[System X] Or Nothing.

So, a friend of mine recently tweeted something at me that made me think. It was relatively simple, and it was an expression of frustration:

"I guess it had to be D20 or nothing."

I've definitely been there. I guess, in a sense, I still am there, because I don't currently have a group. Either way, this was about a game called Shadowrun. Shadowrun is awesome: It's a dystopian cyberpunk future where magic is also a thing, and over the years, the writers have fused the two together in some very interesting ways. But some folks really do get stuck in a rut with a system, leading to some very strange statements. In this particular case, the claim was Shadowrun was "too limiting."

Ummm... Okay, let's think about this for a moment.

D20 Style games use a class based system. This doesn't always make sense.

Unsurprisingly, there are no pictures of a Fighter/Wizard/Cleric/Rogue that I could find. This might tell you something...

When you make a character in a D20 game, they are going to be something. A Fighter. A Wizard. The Quick Lady. The Jedi. The Rapscallion. The Gentleman. They're mostly archetypal, a foundation on which to build your character.

But they also mostly allow taking a new class whenever, and this can make some heavy work for the GM. For example, let's take DnD 3.5, and the Fighter example. They start with the ability to use most weapons and heavy armour, something not every class has access to. Then there's the Sorcerer. Their thing is that they have magic from some inborn talent, that then expresses itself. Multiclassing into Sorcerer makes a sort of sense, as it's not something you learn, it's something you suddenly find was part of you all along.

But the Sorcerer isn't the only magic class in DnD. There's also the Wizard, and letting someone suddenly become a Wizard, in most DnD settings, is... Problematic. Why?

Wizards have taken years of training. So have fighters. In the story sense, that's like training for two different lifetime vocations. So it makes less sense in a story sense. It makes less sense in the rules sense, because Wizards start having learned spells (from said years of training), and written them down in a spellbook (Written over the course of said training, and, again in most DnD settings, writing in a spellbook itself is a learned skill with specialist materials).

If you take Wizard as a second class, the GM not only has to agree how that could possibly make sense in the setting and backstory you've already provided, or set the groundwork for you having learned how to be a wizard with little to no warning, they also have the terrible choice of either handing you a spellbook, somehow, somewhere, or not letting you have any of the accoutrements of a wizard until you beg, buy, steal, or find them. Which has just locked you out of the whole reason you got Wizard in the first place.

Not even counting the problems with Fighter/Wizard in DnD in general, this already has the potential to wrongfoot even a stellar GM.

Shadowrun Does This Differently

This Troll probably sucks at using the internet. But who gives a fuck, he has a license for that axe, and can summon ghost bears!

By contrast, Shadowrun lets you have the potential to be a mage from the get-go, while never barring you from combat training. But it also realistically expects that, if you're going to get those mage skills, you're going to have to work for it. And it has perfectly reasonable explanations as to why you can't be an Technomancer-Hermetic-Adept-Street Samurai:

1) Magic expresses itself very specific ways. A Technomancer is not just a different set of training, but, in a sense, a different mutation. Magic has touched the Technomancer in a way that it didn't touch a Hermetic Mage, or a Shaman, or the Physical Adept.

2) Skill points represent the kind of training you've had... College/University courses, spending time in a military programme, spending time on the darker side of the Interwubs, progressing from fawning script-kiddy to a Name To Tell Stories About. Anyone who's ever gone into any of these things will know that, at best, you can probably do only a few of these things, and if you want to get good, you're going to have to specialise.

So, in a sense, it is limited. But it's the kind of limited that leads to characters, not a collection of numbers that is nigh unbeatable unless the GM decides to play equally unfairly.

I'm not dissing D20, by the way, it does cinematic, combat based gameplay very well. But it leads into two points I wanted to make:

Game Systems are Designed for Specific Purposes

If you can't guess what this game is all about... I really can't help you. But it illustrates the point perfectly!

Now, we're not gonna really get into the paradigm of Gamist-Simulationist-Narrativist here (mainly because those are generalised categories of game design), but we're going to talk about what game systems emphasise.

D20 emphasises combat. It doesn't do "social combat" very well, and it's basically mainly good for a very specific type of game: One where you do a lot of fighting. Beyond that, the rules don't really back it up as well as you'd like. It's a power fantasy, it's about Being Epic, and it has no time for your discussions on the nature of the society you live in. There is a dragon to be slain, and no-name NPCs to save! Different editions had different focuses, but basically, it does Archetypes in High Fantasy Situations quite well, and everything else only so so.

Shadowrun, by contrast, emphasises the deadliness of combat. It also emphasises speed, forward planning, and networking. It's better than D20 for the "social combat" end of things, but the main thrust of it is that you are a team of professionals who could get fucked at any time by any other team of professionals. In a way, it's more democratic, because that no-name NPC could just as easily kill you with 25 Lbs of hi-grade plastique as you could using the same method. It's just, very often, no-name NPC doesn't have hi-grade plastique, and you do.  Probably not the best way to explain it, but there's a whole slew of subtle (and not so subtle) differences that make for a different experience.

The *World games, like Monsterhearts, emphasise the social end of things. The combat is barebones, but is itself a means to an end. In Monsterhearts, yes, you can fight to kill the bad evil guy or hapless mook... But it's more likely you're using combat as a means to get a social hold on someone, give them a reason to do that thing you want them to do. Because in Monsterhearts, you're teenagers. You're not heroes or mercenaries, like Shadowrun and D20. You're teens, the world doesn't make sense (or makes too much sense in all the wrong ways), and the game emphasises the emotional rollercoaster that being a teen entails. That it's laser focused on this has made it quite popular.

How nearly every Paranoia character ends up. Just so you know ahead of time. Also, please report to termination for receiving knowledge above your security clearance, Citzen, thanks in advance!

Paranoia, as our final example of this point, is about living in a world gone blackly, hilariously mad, about being a cog in a machine that's definitely not working as intended, and about fucking up. You are a member of a secret society. Secret Societies are illegal (punishable by death). You are a mutant. Mutants, unless registered (and thus spat upon) are illegal (punishable by death). You are a Troubleshooter, a throwaway resource of a society that is meant to fix these irreconcilable problems in the society, caused by the society that's ordering you to do it, and the only way you're going to get anything done is by breaking the rules. Which you aren't even meant to know in the first place (Showing knowledge of this thing called Paranoia Rulebook is punishable by death, Citizen). Everything about the rules emphasises this, including the fact that your fellow Troubleshooters are all traitors, you are a traitor, and your goals, both public and secret, contradict themselves in a way that's going to get you killed... But it's relatively consequence free, because all but the SRS BSNS versions of the rules allow you to die multiple times with no consequences.

