Types of players cigarettes
VOID --- and deactivated --
2021.03.06 12:02 Hokie_Head VOID --- and deactivated --
2016.03.29 21:17 yamamushi ArkPS4
In light of recent changes to the Reddit API, this subreddit will be inaccessible for a few dats as part of the Reddit wide protest. A fan based subreddit for Ark: Survival Evolved players on the Playstation 4 & Playstation 5.
2014.12.31 00:04 Sparkatiz Destiny Sherpa
Most of us are aware that it can be difficult for a new player to find a group to do their first raid. /fireteams moves fast & can be hard to pick through at times. Destinylfg.net is full of people who require you to have experience, a specific level, or weapons and can be discouraging to new players. And some people like to play sherpa. I would like to bring raid sherpas, and raid newbies together in a clean, organized fashion. One place for both types of people to go without any run around.
2024.06.01 16:39 autumndream697 Pachuca details from NorOnTour
This is what the Nordecke Travel Director posted for NorOnTour folks:
CONCACAF has finally provided logistical details for Crew Supporters attending the CCC Final. There is both good news and bad news contained in their Supporters Plan.
First, the good news. CONCACAF has approved all flags and banners that were submitted, pending a final review by security upon entering the stadium. Additionally, the flags may be attached to PVC poles.
The bad news is that for crowd control and security, CONCACAF wants all Crew Supporters to enter as a group and be at the stadium (South Entrance) by 4:30pm for the 7:15pm kick-off. We are making CONCACAF aware that a 4:30 stadium entry may not be logistically possible, given the timing of the NorOnTour buses.
Per CONCACAF:
This MUST be followed to ensure a through and safe egress. Please arrive as a group by 4:30pm at the latest (15 mins before gates), so that security can properly and efficiently check all individuals and items.
The access to stadium will be through “ACCESO SUR”, which is really close to the parking lot designated for you, in the south side of the stadium.
Your seats section will be in 56 and 57 and will be guarded with security.
Also, as your fans exit, they’ll be escorted by private security through the same door.
Mexico has dry law so no alcohol will be sold in venue. We appreciate your understanding.
Concacaf Club Competitions - Marketing and Fan Activation Form Match: 51 Competencias de Clubes de Concacaf - Activaciones de Mercadeo y Aficionados Club: Columbus Crew . ACTIVACION/ACTIVATION STATUS/ESTATUS COMMENTS 1 20 flags APPROVED/ APROBADO ONLY FLAGS RECEIVED IN THIS REQUEST WILL HAVE ACCESS, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF FLAGS/BANNERS CONTAINING ANY DISCRIMINATORY MESSAGES/IMAGES, AS WELL AS POLITICAL MESSAGES/GRAPHICS.
THE FIXED FLAGS MUST BE INSTALLED WITHOUT COVERING DOORS OR EMERGENCY ROUTES AND ALL FLAGS WILL BE REVIEWED BY SECURITY PRIOR TO ENTRY INTO THE STADIUM. THE POLE MUST BE OUT OF PVC. FLAGS MUST NOT EXCEED 1X1.5 MTS DIMENSIONS
Also, we remind you that the use of any type of gunpowder, smoke or fireworks inside the stadiums is totally prohibited, as is the entry of balloons of any type. As well as any item that could distract the players and/or officials, including laser pointers and items that produce excessive volumes of noise.
submitted by autumndream697 to TheMassive [link] [comments]
CONCACAF has finally provided logistical details for Crew Supporters attending the CCC Final. There is both good news and bad news contained in their Supporters Plan.
First, the good news. CONCACAF has approved all flags and banners that were submitted, pending a final review by security upon entering the stadium. Additionally, the flags may be attached to PVC poles.
The bad news is that for crowd control and security, CONCACAF wants all Crew Supporters to enter as a group and be at the stadium (South Entrance) by 4:30pm for the 7:15pm kick-off. We are making CONCACAF aware that a 4:30 stadium entry may not be logistically possible, given the timing of the NorOnTour buses.
Per CONCACAF:
This MUST be followed to ensure a through and safe egress. Please arrive as a group by 4:30pm at the latest (15 mins before gates), so that security can properly and efficiently check all individuals and items.
The access to stadium will be through “ACCESO SUR”, which is really close to the parking lot designated for you, in the south side of the stadium.
Your seats section will be in 56 and 57 and will be guarded with security.
Also, as your fans exit, they’ll be escorted by private security through the same door.
Mexico has dry law so no alcohol will be sold in venue. We appreciate your understanding.
Concacaf Club Competitions - Marketing and Fan Activation Form Match: 51 Competencias de Clubes de Concacaf - Activaciones de Mercadeo y Aficionados Club: Columbus Crew . ACTIVACION/ACTIVATION STATUS/ESTATUS COMMENTS 1 20 flags APPROVED/ APROBADO ONLY FLAGS RECEIVED IN THIS REQUEST WILL HAVE ACCESS, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF FLAGS/BANNERS CONTAINING ANY DISCRIMINATORY MESSAGES/IMAGES, AS WELL AS POLITICAL MESSAGES/GRAPHICS.
THE FIXED FLAGS MUST BE INSTALLED WITHOUT COVERING DOORS OR EMERGENCY ROUTES AND ALL FLAGS WILL BE REVIEWED BY SECURITY PRIOR TO ENTRY INTO THE STADIUM. THE POLE MUST BE OUT OF PVC. FLAGS MUST NOT EXCEED 1X1.5 MTS DIMENSIONS
Also, we remind you that the use of any type of gunpowder, smoke or fireworks inside the stadiums is totally prohibited, as is the entry of balloons of any type. As well as any item that could distract the players and/or officials, including laser pointers and items that produce excessive volumes of noise.
2024.06.01 16:36 TehKingofPrussia After approx. 750 hours, here are my best (and seconds best) builds for all classes
This thread is for those who are striving to be as efficient as possible. If you have no desire for efficiency, then you are in the wrong place...varlet.
I am not sure how qualified 750 hours make me to make claims about the best builds in the game, but I feel confident enough about making my case as to post it here. I play exclusively on Auric Quickplay, simply fighting wherever The Emperor sends my way.
Here are my suggestions:
Veteran: Anti-Gunner Gunner
How: Recon Lasgun (mark VII), Combat Shovel, left side talents, Krak Grenade.
Why: Someone on the team has to deal with shooters+gunners etc. and Veteran is simply the best at it when correctly specialised, and thus, this duty falls on his/her shoulders.
Either the whole team shares this responsibility with well-rounded builds, or in a team of specialists, one needs to take on the responsibility to focus hard on things that could shoot the team to shreds. Gunners and Shotgunners especially can instantly delete a player if just one gets close enough to the team, and Gunners+Shooters at range forming dealdy "shooting galleries" is one of the biggest threats to an un-coordinated team, I find.
Details:
Left-side talents give amazing damage boosts in various ways, but with most weapons, overkill becomes an issue...hence Recon Lasgun being the choice, as it's low base damage coupled with rapid fire and the burn stack on crit gives it insane, high-precision dps with minimal overkill, high efficiency and a very-very large magazine, allowing you to single-handedly wipe a whole gallery of shooter+gunners, keeping your Preachers and Ogryns nice and hole-free.
Your teammates may not realise how much easier the game is without getting shot to shit, but every time you pop your "F" and annihilate 30 yellow targets, you will know how much work you're really doing.
Your trusty shovel can 1 shot muties with its special attack (forget the exact type) and by giving it bonus damage vs infested it becomes an amazing self-defence tool, allowing you to rapidly and safely clear large numbers of powalkers.
2nd choice: Hellbore Lasgun with a very similar build and Frag Grenades instead. The idea is similar, but this time you really focus hard on elites and specialists of all types. Amongst other things, a proper Hellbore Lasgun build allows you to one shot Crushers in just 1 second, much faster and with greater precision than even Plasma.
Ogryn: Ammo Pig
How: Ripper Gun (Mark 2), Shovel, Big Grenade, Ranged Ulti, mixed talents, mainly right side.
Why: As I was experimenting with various Ogryn builds, I've always found myself reaching for my Gun, whenever the going got tough...simply put, your damage output is the highest if you go all-in on daka. While Veteran focuses on things that shoot back, Ogryn focuses at annihilating everything else that doesn't by laying down devastating automatic canister fire.
Taking the ranged ultimate also allows you to annihilate heavily armored targets with your ranged weapon and also reload near-instantly, allowing you to reliably shut down massive armored deathballs.
Details:
Mainly right-hand-side talents and in general, talents that maximise your damage output, damage versus elites, bit of rending from bottom left-side etc. Mark 2 Ripper gun for maximum close-range devastation, shovel for self-defence and a Big Grenade for those situations when you really need to make your point clear to the Enemies of Mankind.
2nd choice: Doctor Boom build with a focus on Grenade Launcher and taking similar ranged focused talents on the right side of the tree. This build feels outright unfair against large concentrations of heretics, but suffers from low efficiency vs. individual, low-priority targets such as shooters. Taking a GL makes you heavily dependent on the rest of your team clearing out pesky minor-threats, thus conserving your ammo for the really tough situations.
Psyker: Utility Mage
How: Voidstrike Staff, Force Sword (Mark V), Bubble ult, Smite for Blitz, going left-mid-left overall
Why: Psyker has a lot of interesting options at their disposal, but this build provides such an immense amount of utility for the team that I find it a must-have in all teamcomps. Bubble can save the team from a crapton of nasty surprises and allows you+your teammates to comfortably out-shoot the shooting gallery. Especially useful if you lack a veteran or anyone else dedicated to playing anti-shooter.
Smite can shut down a near infinite number of extremely dangerous elite enemies and is hands-down the best answer to Bulwarks, bar none. (because it instantly shuts down nearly any number of them, allowing you to ignore them and focus on actual threats).
These 2 abilities together can, in the blink of an eye, provide instant protection to the entire team from 90% of threats, while doing this consistently and well. No other build in the game can shut down this many problems, this quickly, this easily. While you may not "kill" said threats, you will buy your teammates invaluable time to do so. Amazing answer to Snipers and Bombers especially.
They (our Blitz and Ability) are best rounded out by a Voidstrike as a choice of weapon for its versatility, as well as a Marc V Force Sword for self-defence, anti-mutie and crusher purposes.
Details:
Unlike the last 2 builds, this one mainly focuses on utility, control and protections rather than killing and yet can still kill a large number of enemies even at extreme ranges and can reliably, albeit somewhat slowly, deal with almost any threat, even by themselves. Their achilles heel is Monstrosities, but that's ok, Veteran and Ogryn can shred those quickly.
Voidstrike is an incredible answer to hordes and the best anti-horde weapon outside of flamethrower range that remains potent against high-priority long-range threats, such as Gunners and Snipers.
2nd choice: Surge Mage is a more aggressive choice, focused on killing Elites quickly. This build can kill very dangerous targets very quickly and is unqestionably a great choice, I simply think that other classes can be just as good killers as Surge Mage, but no class can provide utility for the team as well as the Utility Mage can. (and that this utlity is extremely valuable in keeping the team alive). Similar reasoning to why Veteran gets to be the anti-shooter: they are simply "best in class."
Zealot: Crit Healer
How: Heavy Eviscerator XV, Stub Revolver IIa, Icon Ult, Stun Grenade, Blazing Piety, going left-mid-left overall (important to pick up Scourge from top right!)
Why: Zealot walks into a bar and dumps a crapton of super high-impact abilities onto the table, nearly collapsing the table and making the rest of his team blush. It's not a joke, that's just what they do. Icon ult Zealot is the guy who, upon finding himself in the "Parry this, you casual" Dark Souls meme where the guy pulls out the Machine Gun/Sniper rifle, proceeds to say "ok" and does exactly that. A must have in all teams in my opinion.
For starters, the Icon ult is one of the best if not the best in the game, not only does it shut down EVERYTHING, COMPLETELY (bar Chaos Spawns and Beasts of Nurgle), but it also tops up your team and reduces chip damage, gives them a damage boost and is insanely spammable, giving your team very long periods of invulnerability or big beautiful yellow toughness bars.
Stun Grenade is the best grenade in the game, trumping even the Ogryns Big Grenade (since it does almost the same thing, but comes in packs of 3 instead of 1) and can stop even the nastiest wall of armored heretics pushing your team, or shut down half of a shooting gallery, allowing your team to close the gap.
Eviscerator XV is the best melee weapon vs poxwalker hordes bar none, in fact, with this build we will be using these hordes to rapidly regain our Icon ultimate, allowing us to spam it every 10 seconds, making the team insanely tanky and significantly raising the margin of error in the team's favor. Simply an incredible way of keeping your team safe, while suppressing the foul heretic.
Details: This build is the most particular out of all of them, focusing on maximising crit chance as much as possible and using bottom-left talent "Invocation of Death" which causes crits to recharge our ultimate. By repeatedly spanking a large wave of tightly packed heretics, our ultimate returns at alarming speeds, filling 1/4 of the way with each lucky swing.
Revolver can be quickly pulled out to headshot the odd high-threat heretic and help your Veteran manage shooting galleries and specials. They can do decent damage vs. Crushers, but are not very efficient due to high ammo cost involved (takes 2-3 headshots).
2nd Choice: Flamethrower+Hammer+Charge build is a close second, but struggles against spread-out long-range shooters and becomes similarly vulnerable to them as the Grenade Launcher Ogryn. While taking Knives can somewhat help with this issue, they are simply too weak and the opportunity cost of not taking OP Stun Grenades is far too big to justify them...you'd rather take the vulnerability and pray to the Emperor that your Veteran can aim.
Summary:
By taking these 4 builds in tandem you will have the most optimally specialised compostion, well-equipped for dealing with any number of threats at any ranges and rapidly eliminating threats while maintaining squad-cohesion and multiple failsafes for "oh shit" situations. If you haven't already tried out one of these builds, I recommend you do.
submitted by TehKingofPrussia to DarkTide [link] [comments]
I am not sure how qualified 750 hours make me to make claims about the best builds in the game, but I feel confident enough about making my case as to post it here. I play exclusively on Auric Quickplay, simply fighting wherever The Emperor sends my way.
Here are my suggestions:
Veteran: Anti-Gunner Gunner
How: Recon Lasgun (mark VII), Combat Shovel, left side talents, Krak Grenade.
Why: Someone on the team has to deal with shooters+gunners etc. and Veteran is simply the best at it when correctly specialised, and thus, this duty falls on his/her shoulders.
Either the whole team shares this responsibility with well-rounded builds, or in a team of specialists, one needs to take on the responsibility to focus hard on things that could shoot the team to shreds. Gunners and Shotgunners especially can instantly delete a player if just one gets close enough to the team, and Gunners+Shooters at range forming dealdy "shooting galleries" is one of the biggest threats to an un-coordinated team, I find.
Details:
Left-side talents give amazing damage boosts in various ways, but with most weapons, overkill becomes an issue...hence Recon Lasgun being the choice, as it's low base damage coupled with rapid fire and the burn stack on crit gives it insane, high-precision dps with minimal overkill, high efficiency and a very-very large magazine, allowing you to single-handedly wipe a whole gallery of shooter+gunners, keeping your Preachers and Ogryns nice and hole-free.
Your teammates may not realise how much easier the game is without getting shot to shit, but every time you pop your "F" and annihilate 30 yellow targets, you will know how much work you're really doing.
Your trusty shovel can 1 shot muties with its special attack (forget the exact type) and by giving it bonus damage vs infested it becomes an amazing self-defence tool, allowing you to rapidly and safely clear large numbers of powalkers.
2nd choice: Hellbore Lasgun with a very similar build and Frag Grenades instead. The idea is similar, but this time you really focus hard on elites and specialists of all types. Amongst other things, a proper Hellbore Lasgun build allows you to one shot Crushers in just 1 second, much faster and with greater precision than even Plasma.
Ogryn: Ammo Pig
How: Ripper Gun (Mark 2), Shovel, Big Grenade, Ranged Ulti, mixed talents, mainly right side.
Why: As I was experimenting with various Ogryn builds, I've always found myself reaching for my Gun, whenever the going got tough...simply put, your damage output is the highest if you go all-in on daka. While Veteran focuses on things that shoot back, Ogryn focuses at annihilating everything else that doesn't by laying down devastating automatic canister fire.
Taking the ranged ultimate also allows you to annihilate heavily armored targets with your ranged weapon and also reload near-instantly, allowing you to reliably shut down massive armored deathballs.
Details:
Mainly right-hand-side talents and in general, talents that maximise your damage output, damage versus elites, bit of rending from bottom left-side etc. Mark 2 Ripper gun for maximum close-range devastation, shovel for self-defence and a Big Grenade for those situations when you really need to make your point clear to the Enemies of Mankind.
2nd choice: Doctor Boom build with a focus on Grenade Launcher and taking similar ranged focused talents on the right side of the tree. This build feels outright unfair against large concentrations of heretics, but suffers from low efficiency vs. individual, low-priority targets such as shooters. Taking a GL makes you heavily dependent on the rest of your team clearing out pesky minor-threats, thus conserving your ammo for the really tough situations.
Psyker: Utility Mage
How: Voidstrike Staff, Force Sword (Mark V), Bubble ult, Smite for Blitz, going left-mid-left overall
Why: Psyker has a lot of interesting options at their disposal, but this build provides such an immense amount of utility for the team that I find it a must-have in all teamcomps. Bubble can save the team from a crapton of nasty surprises and allows you+your teammates to comfortably out-shoot the shooting gallery. Especially useful if you lack a veteran or anyone else dedicated to playing anti-shooter.
Smite can shut down a near infinite number of extremely dangerous elite enemies and is hands-down the best answer to Bulwarks, bar none. (because it instantly shuts down nearly any number of them, allowing you to ignore them and focus on actual threats).
These 2 abilities together can, in the blink of an eye, provide instant protection to the entire team from 90% of threats, while doing this consistently and well. No other build in the game can shut down this many problems, this quickly, this easily. While you may not "kill" said threats, you will buy your teammates invaluable time to do so. Amazing answer to Snipers and Bombers especially.
They (our Blitz and Ability) are best rounded out by a Voidstrike as a choice of weapon for its versatility, as well as a Marc V Force Sword for self-defence, anti-mutie and crusher purposes.
Details:
Unlike the last 2 builds, this one mainly focuses on utility, control and protections rather than killing and yet can still kill a large number of enemies even at extreme ranges and can reliably, albeit somewhat slowly, deal with almost any threat, even by themselves. Their achilles heel is Monstrosities, but that's ok, Veteran and Ogryn can shred those quickly.
Voidstrike is an incredible answer to hordes and the best anti-horde weapon outside of flamethrower range that remains potent against high-priority long-range threats, such as Gunners and Snipers.
2nd choice: Surge Mage is a more aggressive choice, focused on killing Elites quickly. This build can kill very dangerous targets very quickly and is unqestionably a great choice, I simply think that other classes can be just as good killers as Surge Mage, but no class can provide utility for the team as well as the Utility Mage can. (and that this utlity is extremely valuable in keeping the team alive). Similar reasoning to why Veteran gets to be the anti-shooter: they are simply "best in class."
Zealot: Crit Healer
How: Heavy Eviscerator XV, Stub Revolver IIa, Icon Ult, Stun Grenade, Blazing Piety, going left-mid-left overall (important to pick up Scourge from top right!)
Why: Zealot walks into a bar and dumps a crapton of super high-impact abilities onto the table, nearly collapsing the table and making the rest of his team blush. It's not a joke, that's just what they do. Icon ult Zealot is the guy who, upon finding himself in the "Parry this, you casual" Dark Souls meme where the guy pulls out the Machine Gun/Sniper rifle, proceeds to say "ok" and does exactly that. A must have in all teams in my opinion.
For starters, the Icon ult is one of the best if not the best in the game, not only does it shut down EVERYTHING, COMPLETELY (bar Chaos Spawns and Beasts of Nurgle), but it also tops up your team and reduces chip damage, gives them a damage boost and is insanely spammable, giving your team very long periods of invulnerability or big beautiful yellow toughness bars.
Stun Grenade is the best grenade in the game, trumping even the Ogryns Big Grenade (since it does almost the same thing, but comes in packs of 3 instead of 1) and can stop even the nastiest wall of armored heretics pushing your team, or shut down half of a shooting gallery, allowing your team to close the gap.
Eviscerator XV is the best melee weapon vs poxwalker hordes bar none, in fact, with this build we will be using these hordes to rapidly regain our Icon ultimate, allowing us to spam it every 10 seconds, making the team insanely tanky and significantly raising the margin of error in the team's favor. Simply an incredible way of keeping your team safe, while suppressing the foul heretic.
Details: This build is the most particular out of all of them, focusing on maximising crit chance as much as possible and using bottom-left talent "Invocation of Death" which causes crits to recharge our ultimate. By repeatedly spanking a large wave of tightly packed heretics, our ultimate returns at alarming speeds, filling 1/4 of the way with each lucky swing.
Revolver can be quickly pulled out to headshot the odd high-threat heretic and help your Veteran manage shooting galleries and specials. They can do decent damage vs. Crushers, but are not very efficient due to high ammo cost involved (takes 2-3 headshots).
2nd Choice: Flamethrower+Hammer+Charge build is a close second, but struggles against spread-out long-range shooters and becomes similarly vulnerable to them as the Grenade Launcher Ogryn. While taking Knives can somewhat help with this issue, they are simply too weak and the opportunity cost of not taking OP Stun Grenades is far too big to justify them...you'd rather take the vulnerability and pray to the Emperor that your Veteran can aim.
Summary:
By taking these 4 builds in tandem you will have the most optimally specialised compostion, well-equipped for dealing with any number of threats at any ranges and rapidly eliminating threats while maintaining squad-cohesion and multiple failsafes for "oh shit" situations. If you haven't already tried out one of these builds, I recommend you do.
2024.06.01 16:29 Mini_Tonk Ficnapped! Hazardous Recovery - Playing Dungeons and Dragons with Space Sheep
(Cong Rats u/Xerxes250! You've been FICNAPPED, EKEKEKEK! Thanks to u/Espazilious, u/CaptainMatthew1, and u/T00Dense for supporting me in Group 3 of the Ficnapping!
That's right, I've Ficnapped Hazardous Recovery, a very well-written fic. I'd recommend it to those looking for a more... tech-inspired fic.
So, enjoy the dumb stuff.)
-====================================-
Memory Transcription Subject: Kimmich, currently dying inside
Date [standardized human time]: October 25, 2136
If I had been made aware that one of the first days we were on Earth was going to be spent sitting in a predator's house, looking at sheets of paper, and listening to said predator prattle on about silly plastic shapes with numbers on them I'd have refused the trip as a whole. The whole concept seemed like a massive waste of time, not only for us but for him too. Unfortunately, I was trapped here by the whims of Vemnka and Sevkan, and they never let up a chance to see new human past times.
Andre, for his part, had been slow with us, letting us ease into the new living situation with relative laxity on where we were allowed to go. We'd already watched a few movies, played a few "video games", and even listened to some of his music. It was... enjoyable. Even with the obvious attempts to cover up a whole heap of predatory behaviors, Andre had managed to get us feeling somewhat welcome.
Until he had us sit at his kitchen table and write out the Venlilian numerical system, to which he responded with a chuckle, "Looks like Skaven Scratch." He did not elaborate. At first, I thought the exercise was going to be a simple lesson on how to read human numbers. But no, it was far worse. Instead, Andre went to his workshop, scanned all the numbers, and began printing a bunch of geometric prisms with the numbers on them. Vemnka was the first to ask about their purpose as she picked up a dodecahedron, each side holding a numeral.
"Well, I figured we'd play a game, and these," he held up a worn version of the same shape Vemnka was holding, this one with human numbers on it, "are how we play."
Not even a minute later we were watching as he 'rolled' the 'dice' across a little pad on the table. "So, basically, these dice, the 'd6's will help us make our characters. I use the '4d6 minus the lowest rolled' method for stats, but there are other ways to do it."
Sevkan picked up a triangular prism and poked his paw pad with it. "And what about the rest of them," he asked as he tossed the plastic shape onto the pad.
"The one you just rolled is a 'd4', it's a damage dice. Same with the d6, 'd8', 'd10', and 'd12'. This," he held up a dice with ten sides, but with two separate numbers on each face, "is a percentile dice. Helps when I need to see what outcome happens when a random encounter starts, though we'll not be using it because we're doing a oneshot." He flicked it up with a click and caught it. Next, he picked up the same dodecahedron as before and rolled it. "Ouph, nat 1, less than ideal when starting a game."
"What does that mean," I asked, looking down at the twenty-sided dice; the side displaying '1' was facing up.
"A nat 1 is the worst roll on a 'd20'. It's a critical failure, which means if you roll a nat 1, something bad happens." He rolled it again as he talked, "The d20 is the most used dice because it's the 'check dice', you use it to figure out how well you did on an action. For instance," he reached across the table for a sheet of paper. Looking it over, I could see it was a 'character sheet', as Andre called them. "This is the strength stat," He pointed at a block on the left side of the paper, "It shows how strong your character is. If I were to roll this d20 and get a 13, but your strength stat is a 14, plus whatever save modifier you have, then I'd fail the check and either nothing would happen, or you'd get a reaction to my failure." He shifted his weight as he reached for the ground. With a plap, Andre brought up a hardbacked book. My translator had a bit of difficulty translating the text due to the font, but in the end, it spat out 'D&D Player's Handbook'. A small script of subtext under the cover art, which I ignored due to its content, read 'Everything a player needs to create heroic characters for the world's greatest roleplaying game.'
"A roleplaying game," Vamnka asked before Sevkan or I could formulate the words.
"Yep! A TTRPG, Dungeons and Dragons, D&D. I played this once or twice before my accident with the reactor room, but I think I still remember enough to DM for it."
This time Sevkan asked the question, "TTRPG and DM?"
"Tabletop roleplaying game, and Dungeon Master. I run the game, so I'm the dungeon master." He laid out three sets of three pieces of paper at each seat. It had the same words and markings as the one before him. "So, as I said, we're doing a one-shot because I can't be bothered with doing a whole ass campaign. Plus you won't be here forever and we have work to do at some point."
"I'll be making your characters with input from each of you. We're doing basic fifth edition rules because the newer editions, sixth up to ninth, all suck." He grabbed four of the d6 and held them aloft, looking at Sevkan, then Vemnka, and finally landing his gaze on me. I felt my fur rise but paid it no mind as he looked down at the dice before him. "Vemnka, you're going first." He picked up and tossed the dice to Vemnka who scrambled to grab all four before they had a chance to fall off the table.
"So, I just... toss them?" The quizzical flap of her left ear was met by a curt nod from Andre. "Alright," she said as her paw flicked the dice across the table. One landed on 1, another on 2, another on 3, and the final one on 6. "Twelve in total," she announced.
"Good, now remove the lowest number rolled and mark it down somewhere on the back of your sheet."
After five more rolls, Vemnka's stats totaled 11 in strength, 15 in intelligence, another 15 in constitution, 16 in wisdom, 16 in charisma, and 13 in dexterity.
Next was my turn. I rolled a 13, which I put into dexterity, a 14 in constitution, a 15 in charisma, a 16 in strength, another 16 in wisdom, and a 12 in intelligence.
Finally, Sevkan rolled a 12, which was placed in dexterity, a 13 in charisma, a 16 in constitution, a 10 in both wisdom and intelligence and, as Andre put it, the ever elusive 18 was put in strength.
With all that tedious, boring, unimportant, and downright torturous work out of the way, now was the time to get into character creation. Andre gave us the book to look over and told us to ask any questions we wanted if we needed to. I pulled up my pad's visual translator and began skimming the text.
-====================================-
Memory Transcription Subject: Vemnka, having the time of her life!
The book wasn't big, not by a long shot. I'd read books three to four times as long in [a day] or two. What the book contained, however, was an entirely different story. It wasn't just a rulebook, or handbook, as the cover suggested, it was a way to shape the wild imagination, to tame the itch to create.
And by the stars am I creating!
Andre told us we'd start by choosing class, race, and background. Of course, we had no idea what that meant, so he took us through it one at a time at a leisurely pace. He flipped through the book's pages before landing near the beginning, showcasing a stout-looking human with the undertext 'Dwarf' printed to the left.
After running through all of the vaguely human-like races to pick and a few classes that would shape our table-side adventure, I'd chosen to be a gnome cleric, which was a humorous choice. Andre said I'd primarily be healing, helping my team by keeping them in battle. I didn't mind the idea of being a sideliner, as long as I could help.
Dad had chosen to be a human 'paladin'. Andre explained that the term equated pretty easily to a form of holy guardian, in the form of a mortal, who the god of their faith gifted to defend those around them. Dad thought is was a pretty cool idea, especially the idea of "burning heretics away with holy fire," as Andre put it. It took him a bit longer to choose his race because he kept returning to the page with the almost-Arxur-looking Dragonborn. Still, after some coaxing, he finally let up on whatever was going on in his head and chose the easiest option, and the one Andre had recommended.
Finally, Sevkan had looked a bit farther into the game itself, finding a non-classified databook called "Player's Companion". Andre described it as a supplemental read, adding a bit more variety to the already large amount of options presented in the Player's Handbook. Sevkan took one look at it and immediately chose the Aarakocra, causing Andre to flinch. He said it'd be fine because the Aarakocra looked nothing like Krakotl, but Sevkan still apologized as best he could. He chose the fighter class, which was about as self-explanatory as possible.
Next was backgrounds, I chose to be an acolyte. It made sense in my head that a religious healer would have a background in religion. Dad leaned toward Folk Hero as his background, an option that both he and Andrew agreed would suit his character. Sev chose to be a hermit, which caught me and dad off guard after Andre gave us a rough rundown of what it was. An isolationist fighter, the sort of stuff that got you locked away.
"Alright," Andre said, leaning forward, looking between each of us again. I noticed Dad's fur rise a bit less than last time. Progress is progress. "We've got a Gnome Cleric, a Human Paladin, and an Aarakocra Fighter. Pretty good party dynamics for your first time even hearing about DnD. Now, for the most part, we've done everything we need to do together. From here you would have normally gone through stats and equipment, but I don't want to, and this is a oneshot so those aren't that important. Vem, on that last sheet, please mark down 'Spare the Dying', 'Sacred Flame', and 'Guidance'. Kimmich, on your last sheet, mark down 'Lay on Hands', 'Divine Smite', and 'Divine Sense'. Sev... you can just throw that sheet away. You won't be moving past where you are now."
