Anniversary

The Dreamcast is now 25 years old in the US, after its memorable release date of 9/9/99!

Europe has another month to go (it released on 14 October 1999), and Japan already beat the world to the anniversary by almost a year (27 November 1998).

Share your thoughts, memories, favorite games, or anything else related to the Dreamcast here. You can reminisce about how cool Sonic Adventure was, how groundbreaking Shenmue was, or how unsettling Seaman was.

Play Along

I am taking a month out of my regular gaming habits (mostly smaller indie Steam stuff) to play different Dreamcast games through September in honor of the anniversary. If anyone wants to join me in that, I’d love the company!

Every so often I’ll post a comment to this topic with thoughts on what I’m playing. Feel free to post yours as well!

If anyone needs a place to get started, we have a topic with some game recommendations.

I’ll be emulating them on my Steam Deck through RetroDECK (which uses the Flycast core for RetroArch). I’ve already tested out a bunch of games, and performance and compatibility seem to be really good.

There are no points for this (it’s purely for fun), but if there were, anyone playing on original hardware would get bonus ones!

Hey ho, so I'm taking over running one of my existing D&D groups. I have a campaign in my pocket that I have run part of before, A dystopian Narnia. If somehow my players meet just the right overlaps of nerd and techness to have ended up here. Leave now .

But it's really a set up for a longer campaign that I hope bridges into more worlds. I have the Narnian World really fleshed out, but if somebody feels particularly passionate and has ideas, please let me know. I can provide any detail folks would like into being asked a tricky question just helps me World build so please go for it.

The general gist is that our adventurers are pulled by a much weakened aslan from faerun or whatever default world we start from into Narnia. There they find it has been a thousand years of winter and rule by The White Witch. I'm familiar enough with the lore that if they decide to leave the country of Narnia or seek out another witch as an ally I have some options. Hopefully they save the day and free Narnia from Christmas-less winter. (I'm leaning hard into all the broad references to mythology in Narnia, Dionysus and the Maenads, the River God

If they do, they will receive a set of the magic rings used in The magician's nephew to allow people to pop between Narnia and the wood between the worlds. Allowing them to hop into other stories that have been similarly messed up.

I am looking for One Big Idea But also some other suggestions

1. The suggestions I'm looking for are other stories from about the same realm of stories that could be similarly messed up, ideas I had included Dinotopia, Wrinkle in Time, The Rats of NIMH, maybe one of the Discworld stories (I feel like half of those characters would be self aware) particularly thinking middle grade books with a dip towards children's or younger YA stuff, particularly fantasy stories, particularly those with some nostalgia for my fellow millennial PCs. I don't want to touch Harry Potter.

2. My idea for the reason why the story went wrong is that someone is rewriting it, possibly due to hating children or hating happy endings or something. I wanted a BBEG but I can't think of one. Umbridge is out for the Harry Potter reasons, but who else would go to the trouble? I am planning on the villain having acquired "magical book mcguffin" (that I also need to figure out) that's letting them do this. I like the idea of a villain who gets a lot of power but uses it in such a petty way, to rewrite children's stories

It'll take a long time to get out of Narnia, we don't play very often, and we may not continue depending on how players feel but as someone who's worked this idea over and over in their head for a while, I would love to get past these things.

Hi DnD friends,

I'm tackling a new DM challenge and could use some guidance. I'm designing a dungeon where humanoid beavers are attempting to awaken a sleeping god. Their efforts get derailed when they offer the god a magical plant that overgrows their entire base, warping the rooms and fusing many surviving beavers into half-plant, half-beaver creatures.

Since our group is relatively new, I've found that combat can be a bit slow. To speed things up and make combat more dynamic, I want to include environmental elements and traps—things like shelves that can be pushed over or a chandelier that can be dropped on enemies. I hope this will make the players feel more impactful when they pull off creative moves.

I plan to design a large building that encourages investigation, puzzle solving, and backtracking. My goal is for the players to get familiar with the map before combat, allowing them to discover useful items or environmental features they can take advantage of when enemies appear.

Since I've never done anything like this, I'm seeking advice on how to approach the design. Are there common pitfalls I should avoid to keep the building fun? How large should the maps be if I want to run this over 3 sessions, each about 3 hours long? And what types of puzzles would fit well in this environment?

Thanks a ton for your ideas! I’m already feeling like I may be reaching too high, but I’m excited to give it a shot!