Every game does something different, and it's important to know this. It's also important to know that every setting does something different, and you can mix and match for a tighter focus on what you want. D20 Shadowrun is about Bigger, Better Guns. *World Shadowrun is all about what kind of person Running the Shadows makes you. And Paranoia Shadowrun is probably a very scary thing... Please let me know in the comments if anyone has been crazy enough to try that, and how it went.

A Game/Group Lives or Dies By Communication and Co-Operation (Even in Paranoia)

Probably not the best example.

There is a phrase, bandied about on a thread about gaming stories, and it's one I want you to keep in mind:

Better no game at all than a bad game.

Roleplaying is a co-operative thing, and it's important for the fun of all that you're on the same page. My friend didn't want to play a power fantasy Monty Hall game where you go into dungeons, kill monsters, and eventually become a living demi-god that breaks the fabric of reality and common sense nine times before breakfast. This, from the conversation I had, was exactly what this GM seemed to always want. And being clear about this, instead of faffing about, would have made it clear, earlier on, that this isn't the GM for that.

D20 isn't fun if you aren't down for a certain kind of game. Paranoia seems needlessly hurtful and competitive if you aren't down for what's meant to be a light-hearted, backstabby game (The kind where you playfully cry "You git! I pull out my gun and waste 'em!" ... And then get blown up by your friend, Mister Computer, for not being a Good Citizen (TM) ...) Monsterhearts seems "too real" unless you set boundaries on what subjects are going to come up in your Twilight inspired high-school, and Shadowrun can be decidedly unfair if you aren't all agreeing that the story is a higher priority than Bigger and Better Guns.

Talk to your friends, if you want to roleplay. Explore the possibilities. Think about what kind of fun or exploration you want to have together. And while you may end up saying "Yeah, perhaps it's best if we don't"... More often, you'll find yourself exploring other viewpoints, other worlds... And having a whale of a time doing it.

Shotgun Yak: Music Taste, Dating Site Profiles, and VACUUM CLEANERS, AWWH YEAH.

Even though I blog about games a lot, it's important to talk about other things, including (LE GASP) my actual life. So I'm going to start with what, at first, seems the most underwhelming shit in the world.

I have a new vacuum cleaner. And it is fucking awesome. You may disagree on this point, but hear me out, if only because I'm also gonna be talkin' about online dating later, a thing I know a few friends have experience with.

So, why is this so awesome? I mean, it's a fucking household tool, right?

My Vacuum cleaner, a 3d mockup courtesy of Keyshot. It is awesome, I will brook no arguments.

Right. But it's one this house has been lacking for a while, and it showed. It didn't help that my last vacuum cleaner was weak as fuck... And this is awesome because of another factor: A clean house, a clean mind. Now, I wasn't sure of this statement myself, because I kind of like shit strewn about. I know where it is, y'see, and an empty floor actually makes me freak out a little.

But mess... Mess is a different matter. I'm not talking about "Dude, you have, like, fifty art books strewn around the floor!" (That's relatively fine, so long as I don't damage the books by leaving them open and strewn about, don't deliberately step on them, that kind of thing), I'm talking about the little shit that adds up. Sometimes, little bits of tobacco fall out of your rollup, ash, dust, crumbs... Little things that nonetheless add up to a grody experience. The kind that makes you feel bad for seeing it, and isn't good for your physical health either. You can dust with a brush, broom, and dustpan all you damn want, some of that crap isn't going to go away.

But a vacuum cleaner, that's a huge load off my mind when it comes to keeping my space clean and relatively healthy. And seeing as I see a lot of my room in Winter, and that it's my little retreat from the world when the sadbrain hits, that's actually really fucking important.

Okay, this is a bit of an extreme clipshot for such a point, but I hope you get where I'm coming from here. This is bad.

So that is why a new vacuum cleaner is awesome.

Moving on, let's talk a little bit about online dating. I have two online dating profiles, both on "free" sites: PlentyOfFish and OKCupid. And I'm relatively okay with both my profiles. But online dating has a lot of frustrations, and one of them is summed up quite simply...

...I can't be "Looking for a Relationship" and "Looking for Friends" at the same time, or rather, I can, but people will have issues trusting one or the other motive. And this is Not Technically My Fault. In fact, I'm fairly certain I can drop the technically there, because dating sites like to simplify shit. And people buy into that.

Not that my messages are top notch or anything, any issues with folks just not wanting to talk to the guy who suddenly pops up and can ask a buttload of questions are my fault and my fault alone... But there's other factors out there, and one of them is tied into that whole Culture of Fear thing I talked about a long while back.

This is useful. But not always your friend.

See, some folks genuinely aren't interested in more than a random date, maybe a short fling. This is a good thing, because that's their comfort zone, and so long as they're responsible about it, it's all good. But when someone who has "Looking for a Relationship" on their profile messages them, that sends lil' warning bells that maaaaybe that person wasn't meaning to ring. So they're less likely to respond to that kind of messager, out of the (Sadly, often genuine) fear that the person will become clingy, creepy, or stalky. That's just one example of how a system with hard categories, however useful hard categories can be, isn't helping anyone.

"But Jay," you cry "You can, on some places, set it for Friends, Hookups, and Relationships, all at once, it doesn't have to be black and white!"

Yes. Yes you can. And sadly, this often leads to the perception that, instead of being someone who's laid back and fairly open minded, they're sad, desperate folks clinging to whatever they can get. Because here's another problem with dating profiles, and writing them.

Sell Yourself... But Don't Make It All About You. In practice, this is a hella delicate balance, but those two rules are often just thrown out there, with little practical advice on how to balance them. Me, I talk about me, and I would like it if you talk about you, profile wise. When talking over the direct messaging, it's more mutual, but when it comes to profiles themselves? Hell fucking yes, make it about you. Because if someone's not interested in you, and you're not interested in them, well, that's a helluva fucking great start, isn't it?

