I only just learned that Shamus Young, keeper of the blog Twenty-Sided Tale and creator of the webcomic DM of the Rings and the Mass Effect Retrospective, died this June.
https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/
This was terrible news to me, as I’ve always found him an intelligent, insightful, and funny writer, who had a knack for stating opinions very similar to mine on a variety of topics, from video games to fiction writing in general to DRM, and doing the topic better justice than I possibly could.
That super sucks! I really enjoyed his work and he seemed like a pretty cool guy. RIP.
In addition to the works you mentioned he was also a regular on the Spoiler Warning (https://www.youtube.com/user/SpoilerWarningShow/playlists) lets play channel for many years, though I think he left it a few years back. Not sure why, might’ve just wanted to move on, but there’s a good backlog of his (collaborative) work there.
Thank you. I will be fine I am sure, but it just takes yet even more time, which is the most annoying. Atleast I am not in pain, it’s just literal waiting till it heals and then hopefully stays that way.
Well, I’m relieved that Galadriel didn’t, and in fact clearly couldn’t, swim all the way back to Middle-earth, which only raises the question: what was she thinking? Did she expect to stumble upon that raft in the middle of the open sea by writer fiat?
Elrond in Khazad-dum gave me serious WoW RP energy, in a good way. I like how Elrond, in general, acts with dignity but not hubris. It’s Tolkienian in spirit, in a way that’s often missed in adaptations.
So far the weakest part of the show for me is the dialogue. The writers are no Tolkien, and it shows. Tolkien was very particular in his choice of words to create the feel he wanted, in a way the scriptwriters aren’t.
I had completely wiped from my memory the scene in Gundam Seed in which two side characters argue emphatically with one another over whether a donner kebab is better with chilli sauce vs. yoghurt sauce https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/561287824964452363/1016411523364704326/unknown.png https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/561287824964452363/1016411800402669588/unknown.png
Giant robots! War crimes! The intricate politics of spacers vs earthers! And, most important: kebab condiments.
Don’t worry, the discussion gets interrupted by a bunch of racists starting a gunfight.
Cecil Final Fantasy IV’s mother’s name is Cecilia.
Cloud Final Fantasy VII’s mother’s name is Claudia.
I think all FF protagonist mother’s names should follow the same pattern. Squall’s mother, Raine, is thematically adjacent but not a variation on the same word, so it fails the test
I was curious if Persona had a TTRPG game (Dark Souls does, so…) and it doesn’t seem like they’ve got an official one, but there’s at least four fan-created ones at the top of a google search.
One of them that I started reading states that it uses d10 as its core dice (fine, I guess) but then goes on to suggest that players should each have a pool of 10 d10s (…okay…) and that GMs should have multiple pools of 10 d10s, “ideally in matching colours”.
And sure, buying d10s is not terribly expensive. You can get 50 of them for around £15 off amazon, but it’s more that d10 is a pretty niche die-size, and making your core game revolve around players having 10 of these is just silly and indicates to me they’ve not thought about how the game actually plays, they’ve just thought about cool-sounding mechanics.
If you want to roll a ton of dice you should always use d6, because then you can find your local warhammer nerd and beat them up until they give you the box full of d6s they will carry around
I’ve not read everything he wrote, but I read and really enjoyed his lengthy Mass Effect breakdown/review and a few others.
