monty Pythonesque, and the games just feel cool to play.

I also tell everyone I know about a game from 2014 called Always Sometimes Monsters. This game was telling an inclusive story before it was cool. It seems to have been made in RPG Maker, and is set in a modern city. There is no combat, just being a person, having conversations, running errands, and trying to accomplish your goals. The dialogue is realistic and sharp, and the story unfolds in a very satisfying (if a bit tropey) way.

I made a friend online a couple weeks ago -- this guy posted his game called Amethlion to an android forum. It's an open world crafting RPG and he was selling it for a buck fifty. I jumped at the chance to play a cool little pixel art adventure and actually get to interact with the creator. It's buggy as all hell, but it is very cute and pretty fun. The creator is a very nice person and has been very grateful to hear my bug reports. Dynamic Zero is the name of his company, and he made the game solo with his brother making the music. It's a family affair and I think that is just so sweet.

What mobile games are you all into these days, if any? And if the answer is none, how come?

I have recently bought a Nintendo Switch and have been happily playing on and off for a bit.

While it is general knowledge that its eShop is sub-optimally organised, instead of lamenting about it, let us together list and discuss which cheap and well-hidden games we found by chance (or heavy digging) that are surprisingly enjoyable.

To start of, here is the one I found recently:

• SkyPeace (0,99 €) is a typical side-scrolling arcade game – you fly on your rocket-powered surf board and collect coins, while avoiding enemies. The game is quite fast-paced and getting a high score is not that easy. Especially for this amount of money, I think it is a great game to play a level or two during breaks at work.

To clarify, this thread is not about indies in general – there is a very good thread on must-have indies already. Here I am trying to list (and discuss) obscure and hard to find titles, that are still enjoyable.

Hey all! I got a switch early this year and I've been loving it so far. I've been browsing the store and there seems to be a ton of cool little indie titles. Any recommendations for some really fun ones?

I love strategy games and RPGs. I would also love any recommendations for games that my GF and I could play together as well.

TRS80 gaming is a group for casuals. Back in the day I could play TF2, CSGO and PlanetSide 2 for 4-6 hrs a night (yes I've done the all-nighters, and done an all-nighter with Civilization too). But as I've grown older, I've been more busy with work.

So I, with some friends, wanted to create a gaming group that's basically for casuals.

The games we play are:

• Destiny 2 (we have a clan)
• Guild Wars 2 (we have a guild)
• WarFrame (no guild yet)

Mobile games we're playing:

• Idle Heroes (we have a guild)
• Brawl Stars (no guild right now)
• Clash Royale (no guild right now)

Some of us stream on Twitch (twitch.tv/condenasty80) and I can auto-host channels.

It'd be cool to get other casual players on Tildes on the Discord chat to coordinate some games for Destiny 2, Guild Wars and Warframe (and to group up on mobile games too!)

Reply if you're interested!

edit: forgot to mention, we have a blog, twitter and facebook page so if you want to write a game review or just make comment about recent game news, I'm open to scheduling/publishing posts

Here's the tweet the release date info came from: https://twitter.com/wykrhm/status/1024704897218883584

And an article from March that had some of the first actual gameplay info: https://www.pcgamer.com/artifact-guide/

So, I've been playing this campaign with some friends for a while where I am a crocodile-themed lizardfolk hick with a thunder cannon named Cletus Cornelius Crocodilius the 3rd. Much fun has been had so far, but today something extra special fun happened.

So a while back our party found a stone that basically makes whatever it's being wielded by as light as a feather. So naturally our undead pirate monk has been using it to fuck with Cletus by shoving it into his mouth and then pushing him great distances. I thought it was funny, the DM thought it was funny, and it'd give us all a great laugh. But, it did give me an idea.

See, we were all hunting down this nasty chimera, and after some scouting we knew it could fly. That was no bueno for us and we needed something to clip its wings. Suddenly, I remember that we have a stone that made me weigh about as much as a toddler. I also had several bear traps. And since I was a crocodile, I could grapple things with my mouth, leaving my hands, and my thunder cannon, free to attack.

So, we lure the flying chimera out with out bird-person bard, who lures it into range. We take all our ropes and strap the bear traps to Cletus and then an anchor line around his waist. We then have the sorcerer gnome cast enlarge upon himself, making him the massive size of a slightly larger than average human. He and the monk then chuck me as hard as they can at the chimera, which I proceed to stick to like a giant reptilian tick. I then spat the stone out onto the ground, and suddenly this tick weighed 800lb again.

I proceed to spend the entire combat session locked to this thing, blowing chunks off of it with my thunder cannon until it is grounded and no longer able to fly. It was still a tough fight, but we managed to prevail in the end.

It then became a desperate struggle to cut Cletus out of the bear traps before the dead Chimera fell off the bridge we were fighting it on. Thanks to a few lucky dex saves from myself and the bird person, Cletus managed to leap off the plummeting chimera at the last second.

I love this game.