Dating sites try to sell you a lot of concepts, and not all of them are actually useful. Let's take a digression into interests. Dating Sites looooove generic categories for interests, and people loooove the "Just Ask" as a replacement for talking about themselves, partly because People Are Lazy, partly out of fear of attracting the Creeper, and partly because dating sites encourage pigeonholes.

A sadly very apt image, on multiple levels!

So often, I see something along these lines:

"Hey there, you wanna know more, just ask!"

INTERESTS
- Socialising
- Family and Friends
- Shopping

...Wow. You could be the most bubbly, lovable person on the planet, and I will never know, because online dating, no matter how much you pretend otherwise, is a time investment (Moreso for women than men, because men, on the whole, do seem to message women a lot more than the other way around. At least partly because a lot of women's time is spent going through the hundred and fifty or so variations of "HEY BABY, WHAZZAP" that they seem to get every god-damn day, which cuts into their time) ... And this has told me nothing. What do you shop for? What do you like about socialising? Why do you list keeping up with the family and friends as a hobby? What the hell can I ask?

I could be the most bubbly, lovable person you've met (Probably not, I'm a regular Doctor Doom at times, and not ashamed to admit it), and you, too, will never know. All because of a bunch of shitty factors. Let's sum up some of them.

- The aforementioned Lazy Profile. Often encountered in the wild with the Duckface Selfie, or the male variation, the Man Poses With Tiger (This has become almost a fucking meme)

- People are told to sell themselves, and guess what? This has often had connotations of Make Yourself Appear Better Than You Are, because retail marketing does that, so why shouldn't you? (Protip: It's better in the long run if you actually improve the product... In this case, you. This also works in the long term for retail, but hey...)

- It is a long term thing. But everybody wants a fix now, now, now.

- Text communication needs work too.

- Creepy Dudes. I'm not gonna lie, there's Creepy Ladies out there too, but Creepy Dudes appears to be the bigger problem here. This all ties into the final point, which I'm going to separate and emphasise..

Relationships Need Work. Do The Fucking Work.

Thanks to Orange for this pic that sorta shows how this should go down.

I'm guilty of this one just as much as the rest of you. There are folks I've forgotten to message, and then not messaged later out of guilt. There's one lady I'm talking to right now (I do like guys, but am not exactly fond of my own gender these days, as a whole. Specific dudes I know are awesome though, just to clarify!), who's working on their uni assignments, so I know they won't be able to message back right away. And there's folks who seem awesome, but I'm not willing to send a second message a lot of the time out of fear of being a Creepy Dude.

But yeah... Again, using a dating site is about peace of mind, and, like cleaning the room, it takes work. Which yes, sucks, I know... But, in the words of Jennifer Connolly in Labyrinth

"Yes... It isn't fair... But that's the way it is." (Note: This doesn't apply to certain concepts, like misogyny, classism, and general bigoted assholery. That isn't just the way it is, it's a shitty thing that folks can deal with, and should deal with.)

A little understanding, a little more communication, and a little more effort in that communication, and you'll be happier overall for it.

Finally, I'm gonna segue into Music, and wrap up what you may have noticed has a theme here. Linking it back to the dating sites, you may get frustrated when you just see "MUSIC" under interests. But I'm more tolerant of that, because taste in music is not a thing that can really be pigeonholed. It's not terribly helpful, but that's because we should really concentrate more on why we like the music, not what music we like.

Music wise, there's only two things I really don't like: Gangster Rap, because fools take themselves too damn serious, and Happy Hardcore, because I refuse to believe that shit is music. That's the prejudice part of things over with, out the way, done.

But we like music for a variety of different reasons, and often, we like music that's ideologically contested.

Wait, Ideologically Contested? What The Fuck Is This?

Okay, let's take a few examples, all from the period I grew up in (Which has a lot of it). Let's start with New Order's Blue Monday. Blue Monday is an awesome track, with a great backbeat, some good synth, and vocals that make me wonder what guitar pedals they hooked to the mike, because I wanna sing like that. But the song itself? It's about a dysfunctional as fuck relationship. Just the chorus should clue you into this:

But tell me now, how do I feel?
Tell me now how should I feel?

Two fucking lines, and it establishes a cornucopia of "This person is fucked". They're numb, confused, and dependent on the other person to tell them how they feel. It doesn't get much better:

Those who came before you,
Lived through their vocation.
From the past unto completion,
They'll turn away no more.

Okay, "Those who came before you"... The people they've dated before... "Lived through their vocation"?!? Vocation, a job, a duty. Serious self image issues. Everything about this song (Go look up the lyrics) screams dysfunction, but I love the expression.

Turning Japanese. Teardrop. Tainted Love. Didn't Mean To Turn You On. You Spin Me Right Round, Baby (Right Round). All about things turned sour. And at least two of those are really fucking catchy.

But, at the same time, I love Doki Doki, by Smile.DK. Science Genius Girl, by Freezepop. I love Thrift Shop, by Macklemore... Because they're all expressive as hell. Mary Black. Apollyon Sun. AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. I love music in general because it expresses these things. And sometimes I love things I shouldn't.

Good example, I think Skullcrusher Mountain, by Jonathan Coulton, is, in its twisted sense, romantic. But it's not a healthy romance. Oh, goodness me, no. He specifically wrote it as a Bond Villain Lovesong, and that's not healthy at all. In fact, I wouldn't blame you for disliking me for liking that song. That's Not My Name, by the Ting Tings, is the anthem of clubbing boys and girls who go out, get pissed, and don't understand why nobody will take them home, for fuck's sake. It's not a nice song. The male backing even goes into this, while the lead continues to tell you how pissed they are:

This song was in my head, now it's in my mind,
Call it, reach it, get some words, and get some timing,
Now I realise, I cannot emphasise,
I'll stick around, but just a promise, nothing binding,
However can't you see, that you're so desperately,
A standing joker like a vocal one liner.
This song is sing-a-long, but it's so monotone,
Gotta get some soul, gotta get some feeling

Emphasis mine. The first half is kinda shitty on the dudebro end of things. I'll stick around, but even though it's a promise, I don't feel the obligation to keep it? Way to fucking go, brah, and I mean that in the most sarcastic sense possible. But the other half...

