ANNO: Mutationem

GWJ Conference Call 827

Elden Ring, Solasta: Crown of the Magister, D&D The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, ANNO: Mutationem, Steam Deck, and more!

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Amanda, Rich, and Andrew are joined by Jamie Madigan from The Psychology of Video Games to talk about What is Play, The Engagement Game.

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Comments

00:02:00 Elden Ring
00:07:53 Solasta: Crown of the Magister
00:12:50 The Wild Beyond the Witchlight (tabletop)
00:19:22 ANNO: Mutationem
00:29:06 Steam Deck
00:30:50 What is Play?
00:53:32 Thread of the Week

Really interesting discussion on What is Play!

I have thoughts, but want to mull them over before commenting so I don't sound dumb.

My current TTRPG games are... *deep breath*

Bi-weekly Mondays is my Rime of the Frostmaiden game with Eurogoodjers. That's a good, third of the way through at this point I think.

Tuesday I have my in-person game. This is usually a mix of stuff but recently i've been running shorter sessions of one-off games such as ALIEN cinematic scenarios or City of Mist. I'm expecting this to go on hiatus soon because the player who hosts the session is now pregnant and is probably going to have a bit of a...modified schedule, soon enough (!)

Wednesday I just started another bi-weekly Rime of the Frostmaiden game with some local LGBTQ+ group people who wanted to give the game a shot. Literally not even into the book content yet, I decided to run the opening adventure from the Candlekeep book as a warmup first because it's a good introductory adventure.

Thursday is the BIG ONE. My Odyssey of the Dragonlords campaign is a good year and a half through now (characters are all level 17) and are veering into the endgame content now. No shade to my other games/groups but this is my favourite campaign that I've run pretty much ever.

Friday is free! ...until september when I start up my Candlekeep game again, although i'll be switching to bi-weekly for my sanity and probably moving away from Candlekeep mysteries and taking things in a different direction.

Saturdays I don't usually have much, although i've been doing some more ALIEN RPG once a month off and on with another in-person group.

AAAND Sundays I alternate between PLAYING in a mostly text-based D&D campaign set in the Midgard setting and running my Nights of Payne Town City of Mist campaign. I was also doing a bi-weekly Stars Without Number game with Maq, but that's faltered of late with scheduling issues.

(...for some reason i don't seem to have much time to post around here recently...can't possibly imagine why)

In a very "the cobbler's children have no shoes" situation, I am writing and publishing regular third-party material for Level Up: Advanced 5e ... and both of my game groups have been on hiatus for over 90% of the last 3 months or so.

The Saturday group is on the very tail end of a D&D Princes of the Apocalypse campaign. My character in that is Sygvard Westergaard, a bard (college of valor) 11/paladin 2. He's incredibly versatile - he can sneak like a rogue, heal almost as well as a cleric, and he hits like a freight train thanks to those paladin levels. He's also pretty much the antithesis of the typical irresponsible horny bard. He's a Harper and a Tyrist and takes both extremely seriously and doesn't see that he's got any time to chase after romantic interests with a group of elemental cults threatening the whole region. We're having a lot of fun and are playing the game in a pretty light and somewhat cartoony game, and the other players are some of my best friends in the world. I've really been missing it and hope we can get back to it soon.

The Sunday game is a Monster of the Week game being run by a first-time GM, but you'd never know it based on what a good job she's doing. Our player group is a bunch of old retired guys who live in the same nursing home and hunt monsters in the copious free time retirement provides. It's been a blast and my kindly old philanthropist who turns into a fearsome avenging angel when the monsters show up is also tremendous fun. This one has had marginally more success than the other at actually meeting lately. It's also a super nice group of people. The game is also considerably heavier on roleplaying than the D&D game, which has been pretty great.

Amanda (or anyone else) - if you're interested in some really in-depth talk about a character, I wrote this for an old PC I played years ago and still miss: http://stgcast.org/goodbye-old-friend/

Thanks for picking my thread, I wish it were more active. The babysitter request isn't for me. It's for my kids, so I can code in peace and quiet.

Timespike wrote:

Amanda (or anyone else) - if you're interested in some really in-depth talk about a character, I wrote this for an old PC I played years ago and still miss: http://stgcast.org/goodbye-old-friend/

YES -- this is so, so good and worth a read, folks if you're skimming the comments here, don't pass this up - please go read the post Timespike linked.

Mixolyde wrote:

Thanks for picking my thread, I wish it were more active. The babysitter request isn't for me. It's for my kids, so I can code in peace and quiet.

Oh goodness, my apologies, that totally makes sense and I apologize for my read of that statement!