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September 2024's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

I miss playing D&D with a group, but hanging out for 5+ hours at a time every week just doesn't fit into my schedule. However, I was thinking about how some mobile games have handled this - Words with Friends has (had?) a mode where you would get notified when it was your turn, and you could play whenever you had free time. I think there's at least one chess game that operated this way as well.

I can't imagine many human players would appreciate long waits between moves, when D&D is designed to be very immersive. So I'm being realistic and wondering what options there are as a single player.

Baulder's Gate 3 is fun, but I don't expect anything with that level of graphical fidelity. And something I could play on my phone would be ideal (but not a dealbreaker if I can't).

Are there options like this out there, or do I just have to accept that D&D doesn't have a place in my life?

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I was impressed with our community’s response to this same question for the PlayStation.

I’m thinking of focusing my gaming habits on the Dreamcast for the month of September by emulating some old classics and hidden gems. I’d love to hear this community’s recommendations for the greatest underdog console of all time.

Let me know what games for Dreamcast you think are still worth playing today, especially less well-known ones, and why!

Homebrew and fan translations are also eagerly welcome!

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Hey guys,

I've had a Switch for a couple of years but I haven't really played it lately because I've kinda been disappointed with the last two titles I've played. I've played God of War recently and I was just blown away by how much fun I had and I kinda of want to replicate that? Sadly, my friend wants his PS5 back so I'm looking for some game recommendations for the Switch.

I've played BOTW and I just found it so boring. I played maybe two hours and I was at no point entertained. I also played the Link Awakening remake but I didn't really like the graphics and so I just stopped playing after two hours or so. 2D Zeldas are among my favorite games of all time (OOS/OOA; Minish Cap/LADX), I'm kinda scared to say this, but I also didn't really like OOT (although I played it a good 10 years after its initial release). I don't really like open worlds and much prefer having "guided" gameplay, but I do enjoy a mix of both (like God of War).

I've played Hades and absolutely loved it, just like Rayman Origins, but since I've been disappointed with BOTW and Link's Awakening, I'm kinda scared to buy another critically acclaimed game just to not like it... Looking at the list of games and picking one seems so daunting, I don't really know what to do.

You guys have any suggestions?

DMs, how do you decide if an NPC dies at 0HP (like a monster) or drops unconscious and starts making death saves (like a PC)? I'm a newish DM (been playing off and on for 10 years but never run a campaign that had legs until now), and our last session ended with the death of a recently-introduced barbarian NPC at the hands of another barbarian NPC. I made some other missteps but the big one seems to be this death - some of the players were shocked that barb #2 had done enough damage to kill barb #1 outright. I just had #1 die because she hit 0HP, and it hadn't really occurred to me that she should have gotten death saves.

Any rules of thumb for how you handle NPC death/dying? Or, if you're a player, how you would expect/like to see it handled? Happy to provide more context if desired.

Thanks!

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

Rules:

• No grey market sales
• No affiliate links

If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.

All previous Save Point topics

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Edit to add: coop multiplayer is not available on the mobile version, which is the only realistic choice for our current life pattern / technology setup. I do agree it sounds interesting and fun!

My family has recently been on a big Stardew Valley kick. My spouse and I and our daughter are all first time players playing on android, which has no multiplayer mode.

From what I understand about multiplayer, I don't really think it would be good for us. We all play the game in very different ways. However, I think it would be amazing to be able to trade items. No one but me likes going into the mines/caves, and sometimes you just need one of something out of season.

My idea is that there would be a special chest I could put something into and it would be moved out of my game and into one of theirs or vice versa. Obviously, you could mod the game so you can just get any item, but this way somebody still has to get it, so it (hopefully) doesn't undermine the game economy.

I have been looking at the mod community, and it seems like the android version supports mods. I haven't found a mod that does as described. My general path forward is:

• set up a mod that implements the chest and talks to a server via API
• set up a server that can receive and hold incoming "put" and then send those items with the "get" from the client at the other end
• build the API so that it can represent important assets in the game
• come up with a lightweight way to secure the protocol to the intended users (this may depend on how identifiable individual clients are, but could be as simple as putting in a shared secret when creating the chest)

Obviously there are a lot of details to work out, but I wanted to get some wider feedback from people who had been playing the game longer.

• does this already exist and I'm just not aware? I did spend some time searching, but it seems like most mods are either cosmetic or change the in game mechanics in some way.
• would you be interested in something like this?
• what kind of mechanics would you want to see? Maybe a way to propose and accept specific trades rather than just sending items? Would you limit it to your circle of friends or be interested in a wider community?
• have you written or used Stardew Valley mods (especially on android), and if so, what was your experience?