...It's like that one Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic. Here, lemme link you the comic in question. In this case, it's not the guy doing this... It's the lady. And a lack of communication really fucking hurts.

So, let's wrap this up. You may have noticed a common theme here. Two, actually: Communication, and Safe Space. This whole blog post was a very thinly veiled set of analogies, while also dealing with examples of how they're actually fucking important, yo. Dating sites aren't necessarily a safe space (in fact, for some folks, they definitely aren't!), but part of the problem with them is the whole Humans Are Lazy At Words thing I talked about (Yeah, I just provided you at least two more examples for that.) Music is expressive, but sometimes it expresses things that really aren't safe (I like some of these tunes, not just because they're good tunes, but because I have darker aspects, just like everyone else, and being aware of them helps me just be a Moustache Twirler, as opposed to That Fucking Creepy Villain Nobody Likes Because He's Super Repellent). And a vacuum cleaner, a simple fucking household tool that's really common in the First World, is important to me for helping to create a safe space in my own home, in terms of both mental and physical health.

Now excuse me, I have to do a second pass on the kitchen, and watch those hairs on the carpet get SUCKED INTO OBLIVION, SUCK IT, CARPET DEBRIS!

Ahem...

Many Masks.

I thought I'd write this down to give you some idea of... Well, not the "Real Me", for reasons which will become clear. But to help you understand me a little better. Not a lot better, that involves actually getting to know me. But I know there are some folks who seem interested in the writer, rather than the writings out there, so let's start with a statement that seems obvious, or nonsensical, but is very important.

I am, like you, a person of many facets. I wear many masks, many hats. The only real constants are that all of them, at some point or another, will talk about the same things.

One mask is the Big Bad Wolf. I acknowledge that I have a sensual side, that it's always, on some level, hungering for new tastes, new bodies to explore, new thrills and sights and sounds and moans and - I acknowledge that if I was always the Big Bad Wolf, I'd be a sorry individual indeed, nothing more than a rutting beast. So I'm not always the Big Bad Wolf.

Another is that of Mummy Jamie. I worry about my friends, I want to help them, care about them enough to want to care for them. But Mummy Jamie doesn't mind banging heads together, can be a bit of a shrew and a worrywart, and is, on the whole, a somewhat prudish individual. So I'm not always Mummy Jamie.

I'm the Mad Welshman. Why am I mad? Because very few people seem to understand me. They've even told me so to my face. Family members among them, no less! Madness can be a creative force, but it can be isolating. And, in the end, I might not be so mad after all, as, to quote Larry Niven's somewhat conservative Puppeteers, "The majority is always sane, Louis" (A statement that sanity is always judged as a relative matter.) So whether I'm always the Mad Welshman or not, I'm not always seen that way.

I'm the Mystic, my head in other worlds, rather than this one. I know things you don't, but it's very possible they don't apply to normal, everyday concerns, or even reality. What is reality, anyway?

I'm the Noble, I'm the Grump, I'm the Clown and the Wise Man. All of these are masks I wear, and not all of them have what you would call a "Human" perspective on the world. The Thinker calmly goes through logical scenarios, not caring that they're things like "How a terrorist could actually be effective, instead of randomly bombing yahoos" or "How many people it would take to destroy the Internet". And you may get the impression, reading this, that I have some sort of dissociative personality disorder, but no. These are all facets of the complete me.

I'm complicated, and yet simple. And I love it. Talk to me sometime, you might find you have a lot of masks too!

Experimenting with Genre: The Graphical Parser Games

Everyone who knows gaming knows that Text Adventures (or, as many know them now, Interactive Fiction) are a thing, and that Point n Click Adventures came afterward. What not so many know is that there was a middle ground that got explored quite heavily from the late 80s to the mid 90s: The Graphical Parser Games.

Why call them that instead of Graphical Adventure or the like? Because, as I noted, they're an in-between point. They had text adventure style inputs (and later early Point n Click interfaces), or collections of parser you could click on, and graphics. Here, let me show you an early example: Shadowgate. Notice the differences between that and, say, Maniac Mansion (released between this game, and the Atari STE game I'll mention next, in 1987)

Hit self: You die. Open door: You die.

While it's not the earliest example (that would be Deja Vu: A Nightmare Comes True, by the same company, ICOM Simulations), you can see many of the features of the prototypical graphic parse- What? You think it's an RPG? No, 'fraid not. There are no HP in this game, just a series of "You did the wrong thing and died horribly." No, really, there's a lot of that in this damn game. Going into the wrong door at the wrong time could kill you!

But we're not here to talk about the foibles of earlier designers, who often conflated "Dick move" with "Challenge" and "Replayability" because they didn't know better... So let's see... We have an EXITS doohickey we can click in the bottom left (useful, because often we can't look around), A set of verbs, an inventory, a self button, spells, and... Wait, what do we click on?

Ah, here's the "beauty" of these experiments. The items are actually on screen, and that's what you click! Shadowgate, as one of the earliest, actually suffered for this. Good example, under this carpet, or one very much like it, there is an item. The only way to tell this item is even there (and you need it) is to pixel hunt. What's that? Well, nowadays, most of the irritation is finding a small area you can click on to do a thing, mostly because of glitchy context sensitive controls in the games that have those. In older games, with a smaller screen size (Go look up EGA limits to get some idea of how big this would have been, at its best... Or perhaps CGA, for extra magenta funtimes!), the thing you could click on could be as small as... A single pixel. In among, at the time, anything up to 307,200 on the screen (or less, like Shadowgate)

Now you know why I'm a grouchy old sod about games sometimes... Because I grew up with this shit.

In any case, Shadowgate didn't have a great story, but other experiments happened around the same time as ICON's games. Here's Wonderland, as you would see it on an Atari ST.

And this screen, like others in the series, was ANIMATED too!

Pretty neat, huh? No? Well, consider that, at the time the Atari STE came out, you had... Er... GEM. Not even Windows 3.1. Fucking GEM. And these windows you're seeing? They aren't the Atari ST's Little Green Desktop (AKA Crystal, the precursor to GEM), they're a system that's part of the game itself. And all of these windows are resizable, movable, and can be closed out if need be. Of course, not every system got something this sweet. Here's Guild of Thieves on the C64.

