Last Month's Games: "The DOOM Which Came To Gotham"

Last month I played quite a few games. I didn't really like any of them. So sad. Let's tear them to shreds. Except for Nidhogg. Nidhogg was great. Anyway, I have Vanilla Coke in my fridge, and tomorrow's Saturday and I'm on-call, so... I don't really know where I'm going with this, honestly. It's been The Longest Week. I've been playing Darkest Dungeon instead of writing. I'm a terrible author. 

OverAnalyzed: Infinitely-Spawning Enemies In The Witcher

Games are a funny thing. There are some where it feels natural for enemies to respawn time after time, where mechanic and setting mesh perfectly. Take Dark Souls, a game I love to talk about because it’s so well-crafted. Within the setting, respawning enemies make sense on multiple levels—many are hollowed Undead, and thus have the same Lazarus effect as the player; in addition, the flow of time is distorted, which is essentially “Magic, I ain’t gotta explain nuffin” but is still an answer. There are other games, however, where such jack-in-the-box enemies don’t make sense at all. Two that spring to mind are Far Cry 2 and The Witcher. Both are great games. But both have enemy respawns that border on the nonsensical.

Worm Fodder: Blue Saul

I love Blue Saul. In fairness, I love most of the characters I play. But Blue Saul... Look, playing a hobbit--excuse me, halfling--with larger-than-life appetites and an atrocious Scottish/Irish brogue is glorious. Seriously. One of our other players is Scottish, and watching the pain on his face when I spoke in character was half of the fun.

NAME: "Blue" Saul Chelet

SYSTEM: Dungeon Crawl Classics

LIFESPAN: Oneshot and beyond.

ABOUT: Blue Saul was a halfling dyer who primarily worked with blue dyes. This resulted in his hands and forearms turning a lovely shade of blue, as well as his name. When he was a boy he wanted to be a wizard, but halflings have no magical aptitude. So he put his dreams on hold. Then his wife left him and took the kids. So he wandered about in search of solace, until he found the rest of the party.

NOTABLE FEATS: Convincing a bank manager that he and the rest of the party were an investigatory team sent after a rash of mysterious break-in attempts; despite his lack of magical ability, proved quite skilled at examining/investigating anything magical or supernatural; angering an elf tailor, as is tradition; leaving a town to be destroyed by a cataclysmic battle between a dragon and a demon, intimidating orc woman at his side.

CAUSE OF DEATH: Unless the orc woman killed him, he's living happily ever after.

Poem: "For The North"

When the toad-green leaves
Outside my window
Are the same shade as the night,
I turn to the north and howl.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

So a while back I posted a poem called "For The West" and said that it was supposed to be part of a cycle about the four cardinal directions, and that I was too lazy to write the rest. As it turns out, I had written a second one and lost it. This is the second one. 

Worm Fodder: Barnabras Kollens

Yes, he is named after Barnabras Collins. Yes, it was intentional. Yes, he definitely failed to live up to his namesake. He's a character I played. You shouldn't be surprised.

NAME: Barnabras Kollens

SYSTEM: Dungeon Crawl Classics

LIFESPAN: Oneshot

ABOUT: An undertaker obsessed with romanticizing death. In a modern world, he would have been a Goth. Very cultured, but also completely out of touch with societal norms. 

NOTABLE FEATS: Accidentally resurrecting a zombie girl; convincing a seamstress to make fancy clothes for himself and the zombie; participating in the investigation of a bank break-in; marrying the zombie in a parody of Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride, accidentally unleashing the demon trapped beneath the church; being vaporized along with his zombie bride. 

CAUSE OF DEATH: Probably the emerging demon trapped under the church, it wasn't clear. 

Music Roundup Monday: "Creepy Folk Week"

You know, I should write an intro for this. I mean, it's a bunch of slightly-unsettling folk songs from various traditions--France, the Ukraine, Poland, Britain, and America. Nah.

Guilhem Desq - "Omen"

Corvus Corax - "Totentanz"

Faun - "Iduna"

Marcin Przybyłowicz - "The Song of the Sword-Dancer"

Drudkh - "Archaic Dance"

Townes Van Zandt - "Lungs"

Eilen Jewell - "Bang Bang Bang"

Worm Fodder: Daniel the Grimy

Daniel the Grimy... Look. His character portrait? Doesn't do him justice. That makes him look like he had some sort of tragic mental deficiency. He did not. He was just incredibly, cripplingly stupid. A giant man-child. His INT was suboptimal but survivable, but his WIS was...negatory. 

NAME: Daniel the Grimy

SYSTEM: Dungeon Crawl Classics

ABOUT: A gravedigger with an inexplicable Southern accent who wandered into a conspiracy bigger than himself. 

NOTABLE FEATS: Had his shovel enchanted by an elven smith who thought it would be funny, giving the shovel sentience; murdered--well, his shovel murdered--a fellow adventurer; unleashed a tomb filled with giant graveworms; became part of a three-headed ghost giant a la Monty Python. 

CAUSE OF DEATH: Turned into a half-sphinx and murdered by another player's sphinx-hating spear.