Yeah, makes sense. They’re an online community that is famously the gateway drug for rightwing hate groups before they move onto harder stuff. “Execute the furries” into “gays are bad” is basically a core part of the rightwinger life cycle
I’ll be completely honest with you sir:
It’s just that none of the other popular TTRPGs (as in, ones I can find a group for) have much content on dragons.
On one hand: I know damn well that formatting is a huge bitch, because I’ve made my own huge homebrew for the game.
On the other hand: This is a multi-million dollar company that’s been around for bloody ages. Hiring a professional formatter shouldn’t even be a blip in the budget.
I mean yeah, we WERE founded because we didn’t want to support shitty business practices from Reddit but we wanted a good Reddit substitute
But we get good posts that aren’t Reddit drama too
Thank fuck for that. With any luck the better conditions will even give them the power to push back on management if management demands something stupid be added to a game.
In an industry as notoriously dreadful as game development, every bit of quality of life counts.
Lol yep. Literally Amazon 101, there’s a very good reason you shouldn’t buy from them unless you HAVE to.
Joke’s on them I love Tiamat she’s fuckin’ awesome. More successful evil dragon goddesses with legions of children and cool magic powers please
This! I’m on one of the lategame bosses in the v6 expansion; they’re a lot tougher than the rest of the game so it’ll probably take me all weekend to get good enough to beat them
“AAA Developers aren’t getting money from real keys either, what’s your point?”
Megaman 8-bit Deathmatch, Heroes of the Storm, Pizza Tower, and DnD!
Lies, there’s no knot in this list
Here’s a really good browser game that should last you a good few hours
https://www.kongregate.com/games/innocuousgames/amorphous
Otherwise I guess I still play some Heroes of the Storm for old times’ sake. I really, really don’t like Blizzard as a company anymore, but the game is in maintenance and is basically just coasting out the last of the playerbase before it shuts down, so hopefully I’m not helping them succeed while I enjoy the game for its last few years.
Megaman 8-bit Deathmatch!
Nevermind I just noticed that you don’t have a mouse. Uhhhhhhhhh. You could always grab a gameboy-advance emulator and enjoy some pokemon or Pacman Collection or Beyblade V-Force or Sonic Advance 3. Loads of classics that don’t have overly complicated buttons. I bet you could emulate other old consoles too, the Sega genesis had a phenomenal library that should all be easy enough to play on a keyboard.
Just on a general level? Dragons from any media that makes them intelligent.
I really do relate to not particularly enjoying the company of most others, having a collection of things I consider to be very precious, and enjoying spending large amounts of time doing nothing.
Which is why I keep rejecting so much media that does have dragons because they keep either getting killed off brutally or treated as unfeeling monsters
Aw, RIP. Guess time comes for us all in the end, and I hadn’t been watching for nearly a decade. Congratulations for lasting as long as you did.
Honestly, a profoundly weird experience that I had recently… was playing Dragonstrike (released in 1992 I think?) for DOS, for the first time.
Objectively this game is the very definition of ‘limited by the technology of its time’. It’s a flight sim made before a mouse was a standard computer accessory. I think the biggest in-game sprites are maybe 50 by 50 pixels. It’s outstandingly difficult to play.
And yet… compared to modern games, when I’m playing this, it really just hits me over and over again how they made every single decision correctly. The game has an excellent premise. The storytelling may be simple but it’s good. The core gameplay loop is fun, and your kit feels like it’s complete and well-made, and there’s no stupid gacha mechanics or grinding or oversexualized poster girl or daily quests to try and force you to play X amount of hours. It’s just for fun. And it IS fun, despite the most unbelievably dated graphics I’ve ever seen. If this game was made just a few years later, it would’ve been outstanding.
Yeah, it’s a really weird paradoxical thing, but giving in is exactly why it wasn’t enough- it made them feel that there was more they could be getting.
Oh, and I know EXACTLY the trick you need for that sort of combat thing. Your players are getting too many Long Rests, right? One at the end of every session? At the end of every ingame day? Which makes it impossible to wear your players down, right?
What you need are Rough Resting rules. Your players can sleep overnight when they’re travelling through somewhere, but as they’re sleeping somewhere dangerous, then they can’t fully relax and recuperate- sleeping overnight outside somewhere like a dedicated inn or their own homes only gives them the benefits of a Short Rest (and prevents the Exhaustion from staying awake for too long). This means you don’t need to cram a ton of fights into one session, because now your players will actually get worn down meaningfully between fights- and you can choose to not give them a full heal until they actually need one- a boss is a LOT more threatening if the party doesn’t have all their resources to nuke them on turn 1.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15je74qMiYxSEnF43zp2UkEoSk3LqRymMbxruPVGQ-i4/edit
Okay, first and foremost, it’s about managing expectations. You’re putting yourself in a situation where you CANNOT succeed because you’re allowing them to create expectations that are 100% impossible to fulfil- even if you were a perfect DM, if the players want more than perfection, well…
What you need to do is sit down and create a hard list of rules that your players approve of. It’s actually fine to ignore RAW in favour of RAI, but consistency is an important part of the game. Decide what houserules you’re using, and write them down. Stick them to your DM screen.
Now, secondly, if your players want combat, take a look at that google document I’ve linked. It has over 400 magic items that I’ve made, they’re mostly well balanced, and a lot of them are combat oriented. Give your players a selection of items, remind them that they only have three attunement slots, and let the items allow them to create strong but varied builds.
Thirdly, if your players want to steamroll stuff, then I have another thing for you- your encounter pacing. DnD is designed around having seven encounters per Long Rest, although not every encounter is meant to be combat (I use 3 combat, 2 traps, 2 RP situations). To satisfy your players more broadly, then use early encounters to fulfil their desire to steamroll some mooks and drain their resources, and then for later encounters, chuck a boss at them, and make that boss charismatic and really good at hitting people with area attacks and repositioning (give him an ability to cleave with his sword if he’s not a mage!)- there’s your deadly battle.
But more than anything, just manage expectations. Tell them that you’ll do your best to give them some battles that let them show off their power, and some more challenging fights that will test their builds and their characters.
It’s also just important to remember- the challenge of a DnD fight is in puzzle and strategy. The thrill of a fight is in storytelling and description. If they just want thrilling fights, then honestly? Just don’t even track the HP of the boss (do not tell them this under any circumstances or the illusion will be ruined), just keep them standing and throwing out flashy attacks, taking hits and threatening to take the party down, and let them fall when one of the players lands a suitably dramatic attack. Oh and also if the boss is gonna drop any magic items, make sure the boss uses those magic items. Literally no better advertisement for an item than it being used to kick the party’s ass
Yeah, he was one of the last heroes to get added. The devs knew the writing was on the wall so they focused on adding fan-favourites before the game went into ‘maintenance mode’ and wouldn’t get new content, so we have Deathwing and Hogger (and they’re both great)
Also yeah there’s no level cap on heroes anymore, I have Brightwing over level 200, she’s absolutely great
Ironically I found the game had the opposite balance issues before going Maintenance Mode- too much focus on high level competitive play which was getting super ultra hard stomped by Genji and Tracer plus a support. The day our competitive leagues were officially canned, then we got what I vividly recall was the best balance patch ever that made QM and draft league games so much more open-ended and fun to play.