Nary a window to be seen.

Not as cool, is it? In fact, apart from the well drawn pixel art (considering the limitations of the system), it's no different from, say... Twin Kingdom Valley, or Questprobe's Marvel graphical text adventures... Where, on most platforms they came out on, you had to specifically request the drawing, and it would look... Well...

You see a cabin in the woods. It is where you put treasure.

...About like that. But like their ICON contemporaries, the Magnetic Scrolls adventure games had a selectable parser. You could, if you were somehow in possession of an Atari ST without a working keyboard (Not completely uncommon, but relatively easy to fix), you could click on a VERB or COMMAND menu, then something either in the room, or in your inventory. It had separate windows for both, with pretty icons. In this way, the Magnetic Scrolls games beat the metaphorical tar out of their compatriots. So let's look at the final compatriot, which did one thing both ICON and the Magnetic Scrolls games didn't quite manage.

Legend Entertainment released their first game in 1990. It was... Er...

Hoo, boy... This is awkward.

...This, Spellcasting 101. If you guessed from this screenshot that the series (for lo, they made three of them!) was on par, writing and tone wise, with Leisure Suit Larry... You'd be quite right. But, regardless of my opinion of the game (Slightly embarassed it exists, thanks for asking), it nonetheless belongs to the subgenre, and Legend (With chief writer and ex-Infocom staffer Steve Meretzky at the helm most of the company's life) went on to better things. Mostly better, anyhoo. Fast forward two years, and you have their first tie-in (A thing they became famous for) ...

Know what impresses me? That item list!

...Frederik Pohl's Gateway. Based on the science fiction series of the same name (And, not oddly at all, the same author), the game was... Actually critically lambasted for feeling out of date, design wise. But suffice to say, it now has quite a cult following, as do Legend in general and Steve Meretzky. Sadly, the sequel to this game (also panned) was the last gasp of the subgenre in the mainstream, and after this, Legend went on to make first person graphical adventure games, with the mostly familiar elements you'd expect. And so history trundled on. But Legend pretty much thrived in this field, whereas ICON and the MS team... Didn't really.

Companions of Xanth: Not Legend's greatest achievement. That would be Callahan's Crosstime Saloon.

Experimenting with the Genre: "Failed" Boulderdash Games

Sometimes, experiments in a genre are missed, or aren't appreciated. I thought I'd start, in my usual "When it occurs to me" way, to take a brief look at various experiments in gaming history, starting with four "Boulderdash Clones" that were released on the BBC Micro over its shelf life: Repton Infinity, Bonecruncher, Clogger, and XOR. XOR, as we'll see, only tentatively fits this category, but some of you, no doubt, are scratching your heads and saying "Er... Bold-Her-Dash?"

Let me explain. This here, in the screenshot below, is a typical Boulderdash screen:

Boulderdash (The Amiga Version) - Prettier than the original 8-bit versions.

Now, there's quite a few things missing on this screen, but three of the absolute basic elements are here: Your hero (named Rockford), who must collect all the diamonds/eggs/whatever the hell thing he's collecting today (Believe me, it varies, but most often it's diamonds, because diamonds were easy to draw on an 8 bit game), while not getting trapped or crushed by rocks (which follow certain rules you can abuse, and later have to abuse), or killed by monsters and fungus. You also have a time limit in each level, which can, in some versions and clones, be reset or added to with a collectible. A nice, simple formula that spawned... Metric fucktons of clones.

But not every game was a lazy clone, and, while all four of the games I'm now going to talk about were moderately popular at the time, they've been relegated to the sidelines of gaming history, for the most part.

First up is Repton Infinity (1988, Superior Software). Repton was the BBC equivalent of Boulderdash, a green lizard man (Rockford's apparently human) who had three main games, a couple of standalone expansions, and Infinity. Infinity was, at its most basic level, a "Make your own Repton", and at first, it doesn't look much more fun to play with, or more powerful, than Boulderdash Construction Kit (released two years earlier than Infinity, in 1986)

But then you actually get into the thing, and you realise (mainly from the demo levels provided) that you can change the rules. Not many of them, but the templates provided allowed for more mechanics than had previously existed across the whole series. Below is one example of the modified rule and tilesets... The worst of the three.

Robbo Doesn't Want to Be Here.

Meet Robbo. Robbo, like Repton, has to collect... Things. But he has different obstacles, and they act somewhat differently to the way they would in the main Repton games: Instead of keys (Which open all diamond-holding safes), he has a computer disk... Which he has to actually put in a computer. There are things he has to hit with a wrench to make them work again. And there are things that don't fall the way you thought they would if you played much Boulderdash or Repton.

The Robbo levels were annoying as hell, but they opened up the game to ever so slightly more than just "I recolour Rockford to be Red, and make maps". I respect that. So, moving on...

Bonecruncher, also from Superior (I'm not promising, but there might be a pattern here), also experimented. It also had resources to collect, and if you could guess from the cover that it involved bones somehow, you'd win yourself an imaginary cookie: Bono, our hero, is the proud owner of a business selling soap to the monsters that surround his island castle. For reasons best left unexplored (IE - Because it's a puzzle game that wasn't actually worried about plot except as a framing device), monster soap is made from very human skeletons strewn around the castle (5 per bar of soap), and winning the level does not, in many cases, require you to grab them all... Just enough to make soap for monsters. Let's take a brief poke at a Bonecruncher screen.

Ahh, the only unhappy folks are Bono and that eggsiwhotsit.

Okay, we've got most of the game's puzzle elements on this screen, good enough (Thanks Wikipedia). Skeletons for soap: Check. Keys for doors: Check. Thing that could be a monster, but is actually your co-worker Fozzy: Check. Eggsiwhotsit that's probably a boulder: Check. But apart from Fozzy, this doesn't seem that different, does it?

Except... That arrow, and the unpictured elements, are what make this one unique. And challenging. See, even though it looks like it's side-view, it's meant to be a top-down look at a floor of Bono's Castle (Just assume I made a St. Bono U2 joke, to save us both some pain), and those eggsiwhotsits (Glooks) don't fall... But they do stampede in the direction of the most recently soaped-up monster. So, let's break down how this is more complex.

