I occasionally roll dice as theatre myself. In my last session, I had a troupe of traveling performers that I rolled for on each act to see if they did well or not, with each roll hidden from the players, and I would then describe the outcome to them. Most of the rolls were real, but some performers I had already decided would fail from the beginning, because they were plants for the enemy faction and had a plan going on in the background that depended on their failure at the act. But of course I still had to roll to not set off any alarms. Going to be fun when my players later piece together “oh, that hypnotist didn’t actually fail, they just used mass suggestion to make everybody believe they did so they don’t come under scrutiny.” If a player catches on - one actually did pretty quick - then great, let them have the victory, but in general it’s one of the ways I like to create expectations so I can subvert them or use them to sneak things by. The enemy faction is very guerilla-oriented, so it fits their MO pretty well.

On a more general scale, when it comes to hidden rolls, if I really need something to succeed, I’ll make the roll not a matter of whether they succeed, but who succeeds. Keeps the story moving if I realize too late that that roll shouldn’t have happened because a failure brings the game to a halt.

Gorilla warfare is the Navy Seals one, under a different name.

Yeah, I’m in the same boat. Despite only having a laptop 3070, and not a desktop 4090 that others are seeing slowdown on, I feel like the numbers Steam is feeding me for FPS is a lie because it says I’m getting 40-50fps but it feels smoother than that for some reason. I am seeing significant slowdown in the capital but other than that I’m not getting bad performance, or bugs, and the microtransactions are easy to ignore because everything is easily obtainable. I’ve been having a blast for the most part, and when they get out some patches maybe I won’t even see slowdown in busy areas. Maybe.

The one thing that gets my goat is the one save system. For the benefit of anybody reading, there IS a way to delete your save on PC, disabling Steam Cloud sync, deleting the file, starting a new game, then turning sync back on and telling Steam to use your local files rather than your cloud files when it complains about a conflict. But the fact remains that this should be a feature within the game itself, not basically cheated in. I frequently restart games because I get distracted and go play something else, come back, can’t remember the plot. This is a major roadblock for me, though of course not one I’m encountering just yet.

I’ve got a high opinion of the devs at Capcom, as they seem to be genuinely interested in making great games.I rarely have a bad time playing a Capcom game. It’s just… The execs. And things like the microtransactions, Denuvo, and the one save system reek of stuff the execs tried to shoehorn in that the game didn’t need to try and bleed the users dry. I’m just grateful that, for the time being, these changes don’t affect me much, but you’re right, it does make me feel a little guilty to have a good time while others can’t even play it.

I’ve heard it pointed out before that these kids were living on World War 2 rations and, regardless of the quality of Turkish Delight under normal circumstances, it probably tastes a heck of a lot better when you’ve been eating mostly meat, cheese, and preserves for the last however long (though in Googling it, I see they did get SOME sweets in rations).

Looking into it, that’s apparently pretty much what Various Daylife is, a life sim of some kind. Sitting at “Mostly Negative” on Steam, as well.

The main thing that keeps me from reinstalling and trying to play Skyrim again is the thought of having to do Bleak Falls Barrow for the billionth time. Yeah, I could mod around it, but I just don’t care enough to figure out how for a game I pretty much always play through the first few hours of and then drop for another three years anyways.

That right there is a cowlboy. Skreeeeeee-haaaaaaw!

No, no, I know these guys. It’s just the Goodfeathers. Watch, one of the ones on the left is gonna start beating up the one on the right in a little cartoonish dust cloud kind of thing. Hilarious.

The Throne of the Gods…

A friend of mine went to the thrift store and sent me a picture of a really weird wooden cat thing with huge doll eyes that stared into your soul. I needed to own it, so I asked them to buy it and I’d pay them back, since it was only a couple dollars. I have no idea what it’s supposed to be, cat is just my closest guess, but I can tell you that, whatever it is, it is now my little buddy. Supremely weird creature, I love it.

I saw you said you like some electronic music, so I’ll throw in Prefuse 73 (or really, any of Scott Heren’s pseudonyms) and Infected Mushroom. Prefuse 73 has some voice samples but is largely electronic/trip-hop, while Infected Mushroom has a decent split between songs with lyrics and songs without, so I recommend just grabbing an album and picking out what works for you.

I used to be one of those people who thought that it was unfair that they were handing out the achievements for “less effort,” 'til somebody pointed out to me that it isn’t for less effort. Somebody who needs accommodations would be playing a harder game than somebody who doesn’t at default settings. Their difficulty curve is steeper. Accomodations are a way of bringing the difficulty curve more in line with what a non-disabled player would experience.

And besides - most people aren’t going to want to completely ruin the game for themselves by sucking out any semblance of difficulty. Most people are still gonna play the game in a way where they get challenged. And even if they do, who cares? That doesn’t devalue the work that you did, you know? You still put in that effort yourself, so you can still feel secure in it.

Not coming after you in particular, just talking on a couple of the general points you brought up.

I can’t prove it, but there’s a florist in my town, definitely still in business, that I have not seen a non-company-branded car in front of in actual years. Morning, noon, and night, never any customers. Never any movement from inside. The only time I ever saw the lights on was in the dead of night. The building is half-claimed by ivy.

If it weren’t for the upkept greenhouse and the sign out front occasionally changing, you’d never know it wasn’t totally abandoned, but it’s still operating. Mob activity is the only way to explain it.