Sevkan looked down at the sheet with a hint of sadness. To be fair to him, 'Spare the Dying' and 'Divine Smite' sounded cool, but before I could ask what they meant, Dad beat me to it. "What are these for? What do you mean?"
Andre rolled a D20 absent-mindedly, "Spare the Dying is a Cleric Cantrip that stabilizes a person who's taken fatal damage and is rolling death saves. Divine Smite is that whole 'BURN IN HOLY FIRE' thing I was talking about. Depending on how you flavor it, it's you wrapping your weapon in divine fire and burning away at your enemy's soul."
Despite his previous misgivings, ones which were practically plastered over his fur, Dad seemed honestly interested in the concept behind the Divine Smite. "And I just get to use it? Any time I want?"
"Well, not really." Andre pointed a finger toward me. "She has three cantrips which can be used at any time, you only have two. Divine Smite is an actual spell, as in its magic that requires you to utilize a spell slot. Lay on Hands is a contrip that can heal and Divine Sense allows you to detect certain types of creatures based on their alignment. Good and Evil in particular."
Sev spoke up, displaying confusion with his ears. "So why don't I get any spells or cantrips?" There was a degree of disappointment in his voice.
Andre leaned back with a chuckle, flexing his dexterous prosthetics as he clutched the d20 he'd been rolling. "Because, as a fighter, you probably have the most useful ability of them all. It's called 'Second Wind' and its essentially Lay on Hands but only you gain from it. It's an ability you can only use once per short rest, which we won't be needing to get into, which heals you for 1d10 plus your level, which all of you will be set at level 2.
"Again, we won't need much of the stuff in the books because this is A. Your first time and I want it to be fun, and B. A oneshot where nothing matters and we're here to have a good time. So, real quick," Andre grabbed a d8s and a d10 and began rolling them. "Vem," the d8 clacked across the table, landing on a 4, "you've got 15 health total. Because you're a light class, always expect to be on the lower side of health. Kimmich, you've got," he rolled the d10, it landed on an 8, "20 health, not a bad roll. And finally Sevkan," the d10 rolled across the table once more, the 5 side facing up. "18 health. Not too bad either, given your ability to heal yourself."
"How did you get those numbers," I asked, looking across the table at each of our sheets.
"While you all were reading, I put your modifiers where they belong, and changed what needed to be changed with your stats." Andre leaned over and pointed at Dad's sheet, "I increased each of your scores by one because you're human." He moved to mine, "I increased your intelligence by two." Then he moved to Sevkan's "And I increased your dexterity by 2 and wisdom by one. I made a slight mistake when asking you guys to roll, as usually, you'd choose race and class before putting your stat rolls anywhere, but you all seem to have put them in pretty good spots."
The three of us gave Andre amused looks, to which he raised an eyebrow. "Humans get an additional point in everything?" Sev asked with a small whistling laugh.
"Oh, uh. Yeah, now that there are actual other intelligent races in the galaxy that doesn't look too good does it?"
"It's fine," I said. It was plenty understandable, thinking you're the best at everything you do when there's no one to compare to. "So are we going to start?"
"Yep! Just one more thing. Weapons and armor are important to this, even if you don't have to use them all the time." Andre flipped to a page with a list of item names which I couldn't make ears or tails of. I recognized 'sword', 'bow', and 'spear' as ancient primitive weapons, but other than that everything else escaped me.
"I'm noting a lot of confusion. Anything you need to know?" Andre looked at us expectantly.
"What's a 'maul'," came Sevkan's response.
"Oh, that's a term for a large, two-handed warhammer. Usually, it's depicted as spiked on both ends. Imagine a very large, very crude sledgehammer with spikey bits."
"And a 'glaive'?" Dad asked next.
"I assume you know what a sword is?" We flicked our ears in affirmation. "Well, it's essentially a curved sword attached to a pole. It's made to look a specific way, if it wasn't then it'd probably just be called a Dao. Or maybe the Dao would be called a glaive. Maybe Glaive is just a type of polearm. I have no idea. Anyway, to speed this up, I'll be choosing the weapons and armor you can have for you, and don't worry, I'll use your attitudes as a reference for what you get. For you, Vemnka, I think the mace and shield combo will do nicely with the scale mail. Kimmich, you'd work well with two long swords to accompany your chainmail armor. And finally, Sevkan, a halberd with your chainmail will work fine. Sound good to everyone?"
I was a little disappointed at the stolen opportunity to continue building my character, I'd yet to come up with a name or backstory, as I was sure was the norm, but with the idea of starting taking center stage, I couldn't help but wag my tail.
-====================================-
Memory Transcription Subject: Sevkan, going down the rabbit hole
Andre put a thin plastic sheet over most of the table, took out a bundle of markers, and began drawing, much to our collective surprise.
The sheet was was smooth and cool to the touch, though not through any internal system, probably just from the back of the garage where Andre had found it. It had a grid printed over it, which Andre seemed to be using as a guide as he drew a boxy shape, marking certain areas with certain colors. There must have been a system he was following, one that none of us Venlil in the room had managed to pick up on, and we didn't want to interrupt Andre as we worked in case we caused him to mess up.
I looked over my character sheet, made mostly by Andre with small additions I felt like I needed to add. I still felt a little bad for not realizing how raw the image of a Krakotl must have been to Andre as I chose the Aarakocra, but he'd brushed it off swiftly and curtly, clearly not wanting to continue the line of thought. Still, I should've chosen a different race. The goliath looked cool and probably would have been a better fighter than a bird with hollow bones, but I also didn't want to drag the others much longer, so I kept silent.
At long last Andre stood at his full height and analyzed his work. "There we go. The battle map is set up, now for the tokens." He reached into his back pocket and pulled out three little white objects. I immediately recognized them as chess pieces. A rook, a knight, and a bishop were placed on the table, along with a dozen white pawns, some of which came from a different chess set, and four black pawns as well as a black king. The black pawns were marked with the colors, yellow, beige, green, and white. We quietly agreed which pieces we would be. Dad would be the knight, I would be the rook, and Vemnka would be the bishop.
Andre sat down and we began. "Alright, I've decided to pull the classic 'wake up in a tavern' DnD start because it's funny and I also didn't exactly plan this. So here we go. Please leave your questions for after I'm done talking."
"You wake up, each of you, around a wooden table in a comfortable tavern with candles above you and empty tankards before you. You look at each other and recognize if only barely, the friends you made last night through a bout of drinking and dancing. You feel the roaring of a hangover in your head as you each groan and attempt to lift your heads."
Andre pointed at the chess pieces, which must have represented our characters. "Please roll constitution to see if the hangover affects you in any major way. It's a d20 plus the number below the stat itself."
We looked at each other with slight confusion. Not at the command to roll, nor for its circumstance, but for the setting. Is this a human board game? I mean, I guess I expected something more akin to chess. but this is nothing like it. It's so... alien.
Dad rolled his d20 first; it landed on a 16, "An 18?"
"Yep, Kimmich, your character brushes off the hangover with ease. You still feel a buzzing in your head, but other than that, you're fit as a fiddle." Oh, I get it now. How interesting. I could see Dad and Vemnka twitch their ears in understanding as I rolled my d20.
It landed on 8. "Plus two, so an 11."
"Sevkan, your head hurts like hell but you're still able to function to a normal degree. If it weren't for your fellow drunkards you're sure you'd have to stumble around by your lonesome for a while."
Vemnka let out a laugh as she rolled her dice. While she had been aiming for the center of the table, the dice had other plans and shot off to the right, flying off the table and rolling under a stool in the kitchen. "Oops! I'll get it," she said, jumping out of her seat and lifting the stool. "It landed on 19," she beeped excitedly.
"Nope," Andre said, much to our surprise. "Rule two of dice: if it goes off the table, its results are null. I didn't make that rule, but I still follow it. Roll again."
Vemnka's ears drooped a bit, but she set herself and climbed back into her seat to roll again. This time the dice did as it was meant to and rolled across the table without falling off. It landed on... "A nat 20!"
"No shit?" Andre lept out of his chair to peer across the table toward the dice. "Well, I'll be damned, a 19 and a 20 in succession. Well, I guess you're just better than those other two. Your character's hangover is completely gone, you felt it for all but a second as you raise your head to see your Aarakocra companion still struggling with his."
"Is there anything I can do to help him?" She asked. Andre's lip curled upward slightly.
"Now you're getting it. It's a role-playing game. You have your roles, the ones you set up for yourself, and now you get to play them. And yes, there is something you can do to help. Roll me a medicine check. I'll add your modifier myself." The sound of a die rattling across the table ended with... "Another Nat 20?!"
We jumped at Andre's incredulous shout as he glared at the die before him. He seemed more angry at the dice than at Vemnka so I assumed we were probably not in trouble. How can we be? We didn't do anything that would make him angry. Why's he yelling?
"Sorry, but the chance of rolling two nat 20s in a row, while not astronomical, is pretty fucking low. Something like a one in four hundred chance, maybe more," Andre said, sitting back down and sighing deeply. "It's fine, just funny is all. Usually, RNJesus is on the DM's side, not the party's. Kinda nice to see a change of pace."
"RNJesus," we asked collectively.
"Don't worry about it, let's continue. Vemnka, you put your hand on Sevkan's shoulder and do some voodoo magic bullshit and pray to your god to heal his aching body. Miraculously, it works and Sevkan sits upright feeling light as a feather. The Aarakocra's headache is now on par with Kimmich's."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that, now let's get on with it. As Sevkan gets up and shakes off the remaining ebbing in his head, you all notice five less-than-reputable figures sitting in a booth at the far end of the tavern. Each wears a hood or cowl accompanied by a cloak, which hides their race and weapons from you, however, you can tell that one of them is considerably larger than the others. If you had to, you'd place it at about 226 cm (7'5") while those around it are around the average human height of 180 cm (6'0"). Roll me perception too."
We looked at each other at the description but shrugged it off as we rolled. I rolled a 7, Dad rolled a 19, and Vemnka rolled a 17.
"Both of you," he said, pointing at Vemnka and Dad with one hand, "See that they are pointing in your direction while the big one holds a piece of paper in his hand. It shows artistic renditions of the three of you, along with a long string of words you can't make out from your current distance. Kimmich, you hear them talking about a bounty and that you are the specified targets. Now it's time for you to react, how do you want to move forward?"
"Well," Vemnka said nervously. I could see her tail flick in my direction, looking for guidance, but I had none. "I suppose I'll confront them? I'm not sure what a bounty is exactly..."
"Really?"
We looked at Andre and the obviousness of the situation. If we didn't know what a word was, we knew it must have been predatory. "Right, sorry. Bounties are orders given to hired people to hunt people. For one reason or another, if someone wants someone dead then they'll place a bounty on their head. I'm not sure if it was ever actually a thing, but bounty hunters were popular during the Wild West days of the US. They usually brought criminals in for trial though, and usually didn't kill them."
"Okay, but why do they want us dead," Dad asked, his ears falling back slightly.
"That's the neat part, you have no idea," Andre said as he leaned forward and moved the green-tipped black pawn a space on the map. "Vemnka, as you get up, you notice that one of the figures is moving towards the door with slight urgency. Before you can make a move, however, the large figure stands up and doffs his cloak, revealing the tattooed grey skin of a Goliath wielding a greatsword in the executioner's style. He shouts over the tavern for everyone other than your group to leave immediately as things are about to get bloody. His three other goons, the one moving toward the door exempt, move in unison towards you. Roll initiative. It's a d20, same as all the others."
I looked toward my sister to see her tail freaking out, her bishop is the closest to the enemy party, meaning she was more likely to be targeted first. I had to protect her, not only because of our sibling relationship but also because she could heal us if we got hurt. The three of us rolled as one, I got a 10, Dad a 14, and Vemnka got a 4. Andre himself rolled a few dice before moving the chess pieces into place and writing down something on a sheet of paper. "Alright, perfect. Initiative rolled, time to start combat. First up, yellow pawn."
He moved the pawn toward Vemnka's bishop, immediately putting her in danger. "One of the vagabonds rushes you, Vemnka, and you see the flash of Tabaxi claws as they raise their hand to strike at you." Andre's dice rolled, clattering to a halt inside the pad on his end, obscuring the results. "Does a 14 hit?"
"How do I check that," she asked, her tail going even crazier. Though, I couldn't tell if it was excitement or panic.
"AC," Andre responded flatly, "Armor Class."
"Right, yep." She looked down at her paper and flicked he ears 'no' then shook her head.
"The Tabaxi's claws swipe right above your head and miss by a hair. You can even feel the air move past you as you flinch backward. Next, the Goliath moves toward you, hefting his greatsword. Kimmich, if looks could kill, you'd be halfway to Valhalla by now. He glares at you with a mighty fire in his eyes. It's hard to tell, but you think he might have it out for you. He takes a swing with his sword and..." Andre rolled and looked back up at the table, his eyes focusing rather intensely on the black king representing the Goliath. "Meh, Nat 1. He swings and you dodge, causing his swing to miss wildly and land on the Tabaxi nearby. She takes," he rolls, "A sizable chunk of damage as blood flows from her lower abdomen."
"Wouldn't she be writhing in pain right now," Dad asked, pointing to the yellow-topped pawn.
"In real life? Yes. Here? I control the game, and while she is certainly hurt, she still has enough will to fight. Money is a powerful incentive for some people, especially bandits and vagabonds. Next, Sevkan, you notice the flash of steel as a dehooded human rushes you with a shortsword in hand. He has a keen eye and sharp nose, but your reflexes are faster as you dodge his swipe. He stumbles a bit, but recovers before you have a chance to harm him." Andre looks at Dad, who doesn't even seem to register the human's gaze as he looks over his sheet. "Kimmich, it's your turn. You can attack, retreat, use a spell-"
"Divine smite the Goliath, I'll use Divine Smite on the Goliath."
Andre lets out a chuckling laugh, "Now we're talkin'. Let's do this. Roll for attack."
Dad rolled, and I watched as the dice skipped across the table and finally landed on 11. "Plus five, so 16."
"Very good, that is a successful hit. Please roll both damage and the Divine Smite's 2d8."
Dad rolled his d8 three separate times, coalescing in a massive 18 damage, a 7, an 8, and a 3. "18 damage total against the Goliath."
Andre did a weird whistle as he marked down the information on what I could only assume was the stat sheet for the enemies. "18 against big guy. Sevkan, your turn. D-"
"Actually," Dad interrupted, "it says here that I have an extra action and a bonus action."
"Oh."
"So I'm going to attack him again."
"Okay."
Dad rolled another d8 which landed 6 side up. "Another six damage and I end my turn."
"Thank you, finally. Sevkan, go, please. Attack or... Well, all you can do is attack." Andre leaned back in his chair, stare planted squarely on me. I looked down at my sheet for any actions I had. I had a normal and bonus action, and that was it. I looked at the section marked features and traits and noticed that I could do three actions with action surge. "Alright, I'll attack three times. Twice with my halberd using action surge and once with that dagger, you forgot to give everyone that we all had the option to take." I glared right back at him.
"Yes, I didn't give you all the tools you could have had because it would have just wasted more time. But fine, if you want to use it, fine. It's a d6 slashing damage."
I rolled the 2d10 for damage. One landed on 8 while the other landed on 9. My d6 lands true on a 4. "21 damage to the beige-tipped pawn. That's the human, right?"
"Yep," Andre nodded as he wrote down the damage. "You take two swipes at the human with your halberd, both connect with both his arms and torso, slowing him considerably. It's only when he remains standing that you pull your dagger from its sheath and plunge it into his chest. You miss his heart by millimeters, but it does the job as he collapses in a pool of blood. Congrats, first knockout of the game."
I shudder at Andre's description of my character, who might as well be interchangeable with a Krakotl, killing a man. A human, for that matter. I look over to see Dad glaring daggers at Andre and Vemnka staring at me worriedly. I wave her off with my tail and focus back on Andre.
"Retribution is in store for you, though, as an Elf leaps over a table with two daggers drawn, ready to avenge her slain comrade. She..." Andre rolls and whoops as he punches a fist into the air. "She comes down with blinding speed and rakes her metal blades across your chest," He rolls again and lets out a slightly disappointed 'oh' before continuing. "You take a total of 8 damage from the Elf's daggers."
Andre, once again, leans forward, this time to remove the beige-tipped pawn from the table and replace it with a red cross, as well as move the green tipped toward where all the white pawns were. I assumed the gap in the markings must have been a door, as Andre had moved all the white pawns out of it when combat started. The green pawn must be escaping or blocking ours. Either way, we have to deal with the three remaining in front of us before we can handle that one.
"I see gears turning, always a good sign, but let's continue. Vemnka your combat turn. Make it count. You can use your bonus action to heal or attack with your mace, it doesn't matter as long as you do a different action when using it."
Vemnka looks over at me, then to the board with a contemplative look. "I'd like to use my first action to bless the two of them, then I'd like to use my bonus action to bonk the -what did you call it?"
"A Tabaxi."
"Yeah, that, I want to bonk that." Her tail swayed with contentment as she rolled her damage dice. It rolled into the batch of white pawns before landing on 6.
"Ouph, 'fraid that's not gonna be enough to hit anyone, but, Kimmich, Sevkan, both of you can now roll a d4 to accompany your attack roll." He flicked his d4 into the air but somehow missed it as it fell. It clattered onto the table and got flung into the living room as Andre tried to grab it. "Fuck, alright, hold on. Damned carpet's gonna be the death of me."
He went looking for the die, leaving us Venlil staring at the table before us.
"So what do you think," I asked abruptly.
"I don't know," Dad responded, his tone careful but gruff. "It's very clearly predatory. I mean, we wake up in a tavern after a night of drinking so hard our heads feel like they're about to explode and once the hangover clears we've got a band of roughnecks out for blood from the get-go." He squinted at the chess pieces representing our characters, they were all next to each other. "And I can't even really argue that we should stop because I'm fine with what's being depicted. Even if his description of you... knocking out that human was a bit over the top, I think that's the point."
"I agree," Vemnka spoke up, "The whole game is very fantastical, not meant to be compared to real life. I mean, sure, the concept of bounty hunters is a real thing, but I don't think there are humans as tall as that Goliath walking around. Or whatever a Tabaxi is."
"Fantastical and weird. If those don't describe humanity, I don't know what does," I said with a bemused flick of my tail.
"How about tired of hearing you talk about me behind my back," Andre's voice shouted from behind the couch, where he was scrounging for the lost die. Finally, he seemed to have found it, poking his head out from the backrest and looking over at us. "I'm joking of course, I don't mind at all. Unless you're insulting my taste in music, then we'll have a problem."
"I-I mean it's just-"
"Not for everyone, yadda yadda yadda. Anyway," Andre stood up, holding the d4 in his hand. "Lets continue. Tabaxi time." He took his seat and leaned forward to adjust the white pawns before rolling the hit dice. "Bruh. Another Nat 1. And here I was imagining the Goliath and Tabaxi to be the leaders of the group. Whatever. The Tabaxi attempts another swipe at you, or so it appears because she ends up cat-scratching the arm of the Goliath next to her. That's five damage, and it moves to the Goliath who is slightly pissed at everyone except for the Elf, who's, y'know, actually put in some work. The Goliath makes a wide swing, hoping to cut you all down in one fell swoop." He rolls the d20 three more times, once with a 'whoop' of success, another with a 'aww' of failure, and a final with a 'oh come the fuck on.' I could only assume it was a horrible failure. Andre's sigh fills the room. "Alright, Kimmich, you take 18 damage, he crit succeeded. Sevkan, you take no damage, and instead duck low as the swipe passes over you. Vemnka, you feel the blade move over you, but it does not connect due to your short stature. No, instead, he once again hits the fucking Tabaxi with his swing because he crit failed. Again. And because the human is no longer available to fight, it's now your turn Kimmich."
"I would like to smite again."
"Oh fuck, right you get two 1st level spell slots." Andre almost sounded annoyed when it was brought up, but relented nonetheless. "Take the hit dice."
Dad rolled, and it landed on 14. He rolled the d4 for the blessing Vemnka gave us. It landed on a 3. "Plus the five-"
"Yeah, yeah, it hits. Roll me damage."
"I'm sensing some hostilities from you," Dad said smugly.
"I'm starting to understand why my DMs hated being DMs, that's all. Please, fuck up that Goliath." And so he did, rolling a 15 in total. "You swing one of your longswords upward and cleave the Goliath's jaw in two, but he does not die. A mere flesh wound such as that would do little to dampen the giant-kin's will. No, what killed him was the bright light that engulfed his head after the strike landed. His face was the first to go as he tried to breathe through the holy flames surrounding him. His screams ended abruptly as his larynx melted away, leaving only writhing agony. He died a pitiable death in all fairness, as any sinner does. The second knockout of the game goes to Kimmich. Yay."
Again, the feeling of discomfort appeared as Andre described in unnecessary detail the visual of... someone burning alive. Oh stars, he planned that out, didn't he?
"Let's move on. Sev, your turn. First, lemme see you all roll perception again."
I rolled a 10 while both Dad and Vemnka rolled 16s. Adding modifiers made their 16s into 19s. "Alright. Again, Vemnka and Kimmich only, you see the figure who'd been moving toward the door at the beginning of the fight, now make a break for it as the Goliath collapses into a burnt-out husk. His hood is removed by the movement revealing it to be a green-scaled Dragonborn." Andre moves the Dragonborn's piece next to the door and through it, stopping it just within our sightlines. "He has a chance to escape, will you let him?" He looked at us expectantly.
I turned to Dad to see him eyeing the piece like a fresh firefruit. "Dad, no. If he leaves then that leaves the Elf and the Tub- Taba- Tabasi, whatever it's called. We can end this soon." Vemnka put her tail on his shoulder in an attempt to get his attention. He flinches at the touch and lowers his raised fur.
"Yes, yeah. Let him go," he says hoarsely.
"Alright, letting the Dragonborn go. Now it's Sev's turn. Go ahead and do something about his pesky elf." Andre moves the Elf's pawn a bit to put it back on the right square.
I shrug, attempting to fight off the conflicting feelings. On one paw, it's a game and no one is going to get hurt by me doing these things. But on the other, if I do this willingly does that make me any better than someone who would kill in real life?
Andre's voice snapped me out of my stupor. "Don't overthink it. It's a game, and this situation is self-defence. Kimmich is the only person here who's killed someone so far. The human will probably live in prison and the Dragonborn might find new meaning in life. It's not like any of this properly reflects the real world anyway. Just focus on the game, nothing more, nothing less."
I shook my body to rid myself of those thoughts and rolled my d20 and d4 from the blessing. "18 to hit."
"And hit it does. Halberd is a go!"
With another roll, it lands on a zero. "Got a 0?"
"Oh, yeah, the model I imposed the numbers on only uses one character for each side, but that's a 10. Good roll. Elf takes 10 damage and doesn't like you right now. I'm super tired of talking, so I'll just roll the hit dice. She attacks you for 19. Your AC is 19. Meets it beats it, that's a hit. Rolling damage, she lands a solid blow of 9 damage for her twin daggers. Now both you and Kimmich should have 3 health. Vem, your turn."
"Hit the tab?"
"Hit the tab."
"Hitting tab." Vemnka rolled her d20 and it landed on a 19. "19 plus whatever, I already know it hits."
"That it does," Andre responded. With a flick of his wrist, he knocks over the Tabaxi's pawn and places a cross where it was, he does the same with the Goliath's king. "Wait, why did you do that? I hadn't rolled damage."
"The Tabaxi had one health, there's no feasible way you do zero damage when rolling a dice with no zero on it. Anyway, let's wrap this up, it feels like we've been at this forever. Kimmich, your turn."
Dad sighed a deep whistling sigh. "I'll just roll to attack the Elf." He rolled his two dice, one landed on a 12 and the other landed on a 7, plus the 5 to his hits. "17 and 12. Rolling damage for that 17."
"Roll for both, the Elf's AC isn't that high."
"Really," I asked, bewildered.
"Really. The Goliath had the most AC at 16, but meets it beats it and Kimmich met it in the first round." The clack of dice interrupted him as Dad rolled his two damage die. Andre leaned forward to announce the numbers. "A total of 13. Congratulations, the three of you have just won a skewed encounter of DnD."
"Skewed encounter?"
"The Goliath had 40 health while everyone other than the Tabaxi had 20. The Tabaxi had 17. The Goliath had an AC of 16 while the rest had between 12 and 14. At least one of you should have died. I was betting on Kimmich because I had the Goliath go after him, but the nat 1s kinda stopped that from happening." Andre shook his prosthetic hands and brought them up to his chin. "Anyway, I'm dead tired. Never want to do that again, ever."
"I can't say I'm in the same cruiser as you, I found it quite fun, even with the gruesome descriptions," I said, probably unconvincingly. I did have fun, but it was a lot to take in all at once.
"I had fun too. Just, if we do do this again, try to tone back the predatory stuff. The fighting was fine, but the description was a bit... spot on I think." Vemnka's tail curled a bit as she probably imagined the images Andre described in her head.
Dad only gave a small 'hmph' as he scooted off his chair and went toward our rooms.
"Well," Andre started, "that's about what I expected from a bunch of scared space sheep."
I let out a whistle as Vemnka gently lowered herself to the ground, marched up to Andre, and bopped him on the thigh with all her might.
===================END=TRANSCRIPTION===================
submitted by Mini_Tonk to NatureofPredators [link] [comments]
That's right, I've Ficnapped Hazardous Recovery, a very well-written fic. I'd recommend it to those looking for a more... tech-inspired fic.
So, enjoy the dumb stuff.)
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Memory Transcription Subject: Kimmich, currently dying inside
Date [standardized human time]: October 25, 2136
If I had been made aware that one of the first days we were on Earth was going to be spent sitting in a predator's house, looking at sheets of paper, and listening to said predator prattle on about silly plastic shapes with numbers on them I'd have refused the trip as a whole. The whole concept seemed like a massive waste of time, not only for us but for him too. Unfortunately, I was trapped here by the whims of Vemnka and Sevkan, and they never let up a chance to see new human past times.
Andre, for his part, had been slow with us, letting us ease into the new living situation with relative laxity on where we were allowed to go. We'd already watched a few movies, played a few "video games", and even listened to some of his music. It was... enjoyable. Even with the obvious attempts to cover up a whole heap of predatory behaviors, Andre had managed to get us feeling somewhat welcome.
Until he had us sit at his kitchen table and write out the Venlilian numerical system, to which he responded with a chuckle, "Looks like Skaven Scratch." He did not elaborate. At first, I thought the exercise was going to be a simple lesson on how to read human numbers. But no, it was far worse. Instead, Andre went to his workshop, scanned all the numbers, and began printing a bunch of geometric prisms with the numbers on them. Vemnka was the first to ask about their purpose as she picked up a dodecahedron, each side holding a numeral.
"Well, I figured we'd play a game, and these," he held up a worn version of the same shape Vemnka was holding, this one with human numbers on it, "are how we play."
Not even a minute later we were watching as he 'rolled' the 'dice' across a little pad on the table. "So, basically, these dice, the 'd6's will help us make our characters. I use the '4d6 minus the lowest rolled' method for stats, but there are other ways to do it."
Sevkan picked up a triangular prism and poked his paw pad with it. "And what about the rest of them," he asked as he tossed the plastic shape onto the pad.
"The one you just rolled is a 'd4', it's a damage dice. Same with the d6, 'd8', 'd10', and 'd12'. This," he held up a dice with ten sides, but with two separate numbers on each face, "is a percentile dice. Helps when I need to see what outcome happens when a random encounter starts, though we'll not be using it because we're doing a oneshot." He flicked it up with a click and caught it. Next, he picked up the same dodecahedron as before and rolled it. "Ouph, nat 1, less than ideal when starting a game."
"What does that mean," I asked, looking down at the twenty-sided dice; the side displaying '1' was facing up.
"A nat 1 is the worst roll on a 'd20'. It's a critical failure, which means if you roll a nat 1, something bad happens." He rolled it again as he talked, "The d20 is the most used dice because it's the 'check dice', you use it to figure out how well you did on an action. For instance," he reached across the table for a sheet of paper. Looking it over, I could see it was a 'character sheet', as Andre called them. "This is the strength stat," He pointed at a block on the left side of the paper, "It shows how strong your character is. If I were to roll this d20 and get a 13, but your strength stat is a 14, plus whatever save modifier you have, then I'd fail the check and either nothing would happen, or you'd get a reaction to my failure." He shifted his weight as he reached for the ground. With a plap, Andre brought up a hardbacked book. My translator had a bit of difficulty translating the text due to the font, but in the end, it spat out 'D&D Player's Handbook'. A small script of subtext under the cover art, which I ignored due to its content, read 'Everything a player needs to create heroic characters for the world's greatest roleplaying game.'
"A roleplaying game," Vamnka asked before Sevkan or I could formulate the words.
"Yep! A TTRPG, Dungeons and Dragons, D&D. I played this once or twice before my accident with the reactor room, but I think I still remember enough to DM for it."
This time Sevkan asked the question, "TTRPG and DM?"
"Tabletop roleplaying game, and Dungeon Master. I run the game, so I'm the dungeon master." He laid out three sets of three pieces of paper at each seat. It had the same words and markings as the one before him. "So, as I said, we're doing a one-shot because I can't be bothered with doing a whole ass campaign. Plus you won't be here forever and we have work to do at some point."
"I'll be making your characters with input from each of you. We're doing basic fifth edition rules because the newer editions, sixth up to ninth, all suck." He grabbed four of the d6 and held them aloft, looking at Sevkan, then Vemnka, and finally landing his gaze on me. I felt my fur rise but paid it no mind as he looked down at the dice before him. "Vemnka, you're going first." He picked up and tossed the dice to Vemnka who scrambled to grab all four before they had a chance to fall off the table.
"So, I just... toss them?" The quizzical flap of her left ear was met by a curt nod from Andre. "Alright," she said as her paw flicked the dice across the table. One landed on 1, another on 2, another on 3, and the final one on 6. "Twelve in total," she announced.