• We have to get skeletons. Okay, that's like Boulderdash, think of them as diamonds.
• Glooks, if they roll over us, will kill us, but will also kill anything they trap. Cool.
• Once we have five skeletons, we find a cauldron to make soap. Okay, that's new.
• Once we have a bar of soap, we can hit up a stairway to throw soap to a monster. This changes the Glooks' "fall" direction after a short period of time, allowing us to get to new places, and changing the layout. Ah, that requires a bit of thought...
• We also have two kinds of monsters, like Boulderdash and Repton. Like those games, they're a wall-traveller, and a chaser. Gotcha.
• We won't always have enough skeletons, which is a shitter, but, if we're low on skellies, we can trap chaser type monsters behind Glooks (if they can't move anywhere, they die and turn into a skeleton), or Fozzie can trap them (Don't depend on him though, his AI's a bit erratic)
• Unfortunately, Fozzie can also get killed by being trapped or Glooks.
• If we really want a monster gone, but don't need his sweet, sweet skeleton, there are pits, too. They'll kill anything that walks into them. Including Bono.
• And finally, once we've taken soap to all the moat-monsters, we move on to the next level.

Whew! That was a lot of changes, and some interesting and thought provoking ones at that! Alas, the fact that they weren't always implemented well in the map design, combined with the fact that sometimes reviewers miss the point, meant that it had mixed reviews. I'd hardly call it a "merely average addition to an already jaded format", but obviously, tastes differ.

Clogger, again, is a different beast.

I think it's safe to say... MY MIND!

Clogger is a strange one. Again, the "plot" is only a framework, but collecting things (Apples, in this case) is only half the fun! There was, as an aside, a sort of unwritten rule back then that a game had to have a plot. I've already written about how you don't need plot in a game, and that sometimes it's a waste of time here , and early game devs don't get a pass for this, even if the knowledge wasn't easily disseminated.

Anyhoo, what made this game different? Screenshots don't really tell the whole story, but the two main goals are as follows:

• Collect apples and pies.
• Make a pretty picture by pushing the pieces into place with your shovel attachment.

Now, those of you who've played Sokoban, or any other block puzzle game, will instantly see why this is both different, and very possibly frustrating as hell. You can only push. To make life even more "fun", our poor little Clogger can't go over rough grass (It clogs him up something fierce. Oh ho ho ho ho. Ho. Ho. ho.), although he'll occasionally find a thing that can cut grass when pushed. Not to mention other puzzle elements, like gyroscopes and... Look, it was hella complex, but the goals were shown relatively organically for an early game like this. As with most early games, however, reading the fucking manual was a must. I really should write a GTtMMR about folks not reading the manual, or folks not making good manuals, because it's not fucking rocket science, and people still cock it up! [pant... pant... pant...] Okay, rant over. For now. So that's Clogger. Finally, there's the odd one out here, XOR.

Yes, it says Commodore on it. Multi platform was a thing, even back in the day!

XOR, like the other games in this article, including Repton and Boulderdash, was about finding your way through a maze, collecting all the things, and reaching the exit. But, unlike pretty much every other game in this post, it didn't have a time limit. It didn't need one, because it was a game where failure was really easy. Let's do our best to sum up how it differed from its compatriots. Screenshot, maestro?

Well, that was needlessly abstract!

What's pictured are a few of the main elements: Masks, wot you pick up. Map segments, which show where masks are (but not you, or those wibbly bits), and wibbly forcefields that, depending on the way they point, either block vertical (pointing horizontal) or horizontal (vice versa) movement through them, but get destroyed when you move through them the right way. Also, that shield is us.

Not pictured is the other shield, which is also us (We can switch between them), chickens that always fall down (and can kill you if they fall on you), fish that move sideways (and again, kill you if they hit you from more than one tile away), and these four elements provide the majority of the challenge of XOR. It's all about "How do I get all these masks without dying or getting into a Dead Man Walking scenario?" , and I think the developer was very nice (compared to peers of his time) to not give a time limit for thinking about these things (also a password system and the ability to restart a level. Say "Thank you" !)

If you'd bought the game back in the day, you'd also have been asked by the dev to try and complete the game in a minimum number of moves, for a shiny certificate (Devs liked giving out certificates and letters back then, and I'm sure those who still have their shiny certificates are happy, despite the death-stares child me is throwing them from the ether to this day.) It doesn't look fun, but... Actually, if you like logic puzzles, it straddles that fine line between dickish and engaging with aplomb.

Now, at this point in the post, I imagine some people are expecting some sort of moral, or message beyond "Hey, look at these interesting past experiments in a genre mostly made of the same game, but with different maps for ten years!"

There isn't one. I can't say whether the devs got rewarded for their experimentation, or at least felt they did. I don't think it provides anything clear on the old "Tired Sequel XVIII: The Sequeling versus The New (And Possibly Bad) Hotness" argument (Which is a purely opinion style ballyhoo anyhow.) I don't even think all of them are good (I hate Repton Infinity, for example.) But I do think there's some value in looking at these experiments if you're into game development, seeing how changes to a formula can and can't work in a game. Hell, I think that's a good learning experience overall, for any dev, reviewer, or gamer who wants to know what makes this fucking thing tick. So yeah, they're easily found and played, so give them a shot, see what you think of them, and the changes they made to a formula that, honestly, started boring the tits off me somewhere around 1989.

How Not To Have A Civil Discussion.

I've talked before about the whole GamerGate mess, and am currently planning a call for de-escalation. This is my case for it, and, at its core, it's really quite simple: If you have genuine concerns, Twitter is not the place to do it. If you don't want to support harassment (in general, I'm not going to say one "side" or the other is dicking the other over more, because that misses the bloody point), Twitter isn't working for that. Let's explain why.

The origin of the GamerGate hashtag is only tangenitally relevant to our discussion here. What is more important here is what it has become. Now, let's take a quick screenshot of a portion of the hashtag's current output, shall we? This is a highly frustrating thing to do on TweetDeck, by the way, because unlike Twitter's frontend, TweetDeck refreshes constantly, giving you a true impression of how thick and fast stuff is being posted.

