If it’s going to have some kind of inventory system… figure out a way to prevent players from hoarding high-value items until the end of the game, at which point they are either meaningless because you’re so leveled up, or else you can trivially defeat the final boss by spamming all the holy hand grenades you’ve been socking away.

Starship Troopers isn’t a smart movie pretending to be a dumb movie, it’s a moderately intelligent movie with pretensions of being a smart movie pretending to be a dumb movie.

Robocop, on the other hand, is a masterpiece.

The flak canon was a ton of fun, but I have a special fondness for the slime gun. Primary fire leaving a bunch of slime balls around was hilarious, as was running around with the secondary charged up, just hoping to run face first into someone and fire it at point-blank range, killing you both. Strategic or tactically sound? No. But hilarious.

SLXPLOVS

Yeah, but D&D also has spells and potions of shrink / enlarge that don’t make players start drowning in atmosphere their lungs are too small to breathe or collapse under their own weight due to square cube law restrictions, so there’s definitely some magical physics at work in there.

You know what I miss? The Ultimate Alliance games from the PS2 era. Isometric view. Build a four-person team of Marvel characters. Some team combinations grant group buffs, like having all four members of the Fantastic Four will increase your XP gain. Equip your characters. Pick from an array of comic canon costumes, each with their own abilities. Some combinations of equipment or costumes will also grant bonuses like having everyone wear their Age of Apocalypse costume.

The whole thing is an action RPG where you play through some big comic book crisis. Lots of opportunity for villain and hero interaction. Cool cinematics.

It’s a rock-solid platform, but I don’t feel like I see it used nearly enough. I remember playing an Ultimate Alliance on 360 and it just wasn’t as good; smaller roster, fewer costumes, less interesting in general, despite the better graphics.

I vaguely recall hearing something about one on the Switch and that Midnight Sons was a bit similar… but then again I don’t recall hearing much else about those games except for their existence, so they can’t have done very well.

I was hanging out with this woman and we made some boffer swords. Now, these are soft… ish. They’re made from half-inch PVC with foam pool noodle on top and the whole thing wrapped in duct tape. You can take a direct hit from one of these without it seriously injuring you, but it’s not exactly pleasant. She had little to no experience with larping, but we took them out on the driveway and went at it a bit. I accidentally, and I really want to emphasize that, accidentally hit her full in the face with this foam bat. I apologized and we went again… and then I full-on hit her in the face again. And I apologized, and she smiled, and we continued to have a good time sword fighting.

So anyway, we got married and our daughter is almost five now.

We got an Un-Skru under-cabinet opener and it’s pretty great

Also, if you haven’t tried it, loose leaf pu’er tea really is excellent. I get mine in tins from the local Chinese grocery store, and the one time they didn’t have any I drove around all afternoon trying to find a store that had some in stock.

I’ve only ever found one zip-up hoodie with decent insulation and pockets deep enough that my phone won’t fall out of them if I’m not careful, and you better believe I’m taking good care of it.

I use a Bluetooth numpad! I got an 8bitdo mechanical numpad and it’s so clicky and satisfying.

My mom once gave me a cat litter scoop like this one

in my Christmas stocking. This was not, to my knowledge, in the context of a conversation about needing to clean up after the cat more often, but for all I know it was her way of subtly trying to get the point across.

I fuckin hate that Playstation 4 and 5 do this for taking screenshots from movies. I just want to get a good screen grab for meme purposes! Do you think I’m going to screen shot every goddamn frame of a movie, one at a time, paste those back together as a video, then somehow rip the audio too, and then share this necromantically-assembled abomination with all my pirate buddies? Fuck you!

The supreme rulers are hardly known by their subjects.

The lesser are loved and praised.

The even lesser are feared.

The least are despised.

Those who show no trust will not be trusted.

Those who are quiet value the words.

When their task is completed, people will say:

We did it ourselves.

–Tao Te Ching, Chapter 17

Damien, Jason, Freddie

I’ve been planning Lae’zel as Bard / Gale as Barbarian next chance I get.

Castle of Not

Cursed castle. Everything within it can only be defined by what it is not.

[Players meet the beautiful princess.]

“A hideous prince does not stand before you.”

[Players find a chest of gold.]

“You have not found a rotten sack full of live crabs.”

Sounds like something that would need to be secured by the Antimemetics Division.

I loved swordfish steak the one time I had it, so I’d bet that Scylla, Charybdis, or the Kraken would be quite good.

Oh, also The Kraken is quite tasty.