"Good, now remove the lowest number rolled and mark it down somewhere on the back of your sheet."
After five more rolls, Vemnka's stats totaled 11 in strength, 15 in intelligence, another 15 in constitution, 16 in wisdom, 16 in charisma, and 13 in dexterity.
Next was my turn. I rolled a 13, which I put into dexterity, a 14 in constitution, a 15 in charisma, a 16 in strength, another 16 in wisdom, and a 12 in intelligence.
Finally, Sevkan rolled a 12, which was placed in dexterity, a 13 in charisma, a 16 in constitution, a 10 in both wisdom and intelligence and, as Andre put it, the ever elusive 18 was put in strength.
With all that tedious, boring, unimportant, and downright torturous work out of the way, now was the time to get into character creation. Andre gave us the book to look over and told us to ask any questions we wanted if we needed to. I pulled up my pad's visual translator and began skimming the text.
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Memory Transcription Subject: Vemnka, having the time of her life!
The book wasn't big, not by a long shot. I'd read books three to four times as long in [a day] or two. What the book contained, however, was an entirely different story. It wasn't just a rulebook, or handbook, as the cover suggested, it was a way to shape the wild imagination, to tame the itch to create.
And by the stars am I creating!
Andre told us we'd start by choosing class, race, and background. Of course, we had no idea what that meant, so he took us through it one at a time at a leisurely pace. He flipped through the book's pages before landing near the beginning, showcasing a stout-looking human with the undertext 'Dwarf' printed to the left.
After running through all of the vaguely human-like races to pick and a few classes that would shape our table-side adventure, I'd chosen to be a gnome cleric, which was a humorous choice. Andre said I'd primarily be healing, helping my team by keeping them in battle. I didn't mind the idea of being a sideliner, as long as I could help.
Dad had chosen to be a human 'paladin'. Andre explained that the term equated pretty easily to a form of holy guardian, in the form of a mortal, who the god of their faith gifted to defend those around them. Dad thought is was a pretty cool idea, especially the idea of "burning heretics away with holy fire," as Andre put it. It took him a bit longer to choose his race because he kept returning to the page with the almost-Arxur-looking Dragonborn. Still, after some coaxing, he finally let up on whatever was going on in his head and chose the easiest option, and the one Andre had recommended.
Finally, Sevkan had looked a bit farther into the game itself, finding a non-classified databook called "Player's Companion". Andre described it as a supplemental read, adding a bit more variety to the already large amount of options presented in the Player's Handbook. Sevkan took one look at it and immediately chose the Aarakocra, causing Andre to flinch. He said it'd be fine because the Aarakocra looked nothing like Krakotl, but Sevkan still apologized as best he could. He chose the fighter class, which was about as self-explanatory as possible.
Next was backgrounds, I chose to be an acolyte. It made sense in my head that a religious healer would have a background in religion. Dad leaned toward Folk Hero as his background, an option that both he and Andrew agreed would suit his character. Sev chose to be a hermit, which caught me and dad off guard after Andre gave us a rough rundown of what it was. An isolationist fighter, the sort of stuff that got you locked away.
"Alright," Andre said, leaning forward, looking between each of us again. I noticed Dad's fur rise a bit less than last time. Progress is progress. "We've got a Gnome Cleric, a Human Paladin, and an Aarakocra Fighter. Pretty good party dynamics for your first time even hearing about DnD. Now, for the most part, we've done everything we need to do together. From here you would have normally gone through stats and equipment, but I don't want to, and this is a oneshot so those aren't that important. Vem, on that last sheet, please mark down 'Spare the Dying', 'Sacred Flame', and 'Guidance'. Kimmich, on your last sheet, mark down 'Lay on Hands', 'Divine Smite', and 'Divine Sense'. Sev... you can just throw that sheet away. You won't be moving past where you are now."
Sevkan looked down at the sheet with a hint of sadness. To be fair to him, 'Spare the Dying' and 'Divine Smite' sounded cool, but before I could ask what they meant, Dad beat me to it. "What are these for? What do you mean?"
Andre rolled a D20 absent-mindedly, "Spare the Dying is a Cleric Cantrip that stabilizes a person who's taken fatal damage and is rolling death saves. Divine Smite is that whole 'BURN IN HOLY FIRE' thing I was talking about. Depending on how you flavor it, it's you wrapping your weapon in divine fire and burning away at your enemy's soul."
Despite his previous misgivings, ones which were practically plastered over his fur, Dad seemed honestly interested in the concept behind the Divine Smite. "And I just get to use it? Any time I want?"
"Well, not really." Andre pointed a finger toward me. "She has three cantrips which can be used at any time, you only have two. Divine Smite is an actual spell, as in its magic that requires you to utilize a spell slot. Lay on Hands is a contrip that can heal and Divine Sense allows you to detect certain types of creatures based on their alignment. Good and Evil in particular."
Sev spoke up, displaying confusion with his ears. "So why don't I get any spells or cantrips?" There was a degree of disappointment in his voice.
Andre leaned back with a chuckle, flexing his dexterous prosthetics as he clutched the d20 he'd been rolling. "Because, as a fighter, you probably have the most useful ability of them all. It's called 'Second Wind' and its essentially Lay on Hands but only you gain from it. It's an ability you can only use once per short rest, which we won't be needing to get into, which heals you for 1d10 plus your level, which all of you will be set at level 2.
"Again, we won't need much of the stuff in the books because this is A. Your first time and I want it to be fun, and B. A oneshot where nothing matters and we're here to have a good time. So, real quick," Andre grabbed a d8s and a d10 and began rolling them. "Vem," the d8 clacked across the table, landing on a 4, "you've got 15 health total. Because you're a light class, always expect to be on the lower side of health. Kimmich, you've got," he rolled the d10, it landed on an 8, "20 health, not a bad roll. And finally Sevkan," the d10 rolled across the table once more, the 5 side facing up. "18 health. Not too bad either, given your ability to heal yourself."
"How did you get those numbers," I asked, looking across the table at each of our sheets.
"While you all were reading, I put your modifiers where they belong, and changed what needed to be changed with your stats." Andre leaned over and pointed at Dad's sheet, "I increased each of your scores by one because you're human." He moved to mine, "I increased your intelligence by two." Then he moved to Sevkan's "And I increased your dexterity by 2 and wisdom by one. I made a slight mistake when asking you guys to roll, as usually, you'd choose race and class before putting your stat rolls anywhere, but you all seem to have put them in pretty good spots."
The three of us gave Andre amused looks, to which he raised an eyebrow. "Humans get an additional point in everything?" Sev asked with a small whistling laugh.
"Oh, uh. Yeah, now that there are actual other intelligent races in the galaxy that doesn't look too good does it?"
"It's fine," I said. It was plenty understandable, thinking you're the best at everything you do when there's no one to compare to. "So are we going to start?"
"Yep! Just one more thing. Weapons and armor are important to this, even if you don't have to use them all the time." Andre flipped to a page with a list of item names which I couldn't make ears or tails of. I recognized 'sword', 'bow', and 'spear' as ancient primitive weapons, but other than that everything else escaped me.
"I'm noting a lot of confusion. Anything you need to know?" Andre looked at us expectantly.
"What's a 'maul'," came Sevkan's response.
"Oh, that's a term for a large, two-handed warhammer. Usually, it's depicted as spiked on both ends. Imagine a very large, very crude sledgehammer with spikey bits."
"And a 'glaive'?" Dad asked next.
"I assume you know what a sword is?" We flicked our ears in affirmation. "Well, it's essentially a curved sword attached to a pole. It's made to look a specific way, if it wasn't then it'd probably just be called a Dao. Or maybe the Dao would be called a glaive. Maybe Glaive is just a type of polearm. I have no idea. Anyway, to speed this up, I'll be choosing the weapons and armor you can have for you, and don't worry, I'll use your attitudes as a reference for what you get. For you, Vemnka, I think the mace and shield combo will do nicely with the scale mail. Kimmich, you'd work well with two long swords to accompany your chainmail armor. And finally, Sevkan, a halberd with your chainmail will work fine. Sound good to everyone?"
I was a little disappointed at the stolen opportunity to continue building my character, I'd yet to come up with a name or backstory, as I was sure was the norm, but with the idea of starting taking center stage, I couldn't help but wag my tail.
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Memory Transcription Subject: Sevkan, going down the rabbit hole
Andre put a thin plastic sheet over most of the table, took out a bundle of markers, and began drawing, much to our collective surprise.
The sheet was was smooth and cool to the touch, though not through any internal system, probably just from the back of the garage where Andre had found it. It had a grid printed over it, which Andre seemed to be using as a guide as he drew a boxy shape, marking certain areas with certain colors. There must have been a system he was following, one that none of us Venlil in the room had managed to pick up on, and we didn't want to interrupt Andre as we worked in case we caused him to mess up.
I looked over my character sheet, made mostly by Andre with small additions I felt like I needed to add. I still felt a little bad for not realizing how raw the image of a Krakotl must have been to Andre as I chose the Aarakocra, but he'd brushed it off swiftly and curtly, clearly not wanting to continue the line of thought. Still, I should've chosen a different race. The goliath looked cool and probably would have been a better fighter than a bird with hollow bones, but I also didn't want to drag the others much longer, so I kept silent.
At long last Andre stood at his full height and analyzed his work. "There we go. The battle map is set up, now for the tokens." He reached into his back pocket and pulled out three little white objects. I immediately recognized them as chess pieces. A rook, a knight, and a bishop were placed on the table, along with a dozen white pawns, some of which came from a different chess set, and four black pawns as well as a black king. The black pawns were marked with the colors, yellow, beige, green, and white. We quietly agreed which pieces we would be. Dad would be the knight, I would be the rook, and Vemnka would be the bishop.
Andre sat down and we began. "Alright, I've decided to pull the classic 'wake up in a tavern' DnD start because it's funny and I also didn't exactly plan this. So here we go. Please leave your questions for after I'm done talking."
"You wake up, each of you, around a wooden table in a comfortable tavern with candles above you and empty tankards before you. You look at each other and recognize if only barely, the friends you made last night through a bout of drinking and dancing. You feel the roaring of a hangover in your head as you each groan and attempt to lift your heads."
Andre pointed at the chess pieces, which must have represented our characters. "Please roll constitution to see if the hangover affects you in any major way. It's a d20 plus the number below the stat itself."
We looked at each other with slight confusion. Not at the command to roll, nor for its circumstance, but for the setting. Is this a human board game? I mean, I guess I expected something more akin to chess. but this is nothing like it. It's so... alien.
Dad rolled his d20 first; it landed on a 16, "An 18?"
"Yep, Kimmich, your character brushes off the hangover with ease. You still feel a buzzing in your head, but other than that, you're fit as a fiddle." Oh, I get it now. How interesting. I could see Dad and Vemnka twitch their ears in understanding as I rolled my d20.
It landed on 8. "Plus two, so an 11."
"Sevkan, your head hurts like hell but you're still able to function to a normal degree. If it weren't for your fellow drunkards you're sure you'd have to stumble around by your lonesome for a while."
Vemnka let out a laugh as she rolled her dice. While she had been aiming for the center of the table, the dice had other plans and shot off to the right, flying off the table and rolling under a stool in the kitchen. "Oops! I'll get it," she said, jumping out of her seat and lifting the stool. "It landed on 19," she beeped excitedly.
"Nope," Andre said, much to our surprise. "Rule two of dice: if it goes off the table, its results are null. I didn't make that rule, but I still follow it. Roll again."
Vemnka's ears drooped a bit, but she set herself and climbed back into her seat to roll again. This time the dice did as it was meant to and rolled across the table without falling off. It landed on... "A nat 20!"
"No shit?" Andre lept out of his chair to peer across the table toward the dice. "Well, I'll be damned, a 19 and a 20 in succession. Well, I guess you're just better than those other two. Your character's hangover is completely gone, you felt it for all but a second as you raise your head to see your Aarakocra companion still struggling with his."
"Is there anything I can do to help him?" She asked. Andre's lip curled upward slightly.
"Now you're getting it. It's a role-playing game. You have your roles, the ones you set up for yourself, and now you get to play them. And yes, there is something you can do to help. Roll me a medicine check. I'll add your modifier myself." The sound of a die rattling across the table ended with... "Another Nat 20?!"
We jumped at Andre's incredulous shout as he glared at the die before him. He seemed more angry at the dice than at Vemnka so I assumed we were probably not in trouble. How can we be? We didn't do anything that would make him angry. Why's he yelling?
"Sorry, but the chance of rolling two nat 20s in a row, while not astronomical, is pretty fucking low. Something like a one in four hundred chance, maybe more," Andre said, sitting back down and sighing deeply. "It's fine, just funny is all. Usually, RNJesus is on the DM's side, not the party's. Kinda nice to see a change of pace."
"RNJesus," we asked collectively.
"Don't worry about it, let's continue. Vemnka, you put your hand on Sevkan's shoulder and do some voodoo magic bullshit and pray to your god to heal his aching body. Miraculously, it works and Sevkan sits upright feeling light as a feather. The Aarakocra's headache is now on par with Kimmich's."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that, now let's get on with it. As Sevkan gets up and shakes off the remaining ebbing in his head, you all notice five less-than-reputable figures sitting in a booth at the far end of the tavern. Each wears a hood or cowl accompanied by a cloak, which hides their race and weapons from you, however, you can tell that one of them is considerably larger than the others. If you had to, you'd place it at about 226 cm (7'5") while those around it are around the average human height of 180 cm (6'0"). Roll me perception too."
We looked at each other at the description but shrugged it off as we rolled. I rolled a 7, Dad rolled a 19, and Vemnka rolled a 17.
"Both of you," he said, pointing at Vemnka and Dad with one hand, "See that they are pointing in your direction while the big one holds a piece of paper in his hand. It shows artistic renditions of the three of you, along with a long string of words you can't make out from your current distance. Kimmich, you hear them talking about a bounty and that you are the specified targets. Now it's time for you to react, how do you want to move forward?"
"Well," Vemnka said nervously. I could see her tail flick in my direction, looking for guidance, but I had none. "I suppose I'll confront them? I'm not sure what a bounty is exactly..."
"Really?"
We looked at Andre and the obviousness of the situation. If we didn't know what a word was, we knew it must have been predatory. "Right, sorry. Bounties are orders given to hired people to hunt people. For one reason or another, if someone wants someone dead then they'll place a bounty on their head. I'm not sure if it was ever actually a thing, but bounty hunters were popular during the Wild West days of the US. They usually brought criminals in for trial though, and usually didn't kill them."
"Okay, but why do they want us dead," Dad asked, his ears falling back slightly.
"That's the neat part, you have no idea," Andre said as he leaned forward and moved the green-tipped black pawn a space on the map. "Vemnka, as you get up, you notice that one of the figures is moving towards the door with slight urgency. Before you can make a move, however, the large figure stands up and doffs his cloak, revealing the tattooed grey skin of a Goliath wielding a greatsword in the executioner's style. He shouts over the tavern for everyone other than your group to leave immediately as things are about to get bloody. His three other goons, the one moving toward the door exempt, move in unison towards you. Roll initiative. It's a d20, same as all the others."
I looked toward my sister to see her tail freaking out, her bishop is the closest to the enemy party, meaning she was more likely to be targeted first. I had to protect her, not only because of our sibling relationship but also because she could heal us if we got hurt. The three of us rolled as one, I got a 10, Dad a 14, and Vemnka got a 4. Andre himself rolled a few dice before moving the chess pieces into place and writing down something on a sheet of paper. "Alright, perfect. Initiative rolled, time to start combat. First up, yellow pawn."
He moved the pawn toward Vemnka's bishop, immediately putting her in danger. "One of the vagabonds rushes you, Vemnka, and you see the flash of Tabaxi claws as they raise their hand to strike at you." Andre's dice rolled, clattering to a halt inside the pad on his end, obscuring the results. "Does a 14 hit?"
"How do I check that," she asked, her tail going even crazier. Though, I couldn't tell if it was excitement or panic.
"AC," Andre responded flatly, "Armor Class."
"Right, yep." She looked down at her paper and flicked he ears 'no' then shook her head.
"The Tabaxi's claws swipe right above your head and miss by a hair. You can even feel the air move past you as you flinch backward. Next, the Goliath moves toward you, hefting his greatsword. Kimmich, if looks could kill, you'd be halfway to Valhalla by now. He glares at you with a mighty fire in his eyes. It's hard to tell, but you think he might have it out for you. He takes a swing with his sword and..." Andre rolled and looked back up at the table, his eyes focusing rather intensely on the black king representing the Goliath. "Meh, Nat 1. He swings and you dodge, causing his swing to miss wildly and land on the Tabaxi nearby. She takes," he rolls, "A sizable chunk of damage as blood flows from her lower abdomen."
"Wouldn't she be writhing in pain right now," Dad asked, pointing to the yellow-topped pawn.
"In real life? Yes. Here? I control the game, and while she is certainly hurt, she still has enough will to fight. Money is a powerful incentive for some people, especially bandits and vagabonds. Next, Sevkan, you notice the flash of steel as a dehooded human rushes you with a shortsword in hand. He has a keen eye and sharp nose, but your reflexes are faster as you dodge his swipe. He stumbles a bit, but recovers before you have a chance to harm him." Andre looks at Dad, who doesn't even seem to register the human's gaze as he looks over his sheet. "Kimmich, it's your turn. You can attack, retreat, use a spell-"
"Divine smite the Goliath, I'll use Divine Smite on the Goliath."
Andre lets out a chuckling laugh, "Now we're talkin'. Let's do this. Roll for attack."
Dad rolled, and I watched as the dice skipped across the table and finally landed on 11. "Plus five, so 16."
"Very good, that is a successful hit. Please roll both damage and the Divine Smite's 2d8."
Dad rolled his d8 three separate times, coalescing in a massive 18 damage, a 7, an 8, and a 3. "18 damage total against the Goliath."
Andre did a weird whistle as he marked down the information on what I could only assume was the stat sheet for the enemies. "18 against big guy. Sevkan, your turn. D-"
"Actually," Dad interrupted, "it says here that I have an extra action and a bonus action."
"Oh."
"So I'm going to attack him again."
"Okay."
Dad rolled another d8 which landed 6 side up. "Another six damage and I end my turn."
"Thank you, finally. Sevkan, go, please. Attack or... Well, all you can do is attack." Andre leaned back in his chair, stare planted squarely on me. I looked down at my sheet for any actions I had. I had a normal and bonus action, and that was it. I looked at the section marked features and traits and noticed that I could do three actions with action surge. "Alright, I'll attack three times. Twice with my halberd using action surge and once with that dagger, you forgot to give everyone that we all had the option to take." I glared right back at him.
"Yes, I didn't give you all the tools you could have had because it would have just wasted more time. But fine, if you want to use it, fine. It's a d6 slashing damage."
I rolled the 2d10 for damage. One landed on 8 while the other landed on 9. My d6 lands true on a 4. "21 damage to the beige-tipped pawn. That's the human, right?"
"Yep," Andre nodded as he wrote down the damage. "You take two swipes at the human with your halberd, both connect with both his arms and torso, slowing him considerably. It's only when he remains standing that you pull your dagger from its sheath and plunge it into his chest. You miss his heart by millimeters, but it does the job as he collapses in a pool of blood. Congrats, first knockout of the game."
I shudder at Andre's description of my character, who might as well be interchangeable with a Krakotl, killing a man. A human, for that matter. I look over to see Dad glaring daggers at Andre and Vemnka staring at me worriedly. I wave her off with my tail and focus back on Andre.
"Retribution is in store for you, though, as an Elf leaps over a table with two daggers drawn, ready to avenge her slain comrade. She..." Andre rolls and whoops as he punches a fist into the air. "She comes down with blinding speed and rakes her metal blades across your chest," He rolls again and lets out a slightly disappointed 'oh' before continuing. "You take a total of 8 damage from the Elf's daggers."
Andre, once again, leans forward, this time to remove the beige-tipped pawn from the table and replace it with a red cross, as well as move the green tipped toward where all the white pawns were. I assumed the gap in the markings must have been a door, as Andre had moved all the white pawns out of it when combat started. The green pawn must be escaping or blocking ours. Either way, we have to deal with the three remaining in front of us before we can handle that one.
"I see gears turning, always a good sign, but let's continue. Vemnka your combat turn. Make it count. You can use your bonus action to heal or attack with your mace, it doesn't matter as long as you do a different action when using it."
Vemnka looks over at me, then to the board with a contemplative look. "I'd like to use my first action to bless the two of them, then I'd like to use my bonus action to bonk the -what did you call it?"
"A Tabaxi."
"Yeah, that, I want to bonk that." Her tail swayed with contentment as she rolled her damage dice. It rolled into the batch of white pawns before landing on 6.
"Ouph, 'fraid that's not gonna be enough to hit anyone, but, Kimmich, Sevkan, both of you can now roll a d4 to accompany your attack roll." He flicked his d4 into the air but somehow missed it as it fell. It clattered onto the table and got flung into the living room as Andre tried to grab it. "Fuck, alright, hold on. Damned carpet's gonna be the death of me."
He went looking for the die, leaving us Venlil staring at the table before us.
"So what do you think," I asked abruptly.
"I don't know," Dad responded, his tone careful but gruff. "It's very clearly predatory. I mean, we wake up in a tavern after a night of drinking so hard our heads feel like they're about to explode and once the hangover clears we've got a band of roughnecks out for blood from the get-go." He squinted at the chess pieces representing our characters, they were all next to each other. "And I can't even really argue that we should stop because I'm fine with what's being depicted. Even if his description of you... knocking out that human was a bit over the top, I think that's the point."
"I agree," Vemnka spoke up, "The whole game is very fantastical, not meant to be compared to real life. I mean, sure, the concept of bounty hunters is a real thing, but I don't think there are humans as tall as that Goliath walking around. Or whatever a Tabaxi is."
"Fantastical and weird. If those don't describe humanity, I don't know what does," I said with a bemused flick of my tail.
"How about tired of hearing you talk about me behind my back," Andre's voice shouted from behind the couch, where he was scrounging for the lost die. Finally, he seemed to have found it, poking his head out from the backrest and looking over at us. "I'm joking of course, I don't mind at all. Unless you're insulting my taste in music, then we'll have a problem."
"I-I mean it's just-"
"Not for everyone, yadda yadda yadda. Anyway," Andre stood up, holding the d4 in his hand. "Lets continue. Tabaxi time." He took his seat and leaned forward to adjust the white pawns before rolling the hit dice. "Bruh. Another Nat 1. And here I was imagining the Goliath and Tabaxi to be the leaders of the group. Whatever. The Tabaxi attempts another swipe at you, or so it appears because she ends up cat-scratching the arm of the Goliath next to her. That's five damage, and it moves to the Goliath who is slightly pissed at everyone except for the Elf, who's, y'know, actually put in some work. The Goliath makes a wide swing, hoping to cut you all down in one fell swoop." He rolls the d20 three more times, once with a 'whoop' of success, another with a 'aww' of failure, and a final with a 'oh come the fuck on.' I could only assume it was a horrible failure. Andre's sigh fills the room. "Alright, Kimmich, you take 18 damage, he crit succeeded. Sevkan, you take no damage, and instead duck low as the swipe passes over you. Vemnka, you feel the blade move over you, but it does not connect due to your short stature. No, instead, he once again hits the fucking Tabaxi with his swing because he crit failed. Again. And because the human is no longer available to fight, it's now your turn Kimmich."
"I would like to smite again."
"Oh fuck, right you get two 1st level spell slots." Andre almost sounded annoyed when it was brought up, but relented nonetheless. "Take the hit dice."
Dad rolled, and it landed on 14. He rolled the d4 for the blessing Vemnka gave us. It landed on a 3. "Plus the five-"
"Yeah, yeah, it hits. Roll me damage."
"I'm sensing some hostilities from you," Dad said smugly.
"I'm starting to understand why my DMs hated being DMs, that's all. Please, fuck up that Goliath." And so he did, rolling a 15 in total. "You swing one of your longswords upward and cleave the Goliath's jaw in two, but he does not die. A mere flesh wound such as that would do little to dampen the giant-kin's will. No, what killed him was the bright light that engulfed his head after the strike landed. His face was the first to go as he tried to breathe through the holy flames surrounding him. His screams ended abruptly as his larynx melted away, leaving only writhing agony. He died a pitiable death in all fairness, as any sinner does. The second knockout of the game goes to Kimmich. Yay."
Again, the feeling of discomfort appeared as Andre described in unnecessary detail the visual of... someone burning alive. Oh stars, he planned that out, didn't he?
"Let's move on. Sev, your turn. First, lemme see you all roll perception again."
I rolled a 10 while both Dad and Vemnka rolled 16s. Adding modifiers made their 16s into 19s. "Alright. Again, Vemnka and Kimmich only, you see the figure who'd been moving toward the door at the beginning of the fight, now make a break for it as the Goliath collapses into a burnt-out husk. His hood is removed by the movement revealing it to be a green-scaled Dragonborn." Andre moves the Dragonborn's piece next to the door and through it, stopping it just within our sightlines. "He has a chance to escape, will you let him?" He looked at us expectantly.
I turned to Dad to see him eyeing the piece like a fresh firefruit. "Dad, no. If he leaves then that leaves the Elf and the Tub- Taba- Tabasi, whatever it's called. We can end this soon." Vemnka put her tail on his shoulder in an attempt to get his attention. He flinches at the touch and lowers his raised fur.
"Yes, yeah. Let him go," he says hoarsely.
"Alright, letting the Dragonborn go. Now it's Sev's turn. Go ahead and do something about his pesky elf." Andre moves the Elf's pawn a bit to put it back on the right square.
I shrug, attempting to fight off the conflicting feelings. On one paw, it's a game and no one is going to get hurt by me doing these things. But on the other, if I do this willingly does that make me any better than someone who would kill in real life?
Andre's voice snapped me out of my stupor. "Don't overthink it. It's a game, and this situation is self-defence. Kimmich is the only person here who's killed someone so far. The human will probably live in prison and the Dragonborn might find new meaning in life. It's not like any of this properly reflects the real world anyway. Just focus on the game, nothing more, nothing less."
I shook my body to rid myself of those thoughts and rolled my d20 and d4 from the blessing. "18 to hit."
"And hit it does. Halberd is a go!"
With another roll, it lands on a zero. "Got a 0?"
"Oh, yeah, the model I imposed the numbers on only uses one character for each side, but that's a 10. Good roll. Elf takes 10 damage and doesn't like you right now. I'm super tired of talking, so I'll just roll the hit dice. She attacks you for 19. Your AC is 19. Meets it beats it, that's a hit. Rolling damage, she lands a solid blow of 9 damage for her twin daggers. Now both you and Kimmich should have 3 health. Vem, your turn."
"Hit the tab?"
"Hit the tab."
"Hitting tab." Vemnka rolled her d20 and it landed on a 19. "19 plus whatever, I already know it hits."
"That it does," Andre responded. With a flick of his wrist, he knocks over the Tabaxi's pawn and places a cross where it was, he does the same with the Goliath's king. "Wait, why did you do that? I hadn't rolled damage."
"The Tabaxi had one health, there's no feasible way you do zero damage when rolling a dice with no zero on it. Anyway, let's wrap this up, it feels like we've been at this forever. Kimmich, your turn."
Dad sighed a deep whistling sigh. "I'll just roll to attack the Elf." He rolled his two dice, one landed on a 12 and the other landed on a 7, plus the 5 to his hits. "17 and 12. Rolling damage for that 17."
"Roll for both, the Elf's AC isn't that high."
"Really," I asked, bewildered.
"Really. The Goliath had the most AC at 16, but meets it beats it and Kimmich met it in the first round." The clack of dice interrupted him as Dad rolled his two damage die. Andre leaned forward to announce the numbers. "A total of 13. Congratulations, the three of you have just won a skewed encounter of DnD."
"Skewed encounter?"
"The Goliath had 40 health while everyone other than the Tabaxi had 20. The Tabaxi had 17. The Goliath had an AC of 16 while the rest had between 12 and 14. At least one of you should have died. I was betting on Kimmich because I had the Goliath go after him, but the nat 1s kinda stopped that from happening." Andre shook his prosthetic hands and brought them up to his chin. "Anyway, I'm dead tired. Never want to do that again, ever."
"I can't say I'm in the same cruiser as you, I found it quite fun, even with the gruesome descriptions," I said, probably unconvincingly. I did have fun, but it was a lot to take in all at once.
"I had fun too. Just, if we do do this again, try to tone back the predatory stuff. The fighting was fine, but the description was a bit... spot on I think." Vemnka's tail curled a bit as she probably imagined the images Andre described in her head.
Dad only gave a small 'hmph' as he scooted off his chair and went toward our rooms.
"Well," Andre started, "that's about what I expected from a bunch of scared space sheep."
I let out a whistle as Vemnka gently lowered herself to the ground, marched up to Andre, and bopped him on the thigh with all her might.
===================END=TRANSCRIPTION===================
2024.06.01 16:24 ConsiderationOk2202 What are Singaporeans favourite type of gamers
My favourite games are dead space, doom, bioshock, silent hill, resident evil, the last of us and fallout. These are sci fi, horror, single player story games
I freaking love this kind of games, their gameplay story world-building and everything about them [I'm a huge nerd abt them]
But I realise pple my age [I'm 20], are more interested in multiplayer and sandbox games like COD, Valorant, Mobile Legends, League of Legends, Roblox and Minecraft
They have no interest in single player story type and I find it hard to play a common game with them and to discuss game stuff
submitted by ConsiderationOk2202 to askSingapore [link] [comments]
I freaking love this kind of games, their gameplay story world-building and everything about them [I'm a huge nerd abt them]
But I realise pple my age [I'm 20], are more interested in multiplayer and sandbox games like COD, Valorant, Mobile Legends, League of Legends, Roblox and Minecraft
They have no interest in single player story type and I find it hard to play a common game with them and to discuss game stuff
2024.06.01 16:15 IronToastey New Player Sniper Loadout
Hello, new player here. I really love this game and want to get into Sniping. Does anyone have some loadout / trait recommendations ? Maybe some budget stuff for training aswell. I dont play much shooter so i really could use some general tipps aswell ^ I just have like 10 hours played so i dont know much yet. And i play solo most of the time.