Huh. So, GamerGate is currently, for those who don't know, a hodgepodge, and nothing demonstrates it quite like a selection of the tweets currently on the tag. Look at this. GamerGate is ostensibly meant to be focused on ethics in journalism, and we have, in that set of tweets, someone having a common misunderstanding (It's not the "sexy" most critics object to, it's the objectification, the idea of "Women as furniture/tools" that causes problems.), someone using #GamerGate to post an open letter (that appears to be "on message"), and someone who, quite frankly, is beginning to get what I'm aiming at, although, like many, he's still stuck on the gender-war part of things, and not the flaw underlying the hashtag.

Here, we have several different agendas. Including, er... anti-gamergate sentiments, which is sort of the opposing view, is it not? So let's talk about momentum for a second. Momentum is seen as the main reason to stick to using a hashtag for a movement, because the tweets are short, punchy, and it supposedly means you can all blitz along in a single direction, overwhelming opposition as you go.

Except that isn't happening, for a simple reason. Anybody can post on a hashtag. I did that earlier today, in fact. 

What's even more interesting is that the statement I made isn't even true. I've never even tried an aubergine. So there you have it, a nice, simple demonstration of the most fatal flaw of basing your movement around a hashtag. Anyone can post anything. It's been around 35 minutes at the time of this sentence, and not a single person has noticed I've introduced useless noise into the supposedly clear signal of GamerGate.

So what's ended up happening is that you have folks tweeting anti-gg sentiment (in many different forms, whether they're anti the 8chan involvement, anti the misogyny, anti journalistic ethics, or just anti everything and wanting a fight about it), and that momentum is... Not actually a single force. In fact, it never has been. From almost the beginning, people added that hashtag on the end of their rebuttals, and all you get from looking at the hashtag in tweetdeck as it goes by is... An endless blur of words. Words that contradict each other a lot of the time.

So, in order to make sense of things, folks go elsewhere. They go to mass media, they go looking for information elsewhere. And much of the media, looking for a simple story, have gone for what they perceive as the biggest problem: The harassing elements. The anger, and the fear, and the hate.

This person isn't necessarily one of the people who send death threats and hate speech to people like Brianna Wu, John Walker, or any of the folks involved in this, pro or anti. They hold an opinion I personally disagree with (and are making a generalisation, to boot, which is just sloppy thinking.) But there's no guarantee this person is actively endorsing or participating in hate crimes.

This person probably isn't sending death threats either. He's angry, just like the pro-gg example I gave above, and saying things he may well regret... But that's all.

Ah, but I say that's all, when this is the very core of the problem.

What do "anti-gg SJWs" want? They want better representation of women in video games, and for female developers to not have such a raw deal in developement, and a host of other things that can be summed up as getting the industry to grow and deal with genuine concerns.

What do "pro-gg Gaters" want? They want to answer some questions like whether patreon funding ought to be disclosed, whether review copies are a matter for disclosure, and whether there are conflicts of interest in the industry, and how can we resolve them? This, too, can be summed up as getting the industry to grow and dealing with genuine concerns.

So, here's the main thrust of my argument: This has, through the alchemy of the internet, become something else. And no, before you say it isn't, there are people who have come directly to me with issues about patreons, and asking why reviews are political and objective (And they were pretty satisfied with my answer that this is because you can't actually remove politics and opinion from a review, because lots of things are politics, and even saying "I like this game" is a subjective opinion.) There are people who've come to me with concerns about objectifying women, and I agree with them. There are folks with concerns about employment in the industry, about review copies, about patreon, kickstarter, Early access... And I'll let you in on two little secrets.

First, for the most part, even though many of those folks post on twitter under #GamerGate... We were perfectly able to have a civil discussion. Secondly, that's because they're just folks, same as us. Brianna Wu is a normal human being. Erik Kain is a normal human being. Boogie2988 is a normal human being. So is MundaneMatt. They have opinions, sometimes those opinions differ from ours, and sometimes they do things that count as "getting angry" or "being hateful"

So... The majority of folks are normal... human... beings. This doesn't sound like an epiphany until you realise that a lot of the language in the tweets isn't referring to those normal human beings. It's all about whether you support a fucking hashtag. What's more, a hashtag that anyone can post anything, anything at all in.

And this is where we come to the crux of things. I'd like to propose a different pigeon-holing. And pigeon-holing it is, it's what we human beings do. But you'll like this one, I think...

There are three factions in GamerGate. Just three.

Folks - Folks have concerns, and opinions. They are angry, and concerned. They want the second group, the Industry Folks, to address those concerns. Some of those folks are feminist. Some of those folks don't understand some parts of the other Folks' and Industry Folks' points of view. These two groups need to stop with this hashtag business, Industry Folks need to open up forums and moderate (explaining clearly what they're moderating, and why), and both these groups need to be concerned with the third group.

The third group are Hate Criminals. These are the only clear winners right now, because anger, and fear, and hatred serve them well. Every time you tell a normal person who uses the GamerGate hashtag they're a misogynistic fucktard? They laugh. Every time you tell a normal person who doesn't use the hashtag they're a man-hating ice bitch? They laugh. Which brings us to another reason Twitter's no good for calm and civil discussion (although some of us, myself included, have managed... But not without a lot of work...)

Twitter's current rules mean you have to be directly involved to report a hate crime  . That, in layman's terms, means you have to be the victim, or you have to be the Hate Criminal. And, forgive me for stating the obvious, but the Hate Criminal isn't going to report themselves. The victim isn't always going to report either. And, when the victim lives in fear and doesn't report, the Hate Criminal laughs again. 

(FACTCHECK EDIT: There is an option for not being directly involved, but being offended. Use that... But the rest still stands.)

So here's my call for de-escalation. It's really simple, let's start with the Industry Folks end of things.

Industry Folks, you need to show everyone there's a place for civil discussion that isn't a bloody hashtag. You need to be really obvious about it, and you need to keep at it. Yes, you'll need to moderate your forums, make sure that haters get banned, and preferably reported to the proper authorities. You'll also need to clearly state that's what's going to happen.