And one side question, is there a „fast“ way to level weapons? Because i really want to unlock some new ammo types but it said i need XP with the Weapon.
submitted by IronToastey to HuntShowdown [link] [comments]
And one side question, is there a „fast“ way to level weapons? Because i really want to unlock some new ammo types but it said i need XP with the Weapon.
2024.06.01 16:05 AshamedComfort8976 Recently arrested for DWI - was not impaired.
Hello,
I am in the state of Texas. Recently, I was pulled over for doing 9 mph over. I was keeping with the flow of traffic. I have Crohn's disease, and use CBD whenever my flareups become severe. I had half of a CBD cigarette in my car at the time I was pulled over. I purchased it at a store here in town. They did a field sobriety test, which I feel was poorly administered. On the roadside, I was failed on one criteria (that being my eyes crossed when instructed to focus on his finger when it was roughly an inch from my face,) and I was arrested on a D.W.I. When I was arrested, the officer asked if I had any guns in my car. I had a pistol in my car, which is legal for me to own and was stored in accordance with the law. I was told he was not worried about the pistol.
Once I got booked at the jail, a second sobriety test was done. It was my first experience with it, but I think I could reasonably call the officer's competency into question if I have to go to court. It took him over 3 minutes to palpate a pulse in my wrist because he was doing it wrong, and I'm pretty sure he made up the heart rate results. He said it was 130, 120 and 110 each time he took it. I find it unlikely that it dropped by a perfect 10 BPM with each subsequent take. He took my blood pressure, placing the BP cuff improperly (and verbalizing he did so, he said he was "looking for my veins", those cuffs go over the brachial artery) and got the result of a textbook perfect 120/80. I know my usual blood pressure, it is higher than this, and I would argue that a BP of 120/80 with a heart rate of 130 is almost a physiological impossibility.
I called the bail bondsman in jail and only then learned of my charges; a DWI and Unlawful Possession of a Firearm. I think the UPF is secondary to the DWI. I had asked the cop when he arrested me if I'd be able to get out of jail in time for a test the next morning. He said if I passed the FST at the station I'd be able to go pick up my car that night (LOL I was naive, though I managed to make it and take the test on 26 hours no sleep)
Anyways, how should I approach this going forwards? This has interfered with my academics, and I am currently appealing a STRONG decision my school made. I called the DA's office she had not yet accepted the case 2 days after my arrest. It is a weekend and I will call back and ask on Tuesday. I question whether or not she actually will. I feel like if she watches at least some of the body cam footage from my arrest she'd realize it would not be an easy case to fight should I lawyer up. Though I'd be willing to take any type of deal with her just to get it off my record ASAP so that I may resume my academics. Ideally she refuses to accept the case while my appeal with my school is ongoing. That would really bode well for me.
What do yall think? I live in a college town where the police are infamous for behaving in a predatorial manner to the students. The jail was over-booked. I was booked at 10 PM and wasn't given any paperwork or ability to call someone until about 3 AM. I hear court dates are almost half a year out, and the crowd in that jail looked much rougher than students. Without knowing the local prosecutors, do yall think it is likely my case will actually be accepted? Do you think I have strong grounds to fight the DWI charge should I need to? My ideal scenario is that the DA just doesn't take the case or maybe I can make a deal to get the charges dropped. I'd be willing to accept probation, PITA that it is, just to get my academics back on track.
submitted by AshamedComfort8976 to legaladvice [link] [comments]
I am in the state of Texas. Recently, I was pulled over for doing 9 mph over. I was keeping with the flow of traffic. I have Crohn's disease, and use CBD whenever my flareups become severe. I had half of a CBD cigarette in my car at the time I was pulled over. I purchased it at a store here in town. They did a field sobriety test, which I feel was poorly administered. On the roadside, I was failed on one criteria (that being my eyes crossed when instructed to focus on his finger when it was roughly an inch from my face,) and I was arrested on a D.W.I. When I was arrested, the officer asked if I had any guns in my car. I had a pistol in my car, which is legal for me to own and was stored in accordance with the law. I was told he was not worried about the pistol.
Once I got booked at the jail, a second sobriety test was done. It was my first experience with it, but I think I could reasonably call the officer's competency into question if I have to go to court. It took him over 3 minutes to palpate a pulse in my wrist because he was doing it wrong, and I'm pretty sure he made up the heart rate results. He said it was 130, 120 and 110 each time he took it. I find it unlikely that it dropped by a perfect 10 BPM with each subsequent take. He took my blood pressure, placing the BP cuff improperly (and verbalizing he did so, he said he was "looking for my veins", those cuffs go over the brachial artery) and got the result of a textbook perfect 120/80. I know my usual blood pressure, it is higher than this, and I would argue that a BP of 120/80 with a heart rate of 130 is almost a physiological impossibility.
I called the bail bondsman in jail and only then learned of my charges; a DWI and Unlawful Possession of a Firearm. I think the UPF is secondary to the DWI. I had asked the cop when he arrested me if I'd be able to get out of jail in time for a test the next morning. He said if I passed the FST at the station I'd be able to go pick up my car that night (LOL I was naive, though I managed to make it and take the test on 26 hours no sleep)
Anyways, how should I approach this going forwards? This has interfered with my academics, and I am currently appealing a STRONG decision my school made. I called the DA's office she had not yet accepted the case 2 days after my arrest. It is a weekend and I will call back and ask on Tuesday. I question whether or not she actually will. I feel like if she watches at least some of the body cam footage from my arrest she'd realize it would not be an easy case to fight should I lawyer up. Though I'd be willing to take any type of deal with her just to get it off my record ASAP so that I may resume my academics. Ideally she refuses to accept the case while my appeal with my school is ongoing. That would really bode well for me.
What do yall think? I live in a college town where the police are infamous for behaving in a predatorial manner to the students. The jail was over-booked. I was booked at 10 PM and wasn't given any paperwork or ability to call someone until about 3 AM. I hear court dates are almost half a year out, and the crowd in that jail looked much rougher than students. Without knowing the local prosecutors, do yall think it is likely my case will actually be accepted? Do you think I have strong grounds to fight the DWI charge should I need to? My ideal scenario is that the DA just doesn't take the case or maybe I can make a deal to get the charges dropped. I'd be willing to accept probation, PITA that it is, just to get my academics back on track.
2024.06.01 15:59 KyleTerra UPDATED PROC_GEN CODE
extends TileMap
@export var noise = FastNoiseLite.new()
@export var biome_noise = FastNoiseLite.new()
@export var chunk_size : int = 16
@export var player : NodePath
@export var tileset : TileSet
@export var width : int = 10
@export var height : int = 10
@export var shallow_water_threshold : float = 0.1
@export var water_threshold : float = 0.3
@export var sand_threshold : float = 0.4
@export var grass_threshold : float = 0.6
@export var other_tile : int = 2
@export var grass_tiles : Array = [Vector2i(0, 0), Vector2i(1, 0), Vector2i(2, 0), Vector2i(3, 0)]
@export var high_tiles : Array = [Vector2i(27, 0), Vector2i(28, 0)]
@export var chunk_delay : int = 0.1
@export var tree : PackedScene
@export var tree_threshold : float = 0.3
@export var tree_chance : float = 0.3
var rng = RandomNumberGenerator.new()
var chunk_pool = []
var chunk_trees = {}
var tree_states = {}
var chunks = {}
func _ready():
var tree_instance = create_tree(chunk, chunk_coords, coords)
chunk_trees[chunk_coords].append(tree_instance)
func create_tree(chunk : TileMap, chunk_coords : Vector2i, coords : Vector2i):
tree.queue_free()
var coords_array = key.split(",")
var chunk_coords = Vector2i(coords_array[0].to_int(), coords_array[1].to_int())
tree_states[chunk_coords] = []
for coords in data[key]:
tree_states[chunk_coords].append(Vector2i(coords[0], coords[1]))
submitted by KyleTerra to Infinite_Horizon [link] [comments]
@export var noise = FastNoiseLite.new()
@export var biome_noise = FastNoiseLite.new()
@export var chunk_size : int = 16
@export var player : NodePath
@export var tileset : TileSet
@export var width : int = 10
@export var height : int = 10
@export var shallow_water_threshold : float = 0.1
@export var water_threshold : float = 0.3
@export var sand_threshold : float = 0.4
@export var grass_threshold : float = 0.6
@export var other_tile : int = 2
@export var grass_tiles : Array = [Vector2i(0, 0), Vector2i(1, 0), Vector2i(2, 0), Vector2i(3, 0)]
@export var high_tiles : Array = [Vector2i(27, 0), Vector2i(28, 0)]
@export var chunk_delay : int = 0.1
@export var tree : PackedScene
@export var tree_threshold : float = 0.3
@export var tree_chance : float = 0.3
var rng = RandomNumberGenerator.new()
var chunk_pool = []
var chunk_trees = {}
var tree_states = {}
var chunks = {}
func _ready():
`rng.randomize()` `randomize_noise()` `load_chunk_state()`func randomize_noise():
`noise.seed = rng.randi()` `biome_noise.seed = rng.randi()`func generate_chunk(chunk_coords : Vector2i):
`if chunk_coords in chunks:` `return` `var chunk = TileMap.new()` `chunk.tile_set = tileset` `chunks[chunk_coords] = chunk` `add_child(chunk)` `chunk.position = chunk_coords * chunk_size * chunk.tile_set.tile_size` `chunk_trees[chunk_coords] = []` `rng.seed = chunk_coords.x * 100000 + chunk_coords.y` `for x in range(chunk_size):` `for y in range(chunk_size):` `var world_x = chunk_coords.x * chunk_size + x` `var world_y = chunk_coords.y * chunk_size + y` `var noise_value = noise.get_noise_2d(world_x, world_y)` `var coords = Vector2i(x, y)` `var atlas_coords = map_noise_to_tile_atlas(noise_value)` `chunk.set_cell(0, coords, 0, atlas_coords)` `if noise_value > tree_threshold and rng.randf() < tree_chance:`if not is_tree_removed(chunk_coords, coords):
var tree_instance = create_tree(chunk, chunk_coords, coords)
chunk_trees[chunk_coords].append(tree_instance)
func create_tree(chunk : TileMap, chunk_coords : Vector2i, coords : Vector2i):
`var tile_pos = chunk.position + Vector2(coords.x, coords.y) * Vector2(tileset.tile_size.x, tileset.tile_size.y)` `var tree_instance = tree.instantiate()` `tree_instance.position = tile_pos` `tree_instance.get_child(2).chunk_coords = chunk_coords` `tree_instance.get_child(2).tree_coords = coords` `tree_instance.get_child(2).connect("tree_chopped", self._on_tree_chopped)` `add_child(tree_instance)` `return tree_instance` func remove_chunk(chunk_coords: Vector2i):`if chunk_coords in chunks:` `# Save the state of the chunk before removing it` `save_chunk_state(chunk_coords)` `# Remove all trees in this chunk` `if chunk_coords in chunk_trees:` `for tree in chunk_trees[chunk_coords]:`if tree != null:
tree.queue_free()
`chunk_trees.erase(chunk_coords)` `# Remove the chunk itself` `chunks[chunk_coords].queue_free()` `chunks.erase(chunk_coords)`func map_noise_to_tile_atlas(value):
`var seed = int(value * 1000)` `if value < water_threshold:` `return Vector2i(29, 0)` `elif value < shallow_water_threshold:` `return Vector2i(30, 0)` `elif value < sand_threshold:` `return Vector2i(12, 0)` `elif value < grass_threshold:` `var random_index = seed % grass_tiles.size()` `return grass_tiles[random_index]` `else:` `var random_index = seed % high_tiles.size()` `return high_tiles[random_index]`func update_chunks():
`var player_node = get_node(player)` `var player_pos = player_node.position` `var tile_size = tileset.tile_size` `var player_chunk_coords = Vector2i(floor(player_pos.x / (chunk_size * tile_size.x)), floor(player_pos.y / (chunk_size * tile_size.y)))` `var radius = 3 # Number of chunks to keep around the player` `# Generate new chunks around the player` `for x in range(player_chunk_coords.x - radius, player_chunk_coords.x + radius + 1):` `for y in range(player_chunk_coords.y - radius, player_chunk_coords.y + radius + 1):` `generate_chunk(Vector2i(x, y))` `# Remove chunks that are too far from the player` `var chunks_to_remove = []` `for chunk_coords in chunks.keys():` `if abs(chunk_coords.x - player_chunk_coords.x) > radius or abs(chunk_coords.y - player_chunk_coords.y) > radius:` `chunks_to_remove.append(chunk_coords)` `for chunk_coords in chunks_to_remove:` `remove_chunk(chunk_coords)`func _process(delta):
`update_chunks()`func _on_tree_chopped(chunk_coords : Vector2i, tree_coords : Vector2i):
`if chunk_coords not in tree_states:` `tree_states[chunk_coords] = []` `tree_states[chunk_coords].append(tree_coords)` `save_chunk_state(chunk_coords)`func is_tree_removed(chunk_coords : Vector2i, tree_coords : Vector2i) -> bool:
`if chunk_coords in tree_states:` `return tree_coords in tree_states[chunk_coords]` `return false`func save_chunk_state(chunk_coords : Vector2i):
`var data = {}` `for key in tree_states.keys():` `data[str(key)] = []` `for coords in tree_states[key]:` `data[str(key)].append([coords.x, coords.y])` `var file = FileAccess.open("user://chunk_states.json", FileAccess.WRITE)` `file.store_string(JSON.stringify(data))` `file.close()` func load_chunk_state():`var file = FileAccess.open("user://chunk_states.json", FileAccess.READ)` `if file != null:` `var data = JSON.parse_string(file.get_as_text())` `if typeof(data) == TYPE_DICTIONARY:` `for key in data.keys():` # Parse the string key into two integersvar coords_array = key.split(",")
var chunk_coords = Vector2i(coords_array[0].to_int(), coords_array[1].to_int())
tree_states[chunk_coords] = []
for coords in data[key]:
tree_states[chunk_coords].append(Vector2i(coords[0], coords[1]))
`file.close()`
2024.06.01 15:48 katelovesmeiu Professional Challenger Coach Verified Metafy & Coachify Partner Eight Years of Coaching Experience Over 7.000 Sessions Held Over 4.000 Students US Collegiate Coach Guaranteed Improvement & Personalized Plans Available Coaching Subscriptions & Individual Sessions Discord > shelbion👑
Book Your Free Consultation Today! > Discord @ shelbion
Some of my notable achievements as a player include:
I've studied the techniques of renowned coaches, such as LS, MagiFelix, and others, and I've developed my unique coaching approach. So far, my approach has helped countless individuals, and over 20 teams advance their competitive play, across 5 different continents, including members of various College and University eSport Teams.
Some of my notable achievements include:
We hold various events on a weekly basis, including 1v1 & 5v5 tournaments, meme contests, and more. There are plenty of rewards to be won, including free coaching sessions with me. To join our community, visit https://discord.gg/RHW9BMxRd5 and message me upon joining to receive your role.
The First Session is designed to assess your current level of gameplay and identify areas for improvement. After conducting an analysis, I will create a Personalized Coaching Plan tailored to your specific needs. This plan will outline a series of sessions designed to maximize your improvement.
The Coaching Plan may include various session types, such as:
Payments are usually done through PayPal, however other forms of Payment such as Direct Transfer can be discussed.
Feel free to message me either on Discord or through a Direct Message on Reddit and I will come back to you as quickly as possible.
submitted by katelovesmeiu to LeagueMarket [link] [comments]
About Me
My name is Shelbion and I've been an avid League of Legends player for over a decade. In Season 4, I reached Challenger for the first time and even considered pursuing a professional career. However, after much reflection, I decided to pursue other challenges within the game.Some of my notable achievements as a player include:
- Reaching Challenger on multiple positions.
- Participating and winning in numerous SR and 1v1 tournaments.
- Playing for various teams(Amateur and Semi-Professional).
Coaching
With over 7.000 hours of coaching experience, I fall into the category of one of the most experienced individuals in the field. My experience, passion, and ability to identify your flaws and tailor each session to your needs make me stand out as a Coach.I've studied the techniques of renowned coaches, such as LS, MagiFelix, and others, and I've developed my unique coaching approach. So far, my approach has helped countless individuals, and over 20 teams advance their competitive play, across 5 different continents, including members of various College and University eSport Teams.
Some of my notable achievements include:
- Assisting a Diamond 2 player reach Challenger in just five weeks.
- Helping a Silver 2 player climb to Platinum in three weeks.
- Guiding a Diamond 3 player to Grandmaster in six weeks.
Subscription Based Coaching
- One Individual Session (Monthly)
- Group Sessions (Weekly) x2
- Priority Coaching - Price:
99.99> 49.99$.
Verifications & Certifications
- Certified IFOEC (International Federation of eSport Coaches) Educator & Coach.
- Certified EHPI (eSports Health & Performance) Professional.
- University of Irvine eSport Specialization
- Verified Coachify & Metafy Partner.
Community
In addition to my experience as a Player, I am also the Founder of Noxus Coaching - a rapidly growing, educational community on Discord. Our community is a great place to find new friends to play with, have a good time, and most importantly, improve your skills.We hold various events on a weekly basis, including 1v1 & 5v5 tournaments, meme contests, and more. There are plenty of rewards to be won, including free coaching sessions with me. To join our community, visit https://discord.gg/RHW9BMxRd5 and message me upon joining to receive your role.
Podcast
- Podcast Appearance > https://youtu.be/4jn4FXOaOlE?si=98POLUJdJeSNnbiW
How Does it Work?
We will schedule an initial Interview during which we can discuss your goals and I can provide a more detailed explanation of my coaching services. This interview will typically last for 3-5 minutes.The First Session is designed to assess your current level of gameplay and identify areas for improvement. After conducting an analysis, I will create a Personalized Coaching Plan tailored to your specific needs. This plan will outline a series of sessions designed to maximize your improvement.
The Coaching Plan may include various session types, such as:
- Theory sessions: These sessions will cover key concepts such as wave management, vision, decision making, and more.
- Practical sessions: These sessions will either be VOD reviews or live games, and will be used to put theoretical knowledge into practice and analyze gameplay.
- Reviews: These sessions will occur periodically and will be used as checkpoints to track your progress and identify any additional areas for improvement.
Personalized Support (Available 24/7)
In addition to the structured coaching sessions, I offer personalized support to my clients on a 24/7 basis. Whether you have a specific question or just want to debrief after a tough game, I am always available to help. Simply message me and I will respond as quickly as possible.AvailabilityPricesPayments
I am able to cover any server and any timezone! Rates for both Private and Team coaching are negotiable. We will easily get the sessions to fit your budget and your needs.Payments are usually done through PayPal, however other forms of Payment such as Direct Transfer can be discussed.
Contact
Main form of contact is Discord on which you can find me at shelbion (Or Shelbion#8832)Feel free to message me either on Discord or through a Direct Message on Reddit and I will come back to you as quickly as possible.
2024.06.01 15:48 katelovesmeiu Professional Challenger Coach Verified Metafy & Coachify Partner Eight Years of Coaching Experience Over 7.000 Sessions Held Over 4.000 Students US Collegiate Coach Guaranteed Improvement & Personalized Plans Available Coaching Subscriptions & Individual Sessions Discord > shelbion👑
Book Your Free Consultation Today! > Discord @ shelbion
Some of my notable achievements as a player include:
I've studied the techniques of renowned coaches, such as LS, MagiFelix, and others, and I've developed my unique coaching approach. So far, my approach has helped countless individuals, and over 20 teams advance their competitive play, across 5 different continents, including members of various College and University eSport Teams.
Some of my notable achievements include:
We hold various events on a weekly basis, including 1v1 & 5v5 tournaments, meme contests, and more. There are plenty of rewards to be won, including free coaching sessions with me. To join our community, visit https://discord.gg/RHW9BMxRd5 and message me upon joining to receive your role.
The First Session is designed to assess your current level of gameplay and identify areas for improvement. After conducting an analysis, I will create a Personalized Coaching Plan tailored to your specific needs. This plan will outline a series of sessions designed to maximize your improvement.
The Coaching Plan may include various session types, such as:
Payments are usually done through PayPal, however other forms of Payment such as Direct Transfer can be discussed.
Feel free to message me either on Discord or through a Direct Message on Reddit and I will come back to you as quickly as possible.
submitted by katelovesmeiu to LeagueCoachingGrounds [link] [comments]
About Me
My name is Shelbion and I've been an avid League of Legends player for over a decade. In Season 4, I reached Challenger for the first time and even considered pursuing a professional career. However, after much reflection, I decided to pursue other challenges within the game.Some of my notable achievements as a player include:
- Reaching Challenger on multiple positions.
- Participating and winning in numerous SR and 1v1 tournaments.
- Playing for various teams(Amateur and Semi-Professional).
Coaching
With over 7.000 hours of coaching experience, I fall into the category of one of the most experienced individuals in the field. My experience, passion, and ability to identify your flaws and tailor each session to your needs make me stand out as a Coach.I've studied the techniques of renowned coaches, such as LS, MagiFelix, and others, and I've developed my unique coaching approach. So far, my approach has helped countless individuals, and over 20 teams advance their competitive play, across 5 different continents, including members of various College and University eSport Teams.
Some of my notable achievements include:
- Assisting a Diamond 2 player reach Challenger in just five weeks.
- Helping a Silver 2 player climb to Platinum in three weeks.
- Guiding a Diamond 3 player to Grandmaster in six weeks.
Subscription Based Coaching
- One Individual Session (Monthly)
- Group Sessions (Weekly) x2
- Priority Coaching - Price:
99.99> 49.99$.
Verifications & Certifications
- Certified IFOEC (International Federation of eSport Coaches) Educator & Coach.
- Certified EHPI (eSports Health & Performance) Professional.
- University of Irvine eSport Specialization
- Verified Coachify & Metafy Partner.
Community
In addition to my experience as a Player, I am also the Founder of Noxus Coaching - a rapidly growing, educational community on Discord. Our community is a great place to find new friends to play with, have a good time, and most importantly, improve your skills.We hold various events on a weekly basis, including 1v1 & 5v5 tournaments, meme contests, and more. There are plenty of rewards to be won, including free coaching sessions with me. To join our community, visit https://discord.gg/RHW9BMxRd5 and message me upon joining to receive your role.
Podcast
- Podcast Appearance > https://youtu.be/4jn4FXOaOlE?si=98POLUJdJeSNnbiW
How Does it Work?
We will schedule an initial Interview during which we can discuss your goals and I can provide a more detailed explanation of my coaching services. This interview will typically last for 3-5 minutes.The First Session is designed to assess your current level of gameplay and identify areas for improvement. After conducting an analysis, I will create a Personalized Coaching Plan tailored to your specific needs. This plan will outline a series of sessions designed to maximize your improvement.
The Coaching Plan may include various session types, such as:
- Theory sessions: These sessions will cover key concepts such as wave management, vision, decision making, and more.
- Practical sessions: These sessions will either be VOD reviews or live games, and will be used to put theoretical knowledge into practice and analyze gameplay.
- Reviews: These sessions will occur periodically and will be used as checkpoints to track your progress and identify any additional areas for improvement.
Personalized Support (Available 24/7)
In addition to the structured coaching sessions, I offer personalized support to my clients on a 24/7 basis. Whether you have a specific question or just want to debrief after a tough game, I am always available to help. Simply message me and I will respond as quickly as possible.AvailabilityPricesPayments
I am able to cover any server and any timezone! Rates for both Private and Team coaching are negotiable. We will easily get the sessions to fit your budget and your needs.Payments are usually done through PayPal, however other forms of Payment such as Direct Transfer can be discussed.
Contact
Main form of contact is Discord on which you can find me at shelbion (Or Shelbion#8832)Feel free to message me either on Discord or through a Direct Message on Reddit and I will come back to you as quickly as possible.
2024.06.01 15:48 Legate_Marius [FoundryVTT] [LFP] [PAID] [Online] [5E] [Weds-Thurs-Friday] [PST] [Weekly] Experienced DM For Hire!
Hello Adventurers!
My name is Caz, and I'm here to offer my services as a Dungeon Master for your next epic adventure! With nine years of DMing experience in the 5e system, I bring a wealth of knowledge and creativity to the table.
A bit about me:
submitted by Legate_Marius to FoundryLFG [link] [comments]
My name is Caz, and I'm here to offer my services as a Dungeon Master for your next epic adventure! With nine years of DMing experience in the 5e system, I bring a wealth of knowledge and creativity to the table.
A bit about me:
- Age: 32
- Marital Status: Married
- Hobbies: Avid gamer and D&D enthusiast
- Dungeons & Dragons has been a significant part of my life, helping me through tough times and allowing me to express my creativity. I started as a player in the Lost Mines of Phandelver campaign, and since then, I’ve become the forever DM, running games with passion and dedication. Experience:
- Campaigns Run: Lost Mines of Phandelver, Curse of Strahd, and several homebrew campaigns to completion.
- Current Projects: Running two homebrew games in my unique world.
- Platforms: From Roll20 to Foundry VTT, constantly improving my skills in map making and storytelling.
- Type: Sandbox Storyteller
- Approach: Over-prepared with countless stories ready for players to discover, driven by player agency and interactions.
- Roleplay: Heavy emphasis on character-driven narratives.
- Combat: Gritty, tactical, and challenging encounters.
- Voices: Not great but I do attempt to make NPCs have accents and sound different.
- Attentive and experienced gameplay
- Thorough character backstory integration
- Fairness and unbiased DMing
- A self-hosted Foundry server with fast internet and $50 worth of D&D digital assets monthly
- I value honesty and fairness in my games, and I maintain strict rules against metagaming, cheating, and strong-arming the DM. If you're seeking a fair and dedicated DM, look no further.
- Slots Available: Up to 5 recommended, 6 maximum
- System Used: 5e
- Style: Voice
- Session Duration: 4-5 hours
- Schedule: Open on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays (time negotiable)
- Requirements: 18+, Discord, microphone, PC or laptop, web browser supporting Foundry
- Price: Session 0 is free!
- Homebrew Campaigns: $25 USD per session
- Premade Modules: $20 USD per session
- Payment: Through PayPal, either before each session or all at once on the first of the month. If you do not pay, you will not be able to play.
2024.06.01 15:48 katelovesmeiu Professional Challenger Coach Verified Metafy & Coachify Partner Eight Years of Coaching Experience Over 7.000 Sessions Held Over 4.000 Students US Collegiate Coach Guaranteed Improvement & Personalized Plans Available Coaching Subscriptions & Individual Sessions Discord > shelbion👑
Book Your Free Consultation Today! > Discord @ shelbion
Some of my notable achievements as a player include:
I've studied the techniques of renowned coaches, such as LS, MagiFelix, and others, and I've developed my unique coaching approach. So far, my approach has helped countless individuals, and over 20 teams advance their competitive play, across 5 different continents, including members of various College and University eSport Teams.
Some of my notable achievements include:
We hold various events on a weekly basis, including 1v1 & 5v5 tournaments, meme contests, and more. There are plenty of rewards to be won, including free coaching sessions with me. To join our community, visit https://discord.gg/RHW9BMxRd5 and message me upon joining to receive your role.
The First Session is designed to assess your current level of gameplay and identify areas for improvement. After conducting an analysis, I will create a Personalized Coaching Plan tailored to your specific needs. This plan will outline a series of sessions designed to maximize your improvement.
The Coaching Plan may include various session types, such as:
Payments are usually done through PayPal, however other forms of Payment such as Direct Transfer can be discussed.
Feel free to message me either on Discord or through a Direct Message on Reddit and I will come back to you as quickly as possible.
submitted by katelovesmeiu to LeagueCoaching [link] [comments]
About Me
My name is Shelbion and I've been an avid League of Legends player for over a decade. In Season 4, I reached Challenger for the first time and even considered pursuing a professional career. However, after much reflection, I decided to pursue other challenges within the game.Some of my notable achievements as a player include:
- Reaching Challenger on multiple positions.
- Participating and winning in numerous SR and 1v1 tournaments.
- Playing for various teams(Amateur and Semi-Professional).
Coaching
With over 7.000 hours of coaching experience, I fall into the category of one of the most experienced individuals in the field. My experience, passion, and ability to identify your flaws and tailor each session to your needs make me stand out as a Coach.I've studied the techniques of renowned coaches, such as LS, MagiFelix, and others, and I've developed my unique coaching approach. So far, my approach has helped countless individuals, and over 20 teams advance their competitive play, across 5 different continents, including members of various College and University eSport Teams.
Some of my notable achievements include:
- Assisting a Diamond 2 player reach Challenger in just five weeks.
- Helping a Silver 2 player climb to Platinum in three weeks.
- Guiding a Diamond 3 player to Grandmaster in six weeks.
Subscription Based Coaching
- One Individual Session (Monthly)
- Group Sessions (Weekly) x2
- Priority Coaching - Price:
99.99> 49.99$.
Verifications & Certifications
- Certified IFOEC (International Federation of eSport Coaches) Educator & Coach.
- Certified EHPI (eSports Health & Performance) Professional.
- University of Irvine eSport Specialization
- Verified Coachify & Metafy Partner.
Community
In addition to my experience as a Player, I am also the Founder of Noxus Coaching - a rapidly growing, educational community on Discord. Our community is a great place to find new friends to play with, have a good time, and most importantly, improve your skills.We hold various events on a weekly basis, including 1v1 & 5v5 tournaments, meme contests, and more. There are plenty of rewards to be won, including free coaching sessions with me. To join our community, visit https://discord.gg/RHW9BMxRd5 and message me upon joining to receive your role.
Podcast
- Podcast Appearance > https://youtu.be/4jn4FXOaOlE?si=98POLUJdJeSNnbiW
How Does it Work?
We will schedule an initial Interview during which we can discuss your goals and I can provide a more detailed explanation of my coaching services. This interview will typically last for 3-5 minutes.The First Session is designed to assess your current level of gameplay and identify areas for improvement. After conducting an analysis, I will create a Personalized Coaching Plan tailored to your specific needs. This plan will outline a series of sessions designed to maximize your improvement.
The Coaching Plan may include various session types, such as:
- Theory sessions: These sessions will cover key concepts such as wave management, vision, decision making, and more.
- Practical sessions: These sessions will either be VOD reviews or live games, and will be used to put theoretical knowledge into practice and analyze gameplay.
- Reviews: These sessions will occur periodically and will be used as checkpoints to track your progress and identify any additional areas for improvement.
Personalized Support (Available 24/7)
In addition to the structured coaching sessions, I offer personalized support to my clients on a 24/7 basis. Whether you have a specific question or just want to debrief after a tough game, I am always available to help. Simply message me and I will respond as quickly as possible.AvailabilityPricesPayments
I am able to cover any server and any timezone! Rates for both Private and Team coaching are negotiable. We will easily get the sessions to fit your budget and your needs.Payments are usually done through PayPal, however other forms of Payment such as Direct Transfer can be discussed.
Contact
Main form of contact is Discord on which you can find me at shelbion (Or Shelbion#8832)Feel free to message me either on Discord or through a Direct Message on Reddit and I will come back to you as quickly as possible.
2024.06.01 15:48 Nika99_plays Modded characters crashing
Everything is normal, except when trying to use any modded character (for example: samuel). It just freezes for a second and crashes the game.
-- Last part of crash logs [INFO] - Done Reading Special Seed Counters
[INFO] - Reading chunk 11
[INFO] - Reading Bestiary Counters
[INFO] - Done Reading Bestiary Counters
[INFO] - Saving PersistentGameData to Steam Cloud: rep_beta_persistentgamedata1.dat.
[INFO] - Loading GameState 1 from SteamCloud!
[INFO] - GameState Version Loaded: 147
[INFO] - Menu Game Init
[INFO] - Menu Daily Init
[INFO] - Menu Character Init
[INFO] - Menu SpecialSeed Init
[INFO] - Menu Challenge Init
[INFO] - Menu Collection Init
[INFO] - Menu Stats Init
[INFO] - Menu Mods Init
[INFO] - Menu Options Init
[INFO] - Menu Controller Init
[INFO] - Menu Key Config Init
[INFO] - Menu Cutscene Init
[INFO] - Menu Bestiary Init
[INFO] - Menu Custom Challenge Init
[INFO] - Menu Online Lobby Init
[INFO] - Menu Friend Lobbies Init
[INFO] - Menu Multiplayer Init
[INFO] - Menu Options Online Init
[INFO] - Saving PersistentGameData to Steam Cloud: rep_beta_persistentgamedata1.dat.
[INFO] - [warn] no animation named Idle
[INFO] - Setting PersistentGameData ReadOnly to False
[INFO] - RNG Start Seed: LWJ9 27A6 (1535017865) [New, 1]
[INFO] - Level::Init m_Stage 1, m_StageType 2 Seed 1410562545
[INFO] - delete 0 generated rooms.
[INFO] - [RoomConfig] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - allocate 1311 rooms.
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - reallocate 19 rooms.
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - reallocate 1831 rooms.
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - reallocate 157 rooms.
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - reallocate 12 rooms.
[INFO] - generate...
[INFO] - place_room: shape 8
[INFO] - place_room: shape 3
[INFO] - place_room: shape 4
[INFO] - 10 rooms in 7 loops
[INFO] - not enough dead ends, trying to make new one
[INFO] - not enough dead ends, trying to make new one
[INFO] - not enough dead ends, trying to make new one
[INFO] - placing rooms...
[ASSERT] - PlayerManager::GetPlayer() : There are no players!
[ASSERT] - PlayerManager::GetPlayer() : There are no players!
[ASSERT] - PlayerManager::GetPlayer() : There are no players!
[INFO] - Map Generated in 1 Loops
[INFO] - CURRENT ROOM INDEX 84 1ced10dc
[INFO] - Room 1.2(Start Room)
[INFO] - SpawnRNG seed: 3473286958
[INFO] - Lua stack trace:
[INFO] - [C](-1): GetGridIndex
[INFO] - ...stom stage api/scripts/stageapi/grid/altRockOverride.lua(43): Function
[INFO] - resources/scripts/main.lua(73): ?
[INFO] - Caught exception, writing minidump...
submitted by Nika99_plays to themoddingofisaac [link] [comments]
-- Last part of crash logs [INFO] - Done Reading Special Seed Counters
[INFO] - Reading chunk 11
[INFO] - Reading Bestiary Counters
[INFO] - Done Reading Bestiary Counters
[INFO] - Saving PersistentGameData to Steam Cloud: rep_beta_persistentgamedata1.dat.
[INFO] - Loading GameState 1 from SteamCloud!
[INFO] - GameState Version Loaded: 147
[INFO] - Menu Game Init
[INFO] - Menu Daily Init
[INFO] - Menu Character Init
[INFO] - Menu SpecialSeed Init
[INFO] - Menu Challenge Init
[INFO] - Menu Collection Init
[INFO] - Menu Stats Init
[INFO] - Menu Mods Init
[INFO] - Menu Options Init
[INFO] - Menu Controller Init
[INFO] - Menu Key Config Init
[INFO] - Menu Cutscene Init
[INFO] - Menu Bestiary Init
[INFO] - Menu Custom Challenge Init
[INFO] - Menu Online Lobby Init
[INFO] - Menu Friend Lobbies Init
[INFO] - Menu Multiplayer Init
[INFO] - Menu Options Online Init
[INFO] - Saving PersistentGameData to Steam Cloud: rep_beta_persistentgamedata1.dat.
[INFO] - [warn] no animation named Idle
[INFO] - Setting PersistentGameData ReadOnly to False
[INFO] - RNG Start Seed: LWJ9 27A6 (1535017865) [New, 1]
[INFO] - Level::Init m_Stage 1, m_StageType 2 Seed 1410562545
[INFO] - delete 0 generated rooms.
[INFO] - [RoomConfig] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - allocate 1311 rooms.
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - reallocate 19 rooms.
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - reallocate 1831 rooms.
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - reallocate 157 rooms.
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - [ModManager] load stage 3: Burning Basement (mode 0)
[INFO] - reallocate 12 rooms.
[INFO] - generate...
[INFO] - place_room: shape 8
[INFO] - place_room: shape 3
[INFO] - place_room: shape 4
[INFO] - 10 rooms in 7 loops
[INFO] - not enough dead ends, trying to make new one
[INFO] - not enough dead ends, trying to make new one
[INFO] - not enough dead ends, trying to make new one
[INFO] - placing rooms...
[ASSERT] - PlayerManager::GetPlayer() : There are no players!
[ASSERT] - PlayerManager::GetPlayer() : There are no players!
[ASSERT] - PlayerManager::GetPlayer() : There are no players!
[INFO] - Map Generated in 1 Loops
[INFO] - CURRENT ROOM INDEX 84 1ced10dc
[INFO] - Room 1.2(Start Room)
[INFO] - SpawnRNG seed: 3473286958
[INFO] - Lua stack trace:
[INFO] - [C](-1): GetGridIndex
[INFO] - ...stom stage api/scripts/stageapi/grid/altRockOverride.lua(43): Function
[INFO] - resources/scripts/main.lua(73): ?
[INFO] - Caught exception, writing minidump...
2024.06.01 15:46 IuliusGamesYouTube Echo system and how can it be improved
Hello guys, FoxyDaddy here.
As much as i love farming echoes there are 4 features that totaly ruins the experience:
1) Horrific RNG when tuning an echo.
We should at least be able to choose 1 stat that we want and rest rng.
A re-roll option would be nice as well.
2) Very low Exp to gain.
We either need less waveplates used per Tacet field (or any other source of exp) And/ or make any echo exp fodder (able to level an echo with a lv zero echo etc)
3) Limited farming on Echo per day: I can farm a specific type of echo on my world until it runs out? And i must wait for daily reset? Getting forced to *socialise* and Co-OP for what? to take other players echo? wich they won't accept anyway since they need it too.
A good fix is: INCREASE/ Or remove the cap limit on farming echoes. Let them spawn back in 1 minute or so.
4) Diminishing Returns when Leveling a 25 echo into same level 0 echo.
Putting a lv 25 into a lv 0 gives me a level 22.
Were's the rest of exp? Taxes?:D
Echo system is nice but it lacks heavily.
Those would be good improvements.
Thanks and hope you consider it.
submitted by IuliusGamesYouTube to WutheringWaves [link] [comments]
As much as i love farming echoes there are 4 features that totaly ruins the experience:
1) Horrific RNG when tuning an echo.
We should at least be able to choose 1 stat that we want and rest rng.
A re-roll option would be nice as well.
2) Very low Exp to gain.
We either need less waveplates used per Tacet field (or any other source of exp) And/ or make any echo exp fodder (able to level an echo with a lv zero echo etc)
3) Limited farming on Echo per day: I can farm a specific type of echo on my world until it runs out? And i must wait for daily reset? Getting forced to *socialise* and Co-OP for what? to take other players echo? wich they won't accept anyway since they need it too.
A good fix is: INCREASE/ Or remove the cap limit on farming echoes. Let them spawn back in 1 minute or so.
4) Diminishing Returns when Leveling a 25 echo into same level 0 echo.
Putting a lv 25 into a lv 0 gives me a level 22.
Were's the rest of exp? Taxes?:D
Echo system is nice but it lacks heavily.
Those would be good improvements.
Thanks and hope you consider it.
2024.06.01 15:44 simpscaler911 Help with a feature I’m working on
Heya, im gonna have my part fight a dragon. Ive been playing some monster hunter and want to integrate some part-breaking mechanics. Sorry for the bad english, its a second language (any help with the phrasing would also be cool). So here it is.
Called shots. Different areas of the dragons body enable the different abilities it wields. to attack these, the player must first declare that they want to attack a specific spot, then make a normal attack roll with the penalty associated with the area. The player may “spend” 5ft of movement to reduce the associated penalty by 1 to a minimum of 0. On a hit, the dragon takes damage as normal and an equal amount of damage is applied to the part specifically, if that part is vulnerable to a type of a damage, the extra damage occurs to that part specifically. EG: • Horns. 1d6 penalty; 90HP; vulnerable to bludgoning: if reduced to 0HP, the dragons breath attack deals half damage. • Wings. 1d8 penalty; 80HP; vulnerable to slashing: if reduced to 0HP, the dragon looses its wing attack legendary action and its flight speeds its reduced to 0ft • Tail. 1d4 penalty; 160HP; vulnerable to slashing: if reduced to 0HP, the dragon looses its tail strike action, its flight speed is reduced by half and it gains 1 point of exhaustion
submitted by simpscaler911 to dndnext [link] [comments]
Called shots. Different areas of the dragons body enable the different abilities it wields. to attack these, the player must first declare that they want to attack a specific spot, then make a normal attack roll with the penalty associated with the area. The player may “spend” 5ft of movement to reduce the associated penalty by 1 to a minimum of 0. On a hit, the dragon takes damage as normal and an equal amount of damage is applied to the part specifically, if that part is vulnerable to a type of a damage, the extra damage occurs to that part specifically. EG: • Horns. 1d6 penalty; 90HP; vulnerable to bludgoning: if reduced to 0HP, the dragons breath attack deals half damage. • Wings. 1d8 penalty; 80HP; vulnerable to slashing: if reduced to 0HP, the dragon looses its wing attack legendary action and its flight speeds its reduced to 0ft • Tail. 1d4 penalty; 160HP; vulnerable to slashing: if reduced to 0HP, the dragon looses its tail strike action, its flight speed is reduced by half and it gains 1 point of exhaustion
2024.06.01 15:41 SamLanner Reflavoring Spells and Interaction with Reality - How to Balance?
I always hear, "Just reflavor it and it works," and personally, I really like the idea that you can reframe the explanation of something to suit and personalize your character. It’s really useful, but considering magic in the Forgotten Realms (and in other realities that use the D&D magic system), doesn't it become a bit conflicting? Or at least, doesn't it spoil the reflavoring in a certain way, turning it into something merely "decorative" within the narrative perspective?
Let's start with the fact that when you cast a specific spell, you are casting "that" spell, not exactly the reflavored one. This means that any other resource or "source" that can determine which spell was used will say you cast spell X, not Y as the player wanted.
I'll try to give an example: let's say a player creates a chronomancer who, when casting "Ray of Frost," has reflavored it to "Ray of Deceleration." The idea is pretty cool, but if any other resource, like an item that can reveal cast spells, or an archmage investigating the area to discover the type of magic used, wouldn't they identify the spell itself? "Ah, yes, he used Ray of Frost; you can tell by the freezing effects on the body. It’s a common trick, so we're probably dealing with a not-so-experienced mage."
My point is: reflavoring, at least in terms of spells that have a system more or less translatable into the fictional reality, kind of kills the idea of the spells, doesn't it? Yes, you can describe what the spells look like; in Tasha's, if I remember correctly, this is mentioned. But the spells are still traceable, understandable. They have an identification that makes them what they are, which makes the reflavoring just an appearance within the game’s reality. So, even if an NPC says, "No, he used a translucent thing that made the Goblin move entirely slowly, as if he were slow in time itself!" it would just be responded with: "That was just the appearance of the magic being manifested, it has nothing to do with time. The original form of that spell is still Ray of Frost; do you want me to demonstrate it for you?"
Don’t get me wrong, I find it harder to allow this kind of thing when it comes to spells. One of my players has an Eladrin who is a Half-Elf, and his teleportation is described as "he puts himself in another timeline and establishes it in the present so briefly that only he moves." And that’s fine — racial ability, item, or any other thing like that, I find much easier, because he’s not following a parameter like a spell that has V, S, M components. Any of these can reveal what the spell really is, not the player’s flavor. This makes the player more of a "cosplayer" than what they determined they are.
This thought came up when my player and I were discussing what he would do at higher levels since there aren't many Dunamancy spells available, and there are other Wizard spells that can't be ignored. So, it’s something that’s been on my mind since then.
Have any of you dealt with this in your games? Again, I’m very much in favor of reflavoring, but I find spells much more limiting in this regard, and I always think that if they ever conflict, it would be horrible. So, how would you handle this?
submitted by SamLanner to DnD [link] [comments]
Let's start with the fact that when you cast a specific spell, you are casting "that" spell, not exactly the reflavored one. This means that any other resource or "source" that can determine which spell was used will say you cast spell X, not Y as the player wanted.
I'll try to give an example: let's say a player creates a chronomancer who, when casting "Ray of Frost," has reflavored it to "Ray of Deceleration." The idea is pretty cool, but if any other resource, like an item that can reveal cast spells, or an archmage investigating the area to discover the type of magic used, wouldn't they identify the spell itself? "Ah, yes, he used Ray of Frost; you can tell by the freezing effects on the body. It’s a common trick, so we're probably dealing with a not-so-experienced mage."
My point is: reflavoring, at least in terms of spells that have a system more or less translatable into the fictional reality, kind of kills the idea of the spells, doesn't it? Yes, you can describe what the spells look like; in Tasha's, if I remember correctly, this is mentioned. But the spells are still traceable, understandable. They have an identification that makes them what they are, which makes the reflavoring just an appearance within the game’s reality. So, even if an NPC says, "No, he used a translucent thing that made the Goblin move entirely slowly, as if he were slow in time itself!" it would just be responded with: "That was just the appearance of the magic being manifested, it has nothing to do with time. The original form of that spell is still Ray of Frost; do you want me to demonstrate it for you?"
Don’t get me wrong, I find it harder to allow this kind of thing when it comes to spells. One of my players has an Eladrin who is a Half-Elf, and his teleportation is described as "he puts himself in another timeline and establishes it in the present so briefly that only he moves." And that’s fine — racial ability, item, or any other thing like that, I find much easier, because he’s not following a parameter like a spell that has V, S, M components. Any of these can reveal what the spell really is, not the player’s flavor. This makes the player more of a "cosplayer" than what they determined they are.
This thought came up when my player and I were discussing what he would do at higher levels since there aren't many Dunamancy spells available, and there are other Wizard spells that can't be ignored. So, it’s something that’s been on my mind since then.
Have any of you dealt with this in your games? Again, I’m very much in favor of reflavoring, but I find spells much more limiting in this regard, and I always think that if they ever conflict, it would be horrible. So, how would you handle this?
2024.06.01 15:40 valdirunars Is Generating Scout Reports on Opponents Before Online Chess Games Cheating?
Hey fellow chess enthusiasts,
Regarding tools that allows players to create detailed scout reports on their opponents before an online match. The app analyzes opponents’ past games, highlights their strengths and weaknesses, and even suggests strategies to exploit their weaknesses.
This got me thinking: Is using such a tool considered cheating in the world of online chess, or is it just another form of preparation?
On one hand, it seems similar to studying an opponent's games before a tournament match, which is a common and accepted practice in professional chess. However, the ease and depth of the analysis provided by such an app might give users an unfair advantage, especially in casual online games where players usually don't have access to such detailed information.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!
Full disclosure: The reason I ask is that I created one such tool ( chesscomscout.com) and don't want to promote usage that would be considered cheating by the chess community.
Do you think this type of tool would enhance the game by adding a new layer of strategy, or do they undermine the spirit of fair play? How should online chess platforms handle the use of these tools?
Looking forward to your opinions and insights!
submitted by valdirunars to chess [link] [comments]
Regarding tools that allows players to create detailed scout reports on their opponents before an online match. The app analyzes opponents’ past games, highlights their strengths and weaknesses, and even suggests strategies to exploit their weaknesses.
This got me thinking: Is using such a tool considered cheating in the world of online chess, or is it just another form of preparation?
On one hand, it seems similar to studying an opponent's games before a tournament match, which is a common and accepted practice in professional chess. However, the ease and depth of the analysis provided by such an app might give users an unfair advantage, especially in casual online games where players usually don't have access to such detailed information.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!
Full disclosure: The reason I ask is that I created one such tool ( chesscomscout.com) and don't want to promote usage that would be considered cheating by the chess community.
Do you think this type of tool would enhance the game by adding a new layer of strategy, or do they undermine the spirit of fair play? How should online chess platforms handle the use of these tools?
Looking forward to your opinions and insights!
2024.06.01 15:35 sunashigure1 How to perfect Sword-Wielding Felon special enemy hidden boss, in-depth guide. No damage, no items, no Martial Arts, Hard "Twilight" difficulty, useful on Midnight.
 | Sword-Wielding Felon. We can find her in the Senzoku region (northernmost one in Edo). Boss has nearly the same moveset as the Red Demon's one and that means the Tatsumi-ryu style, which specializes in Iai, the art of 'quick-draw'. submitted by sunashigure1 to riseoftheronin [link] [comments] There are two phases in this fight – second one will start when we deal at least 50% damage to her. She will gain a new Martial Art – Counterspark Draw – the one Naosuke Ii has from the get-go. On the other hand, she doesn't seem to have his Grab Martial Art (or it's very rare). No Ki Blaze either, so no projectiles imbued with fire. Second part means 3 projectiles and some mix-ups too, but nothing too extreme. Despite the fact she deals medium Ki damage, she won't be able to break more defensive players' guard (unless she goes for her MA). All we need is to block her regular moves/projectiles, deflect her combo enders (the ones which happen right after the "uppercut", as they're timing-friendly – no delay) and Swift Showdown Martial Arts. Dodge her other MA, Counterspark Draw, as it's tricky to deflect. She also has the ability to block, dodge & counter fast (with an unblockable MA), so don't underestimate her faster recovery. Play it slow, wait for her to come & slowly – yet surely – keep deflecting & punishing her easier moves to secure the perfect, no damage run with restrictions. More tips: -Sword-Wielding Felon wields the Katana, so it's best to choose the Ten style for this fight (better Ki management), -recommended level for this fight is 30+, so be sure to reach that threshold at least (non-challengers), -beat a special enemy to get high rarity items + "The Seven Military Classics" (in the treasue chest nearby) - use it to earn one Skill point of each type, -always try to deflect (or dodge) her Martial Arts. Even if it's the more problematic version, there still will be enough time to dodge away safely, -she recovers a bit faster than other bosses, so expect fast counters, -Blade Flash (R1; after attacking) to regain more Ki. Good luck! |
2024.06.01 15:33 Plastic-Campaign1208 Are you looking for a group active around EU/USA/ASIAN times TLL might have you covered. Join us today 😄
The Lost Legion We are Legion moritūrī tē salūtant -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Lost Legion or TLL in short is looking for both experienced and new players to grow our ranks and make new friends along the way. Where hoping to build a nice fighting force made up of all the roles in the verse. No matter if your interested in being a med player or you just wanna shoot some stuff we will welcome you with open arms. Ofc players that wanna mine or salvage are also just as welcome. We are trying to create a place that is welcome to all the citizens in verse. We also run events with our friends from the alliance (Potestas Imperium) so expect some fun stuff to happen from time to time. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Things to know
https://preview.redd.it/axec959cqy3d1.png?width=985&format=png&auto=webp&s=df9ded27cfa1d27418fdf8a432936259f5c2323c
submitted by Plastic-Campaign1208 to Starcitizen_guilds [link] [comments]
- Most of our ppl are from the EU/USA so we will be active around those time zones, The Asian side still need to grow a bit more, but its growing slowly
- We hold events 2 time's a month if there is enough activity (event types will be decided by vote's made by TLL members)
- We use Rankings based on activity in the discord and how many times you enter events (we do not kick inactive members, we just give them a inactive role. As we all have life's outside of the game, so no worry's about being kicked if life is life)
- The USA/Asian side are in need of new active mods, so if you might be interested in being a mod in a growing org lmk and we can have a talk about it. (TLL-robskuuu)
- We are a grey orientated org (That still means grieving for no reason is not allowed, but play all sides of the game without having to worry about rules)
- If your new to the verse, you can always request a guide from the higher ranking players within the org
- All discord channels are locked behind roles (that's why it can seem empty when entering for the first time, a role will be given to you as fast as possible so the discord opens up for you :D)
- Age Restricted 18+ Only
- When its time in the verse to have you own base and territories we would like to own a little place to call home
- We will aim to get capital ships as soon as they drop to support the alliance in events and to explore the verse
- When there is sufficient interest we will give trainings to new players (you can already request a guide if your new)
https://preview.redd.it/axec959cqy3d1.png?width=985&format=png&auto=webp&s=df9ded27cfa1d27418fdf8a432936259f5c2323c
2024.06.01 15:29 PhilAceAston Tony Martin Talks About Black Sabbath, The Anno Domini Box Set & What Might Happen Next!
Phil Aston: Hello and welcome to the Now Spinning Magazine podcast with me, Phil Aston. And in this episode, I’m absolutely delighted to have with me Tony Martin, one of the UK’s most underrated rock vocalists. You’ve had a really varied career, but what we’re going to talk about today specifically is Black Sabbath and the new “Anno Domini” box set. So, welcome, Tony. Thank you so much for joining me.
Tony Martin: Thank you. And thank you for having me on the show. Very cool.
Phil Aston: A bit of context, because I think this is kind of helpful for you. My son is 30 now, but when he was 15, he set up a Facebook group, kind of saying, “One day, please can we have the Tony Martin Black Sabbath albums released?” That was 15 years ago. He was still at school, half his lifetime ago. And I think in the early time when he set this up, he may have reached out to you and you might have said something like, “I don’t think it’s gonna happen, Dan.” And here we are, all these years later, and it’s not only happened, but it comes out this Friday. How does that feel to know that these albums are now going to be available again?
Tony Martin: Well, first of all, well done to your son. It took 15 years, but he got it done. To be honest, there’s been a few periods when I didn’t think it was happening. In fact, about a year ago, Tony Iommi’s manager called me and said, “You know what, this is just so complicated. I don’t think we can do this.” So I was resigned to it not happening myself. It’s all to do with band politics, really. There are so many people involved or have their fingers in the pie that they all have to be on board. And there were allegiances changing all over the place, left, right, and center. So in the end, it was getting a bit tiring, but well done to Tony Iommi and BMG. My God, the patience they showed to get this thing together and actually get it out there. Wow. But how does it feel? It feels brilliant, to be honest. I’m very excited. I haven’t actually had these albums in my own hands physically for the past 25 years. I gave all mine away thinking I’d be able to get some more, and I didn’t. They just stopped making them. So to actually physically hold them again is really cool. What a great job they’ve done of it. So I’m thrilled and excited. And I’m helping out now because I’m not in the band, obviously, anymore. So I just offered my help to promote it and they said, “Great, let’s do it.”
Phil Aston: Isn’t it amazing? Because I’ve done quite a few reviews about Black Sabbath box sets and stuff, but this one, within about 12 hours, there’s literally 12,000 views of the review. The love for this period of Black Sabbath is actually huge. It’s grown. It almost feels as if the profile is higher now than it was at the time.
Tony Martin: Yeah, there is a kind of reason for that. Partly people have got over the “it’s the new guy” thing, and also it’s been 25 years since. So now we’re reaching out to a whole other group of people, in addition to those that were already there. But to the outside world, it looks like there was a huge gap, and to me it felt like a huge gap. But actually, the fans were always there. I’ve been waiting myself as well to get this back out there. And it’s just band politics, really. That’s all it is.
Phil Aston: Because you had that period when it was almost as if this part of Sabbath’s history was hidden because of band politics. None of this really happened, which I think probably stirred up more interest and kind of people wanting to find out more.
Tony Martin: Yeah, it could be. It’s an old famous thing, you know, if something ain’t around for a while, people start talking about it. But yeah, it’s a strange thing, the music business. You’re either in fashion or you’re not. But I am just thrilled that they’ve got around it. Just the patience they’ve shown to actually put this together. At one point they were just saying, “We can’t do it.” But I’m really chuffed anyway.
Phil Aston: I imagine there’s been compromises along the way. Lots of fans probably don’t understand how complicated the politics and all the different licenses and everything that goes on over the years, they become more and more entangled. People say, “Where’s Eternal Idol?” But of course, that was a different record label. Different people own it.
Tony Martin: Yeah, absolutely. It’s owned by somebody else. And also Eternal Idol, or “Eternal Idiot,” as we call it, was kind of reissued not that long ago. Really.
Phil Aston: That’s right. With the two CD version, wasn’t it?
Tony Martin: Yeah. So they were kind of thinking, “Well, there’s no real panic because that’s already been done and let’s just move on.” Because that would have wrapped them up in contracts for centuries, I think. I can’t even think that they’ll ever get them to let that go. But they were struggling to get the people involved with these four albums to make up their minds and do stuff. I’ve been all for it all the way along, I have to say. Obviously, because it’s my career, my history. It’s not just the band’s history. It’s ten years of my life that went AWOL. So, yeah, I’ve been up for it all the way along, but some people don’t and it’s taken them a while to get on board.
Phil Aston: I think it’s fantastic. The first one was Headless Cross. You joined one of the biggest rock bands with all that history behind it. You were an established singer with the Alliance. But this was a chance, as you say, with Eternal Idol, you went in and it was already prepared. You sang it, but this one was where you could really put your mark on it, your personality lyrically as well as musically. Can you remember what it was like actually being at the beginning of that? Did you feel comfortable around Iommi and Powell and thinking, “Right, what kind of lyrics am I going to do by Headless Cross?”
Tony Martin: Yeah, I was comfortable by then. Well, kind of. The thing is, with Eternal Idol, if I can just backstep a little bit. The Eternal Idol wasn’t the first call up. The first call up was in 1986 when they were doing the Seventh Star with Glenn Hughes. And that scared me to death because I can’t sing like Glenn Hughes. Nobody can sing like Glenn Hughes. They put me on standby back then, so I’d sort of tentatively had an introduction to Tony Iommi. Then in ’87, they got me in for the audition, and that was the next introduction to Tony Iommi. But because Eternal Idol was already written, that gave me a whole year plus a bit more to find out what this thing was. What the hell was I supposed to do? So just doing Eternal Idol like that was fine by me because I didn’t have to discover anything myself back then. It gave me a chance to get my feet in. So by the time it got to Headless Cross, now I know all the guys, and I kind of know what’s expected of me. I still had to find the “me” that I needed to find. I went around it the only way I could, by focusing on things I was interested in. I couldn’t do the lyrics and melodies that Geezer was writing for Ozzy because that was a generation before me. The stuff that Ronnie was doing was fantastic, but I couldn’t get inside his head. So I had to think about what I was going to do. I had an interest in the old gothic death stuff, like Dracula and Frankenstein, Mary Shelley type writing, and of course, in England, we have Shakespeare. Nobody speaks English like that anymore, that old English text. I thought, “Old English text, gothic death, and Black Sabbath. That might work.” So I put them all together and came up with Headless Cross, which is where I lived. I lived in a village called Headless Cross.
Phil Aston: Yeah, you put that on the map. They weren’t pleased about it. The most recognition I’ve got is my name on a bus stop. And Cozy Powell thought the album needed more death, didn’t he?
Tony Martin: Oh, that’s true. That’s actually true. We were recording “When Death Calls,” and he was in the studio playing, and he suddenly stopped. We went, “You alright?” He went, “Yeah, just remind me, what’s this song called again?” I said, “It’s called When Death Calls.” He said, “I don’t think there’s enough death in it.” And he carried on playing. So, okay, maybe he’s taking the piss, but isn’t it such a great sounding album? As Tony Iommi says, he never left Black Sabbath. So when people criticize him, saying, “You should change the name or whatever,” he never left. So it was still Black Sabbath. The riffs, the guitar sound was reaching new peaks of excellence around this time.
Because when it was just him and Ozzy, for example, it was guitar, that was it. When Geoff Nichols joined during the Dio period, it introduced a few more keyboard things. That allowed Iommi to play solos against those keyboard pads and chords. And then you come along and start sticking 50 tracks of vocal harmonies on it, like in Anno Mundi and stuff like that. It just kept developing. Sabbath isn’t really known for vocal harmonies and keyboards, but underneath that was still Tony Iommi. And it still sounded like Sabbath. We were happy to do that. We just wanted to make Tony happy and do the best for him. It was his band. So we were happy to seek out that Sabbath sound and make sure it did what it said on the tin. A couple of times, like with the Seventh Star thing, he ventured a little bit away from it. Songs like Heart Like a Wheel don’t really make the Black Sabbath sound, but it’s still good stuff. I have great respect for all of the eras that went before. I had to sing all of the songs. So I do have great respect for it. And it’s been an honor, you know, like being part of the whole story. But he was the only one that stuck it out. And we respected him for that. You’re right, they did ask him to change a couple of times. He said, “No, I can’t change now.”
Phil Aston: The next one, if I pronounce this right, it’s Tyr.
Tony Martin: Yeah.
Phil Aston: Because when it came out, me and my friends, actually, because there was no Internet back then and nowhere to go and check it, we did call it Tyr. To be.
Tony Martin: Yeah, Tyr.
Phil Aston: Watch you find in Birmingham. You know what I mean? So it actually rhymes with beer, doesn’t it?
Tony Martin: It is, yeah. Actually, it’s Tiw, which is Scandinavian for the son of Odin or something.
Phil Aston: Well, this is almost as close, probably, to Sabbath getting into almost a concept album. Isn’t it? This is a collection of songs that in another time and space you probably as a band would have gone out and performed the whole thing.
Tony Martin: Yeah, it wasn’t meant that way, but they were struggling to find a name for the album. We were recording and getting towards the end and the management called us up and said, “We really need a name for this album.” And Cozy said, “I’ve got one. Let’s call it Satanic Verses.” We went, “What, like Salman Rushdie thing?” He said, “Yeah, it would be great publicity.” We said, “Yeah, but we’ll all be dead.” So we did struggle, but they happened across the artwork. We’d done Anno Mundi, we’d done Gates of Valhalla and all that sort of stuff. They went, “What if… Tyr?” It was fine by me. So it took on the Viking sort of theme. By that time, I was thinking, once I’d done Headless Cross and started to have an interest in the Vikings and stuff. As you know, the Vikings haven’t been particularly good for us. They came over and stole all our women and sheep and whatever. But I had an interest in them as well. So I was thinking, every culture, every religion has its dark side. There’s always a devil type in a god type. I thought we could go around the world and I could do this. You could pick up on all sorts of cultures and pick out the dark side of various things. But it was the last kind of… I still did that with various other songs and various other artists. But Tyr was leaning towards that theme.
Phil Aston: It’s an excellent album. Then of course, the strangeness of the politics in Sabbath. Dehumanizer comes along and Dio re-enters the scene. You obviously had an opportunity because every cloud has a silver lining. You can go off and do your solo album at this time. But you did kind of like… It sounds like it was almost a forced relationship, the way that he was and he wasn’t. I mean, how was that period for you? Because you did demo some of the tracks, didn’t you?
Tony Martin: Firstly, it was a shock. I didn’t see that coming at all. Literally just walking out the door to the next writing rehearsals. My managers called up and said, “They don’t want you to go.” From what I recently found out, although I had my suspicions, Tony Iommi said the record label just wasn’t supporting it. They weren’t getting behind us at all. Then they started banding about all different names and stuff, and Ronnie’s name came up. They thought they’d give it a go. He said it was all on and off all the time. After they let me go, it wasn’t too long before Tony called me back and said, “Can you come back?” I said, “No, I can’t. I’m doing my solo album.” More time went by, and he called me back again and said, “Are you sure you can’t come back?” I said, “I’m doing my solo album. I really can’t.” He said, “Do you want to come down and try?” So I did. I went down and tried putting my voice on some of the songs, but it would have meant rewriting everything, and they weren’t going to do that. So I said, “The best thing is if you finish this with Ronnie, get this done and out of the way, then maybe we can talk again later.” So that’s kind of what happened. By that time, I’d done my solo album, which I wanted to get as far away from the Sabbath thing as I could at the time. I went back to doing what the Alliance and some of the bands I’d been with, that middle-of-the-road AOR type stuff. But when they called me back to Sabbath, Polydor dropped my solo album like a brick. They said, “We can’t do this if you’re going to go back with them.” So that got stopped. It’s so confusing. By the time I got back with the guys to Cross Purposes, it didn’t feel that much of a gap for me, because I’ve been talking to them and working with them through the Dehumanizer thing.
Phil Aston: Stylistically, that album, because it was on the IRS label, I know some people have said, “Well, it should be in there.” Stylistically, musically, it’s very different. I mean, you take it out. These four albums in this set, excluding Eternal Idol, they sound like a progression. Dehumanizer sounds like a kind of sidestep. Even the way the riffs are done in the songs, it’s changed. You take the vocalist out, but the music continued. You took you out and it was very different.
Tony Martin: I suppose it does a bit. If I go back and think over it, I guess that’s what it was. It was kind of an interruption into the flow of things. When we were doing Tyr, I thought we were doing really well. I thought we were onto something. Dehumanizer, in that sort of respect, does feel a little bit like an interruption. But there was some good stuff on there. Ronnie’s always been a good singer. I don’t quite know how they feel about it, but it was kind of nothing to do with me. I just let them get on with it.
Phil Aston: After that, Cross Purposes is probably, out of the four albums in this set, my personal favorite. Geezer’s back in the band now, so you’ve got his bubbling bass in there. And again, lyrically, it’s all you. Did you feel any kind of, “Oh, Geezer’s back. Will he want to help out?”
Tony Martin: I did ask. He just said, “No, you can do it.” So I just carried on.
Phil Aston
The reason why I love this album is that it’s varied. A lot of people think of Black Sabbath as the Godfathers of heavy metal, and heavy metal is always heavy metal. But if you think back to albums like Sabbath Bloody Sabbath in the seventies, they weren’t all heavy metal. There were all sorts of things on there. There were keyboards and light and shade. This, I felt, connected to that album, because you had light and shade on it. So there were more dynamics in the lyrical delivery and the song delivery, in the way that Iommi is weaving his riffs around the melodies. What are your thoughts looking back on this album now?
Tony Martin: I think you’ve just summed it up. It did sort of shift up a notch. Not only that, but the sound they were getting with Leif Mases producing it, it sort of grew up. It lifted somehow out of what they’d done before. It felt like, “Oh, this sounds good.” The songwriting and the exploring we were doing with the songs and stuff. At the time, Geezer Butler said that’s the best album he’s ever been on. He never said that again, but he said it at the time.
Phil Aston: I can imagine him saying just that.
Tony Martin: But it was good. Having Bobby Rondinelli in the band as well. Technically amazing. Brilliant player. His drums close in, and he plays with his wrists. Very technical. Whereas Cozy’s drums are stretched out far and wide. He’d lean over and hit them. But great to have them both in. What an honor. I mean, it’s Geezer Butler as well.
Phil Aston: When you got to South America, Bill Ward was in for a few gigs, wasn’t he? That must have been quite surreal. Bill Ward and Geezer playing songs like Headless Cross, which they had nothing to do with.
Tony Martin: They had nothing to do with. We were kind of weird because once we’d started to get Geezer and Bill back in, they wanted to start doing more of the older songs. That just makes you look, read between the lines going, “What’s going on? Where’s this going?” Once it’s happened to you, you know it. Then you’re reading between the lines. You start to feel it. Then you go, “Ah, right.” You can feel it. They’re clearing up. I did ask if they were going to do a reunion with Ozzy. Iommi was always denying it. Said, “No, no, we’re not doing that.” But I didn’t mind. The reason for that is because I knew what I could do in the future then. I thought, “Well, if they just tell me, that’s fine. Cause then I can plan.” The first time it was a shock and I didn’t know what to do. But I was kind of keyed up for it the next time. But he kept going. They got Bill in. I love Bill. I think he’s brilliant. We did some shows with him. But for some reason, and I don’t know what it is, I mean, I can tell you Iommi loves Bill. He regaled so many stories about when they were out there and how funny it was. I never understood why they never gave him time to get back in it. When you think of Def Leppard, they made a drum kit for a one-armed drummer.
Phil Aston: Yes, very true.
Tony Martin: Surely they can find time to get Bill settled back in. Whatever problems they’ve got. I mean, come on.
Phil Aston: You would think, yeah, very true.
Tony Martin: Get on with it. I thought, “Right, this is going to go south again.” But it didn’t. We carried on with Forbidden, and then Cozy came back after his accident. It was really up and down. Confusing. People in and out. During the time I was in the band, there were eight different lineups.
Phil Aston: It was very much a revolving door, wasn’t it? Before we move on, I just want to ask, because I know a lot of fans ask this. In the booklets in these box sets, there’s an image of Cross Purposes Live. That was a VHS tape and a CD. Is there a reason why that wasn’t included in some way? Is that game politics?
Tony Martin: I did ask about that, and they were just keen to get on with it. They said, “Come on, let’s go, let’s do it.” What they told me was that they’re going to take their time now to see what else they can gather and do an additional thing to this along the way with more of that in it. With the Cross Purposes Live and some other stuff. There’s a track that I recorded with them when Eddie Van Halen came and did Evil Eye.
Phil Aston: Yes, yeah, Evil Eye, wasn’t it?
Tony Martin: Yeah. I used to take the track out. I had it everywhere. Writing sessions, recording sessions, rehearsals. I just happened to be there. I didn’t even know who was coming. Iommi just turned up with Eddie Van Halen. I went, “Holy hell, it’s Eddie Van Halen. What’s he doing here?” He did some rehearsals with us and then disappeared. Never saw him again. But I got the recordings of the rehearsals that we did.
Phil Aston: Oh, wow.
Tony Martin: So I sent them to Tony Iommi. I said, “Use these. Get these on.” He said, “No, no, we can’t.” The reason they said was anything that has the slightest newness about it looks like a new Black Sabbath track or album track. They’re not allowed to release anything new under the Black Sabbath name. So even if it’s historical, they couldn’t allow it. It’s really weird.
Phil Aston: That means there must be lots of live stuff recorded. More bands were recording live stuff from the nineties onwards that you just couldn’t work on because it would go out under the Black Sabbath name.
Tony Martin: Not just live stuff. I’ve got about eight tracks that we never released. Just from the writing sessions and rehearsals and stuff that we used to do. They just can’t get out. They just won’t allow it.
I don’t understand. Well, I kind of understand. When you’re trying to protect your name, your mark, your image, your everything, which is where the band politics comes in, they won’t allow you to do anything that they think. And there’s all kinds of… Everybody from Ozzy to Dio to everybody. They don’t want their thing to be diluted or taken away. I do understand that. There are people involved all along the way that have an objection of some kind or another.
Phil Aston: But I guess, hopefully, this box set’s going to sell out really quickly and will show there’s a demand for this material and for this part of Black Sabbath history. There’s a lot of love for it. A lot of people worked really hard within it, like yourself. They’re great albums, wonderful songs. If there’s other music waiting in the wings, whereas we all get older, thinking through the eyes of the fan, it would go down so well, wouldn’t it? But I am, as you are, very grateful that these four albums have arrived in a box.
Tony Martin: Yes, it’s an important thing for me. It’s an important thing for the band, and it’s a great thing for the fans. I’m thrilled. It’s been an honor to be part of the story. I love the fact that it’s out there now. They did say there is no limit to the box sets. They have sold out on day one.
Phil Aston: I’m not surprised.
Tony Martin: They said the way they do it is they tend to poll the outlets and stuff and say, “How many do you think you can sell?” And they put their numbers in, and they’ve gone way past that. So now they’ve got to go back and produce more. There’s no limit to it. I love what they’ve done. There’s more in the box set than just the albums. Posters, programs, and everything.
Phil Aston: And then Forbidden. I’ll be honest, Tony, when I heard this for the first time back in the day, I didn’t like it. I tried, but I didn’t like it. My son liked it because I think probably because his dad didn’t. But now the remix, it’s as if someone’s released the drums and the guitars. It sounds like a Black Sabbath album. It sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?
Tony Martin: It does. It’s brilliant. I love the fact that they’ve dismantled it and put it back in a way that they couldn’t or didn’t with the other three. Forbidden needed it for all kinds of reasons. It was done under a sort of cloud where a lot of us weren’t really into it very much. But it was also an attempt at trying to give Sabbath a kind of acceptable twist to the youth. It didn’t work.
Phil Aston: The nineties were weird, weren’t they? The nineties were strange for heavy rock.
Tony Martin: The problem was we were fast heading towards great new bands like Nirvana and eventually Green Day and Metallica doing stuff. We were going and they were trying to change the sound to fit in. It didn’t work. We didn’t think it would. But there are people out there that love Forbidden as it is. I said that to Iommi. Last time I saw him, there are people out there that love it. He said, “They’ll probably love this version now.” But shaking the chains, guilty as hell, rusty angels, forbidden. And of course, “Loser Gets It All” is a great track. That wasn’t even on the album originally.
Phil Aston: It’s brilliant.
Tony Martin: Yeah. Strange. I absolutely love it now. It does sound like a Black Sabbath album. It sounds like it should be there in amongst the others. They’ve done a great job. Tony and his engineers have really pulled it together. It’s slightly more guitar and slightly less keyboard. They’ve done Cozy’s drums. Fantastic job on those.
Phil Aston: They’re just unleashed, aren’t they?
Tony Martin: Yes. They haven’t changed anything. They’ve mixed it and given it a new attitude, which is brilliant. They’ve given it more space. It sounds bigger. I just love what they’ve done to it. I’m really proud of it now. I didn’t like it then. There’s still a couple of tracks where I would love to have gone back in and…
Phil Aston: Yeah, you know.
Tony Martin: I thought at the time, because I was that off it at the time, my head just wasn’t quite there. A couple of tracks I thought I could have done better. I did sort of say when they were doing it, “Can I go back in?” They said, “No.”
Phil Aston: I suppose because that might edge towards it being a new recording then.
Tony Martin: Yeah, tricky. I’m not going to tell you which tracks it is, but there were a couple in there that I wasn’t quite happy with. But on the whole, it’s a great job they’ve done.
Phil Aston: Because when you were playing live, there were more songs from your period in Sabbath coming into the set, weren’t there? You were a unique vocalist in many ways for the band. You could cover Ozzy, Dio. You probably could have done Ian Gillan. Anything. You could have the ultimate set list, really, going through every era.
Tony Martin: That was a bit of a mistake. I told them I could sing anything, really. They thought, “What can we give him to sing?” They threw all sorts of stuff at me. I had a shot. Fortunately, I’ve got the kind of voice that can get around most things, and that’s a result of being in so many different kinds of music. I’ve been involved in everything from reggae to rock.
Phil Aston: Who were your key vocal influences growing up? As you say, outside of this Black Sabbath badge, your voice can go in any direction. So who were your influences? Was it blues, soul, rock?
Tony Martin: It kept changing. Everything I listened to, I thought, “That’s good. That’s good.” Each couple of years, something else took my attention. I’d really pour my soul into it. When I started off with reggae, believe it or not, I worked with Musical Youth and Dexys Midnight Runners in the studio. I was a guitarist back then. Then I loved blues. I got into prog rock bands like Yes, King Crimson, Jethro Tull. Then it shifted to Emerson, Lake & Palmer. That led to Rush and bands like that. Then I had to come down out of that prog rock technical stuff because Sabbath is much more honest and basic and straightforward. To a point. When you’re in the band and you find out how he does it, it’s stunning. I never even gave it a thought. I thought, “It’s got to be easy.” It wasn’t easy at all. Iommi can put seven, eight different riffs into one song, and each one of the riffs could be a song on their own.
Phil Aston: Very true.
Tony Martin: So, wow. You get your head around it. It’s weird. Plus, the time signatures he was throwing at us. There was a 14/4 and a 15/8 or something he was throwing at us. How he gets his head around it, I just don’t know. When I saw him a few weeks ago, he said, “You did a really good job on this.” I said, “Thanks, man.” He said, “I actually don’t know how you sang over some of this stuff.” I said, “Neither do I.”
Phil Aston: Just mad, isn’t it? You could try anything. I might have thought, “That means you might be able to put some of the songs in that Ozzy couldn’t do into the set. Or I can try something that I’ve never been able to do before because Tony says he can do anything.”
Tony Martin: It’s because I showed willing. I told them I’d have a go. And I did have a go. I did put into it. The songs, the writing, the live shows, whatever. I kind of made a rod for my own back in some ways because it was hard flicking between all of the different vocal techniques. But I did my best. It sort of came across okay. The problem is when you try to do stuff like that, it can sound a bit like a tribute act. But we got it nailed, I think. Especially having people like Cozy Powell, Geezer Butler, and all those guys in the band. We were willing to seek out that Sabbath sound, and we were conscious of it. So we were all aiming for the same thing. From outside, it might have looked like a chaotic mess. But on the inside, it all had a focus. We were all willing to give it a go. That’s what I think they saw in me. I knew they liked my voice, but I think that’s what they saw, a willingness to have a go and see if you can make it work. All those different time signatures and riffs that I had to go, looking back, to me, it’s Black Sabbath. Like,
Phil Aston I’m a Deep Purple fan, and every lineup of Deep Purple is still Deep Purple. I know Black Sabbath, there’s lots of politics in the way some of the fans look at it. But I think, which is why they had Heaven and Hell later on instead of Black Sabbath, because of the politics. But listening to these four albums, one after the other, you brought to life Viking mythology and song. More death. Just your passion and the way you projected the lyrics and your phrasing makes these albums unique. An important part of the Sabbath story. Finally, do you feel like this outpouring of love for this lineup is validating everything? Any doubt that might have been back then?
Tony Martin: Yeah, doesn’t it just? The biggest validation is from Tony Iommi himself. It wasn’t regarded that highly until he sat and listened to it without the bickering going around. When I went down a few weeks ago, he said, “You did a great job on this. There’s fantastic songs on here.” I said, “I know.” It’s just that validation that he gives it. The fact that the fans are returning to it. The fact that we’ve got new fans coming to it. Whole new record labels. I think it’s Rhino in America. It’s BMG in the UK, Europe. The record labels are coming back to it and getting behind it. They see something in it. The management sees something in it. So it’s all coming together. Which is a shame because I’m not in the band anymore.
Phil Aston Who knows? Maybe you and Tony will think, “It’d be great if some of this other stuff can come out at some point and we don’t have to wait another 25 years.”
Tony Martin: If he was going to do that, he’d say, “Let’s just write some new stuff.” But from what I’ve been told, Tony’s touring dates are done now. He won’t be going out on the road again. That’s probably out of the question for writing. I did tell him I was interested if he wants to do something. But he’s got so much going on. He’s still busy. Doing stuff. He had that ballet, the Black Sabbath ballet.
Phil Aston: Yeah, that’s true.
Tony Martin: Never saw that coming. No, he’s working on all kinds of stuff. He’s writing new material for something else now.
Phil Aston: So what about you, Tony? Have you got any plans for another solo album?
Tony Martin: I never actually stopped. For the past 25 years, my career took me into the studio and writing for people. My voice appears on 89 albums and projects now. It’s been good for me. I owe everything to Black Sabbath because that’s how the world got to hear my voice. People know what they’re talking about when they talk to me. “Can you write, can you sing on this?” They already know what they’re hearing or expecting. I always try to make it better than what they give me in the first place. A lot of that is me in the studio, and I’m happy, and I still am, happy doing that. But I do tend to choose what I do these days.
Phil Aston: Yeah, that makes sense.
Tony Martin: So I’m still doing the odd thing for people now. I did have a solo album a couple of years ago called Thorns.
Phil Aston: Great album.
Tony Martin: Yeah, totally unknown guitarist from America, Scott McClellan. I only met him because he kept badgering me on Facebook. He kept sending me stuff. I was like, “Go away.” He said, “Listen to this. What about this one?” In the end, I listened to it and it was brilliant. So I gave it a go and it turned out really well. But then Covid interrupted that and we couldn’t get out there with it. Some countries were saying, “Yeah, you can come,” and other countries were saying, “No, you can’t.” It all got distracted. I haven’t finished with Thorns because they wanted to do a vinyl for it. They said we had to take some tracks off to get it to fit on the vinyl. I don’t want to take any tracks off.
Phil Aston: Make it a double.
Tony Martin: Yeah, make it a double. Write some more. I wasn’t prepared for that. I’m pacing up, trying to write some new songs. Scott has sent me loads. We’ve got enough tracks for Thorns 2, but I haven’t finished Thorns 1 yet. I’ve got to come back to that. I do want to finish that off and get that done. Then if we can do the next Thorns thing, who knows? We’d like to try and get it out on the road. Getting out on the road for me is so different to the Sabbath thing. The Sabbath machine is huge. They only have to mention it and all the cogs start turning all at the same time all the way around the world. It all starts fitting into place within days, within weeks. On your own, it’s different. I can’t do that. I have to hire other musicians to go out on the road and rehearse the whole thing and start again with a brand new show. It’s a lot harder for me, but I would love to get back out there. My career took me into the studio, so I’ve got more to do. But I just tend to choose now.
Phil Aston: If people want to get Thorns, is it DarkstarRecords.net? Is that the best place?
Tony Martin: No, Battle God. They are the main label. Darkstar were involved and they’re still there, but they’ve had some troubles in the past couple of years. They were on board and I did two versions of it from between the two territories. I liked that. But mostly now, Battle God is the label to grab hold of it. It’s still available and I’m still signing them. People send me the stuff to sign.
Phil Aston: But I haven’t finished yet, so there’s more to come.
Phil Aston: Brilliant. Well, thanks very much, Tony, for all of your time today. Everybody, make sure you go and get a copy on CD or vinyl of this Black Sabbath Tony Martin years box set, “Anno Domini.” It’s absolutely superb.
Tony Martin: Yeah, it is good. I’m just smiling. I think it’s brilliant.
Phil Aston: No, that’s it, isn’t it? Whatever anyone thinks, these albums are available again. People can hear just how awesome this time for Sabbath really was.
Tony Martin: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Phil Aston: All right, take care, and hopefully I’ll talk to you again in the future.
Tony Martin: Thank you. All right, Phil, thanks, mate. Cheers.
Phil Aston: Well, a huge thank you to my guest, Tony Martin. That was fantastic. I’m almost lost for words in knowing what to say to sum up that interview because I know a lot of you are really interested in this box set, “Anno Domini” by Black Sabbath, which is out on CD and vinyl. Just as I thought, it’s sold out already, but there’s going to be another pressing. I was able to ask some of the questions I know some of you have been wanting to know, like why weren’t there extra tracks? Why wasn’t the live Cross Purposes included, etc. So now you know. Some of it is really exciting because it means there might be a companion set with some outtakes or live stuff as well. That’s really exciting.
Tony Martin is a fantastic vocalist, really passionate, really imaginative with his lyrics and his vision of how he writes his music. These four albums are essential. They’re Black Sabbath albums, okay? That’s what they are. They sound like Black Sabbath albums. Wasn’t it interesting that Geezer Butler said Cross Purposes is the best album he’d ever played on? It is a truly remarkable album. But they all are: from Headless Cross, to Tyr (which I can now pronounce correctly), Cross Purposes, and Forbidden, which has been given a new lease of life. Seriously, it is incredible. Just stunning.
Thank you again to Tony Martin for joining me here on the Now Spinning Magazine podcast. Please keep spinning those discs, whether they are vinyl or CD. Check us out on the podcast. We’re on every platform you can think of, from Apple to Spotify to Amazon. Of course, we’re on YouTube. Please subscribe and check out the website at nowspinning.co.uk. Remember, music is the healer and the doctor. So take care and I’ll see you all very, very soon.
Watch the full interview here
Phil Aston Now Spinning Magazine
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Tony Martin: Thank you. And thank you for having me on the show. Very cool.
Phil Aston: A bit of context, because I think this is kind of helpful for you. My son is 30 now, but when he was 15, he set up a Facebook group, kind of saying, “One day, please can we have the Tony Martin Black Sabbath albums released?” That was 15 years ago. He was still at school, half his lifetime ago. And I think in the early time when he set this up, he may have reached out to you and you might have said something like, “I don’t think it’s gonna happen, Dan.” And here we are, all these years later, and it’s not only happened, but it comes out this Friday. How does that feel to know that these albums are now going to be available again?
Tony Martin: Well, first of all, well done to your son. It took 15 years, but he got it done. To be honest, there’s been a few periods when I didn’t think it was happening. In fact, about a year ago, Tony Iommi’s manager called me and said, “You know what, this is just so complicated. I don’t think we can do this.” So I was resigned to it not happening myself. It’s all to do with band politics, really. There are so many people involved or have their fingers in the pie that they all have to be on board. And there were allegiances changing all over the place, left, right, and center. So in the end, it was getting a bit tiring, but well done to Tony Iommi and BMG. My God, the patience they showed to get this thing together and actually get it out there. Wow. But how does it feel? It feels brilliant, to be honest. I’m very excited. I haven’t actually had these albums in my own hands physically for the past 25 years. I gave all mine away thinking I’d be able to get some more, and I didn’t. They just stopped making them. So to actually physically hold them again is really cool. What a great job they’ve done of it. So I’m thrilled and excited. And I’m helping out now because I’m not in the band, obviously, anymore. So I just offered my help to promote it and they said, “Great, let’s do it.”
Phil Aston: Isn’t it amazing? Because I’ve done quite a few reviews about Black Sabbath box sets and stuff, but this one, within about 12 hours, there’s literally 12,000 views of the review. The love for this period of Black Sabbath is actually huge. It’s grown. It almost feels as if the profile is higher now than it was at the time.
Tony Martin: Yeah, there is a kind of reason for that. Partly people have got over the “it’s the new guy” thing, and also it’s been 25 years since. So now we’re reaching out to a whole other group of people, in addition to those that were already there. But to the outside world, it looks like there was a huge gap, and to me it felt like a huge gap. But actually, the fans were always there. I’ve been waiting myself as well to get this back out there. And it’s just band politics, really. That’s all it is.
Phil Aston: Because you had that period when it was almost as if this part of Sabbath’s history was hidden because of band politics. None of this really happened, which I think probably stirred up more interest and kind of people wanting to find out more.
Tony Martin: Yeah, it could be. It’s an old famous thing, you know, if something ain’t around for a while, people start talking about it. But yeah, it’s a strange thing, the music business. You’re either in fashion or you’re not. But I am just thrilled that they’ve got around it. Just the patience they’ve shown to actually put this together. At one point they were just saying, “We can’t do it.” But I’m really chuffed anyway.
Phil Aston: I imagine there’s been compromises along the way. Lots of fans probably don’t understand how complicated the politics and all the different licenses and everything that goes on over the years, they become more and more entangled. People say, “Where’s Eternal Idol?” But of course, that was a different record label. Different people own it.
Tony Martin: Yeah, absolutely. It’s owned by somebody else. And also Eternal Idol, or “Eternal Idiot,” as we call it, was kind of reissued not that long ago. Really.
Phil Aston: That’s right. With the two CD version, wasn’t it?
Tony Martin: Yeah. So they were kind of thinking, “Well, there’s no real panic because that’s already been done and let’s just move on.” Because that would have wrapped them up in contracts for centuries, I think. I can’t even think that they’ll ever get them to let that go. But they were struggling to get the people involved with these four albums to make up their minds and do stuff. I’ve been all for it all the way along, I have to say. Obviously, because it’s my career, my history. It’s not just the band’s history. It’s ten years of my life that went AWOL. So, yeah, I’ve been up for it all the way along, but some people don’t and it’s taken them a while to get on board.
Phil Aston: I think it’s fantastic. The first one was Headless Cross. You joined one of the biggest rock bands with all that history behind it. You were an established singer with the Alliance. But this was a chance, as you say, with Eternal Idol, you went in and it was already prepared. You sang it, but this one was where you could really put your mark on it, your personality lyrically as well as musically. Can you remember what it was like actually being at the beginning of that? Did you feel comfortable around Iommi and Powell and thinking, “Right, what kind of lyrics am I going to do by Headless Cross?”
Tony Martin: Yeah, I was comfortable by then. Well, kind of. The thing is, with Eternal Idol, if I can just backstep a little bit. The Eternal Idol wasn’t the first call up. The first call up was in 1986 when they were doing the Seventh Star with Glenn Hughes. And that scared me to death because I can’t sing like Glenn Hughes. Nobody can sing like Glenn Hughes. They put me on standby back then, so I’d sort of tentatively had an introduction to Tony Iommi. Then in ’87, they got me in for the audition, and that was the next introduction to Tony Iommi. But because Eternal Idol was already written, that gave me a whole year plus a bit more to find out what this thing was. What the hell was I supposed to do? So just doing Eternal Idol like that was fine by me because I didn’t have to discover anything myself back then. It gave me a chance to get my feet in. So by the time it got to Headless Cross, now I know all the guys, and I kind of know what’s expected of me. I still had to find the “me” that I needed to find. I went around it the only way I could, by focusing on things I was interested in. I couldn’t do the lyrics and melodies that Geezer was writing for Ozzy because that was a generation before me. The stuff that Ronnie was doing was fantastic, but I couldn’t get inside his head. So I had to think about what I was going to do. I had an interest in the old gothic death stuff, like Dracula and Frankenstein, Mary Shelley type writing, and of course, in England, we have Shakespeare. Nobody speaks English like that anymore, that old English text. I thought, “Old English text, gothic death, and Black Sabbath. That might work.” So I put them all together and came up with Headless Cross, which is where I lived. I lived in a village called Headless Cross.
Phil Aston: Yeah, you put that on the map. They weren’t pleased about it. The most recognition I’ve got is my name on a bus stop. And Cozy Powell thought the album needed more death, didn’t he?
Tony Martin: Oh, that’s true. That’s actually true. We were recording “When Death Calls,” and he was in the studio playing, and he suddenly stopped. We went, “You alright?” He went, “Yeah, just remind me, what’s this song called again?” I said, “It’s called When Death Calls.” He said, “I don’t think there’s enough death in it.” And he carried on playing. So, okay, maybe he’s taking the piss, but isn’t it such a great sounding album? As Tony Iommi says, he never left Black Sabbath. So when people criticize him, saying, “You should change the name or whatever,” he never left. So it was still Black Sabbath. The riffs, the guitar sound was reaching new peaks of excellence around this time.
Because when it was just him and Ozzy, for example, it was guitar, that was it. When Geoff Nichols joined during the Dio period, it introduced a few more keyboard things. That allowed Iommi to play solos against those keyboard pads and chords. And then you come along and start sticking 50 tracks of vocal harmonies on it, like in Anno Mundi and stuff like that. It just kept developing. Sabbath isn’t really known for vocal harmonies and keyboards, but underneath that was still Tony Iommi. And it still sounded like Sabbath. We were happy to do that. We just wanted to make Tony happy and do the best for him. It was his band. So we were happy to seek out that Sabbath sound and make sure it did what it said on the tin. A couple of times, like with the Seventh Star thing, he ventured a little bit away from it. Songs like Heart Like a Wheel don’t really make the Black Sabbath sound, but it’s still good stuff. I have great respect for all of the eras that went before. I had to sing all of the songs. So I do have great respect for it. And it’s been an honor, you know, like being part of the whole story. But he was the only one that stuck it out. And we respected him for that. You’re right, they did ask him to change a couple of times. He said, “No, I can’t change now.”
Phil Aston: The next one, if I pronounce this right, it’s Tyr.
Tony Martin: Yeah.
Phil Aston: Because when it came out, me and my friends, actually, because there was no Internet back then and nowhere to go and check it, we did call it Tyr. To be.
Tony Martin: Yeah, Tyr.
Phil Aston: Watch you find in Birmingham. You know what I mean? So it actually rhymes with beer, doesn’t it?
Tony Martin: It is, yeah. Actually, it’s Tiw, which is Scandinavian for the son of Odin or something.
Phil Aston: Well, this is almost as close, probably, to Sabbath getting into almost a concept album. Isn’t it? This is a collection of songs that in another time and space you probably as a band would have gone out and performed the whole thing.
Tony Martin: Yeah, it wasn’t meant that way, but they were struggling to find a name for the album. We were recording and getting towards the end and the management called us up and said, “We really need a name for this album.” And Cozy said, “I’ve got one. Let’s call it Satanic Verses.” We went, “What, like Salman Rushdie thing?” He said, “Yeah, it would be great publicity.” We said, “Yeah, but we’ll all be dead.” So we did struggle, but they happened across the artwork. We’d done Anno Mundi, we’d done Gates of Valhalla and all that sort of stuff. They went, “What if… Tyr?” It was fine by me. So it took on the Viking sort of theme. By that time, I was thinking, once I’d done Headless Cross and started to have an interest in the Vikings and stuff. As you know, the Vikings haven’t been particularly good for us. They came over and stole all our women and sheep and whatever. But I had an interest in them as well. So I was thinking, every culture, every religion has its dark side. There’s always a devil type in a god type. I thought we could go around the world and I could do this. You could pick up on all sorts of cultures and pick out the dark side of various things. But it was the last kind of… I still did that with various other songs and various other artists. But Tyr was leaning towards that theme.
Phil Aston: It’s an excellent album. Then of course, the strangeness of the politics in Sabbath. Dehumanizer comes along and Dio re-enters the scene. You obviously had an opportunity because every cloud has a silver lining. You can go off and do your solo album at this time. But you did kind of like… It sounds like it was almost a forced relationship, the way that he was and he wasn’t. I mean, how was that period for you? Because you did demo some of the tracks, didn’t you?
Tony Martin: Firstly, it was a shock. I didn’t see that coming at all. Literally just walking out the door to the next writing rehearsals. My managers called up and said, “They don’t want you to go.” From what I recently found out, although I had my suspicions, Tony Iommi said the record label just wasn’t supporting it. They weren’t getting behind us at all. Then they started banding about all different names and stuff, and Ronnie’s name came up. They thought they’d give it a go. He said it was all on and off all the time. After they let me go, it wasn’t too long before Tony called me back and said, “Can you come back?” I said, “No, I can’t. I’m doing my solo album.” More time went by, and he called me back again and said, “Are you sure you can’t come back?” I said, “I’m doing my solo album. I really can’t.” He said, “Do you want to come down and try?” So I did. I went down and tried putting my voice on some of the songs, but it would have meant rewriting everything, and they weren’t going to do that. So I said, “The best thing is if you finish this with Ronnie, get this done and out of the way, then maybe we can talk again later.” So that’s kind of what happened. By that time, I’d done my solo album, which I wanted to get as far away from the Sabbath thing as I could at the time. I went back to doing what the Alliance and some of the bands I’d been with, that middle-of-the-road AOR type stuff. But when they called me back to Sabbath, Polydor dropped my solo album like a brick. They said, “We can’t do this if you’re going to go back with them.” So that got stopped. It’s so confusing. By the time I got back with the guys to Cross Purposes, it didn’t feel that much of a gap for me, because I’ve been talking to them and working with them through the Dehumanizer thing.
Phil Aston: Stylistically, that album, because it was on the IRS label, I know some people have said, “Well, it should be in there.” Stylistically, musically, it’s very different. I mean, you take it out. These four albums in this set, excluding Eternal Idol, they sound like a progression. Dehumanizer sounds like a kind of sidestep. Even the way the riffs are done in the songs, it’s changed. You take the vocalist out, but the music continued. You took you out and it was very different.
Tony Martin: I suppose it does a bit. If I go back and think over it, I guess that’s what it was. It was kind of an interruption into the flow of things. When we were doing Tyr, I thought we were doing really well. I thought we were onto something. Dehumanizer, in that sort of respect, does feel a little bit like an interruption. But there was some good stuff on there. Ronnie’s always been a good singer. I don’t quite know how they feel about it, but it was kind of nothing to do with me. I just let them get on with it.
Phil Aston: After that, Cross Purposes is probably, out of the four albums in this set, my personal favorite. Geezer’s back in the band now, so you’ve got his bubbling bass in there. And again, lyrically, it’s all you. Did you feel any kind of, “Oh, Geezer’s back. Will he want to help out?”
Tony Martin: I did ask. He just said, “No, you can do it.” So I just carried on.
Phil Aston
The reason why I love this album is that it’s varied. A lot of people think of Black Sabbath as the Godfathers of heavy metal, and heavy metal is always heavy metal. But if you think back to albums like Sabbath Bloody Sabbath in the seventies, they weren’t all heavy metal. There were all sorts of things on there. There were keyboards and light and shade. This, I felt, connected to that album, because you had light and shade on it. So there were more dynamics in the lyrical delivery and the song delivery, in the way that Iommi is weaving his riffs around the melodies. What are your thoughts looking back on this album now?
Tony Martin: I think you’ve just summed it up. It did sort of shift up a notch. Not only that, but the sound they were getting with Leif Mases producing it, it sort of grew up. It lifted somehow out of what they’d done before. It felt like, “Oh, this sounds good.” The songwriting and the exploring we were doing with the songs and stuff. At the time, Geezer Butler said that’s the best album he’s ever been on. He never said that again, but he said it at the time.
Phil Aston: I can imagine him saying just that.
Tony Martin: But it was good. Having Bobby Rondinelli in the band as well. Technically amazing. Brilliant player. His drums close in, and he plays with his wrists. Very technical. Whereas Cozy’s drums are stretched out far and wide. He’d lean over and hit them. But great to have them both in. What an honor. I mean, it’s Geezer Butler as well.
Phil Aston: When you got to South America, Bill Ward was in for a few gigs, wasn’t he? That must have been quite surreal. Bill Ward and Geezer playing songs like Headless Cross, which they had nothing to do with.
Tony Martin: They had nothing to do with. We were kind of weird because once we’d started to get Geezer and Bill back in, they wanted to start doing more of the older songs. That just makes you look, read between the lines going, “What’s going on? Where’s this going?” Once it’s happened to you, you know it. Then you’re reading between the lines. You start to feel it. Then you go, “Ah, right.” You can feel it. They’re clearing up. I did ask if they were going to do a reunion with Ozzy. Iommi was always denying it. Said, “No, no, we’re not doing that.” But I didn’t mind. The reason for that is because I knew what I could do in the future then. I thought, “Well, if they just tell me, that’s fine. Cause then I can plan.” The first time it was a shock and I didn’t know what to do. But I was kind of keyed up for it the next time. But he kept going. They got Bill in. I love Bill. I think he’s brilliant. We did some shows with him. But for some reason, and I don’t know what it is, I mean, I can tell you Iommi loves Bill. He regaled so many stories about when they were out there and how funny it was. I never understood why they never gave him time to get back in it. When you think of Def Leppard, they made a drum kit for a one-armed drummer.
Phil Aston: Yes, very true.
Tony Martin: Surely they can find time to get Bill settled back in. Whatever problems they’ve got. I mean, come on.
Phil Aston: You would think, yeah, very true.
Tony Martin: Get on with it. I thought, “Right, this is going to go south again.” But it didn’t. We carried on with Forbidden, and then Cozy came back after his accident. It was really up and down. Confusing. People in and out. During the time I was in the band, there were eight different lineups.
Phil Aston: It was very much a revolving door, wasn’t it? Before we move on, I just want to ask, because I know a lot of fans ask this. In the booklets in these box sets, there’s an image of Cross Purposes Live. That was a VHS tape and a CD. Is there a reason why that wasn’t included in some way? Is that game politics?
Tony Martin: I did ask about that, and they were just keen to get on with it. They said, “Come on, let’s go, let’s do it.” What they told me was that they’re going to take their time now to see what else they can gather and do an additional thing to this along the way with more of that in it. With the Cross Purposes Live and some other stuff. There’s a track that I recorded with them when Eddie Van Halen came and did Evil Eye.
Phil Aston: Yes, yeah, Evil Eye, wasn’t it?
Tony Martin: Yeah. I used to take the track out. I had it everywhere. Writing sessions, recording sessions, rehearsals. I just happened to be there. I didn’t even know who was coming. Iommi just turned up with Eddie Van Halen. I went, “Holy hell, it’s Eddie Van Halen. What’s he doing here?” He did some rehearsals with us and then disappeared. Never saw him again. But I got the recordings of the rehearsals that we did.
Phil Aston: Oh, wow.
Tony Martin: So I sent them to Tony Iommi. I said, “Use these. Get these on.” He said, “No, no, we can’t.” The reason they said was anything that has the slightest newness about it looks like a new Black Sabbath track or album track. They’re not allowed to release anything new under the Black Sabbath name. So even if it’s historical, they couldn’t allow it. It’s really weird.
Phil Aston: That means there must be lots of live stuff recorded. More bands were recording live stuff from the nineties onwards that you just couldn’t work on because it would go out under the Black Sabbath name.
Tony Martin: Not just live stuff. I’ve got about eight tracks that we never released. Just from the writing sessions and rehearsals and stuff that we used to do. They just can’t get out. They just won’t allow it.
I don’t understand. Well, I kind of understand. When you’re trying to protect your name, your mark, your image, your everything, which is where the band politics comes in, they won’t allow you to do anything that they think. And there’s all kinds of… Everybody from Ozzy to Dio to everybody. They don’t want their thing to be diluted or taken away. I do understand that. There are people involved all along the way that have an objection of some kind or another.
Phil Aston: But I guess, hopefully, this box set’s going to sell out really quickly and will show there’s a demand for this material and for this part of Black Sabbath history. There’s a lot of love for it. A lot of people worked really hard within it, like yourself. They’re great albums, wonderful songs. If there’s other music waiting in the wings, whereas we all get older, thinking through the eyes of the fan, it would go down so well, wouldn’t it? But I am, as you are, very grateful that these four albums have arrived in a box.
Tony Martin: Yes, it’s an important thing for me. It’s an important thing for the band, and it’s a great thing for the fans. I’m thrilled. It’s been an honor to be part of the story. I love the fact that it’s out there now. They did say there is no limit to the box sets. They have sold out on day one.
Phil Aston: I’m not surprised.
Tony Martin: They said the way they do it is they tend to poll the outlets and stuff and say, “How many do you think you can sell?” And they put their numbers in, and they’ve gone way past that. So now they’ve got to go back and produce more. There’s no limit to it. I love what they’ve done. There’s more in the box set than just the albums. Posters, programs, and everything.
Phil Aston: And then Forbidden. I’ll be honest, Tony, when I heard this for the first time back in the day, I didn’t like it. I tried, but I didn’t like it. My son liked it because I think probably because his dad didn’t. But now the remix, it’s as if someone’s released the drums and the guitars. It sounds like a Black Sabbath album. It sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?
Tony Martin: It does. It’s brilliant. I love the fact that they’ve dismantled it and put it back in a way that they couldn’t or didn’t with the other three. Forbidden needed it for all kinds of reasons. It was done under a sort of cloud where a lot of us weren’t really into it very much. But it was also an attempt at trying to give Sabbath a kind of acceptable twist to the youth. It didn’t work.
Phil Aston: The nineties were weird, weren’t they? The nineties were strange for heavy rock.
Tony Martin: The problem was we were fast heading towards great new bands like Nirvana and eventually Green Day and Metallica doing stuff. We were going and they were trying to change the sound to fit in. It didn’t work. We didn’t think it would. But there are people out there that love Forbidden as it is. I said that to Iommi. Last time I saw him, there are people out there that love it. He said, “They’ll probably love this version now.” But shaking the chains, guilty as hell, rusty angels, forbidden. And of course, “Loser Gets It All” is a great track. That wasn’t even on the album originally.
Phil Aston: It’s brilliant.
Tony Martin: Yeah. Strange. I absolutely love it now. It does sound like a Black Sabbath album. It sounds like it should be there in amongst the others. They’ve done a great job. Tony and his engineers have really pulled it together. It’s slightly more guitar and slightly less keyboard. They’ve done Cozy’s drums. Fantastic job on those.
Phil Aston: They’re just unleashed, aren’t they?
Tony Martin: Yes. They haven’t changed anything. They’ve mixed it and given it a new attitude, which is brilliant. They’ve given it more space. It sounds bigger. I just love what they’ve done to it. I’m really proud of it now. I didn’t like it then. There’s still a couple of tracks where I would love to have gone back in and…
Phil Aston: Yeah, you know.
Tony Martin: I thought at the time, because I was that off it at the time, my head just wasn’t quite there. A couple of tracks I thought I could have done better. I did sort of say when they were doing it, “Can I go back in?” They said, “No.”
Phil Aston: I suppose because that might edge towards it being a new recording then.
Tony Martin: Yeah, tricky. I’m not going to tell you which tracks it is, but there were a couple in there that I wasn’t quite happy with. But on the whole, it’s a great job they’ve done.
Phil Aston: Because when you were playing live, there were more songs from your period in Sabbath coming into the set, weren’t there? You were a unique vocalist in many ways for the band. You could cover Ozzy, Dio. You probably could have done Ian Gillan. Anything. You could have the ultimate set list, really, going through every era.
Tony Martin: That was a bit of a mistake. I told them I could sing anything, really. They thought, “What can we give him to sing?” They threw all sorts of stuff at me. I had a shot. Fortunately, I’ve got the kind of voice that can get around most things, and that’s a result of being in so many different kinds of music. I’ve been involved in everything from reggae to rock.
Phil Aston: Who were your key vocal influences growing up? As you say, outside of this Black Sabbath badge, your voice can go in any direction. So who were your influences? Was it blues, soul, rock?
Tony Martin: It kept changing. Everything I listened to, I thought, “That’s good. That’s good.” Each couple of years, something else took my attention. I’d really pour my soul into it. When I started off with reggae, believe it or not, I worked with Musical Youth and Dexys Midnight Runners in the studio. I was a guitarist back then. Then I loved blues. I got into prog rock bands like Yes, King Crimson, Jethro Tull. Then it shifted to Emerson, Lake & Palmer. That led to Rush and bands like that. Then I had to come down out of that prog rock technical stuff because Sabbath is much more honest and basic and straightforward. To a point. When you’re in the band and you find out how he does it, it’s stunning. I never even gave it a thought. I thought, “It’s got to be easy.” It wasn’t easy at all. Iommi can put seven, eight different riffs into one song, and each one of the riffs could be a song on their own.
Phil Aston: Very true.
Tony Martin: So, wow. You get your head around it. It’s weird. Plus, the time signatures he was throwing at us. There was a 14/4 and a 15/8 or something he was throwing at us. How he gets his head around it, I just don’t know. When I saw him a few weeks ago, he said, “You did a really good job on this.” I said, “Thanks, man.” He said, “I actually don’t know how you sang over some of this stuff.” I said, “Neither do I.”
Phil Aston: Just mad, isn’t it? You could try anything. I might have thought, “That means you might be able to put some of the songs in that Ozzy couldn’t do into the set. Or I can try something that I’ve never been able to do before because Tony says he can do anything.”
Tony Martin: It’s because I showed willing. I told them I’d have a go. And I did have a go. I did put into it. The songs, the writing, the live shows, whatever. I kind of made a rod for my own back in some ways because it was hard flicking between all of the different vocal techniques. But I did my best. It sort of came across okay. The problem is when you try to do stuff like that, it can sound a bit like a tribute act. But we got it nailed, I think. Especially having people like Cozy Powell, Geezer Butler, and all those guys in the band. We were willing to seek out that Sabbath sound, and we were conscious of it. So we were all aiming for the same thing. From outside, it might have looked like a chaotic mess. But on the inside, it all had a focus. We were all willing to give it a go. That’s what I think they saw in me. I knew they liked my voice, but I think that’s what they saw, a willingness to have a go and see if you can make it work. All those different time signatures and riffs that I had to go, looking back, to me, it’s Black Sabbath. Like,
Phil Aston I’m a Deep Purple fan, and every lineup of Deep Purple is still Deep Purple. I know Black Sabbath, there’s lots of politics in the way some of the fans look at it. But I think, which is why they had Heaven and Hell later on instead of Black Sabbath, because of the politics. But listening to these four albums, one after the other, you brought to life Viking mythology and song. More death. Just your passion and the way you projected the lyrics and your phrasing makes these albums unique. An important part of the Sabbath story. Finally, do you feel like this outpouring of love for this lineup is validating everything? Any doubt that might have been back then?
Tony Martin: Yeah, doesn’t it just? The biggest validation is from Tony Iommi himself. It wasn’t regarded that highly until he sat and listened to it without the bickering going around. When I went down a few weeks ago, he said, “You did a great job on this. There’s fantastic songs on here.” I said, “I know.” It’s just that validation that he gives it. The fact that the fans are returning to it. The fact that we’ve got new fans coming to it. Whole new record labels. I think it’s Rhino in America. It’s BMG in the UK, Europe. The record labels are coming back to it and getting behind it. They see something in it. The management sees something in it. So it’s all coming together. Which is a shame because I’m not in the band anymore.
Phil Aston Who knows? Maybe you and Tony will think, “It’d be great if some of this other stuff can come out at some point and we don’t have to wait another 25 years.”
Tony Martin: If he was going to do that, he’d say, “Let’s just write some new stuff.” But from what I’ve been told, Tony’s touring dates are done now. He won’t be going out on the road again. That’s probably out of the question for writing. I did tell him I was interested if he wants to do something. But he’s got so much going on. He’s still busy. Doing stuff. He had that ballet, the Black Sabbath ballet.
Phil Aston: Yeah, that’s true.
Tony Martin: Never saw that coming. No, he’s working on all kinds of stuff. He’s writing new material for something else now.
Phil Aston: So what about you, Tony? Have you got any plans for another solo album?
Tony Martin: I never actually stopped. For the past 25 years, my career took me into the studio and writing for people. My voice appears on 89 albums and projects now. It’s been good for me. I owe everything to Black Sabbath because that’s how the world got to hear my voice. People know what they’re talking about when they talk to me. “Can you write, can you sing on this?” They already know what they’re hearing or expecting. I always try to make it better than what they give me in the first place. A lot of that is me in the studio, and I’m happy, and I still am, happy doing that. But I do tend to choose what I do these days.
Phil Aston: Yeah, that makes sense.
Tony Martin: So I’m still doing the odd thing for people now. I did have a solo album a couple of years ago called Thorns.
Phil Aston: Great album.
Tony Martin: Yeah, totally unknown guitarist from America, Scott McClellan. I only met him because he kept badgering me on Facebook. He kept sending me stuff. I was like, “Go away.” He said, “Listen to this. What about this one?” In the end, I listened to it and it was brilliant. So I gave it a go and it turned out really well. But then Covid interrupted that and we couldn’t get out there with it. Some countries were saying, “Yeah, you can come,” and other countries were saying, “No, you can’t.” It all got distracted. I haven’t finished with Thorns because they wanted to do a vinyl for it. They said we had to take some tracks off to get it to fit on the vinyl. I don’t want to take any tracks off.
Phil Aston: Make it a double.
Tony Martin: Yeah, make it a double. Write some more. I wasn’t prepared for that. I’m pacing up, trying to write some new songs. Scott has sent me loads. We’ve got enough tracks for Thorns 2, but I haven’t finished Thorns 1 yet. I’ve got to come back to that. I do want to finish that off and get that done. Then if we can do the next Thorns thing, who knows? We’d like to try and get it out on the road. Getting out on the road for me is so different to the Sabbath thing. The Sabbath machine is huge. They only have to mention it and all the cogs start turning all at the same time all the way around the world. It all starts fitting into place within days, within weeks. On your own, it’s different. I can’t do that. I have to hire other musicians to go out on the road and rehearse the whole thing and start again with a brand new show. It’s a lot harder for me, but I would love to get back out there. My career took me into the studio, so I’ve got more to do. But I just tend to choose now.
Phil Aston: If people want to get Thorns, is it DarkstarRecords.net? Is that the best place?
Tony Martin: No, Battle God. They are the main label. Darkstar were involved and they’re still there, but they’ve had some troubles in the past couple of years. They were on board and I did two versions of it from between the two territories. I liked that. But mostly now, Battle God is the label to grab hold of it. It’s still available and I’m still signing them. People send me the stuff to sign.
Phil Aston: But I haven’t finished yet, so there’s more to come.
Phil Aston: Brilliant. Well, thanks very much, Tony, for all of your time today. Everybody, make sure you go and get a copy on CD or vinyl of this Black Sabbath Tony Martin years box set, “Anno Domini.” It’s absolutely superb.
Tony Martin: Yeah, it is good. I’m just smiling. I think it’s brilliant.
Phil Aston: No, that’s it, isn’t it? Whatever anyone thinks, these albums are available again. People can hear just how awesome this time for Sabbath really was.
Tony Martin: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Phil Aston: All right, take care, and hopefully I’ll talk to you again in the future.
Tony Martin: Thank you. All right, Phil, thanks, mate. Cheers.
Phil Aston: Well, a huge thank you to my guest, Tony Martin. That was fantastic. I’m almost lost for words in knowing what to say to sum up that interview because I know a lot of you are really interested in this box set, “Anno Domini” by Black Sabbath, which is out on CD and vinyl. Just as I thought, it’s sold out already, but there’s going to be another pressing. I was able to ask some of the questions I know some of you have been wanting to know, like why weren’t there extra tracks? Why wasn’t the live Cross Purposes included, etc. So now you know. Some of it is really exciting because it means there might be a companion set with some outtakes or live stuff as well. That’s really exciting.
Tony Martin is a fantastic vocalist, really passionate, really imaginative with his lyrics and his vision of how he writes his music. These four albums are essential. They’re Black Sabbath albums, okay? That’s what they are. They sound like Black Sabbath albums. Wasn’t it interesting that Geezer Butler said Cross Purposes is the best album he’d ever played on? It is a truly remarkable album. But they all are: from Headless Cross, to Tyr (which I can now pronounce correctly), Cross Purposes, and Forbidden, which has been given a new lease of life. Seriously, it is incredible. Just stunning.
Thank you again to Tony Martin for joining me here on the Now Spinning Magazine podcast. Please keep spinning those discs, whether they are vinyl or CD. Check us out on the podcast. We’re on every platform you can think of, from Apple to Spotify to Amazon. Of course, we’re on YouTube. Please subscribe and check out the website at nowspinning.co.uk. Remember, music is the healer and the doctor. So take care and I’ll see you all very, very soon.
Watch the full interview here
Phil Aston Now Spinning Magazine
2024.06.01 15:24 LordChozo Chronicles of a Prolific Gamer - May 2024
May got out to a lightning start for me, continuing the torrid April pace for a while before cooling off a bit in the back end of the month. That's partially by design, as I jumped into a pair of longer games (one enormously so) which I won't finish until deeper into June, but I've also noticed I'm slowly bleeding gaming time from my evenings. As my kids get incrementally older and the days grow incrementally longer entering summer, an hour that would previously be my own is now deferred to them, and that adds up over the course of an entire month.
Not that I'd trade my kids, you understand.
(Games are presented in chronological completion order; the numerical indicator represents the YTD count.)
#27 - Contra: Hard Corps - GEN - 8/10 (Great)
It's been fascinating to watch the Contra series evolve over time, and Hard Corps on the Sega Genesis is no different. With no Mode 7 (the SNES' proprietary isometric viewpoint mode) available on the system, necessarily some of the top down content from Contra III would need to be altered or removed, and that begged the question of what would take its place: after all, a return to basic sidescrolling action might feel like a big step down, and we can't have that. So I think I expected Hard Corps to throw in a new wrinkle to keep the formula a bit more fresh. What I did not expect was for it to make three enormous changes.
For one, Hard Corps has four different characters to choose from, and each is actually unique. It's not just the look - where else can you play a cybernetic wolfman? - but they've got different sizes and hurtboxes as well. And while each starts with the same basic low power machine gun, each has a completely different loadout of possible weapon upgrades, ensuring that all four play very differently from one another outside of the fundamentals of movement. To that end, the two weapon toggle of Contra III is expanded in Hard Corps, allowing you to hold all four of your upgraded weapons simultaneously and switch between them at will, which adds a new layer of depth and strategy to the action. Building upon this notion of enhanced player choice even further, the second big change is that the game has branching paths. After the first stage you make a choice that determines where you head for the second level, and then later on you make another choice that creates further divergence, such that the game has four main endings (and a secret fifth!), all with their own dedicated unique stages. It's for that reason possibly the most replayable game so far in the franchise; I myself did a run through of each ending using a different character per run to get a feel for them all.
This leads to the final big change, which is the only one I don't regard a resounding success: the entire game is basically a boss rush. Let's zero in on the main path that I followed on my primary playthrough and add up all mini-bosses and full boss phases. What number might you expect that to come out as? A dozen or so? Well, sorry about your naiveté, but the answer is 43: it's bosses all the way down. This is a MUCH more mentally taxing load than previous Contra games where you could kind of skate through the non-boss sections with good fundamentals. And that's just one of four possible paths through the game! It's absurd! It's also way more fun than it sounds it would be from the description, but I've heard people say Hard Corps is the toughest Contra game and now I know why. I do miss just running and gunning and dropping dudes in one hit before a thrilling finale; it's hard to be properly wowed by a boss fight when that's all you ever see. But nevertheless Contra: Hard Corps is lives up to the legacy of greatness the franchise had up until that point established...just steel yourself mentally for the extensive memorization it requires of you.
#28 - Ancient Enemy - PC - 5.5/10 (Semi-Competent)
Solitaire is one of those games that nobody really wants to play. It’s a game of convenience and opportunity, only attractive in the absence of something better, which is to say “nearly anything else at all.” Slightly more entertaining are variations on the form, such as Mahjong Solitaire or Free Cell, where certain cards/tiles are locked until the ones above them have been cleared away. These are still just time wasting games for people with nothing else to do, but when presented as a discrete set of challenges there’s a bit more appeal. Do you know they say that every one of the 32,000 numbered games of FreeCell on classic Windows operating systems was supposedly beatable? Did you know a very bored teenage me once decided to see if I could prove it by playing and beating every single unique game of FreeCell in order? I got into the low 30s or so before I questioned what the hell I was doing with my life and wisely moved on.
Well, Ancient Enemy is a game for people with nothing better to do, masquerading as a game that would qualify as "something better to do." It’s an RPG, I guess, but the gameplay revolves entirely around a solitaire variant. You have a deck of “stock cards” numbered 0-9 and start each encounter (“hand”) by flipping the top one. Then on the board you have to collect a card with a number adjacent to the one you’re displaying - 0 serving as a bridge between 1 and 9. Getting a card reveals any card trapped immediately below it and enables that card to be collected as well. If you can’t make a move, you can flip a new stock card over to get a random new number until your deck runs out. Some levels are simple puzzles in this vein, trying to clear all the cards from the board. Most encounters though are battles, where you do the exact same thing, except the color of the card you collect enables you to attack, defend, or cast a spell. So it’s turn-based combat, except each turn is you basically clearing as many cards as you can from the board to juice up your attack or bolster your defense, and that’s about it.
Now, at first, this is actually way more fun than I’m making it sound. I mean, I like solitaire type games for what they are, and the extra mechanics definitely do enrich the experience. You get consumable wild cards, battle boards have bonus cards with instant benefits, you get powers that manipulate the board, new types of cards appear, all good stuff. The problem is that the game completely runs out of these new ideas about a quarter of the way through, at which point you’re just going through the motions until the end, accompanied by a complete nothing of a story that I was confident I had figured out, only to find that the ending was somehow worse than the cliche I’d been anticipating. Thus, the game sadly settled into that exact same niche of games it was supposed to improve upon and supplant. Which I suppose is ok…if you’ve got nothing better to do.
#29 - Snakebird Primer - PC - 7/10 (Good)
I follow a general rule of always playing game franchises in order, but Snakebird Primer is a unique case wherein the developers of the original Snakebird decided that it was too off-putting to new players, and so they made a sequel that they explicitly wanted newcomers to play first. A "primer" in truth to ease you into the overall Snakebird challenge, as it were. So when I decided to check out Snakebird, I thought all right: just this once I'll do it your way.
So how does Snakebird Primer shake out? Well...it's fine. It's a jaunty kind of puzzle game, with bright colors, friendly art and music, and general good vibes. In each stage you control one or more segmented "snakebirds" and have to get them all to the rainbow portal to complete the level. Sometimes you need to eat fruit to open the portal as well, but that's the entire game in a nutshell. It's a very simple concept, complicated only by the fact that a snakebird that has no body segments touching the ground will fall, and so each stage is a kind of pathing challenge, tasking you to figure out the right order of operations to reach the end. The levels are very well paced and designed if you just go in order: there aren't any hand-holdy tutorials, but new ideas are introduced organically at various intervals, and the challenge always feels reasonable, especially because you can undo any number of moves at will, like stepping through code to find an error.
There is, however, a significant difficulty spike for the last couple levels, which is pretty jarring. And when you add to that the fact that the designer of Baba Is You said he built a lot of his design philosophy around the original Snakebird, I've got to admit I'm a lot less keen on checking that one out. It's in that same realm of "enter these six dozen commands in precisely the right order" that made Baba Is You eventually feel more tedious and frustrating to me than anything else, so I think for now I'm happy to have just played the "lite" version instead.
#30 - It Takes Two - PS4 - 8.5/10 (Excellent)
When trying to write down a genre for It Takes Two in my tracking spreadsheet, I wanted to put "Yes". It's as though the developers wanted to make a bunch of different kinds of games and, rather than accepting any limitations (self-imposed or otherwise), they just found a way to do it all at once. It Takes Two is a platformer. It's a third-person shooter. It's a puzzle game. It's a rhythm game. It's a racing game. It's a stealth game. It's a boss battling action adventure. It's a minigame collection. It's a romantic comedy. It's an exploration playground. One minute you're flying around on a jetpack chucking Captain America shields at devils and the next you're literally playing a timed game of chess. None of the things that It Takes Two does would be characterized as masterpiece forms of their respective genres, but that's not the point. There's sufficient depth and development of each mechanic that it never feels like a lazy tack-on to check a box - and that in itself is beyond impressive - but it's the sheer number of different ideas tossed into this package that make it truly special.
It's hard for me to even review this game, frankly. Part of that is because I feel a strong bias towards the game for the audaciousness of what it tries to achieve, and for the way it inspires me to keep stretching myself in new ways however I can. But it's also hard because I don't remember the whole thing. It Takes Two is both fresh in memory, having just finished it, and yet far away and mingled in my mind with similar bits of similar other adventures (Tearaway foremost among them). Why is that? Well, I first booted up It Takes Two in May of 2022 as a co-op experience to share with my wife - quite fitting, as it turns out, given the nature of the game's plot of trying to reconcile an embattled couple. We'd only play in smaller bursts of 1-2 hours at a time, but every session we played it felt like we were playing a new, different game. Music to my ears, but much harder on my gaming-challenged wife, who took longer to adjust to each mechanical shift. Pretty soon we were playing less and less often, even as I was playing a game like Tearaway early on that occupied some similar design space in my head. Soon we stopped playing at all. When I tried to suggest resuming this title over the past year, I was repeatedly rebuffed until finally a month ago I managed to wear her down enough that we picked it up again for about an hour a week. So it is that the first half of the game is fuzzy and nebulous to me, even as I recall that I loved playing, whereas the back half is much fresher, and it's nigh impossible for me to separate my wife's frequent frustrations from my own experience - especially since I've been playing on a controller experiencing heavy stick drift, so managing the camera was a nightmare through no fault of the game's.
All that said, how could I not recommend this game? It's best played with two experienced gamers, but the story only fully lands if you play as a couple, so there's a bit of potential for a disconnect there, as I experienced. It's not a perfect game. But it is an incredibly ambitious one that had me routinely grinning from ear to ear, despite the grumblings on the couch next to me. When I pointed out to my wife that we finished the game in May 2024, almost to the day when we started back in '22, she said "They should've called it It Takes Two Years." We're both glad it's over, but I think for very different reasons.
#31 - Rogue Legacy 2 - PS5 - 7/10 (Good)
Some game sequels try to really shake things up and try something different from the one before. Final Fantasy is probably the biggest and most obvious example of this, but you can also see it in virtually every Super Mario Bros. game, in the Castlevania series, and the list goes on extensively from there. On the other hand, some game sequels treat their predecessors like rough drafts to be perfected. With these, the idea is to take the vision for the previous game, use the increase in time/budget/developer expertise now available, and try to execute on it more completely than was possible before. When a game like this is successful, there becomes almost zero reason to ever play the original game (other than possibly its story), because the new version has replaced it entirely as the definitive experience.
Rogue Legacy 2 is one of these latter types of games. Everything from the first game is pretty much still there (bosses excepted): enemies, basic combat and room design, character classes, traits, progression, etc. It immediately feels like "Hey, I've played this before," yet a cursory look reveals a huge wealth of additional content over the first game. Classes are better differentiated, you get new weapons, more spells, special abilities, new items, new upgrades, new explorable regions, new mechanics, new new new. It truly is a total replacement for Rogue Legacy 1 in this regard, a "go ahead and uninstall that thing forever because we've got it all right here and then some" type of mission statement. I was amazed at how I kept finding ever more avenues of progression and discovery, even many hours into the game, In fact, I never did manage to play as every class, and each class has a variant form as well, most of which I didn't even unlock. It's overflowing with stuff.
And I think that's why it didn't work quite as well for me as the first game: it's all too much. Now there are four different types of currency, all acquired in different ways, all for different upgrade paths. You're always competing with yourself on what to level up between runs because there are too many choices and all of them seem pretty good, but as you're finding your early groove the game throws a big wrench in there: labor costs. While each upgrade has a set gold cost that increases as you level it up, early on the game adds a universal tax mechanic to the entire upgrade tree, making it increasingly prohibitive to spend your money on stuff, and it feels awful. Rogue Legacy 1 had a similar system where each upgrade cost 10g more than the previous, but in the sequel these escalate far more rapidly, to the point where you'll complete a huge run and still feel like you can only afford one or two upgrades that barely move the needle. It's a pure inflationary grinding system meant to pad playtime, and I'm not about that. I played RL1 through multiple New Game + levels, but I was thrilled to beat RL2's final boss and move on because the economy is so frustrating. Other than that though, it's got quite a lot going for it.
#32 - Undertale - PS4 - 7/10 (Good)
When is some information too much information? Undertale is notorious for its rabid fan community insisting that there is only one "right" way to play the game, and so if you've ever heard of Undertale there's a good chance you already know what that preferred method is: pacifism. Undertale takes a unique approach to the JRPG in two primary ways: first, that defending against enemy attacks is an active system pretty much akin to dodging in a bullet hell game, and second that you almost never actually need to choose the "Fight" command from the battle menu in order to succeed in an encounter. The argument from the community is that you must play in this fully pacifist manner, largely because of a design decision that thoroughly punishes players who do not, only revealed after the game's conclusion. Thus, these players are "helping" curious newcomers by saving them from falling victim to a fairly vindictive design choice that would create a lot of frustration.
The problem with that approach is that Undertale makes it abundantly clear from the outset that you have the option for these alternative combat approaches, trains you on how to use them, and then gives you a positive feedback loop for choosing that direction with your gameplay. Which means the discourse surrounding this game effectively undermines not only the game's own ability to surprise and educate you, but also the authorial intent of that same design decision, which in context is a conscious player decision to go against the grain and suffer the possible consequences of doing so. In short, I wish I'd never heard of Undertale before I played it, as I'm sure I would've had a much better time.
As it stands, Undertale is still a highly creative take on the genre that, despite an aesthetic I didn't care for and writing that leaned a bit too hard at times into "lol I'm so random" territory for my tastes, still managed to get me invested with some of its characters and even make me laugh aloud at times. I was particularly impressed with that aforementioned approach to combat, as each enemy introduced unique hazards to avoid, so fighting a new monster was far more exciting here than in a standard turn-based RPG where the only meaningful question is "How much damage did this whatever move do to me?" So for those reasons I applaud Undertale. Even still, there's a lot of walking back and forth with no major purpose beyond "it was decided the game should be a little bit inconvenient here," adding some unnecessary tedium to the mix. In short, Undertale's a generally good time, but if you want it to be even better, just pretend you haven't read anything I just said.
#33 - Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales - PS5 - 7.5/10 (Solid)
2018 was a big year for Miles Morales. In the fall he showed up in the PS4 title Marvel's Spider-Man as a major supporting character, and by the end of the year he was stunning cinema audiences in the fantastic Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as the primary protagonist. It's no surprise then that by 2020, with his brand so hot, Sony and Insomniac Games would cash in with a follow-up title to the hit PS4 game with Miles front and center. And for the most part, the game is what you'd expect it to be from that basic pitch: more of the same from 2018, only focusing on Miles' family, his new home of Harlem and its people, and his path to becoming a fully fledged hero in his own right. That's all fine, but here's the problem: all of it has been done better before, and recently to boot. Miles' story of personal growth and family drama was handled better in the Spider-Verse series, even though MSM:MM wisely walks chooses to walk some different beats along the way. "Superhero of Harlem" was done masterfully by Netflix with the Luke Cage series (the first season, at least) back in 2016, and MSM:MM doesn't even try to address any issues beyond the most surface level. And the "more of the same" gameplay?
Well, admittedly that's still pretty good. Web swinging is as fun as ever to the point that there's an XP challenge to web swing at high speed for a full cumulative hour of real time and I caught myself thinking, "Hmm, maybe..." There are fast travel points that unlock relatively early on, but the joy of traversal feels like the main point of the game, so why would you bother? Miles also gets some new Spidey moves related to his bio-electric powers, and these are really fun and impactful to pull off, such that "more of the same" isn't in this case a damning phrase. And yet, it's also distinctly not "more, but better." In order to emphasize your new powers, the goons you fight (now including women for the first time I can recall ever seeing in a superhero game like this) have upgraded their own abilities as well, which means the simple pleasure of chaining big combos is a bit diminished. Maybe this enemy just blocks all your basic attacks and stops you cold. Maybe this one turns the tables to dodge and counter you. Or maybe you're just constantly surrounded by a flood of dudes with guns and rocket launchers and you feel like you never get a chance to press "punch" without being thoroughly punished.
Now add to that the game's relatively brief length and general lack of meaningful activities compared to its predecessor, as well as its truly awful villains and the ho-hum plot that they service, and you've got a title that's decidedly a step back from what came before. Of course, what came before was excellent, so even a step back still lands you in territory that's quite fun to play around with. My 6-year-old summed it up best when he came downstairs to ask me a question one day and caught me playing: "Whoa...how are you Spider-Man?!" Which is to say that Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a game that really makes you feel like a wannabe Spider-Man who hasn't gotten it all figured out just yet. And I guess that's all right.
Coming in June:
submitted by LordChozo to patientgamers [link] [comments]
Not that I'd trade my kids, you understand.
(Games are presented in chronological completion order; the numerical indicator represents the YTD count.)
#27 - Contra: Hard Corps - GEN - 8/10 (Great)
It's been fascinating to watch the Contra series evolve over time, and Hard Corps on the Sega Genesis is no different. With no Mode 7 (the SNES' proprietary isometric viewpoint mode) available on the system, necessarily some of the top down content from Contra III would need to be altered or removed, and that begged the question of what would take its place: after all, a return to basic sidescrolling action might feel like a big step down, and we can't have that. So I think I expected Hard Corps to throw in a new wrinkle to keep the formula a bit more fresh. What I did not expect was for it to make three enormous changes.
For one, Hard Corps has four different characters to choose from, and each is actually unique. It's not just the look - where else can you play a cybernetic wolfman? - but they've got different sizes and hurtboxes as well. And while each starts with the same basic low power machine gun, each has a completely different loadout of possible weapon upgrades, ensuring that all four play very differently from one another outside of the fundamentals of movement. To that end, the two weapon toggle of Contra III is expanded in Hard Corps, allowing you to hold all four of your upgraded weapons simultaneously and switch between them at will, which adds a new layer of depth and strategy to the action. Building upon this notion of enhanced player choice even further, the second big change is that the game has branching paths. After the first stage you make a choice that determines where you head for the second level, and then later on you make another choice that creates further divergence, such that the game has four main endings (and a secret fifth!), all with their own dedicated unique stages. It's for that reason possibly the most replayable game so far in the franchise; I myself did a run through of each ending using a different character per run to get a feel for them all.
This leads to the final big change, which is the only one I don't regard a resounding success: the entire game is basically a boss rush. Let's zero in on the main path that I followed on my primary playthrough and add up all mini-bosses and full boss phases. What number might you expect that to come out as? A dozen or so? Well, sorry about your naiveté, but the answer is 43: it's bosses all the way down. This is a MUCH more mentally taxing load than previous Contra games where you could kind of skate through the non-boss sections with good fundamentals. And that's just one of four possible paths through the game! It's absurd! It's also way more fun than it sounds it would be from the description, but I've heard people say Hard Corps is the toughest Contra game and now I know why. I do miss just running and gunning and dropping dudes in one hit before a thrilling finale; it's hard to be properly wowed by a boss fight when that's all you ever see. But nevertheless Contra: Hard Corps is lives up to the legacy of greatness the franchise had up until that point established...just steel yourself mentally for the extensive memorization it requires of you.
#28 - Ancient Enemy - PC - 5.5/10 (Semi-Competent)
Solitaire is one of those games that nobody really wants to play. It’s a game of convenience and opportunity, only attractive in the absence of something better, which is to say “nearly anything else at all.” Slightly more entertaining are variations on the form, such as Mahjong Solitaire or Free Cell, where certain cards/tiles are locked until the ones above them have been cleared away. These are still just time wasting games for people with nothing else to do, but when presented as a discrete set of challenges there’s a bit more appeal. Do you know they say that every one of the 32,000 numbered games of FreeCell on classic Windows operating systems was supposedly beatable? Did you know a very bored teenage me once decided to see if I could prove it by playing and beating every single unique game of FreeCell in order? I got into the low 30s or so before I questioned what the hell I was doing with my life and wisely moved on.
Well, Ancient Enemy is a game for people with nothing better to do, masquerading as a game that would qualify as "something better to do." It’s an RPG, I guess, but the gameplay revolves entirely around a solitaire variant. You have a deck of “stock cards” numbered 0-9 and start each encounter (“hand”) by flipping the top one. Then on the board you have to collect a card with a number adjacent to the one you’re displaying - 0 serving as a bridge between 1 and 9. Getting a card reveals any card trapped immediately below it and enables that card to be collected as well. If you can’t make a move, you can flip a new stock card over to get a random new number until your deck runs out. Some levels are simple puzzles in this vein, trying to clear all the cards from the board. Most encounters though are battles, where you do the exact same thing, except the color of the card you collect enables you to attack, defend, or cast a spell. So it’s turn-based combat, except each turn is you basically clearing as many cards as you can from the board to juice up your attack or bolster your defense, and that’s about it.
Now, at first, this is actually way more fun than I’m making it sound. I mean, I like solitaire type games for what they are, and the extra mechanics definitely do enrich the experience. You get consumable wild cards, battle boards have bonus cards with instant benefits, you get powers that manipulate the board, new types of cards appear, all good stuff. The problem is that the game completely runs out of these new ideas about a quarter of the way through, at which point you’re just going through the motions until the end, accompanied by a complete nothing of a story that I was confident I had figured out, only to find that the ending was somehow worse than the cliche I’d been anticipating. Thus, the game sadly settled into that exact same niche of games it was supposed to improve upon and supplant. Which I suppose is ok…if you’ve got nothing better to do.
#29 - Snakebird Primer - PC - 7/10 (Good)
I follow a general rule of always playing game franchises in order, but Snakebird Primer is a unique case wherein the developers of the original Snakebird decided that it was too off-putting to new players, and so they made a sequel that they explicitly wanted newcomers to play first. A "primer" in truth to ease you into the overall Snakebird challenge, as it were. So when I decided to check out Snakebird, I thought all right: just this once I'll do it your way.
So how does Snakebird Primer shake out? Well...it's fine. It's a jaunty kind of puzzle game, with bright colors, friendly art and music, and general good vibes. In each stage you control one or more segmented "snakebirds" and have to get them all to the rainbow portal to complete the level. Sometimes you need to eat fruit to open the portal as well, but that's the entire game in a nutshell. It's a very simple concept, complicated only by the fact that a snakebird that has no body segments touching the ground will fall, and so each stage is a kind of pathing challenge, tasking you to figure out the right order of operations to reach the end. The levels are very well paced and designed if you just go in order: there aren't any hand-holdy tutorials, but new ideas are introduced organically at various intervals, and the challenge always feels reasonable, especially because you can undo any number of moves at will, like stepping through code to find an error.
There is, however, a significant difficulty spike for the last couple levels, which is pretty jarring. And when you add to that the fact that the designer of Baba Is You said he built a lot of his design philosophy around the original Snakebird, I've got to admit I'm a lot less keen on checking that one out. It's in that same realm of "enter these six dozen commands in precisely the right order" that made Baba Is You eventually feel more tedious and frustrating to me than anything else, so I think for now I'm happy to have just played the "lite" version instead.
#30 - It Takes Two - PS4 - 8.5/10 (Excellent)
When trying to write down a genre for It Takes Two in my tracking spreadsheet, I wanted to put "Yes". It's as though the developers wanted to make a bunch of different kinds of games and, rather than accepting any limitations (self-imposed or otherwise), they just found a way to do it all at once. It Takes Two is a platformer. It's a third-person shooter. It's a puzzle game. It's a rhythm game. It's a racing game. It's a stealth game. It's a boss battling action adventure. It's a minigame collection. It's a romantic comedy. It's an exploration playground. One minute you're flying around on a jetpack chucking Captain America shields at devils and the next you're literally playing a timed game of chess. None of the things that It Takes Two does would be characterized as masterpiece forms of their respective genres, but that's not the point. There's sufficient depth and development of each mechanic that it never feels like a lazy tack-on to check a box - and that in itself is beyond impressive - but it's the sheer number of different ideas tossed into this package that make it truly special.
It's hard for me to even review this game, frankly. Part of that is because I feel a strong bias towards the game for the audaciousness of what it tries to achieve, and for the way it inspires me to keep stretching myself in new ways however I can. But it's also hard because I don't remember the whole thing. It Takes Two is both fresh in memory, having just finished it, and yet far away and mingled in my mind with similar bits of similar other adventures (Tearaway foremost among them). Why is that? Well, I first booted up It Takes Two in May of 2022 as a co-op experience to share with my wife - quite fitting, as it turns out, given the nature of the game's plot of trying to reconcile an embattled couple. We'd only play in smaller bursts of 1-2 hours at a time, but every session we played it felt like we were playing a new, different game. Music to my ears, but much harder on my gaming-challenged wife, who took longer to adjust to each mechanical shift. Pretty soon we were playing less and less often, even as I was playing a game like Tearaway early on that occupied some similar design space in my head. Soon we stopped playing at all. When I tried to suggest resuming this title over the past year, I was repeatedly rebuffed until finally a month ago I managed to wear her down enough that we picked it up again for about an hour a week. So it is that the first half of the game is fuzzy and nebulous to me, even as I recall that I loved playing, whereas the back half is much fresher, and it's nigh impossible for me to separate my wife's frequent frustrations from my own experience - especially since I've been playing on a controller experiencing heavy stick drift, so managing the camera was a nightmare through no fault of the game's.
All that said, how could I not recommend this game? It's best played with two experienced gamers, but the story only fully lands if you play as a couple, so there's a bit of potential for a disconnect there, as I experienced. It's not a perfect game. But it is an incredibly ambitious one that had me routinely grinning from ear to ear, despite the grumblings on the couch next to me. When I pointed out to my wife that we finished the game in May 2024, almost to the day when we started back in '22, she said "They should've called it It Takes Two Years." We're both glad it's over, but I think for very different reasons.
#31 - Rogue Legacy 2 - PS5 - 7/10 (Good)
Some game sequels try to really shake things up and try something different from the one before. Final Fantasy is probably the biggest and most obvious example of this, but you can also see it in virtually every Super Mario Bros. game, in the Castlevania series, and the list goes on extensively from there. On the other hand, some game sequels treat their predecessors like rough drafts to be perfected. With these, the idea is to take the vision for the previous game, use the increase in time/budget/developer expertise now available, and try to execute on it more completely than was possible before. When a game like this is successful, there becomes almost zero reason to ever play the original game (other than possibly its story), because the new version has replaced it entirely as the definitive experience.
Rogue Legacy 2 is one of these latter types of games. Everything from the first game is pretty much still there (bosses excepted): enemies, basic combat and room design, character classes, traits, progression, etc. It immediately feels like "Hey, I've played this before," yet a cursory look reveals a huge wealth of additional content over the first game. Classes are better differentiated, you get new weapons, more spells, special abilities, new items, new upgrades, new explorable regions, new mechanics, new new new. It truly is a total replacement for Rogue Legacy 1 in this regard, a "go ahead and uninstall that thing forever because we've got it all right here and then some" type of mission statement. I was amazed at how I kept finding ever more avenues of progression and discovery, even many hours into the game, In fact, I never did manage to play as every class, and each class has a variant form as well, most of which I didn't even unlock. It's overflowing with stuff.
And I think that's why it didn't work quite as well for me as the first game: it's all too much. Now there are four different types of currency, all acquired in different ways, all for different upgrade paths. You're always competing with yourself on what to level up between runs because there are too many choices and all of them seem pretty good, but as you're finding your early groove the game throws a big wrench in there: labor costs. While each upgrade has a set gold cost that increases as you level it up, early on the game adds a universal tax mechanic to the entire upgrade tree, making it increasingly prohibitive to spend your money on stuff, and it feels awful. Rogue Legacy 1 had a similar system where each upgrade cost 10g more than the previous, but in the sequel these escalate far more rapidly, to the point where you'll complete a huge run and still feel like you can only afford one or two upgrades that barely move the needle. It's a pure inflationary grinding system meant to pad playtime, and I'm not about that. I played RL1 through multiple New Game + levels, but I was thrilled to beat RL2's final boss and move on because the economy is so frustrating. Other than that though, it's got quite a lot going for it.
#32 - Undertale - PS4 - 7/10 (Good)
When is some information too much information? Undertale is notorious for its rabid fan community insisting that there is only one "right" way to play the game, and so if you've ever heard of Undertale there's a good chance you already know what that preferred method is: pacifism. Undertale takes a unique approach to the JRPG in two primary ways: first, that defending against enemy attacks is an active system pretty much akin to dodging in a bullet hell game, and second that you almost never actually need to choose the "Fight" command from the battle menu in order to succeed in an encounter. The argument from the community is that you must play in this fully pacifist manner, largely because of a design decision that thoroughly punishes players who do not, only revealed after the game's conclusion. Thus, these players are "helping" curious newcomers by saving them from falling victim to a fairly vindictive design choice that would create a lot of frustration.
The problem with that approach is that Undertale makes it abundantly clear from the outset that you have the option for these alternative combat approaches, trains you on how to use them, and then gives you a positive feedback loop for choosing that direction with your gameplay. Which means the discourse surrounding this game effectively undermines not only the game's own ability to surprise and educate you, but also the authorial intent of that same design decision, which in context is a conscious player decision to go against the grain and suffer the possible consequences of doing so. In short, I wish I'd never heard of Undertale before I played it, as I'm sure I would've had a much better time.
As it stands, Undertale is still a highly creative take on the genre that, despite an aesthetic I didn't care for and writing that leaned a bit too hard at times into "lol I'm so random" territory for my tastes, still managed to get me invested with some of its characters and even make me laugh aloud at times. I was particularly impressed with that aforementioned approach to combat, as each enemy introduced unique hazards to avoid, so fighting a new monster was far more exciting here than in a standard turn-based RPG where the only meaningful question is "How much damage did this whatever move do to me?" So for those reasons I applaud Undertale. Even still, there's a lot of walking back and forth with no major purpose beyond "it was decided the game should be a little bit inconvenient here," adding some unnecessary tedium to the mix. In short, Undertale's a generally good time, but if you want it to be even better, just pretend you haven't read anything I just said.
#33 - Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales - PS5 - 7.5/10 (Solid)
2018 was a big year for Miles Morales. In the fall he showed up in the PS4 title Marvel's Spider-Man as a major supporting character, and by the end of the year he was stunning cinema audiences in the fantastic Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as the primary protagonist. It's no surprise then that by 2020, with his brand so hot, Sony and Insomniac Games would cash in with a follow-up title to the hit PS4 game with Miles front and center. And for the most part, the game is what you'd expect it to be from that basic pitch: more of the same from 2018, only focusing on Miles' family, his new home of Harlem and its people, and his path to becoming a fully fledged hero in his own right. That's all fine, but here's the problem: all of it has been done better before, and recently to boot. Miles' story of personal growth and family drama was handled better in the Spider-Verse series, even though MSM:MM wisely walks chooses to walk some different beats along the way. "Superhero of Harlem" was done masterfully by Netflix with the Luke Cage series (the first season, at least) back in 2016, and MSM:MM doesn't even try to address any issues beyond the most surface level. And the "more of the same" gameplay?
Well, admittedly that's still pretty good. Web swinging is as fun as ever to the point that there's an XP challenge to web swing at high speed for a full cumulative hour of real time and I caught myself thinking, "Hmm, maybe..." There are fast travel points that unlock relatively early on, but the joy of traversal feels like the main point of the game, so why would you bother? Miles also gets some new Spidey moves related to his bio-electric powers, and these are really fun and impactful to pull off, such that "more of the same" isn't in this case a damning phrase. And yet, it's also distinctly not "more, but better." In order to emphasize your new powers, the goons you fight (now including women for the first time I can recall ever seeing in a superhero game like this) have upgraded their own abilities as well, which means the simple pleasure of chaining big combos is a bit diminished. Maybe this enemy just blocks all your basic attacks and stops you cold. Maybe this one turns the tables to dodge and counter you. Or maybe you're just constantly surrounded by a flood of dudes with guns and rocket launchers and you feel like you never get a chance to press "punch" without being thoroughly punished.
Now add to that the game's relatively brief length and general lack of meaningful activities compared to its predecessor, as well as its truly awful villains and the ho-hum plot that they service, and you've got a title that's decidedly a step back from what came before. Of course, what came before was excellent, so even a step back still lands you in territory that's quite fun to play around with. My 6-year-old summed it up best when he came downstairs to ask me a question one day and caught me playing: "Whoa...how are you Spider-Man?!" Which is to say that Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a game that really makes you feel like a wannabe Spider-Man who hasn't gotten it all figured out just yet. And I guess that's all right.
- I've had less time for PC gaming lately for a couple of different reasons, but I'm expecting that to be a temporary thing, and I don't think I'm in danger of failing to finish Mass Effect 3 by the end of June. I didn't realize the version of the game I had included all the DLC. Nor did I actually know what any of the DLC was. So I was quite a ways into the game and feeling great about my progress when I got suspicious that the section I was playing wasn't actually base game content. I looked it up and found that, in fact, about 90% of what I'd played to date was DLC and I'd barely actually started the base game itself. That explains why the main story was taking a while to get off the ground, at any rate.
- Speaking of getting off the ground, my journey through The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom began impatiently a few months after release, but I took an extended break from the game and have now spent pretty much all of May continuing my thorough trek through the game world. I'm well over 200 hours into the game and am only several days away from having explored the entirety of the game's map. At which point I believe I'll finally advance the main quest past its initial stage.
- In my review for Rogue Legacy 2 above I mentioned the Castlevania franchise, which I feel I can speak to as a whole given that I've finished nearly every game in the series to date. Unsurprisingly I felt most drawn to the metroidvania style games, so there was a layer of disappointment in exhausting the last of those to discover. Disappointment that will soon be temporarily eradicated when I boot up Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, produced by that same creative mind.
- And more...
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2024.06.01 15:16 CNCyberKing Phantom Liberty iconics and cars?
Hey, I finished the game several times before the release of Phantom Liberty. I pre-ordered Phantom Liberty and tried it out (but never got around to getting deep into the DLC story), and noticed some changes in the iconic weapons system and the vehicles system.
I was the type of player to create a Corpo if I wanted to collect every single iconic weapon in the game (other than Dum Dum’s), as there are 1 or 2 guns that can only be obtained by a Corpo. Or I would create a Nomad if I wanted to collect every variation of every single car in the game, as there are 2 or 3 vehicles that can only be obtained by a Nomad.
Is this still how it works in Phantom Liberty? Is it still possible to collect every Iconic weapon other than 1 if you are a Corpo? Is it still possible to collect every single car if you are a Nomad? Is it still impossible to do these things as a Street Kid? And with the black dealer, is it possible to just buy every Iconic weapon in the game, or do I still have to worry about the missable ones? Last question, are there any new collectibles introduced in Phantom Liberty other than Iconic weapons, vehicles, legendary armour, cosmetic outfits, shards, and quest items?
Thanks!
submitted by CNCyberKing to cyberpunkgame [link] [comments]
I was the type of player to create a Corpo if I wanted to collect every single iconic weapon in the game (other than Dum Dum’s), as there are 1 or 2 guns that can only be obtained by a Corpo. Or I would create a Nomad if I wanted to collect every variation of every single car in the game, as there are 2 or 3 vehicles that can only be obtained by a Nomad.
Is this still how it works in Phantom Liberty? Is it still possible to collect every Iconic weapon other than 1 if you are a Corpo? Is it still possible to collect every single car if you are a Nomad? Is it still impossible to do these things as a Street Kid? And with the black dealer, is it possible to just buy every Iconic weapon in the game, or do I still have to worry about the missable ones? Last question, are there any new collectibles introduced in Phantom Liberty other than Iconic weapons, vehicles, legendary armour, cosmetic outfits, shards, and quest items?
Thanks!
2024.06.01 15:00 bluestarpurplecat [Recruiting] War Snipers 2.G #298VGUJ2 TH12/TH13/TH14/TH15/TH16 Required Level 35 Farming (War Farming / FWA / Clan Games / CWL) Clan
- Clan Name: War Snipers 2.G
- Clan Tag: #298VGUJ2
- Clan Level: 35
- Clan Type: Farming / Farm Wars / FWA (Farm War Alliance)
- Clan Games: Mandatory
- CWL: We run CWL and FWA wars concurrently to maximize our rewards. All members are eligible, no heroes required!
- Clan Entry Requirements:
- Active TH12 / TH13 / TH14 / TH15 / TH16
- Minimum Troop Levels: Loons: 7+ AND at least two of Yetis: 1+, Gobs: 7+, Wiz: 8+, Edrags: 2+, or Dragons: 6+
- at least 15k (15 000) Friend in Need achievement progress
- Main village defenses upgraded to TH10 level
- Additional info: War Snipers 2.G is a Level 35 English speaking War Farming clan. We do the concept of War farming with a group of 600+ clans like us in the Farm War Alliance. If you want war loot without the effort or pressure of real war, even when your heroes are upgrading, check us out! More info on War Farming can be found here. Having Discord is required to be a member.
- Clan Games: We participate in all clan games and we always reach top tier prizes due to full clan participation. Every member is required to earn a minimum amount of points based on the total goal.