Folks, you need to stop thinking of this in terms of hashtags and "sides". Once you've done that, you'll quickly find out which other folks are angry right now (don't get angry back, just back off quietly, let them calm down. If both of you folks get angry, then the hate wins.) You need to be able to agree to disagree, to explain clearly to each other (yes, I know some of you don't words good, but that's what sitting back, organising your thoughts, and writing things down to help your own thinking is for.)

Both of you, however, need to concentrate on that third group. Because that third group doesn't want the industry to grow. It doesn't want calm and civil discussion. It doesn't want to understand, like many of you do. All they want is hate. Do you want hate? I don't want hate. I find hate utterly useless, because it makes you make mistakes, it makes you over-react, it makes you stupid.

We can't discuss until the hate is dealt with. We can't grow until the hate is dealt with.

Stepping off the soapbox now, although I may try and reiterate this message elsewhere. I'm not going to bang your heads together to make you stop arguing, because you're better than that, I think. I don't even care whether you prove me wrong. But for now, know that this is my stance on claims that "we have it worse than the other side"

I don't give a fuck, because I consider it more important that this is happening on any "side" you care to name. I am not pro or anti gamergate. I'm just anti-hate, and pro-calm discussion.

EDIT: Here's a little numbercrunching by NewsWeek. For all the claims of "anti-harassment" and "ethics in journalism", that sure looks like a major off-message focus to me!

Spare A Thought For Normal Folks.

So, for the past few months, I've been embroiled, in various ways, in the hot-mess on the internet that is GamerGate. For those who don't know, I chatted with fellow Let's Player Skippy Granola about the whole phenomenon a while back, and we put our thoughts on Tindeck (Part 1 , Part 2 )

Neither of us truly believe that the majority of folks are harassers, misogynists, and doxxers (doxxing, as an aside, is the releasing of someone's private stuff all over the internet, usually to allow other harassers easy access, or to shame the individual in some fashion. It ain't cool, and is definitely illegal), although we have both, at times, gotten angry at folks for joining the hashtag... We go a little into why we feel the hashtag (and twitter) don't work for social movements in the chat, but to sum up: Anyone can use a hashtag. Harassers and asshats on both sides, people with genuine concerns, and people trying to address those concerns. And it's about those last two groups that I want to talk about, because, regardless of the history of the tag, there are folks trying to discuss.

I've reached out to a few of those folks in a variety of ways (Why didn't I reach out to lots, do more? More on that later), from attempting to clarify, to attempting to show proof they ask for, to just talking and trying to find common ground. And two things that sound obvious, but are actually very important, come up nearly every time.

People are angry. People are scared.

People are angry for a variety of reasons. The harassers are angry because, as much as they are causing fear, they are also being exposed, one by one, and organised groups of such harassers are slowly being dragged into the light. The reviewers are angry because people appear to be blaming and attacking them. The readers are angry because they feel like they're being lumped in with the harassers, while often being harassed themselves, simply for taking a stance.

The harassers are scared for the same reason they're angry. The reviewers are scared because they feel it's a case of "Damned if you do, damned if you don't", and because harassers are trying to shout them down. The readers are scared because they feel they are being disenfranchised by all these articles saying "Nope, GamerGate be harassers, and anyone who tweets on the hashtag, yo!"... And, obviously, because they themselves are being harassed by extremists on both sides.

[EDIT: I'm simplifying a lot, but you get the basic picture, I hope.]

One thing that also comes up, time and time again, is that reviewers and developers are somehow... Better than normal folk. Bigger. Giants in the earth, that sort of thing. And while it's understandable (We want to put those who are good at speaking out, at creating, on a pedestal), it's also untrue. I actively reviewed for two years, and in all that time, I was, respectively, in a cottage in the middle of West Wales renting from family, and a bedsit in West Wales renting from an agency. I've mostly done voluntary work, one or two film extra bits, but mostly I'm an unemployed joe trying to make it in the world, same as you, dear reader (*laughs* the trying to make it in the world bit specifically, just to clarify!). That's why I didn't speak to hundreds of people, just a few... Because I'm human, just like you, and there's only so many hours in the day I *can* spend talking shop and discussing such things... Just like you only have so much time to do so a day.

And both of these things tie into one common thread: We are all just folks. We are trying to make sense of our world, we are trying to find belonging, we are trying to make our world better (Yes, even the harassers, although their definition of "better" is definitely one I disagree with... On both "sides".)

So I'm not going to get on my high horse and say I'm better than you. I'm not going to tell you you're wrong, or right. All I'm going to say is that, whether you feel the people using the GamerGate hashtag are wrong or right, whether you feel they're supporting harassers or being attacked, they are people, just like you. They have the same spectrum of good and bad as the rest of the world, the same spectrum of intelligence and capacity for "getting it" as the rest of the world... And you can, if you find those good people, explore other options without name-calling, find other places to discuss that aren't inundated with hate speech. You can send mails to twitter, asking for change. You can help your fellows who are being harassed find help, you can give them support.

But please, keep it in mind when you get angry at what Fish or Wu or Kain or Sarkeesian, or whoever the hell is getting angry/saying something you don't like, that they are normal folks like you, with all that implies. And keep in mind that responding to anger with anger, as much as it can make you briefly feel better, isn't going to help your peace of mind, or to help de-escalate this and promote actual, constructive discussion.

Okay, okay, my ankles are starting to ache from this rickety soapbox, I'll step down now... I hope these words helped you. Oh, and Twitter? Please help ensure that folks can feel you're a safe and cool space for folks to hang out, it's not what you started as, but it sure as hell is something you need.

Depression: A Confession.

It's time to face up to something that people who know me have known for some time, but I've been largely unwilling to accept myself. Depression.

Seems like such an inoffensive word, doesn't it? Calm, clinical. It sounds nothing like the real thing. The real thing is hella complicated, sounds like laziness in some quarters, cynicism in others (and, make no mistake, I'm definitely cynical, always have been). But it's more than that, and that's part of what makes it so hard to deal with. Lemme try and spell it out for you.

I have two guitars, a graphtab, and a brain that, when it works right, can churn out some good stuff. But the guitars lie mostly unused, except for when I need to cheer myself up a little. The tablet goes only sporadically used, even though people tell me my sketchbook is filled with good stuff. The Wii, which I bought for fitness, goes largely unused. And I don't go out much. But here's part of what makes it complicated. I don't go out much because I can't afford to go out much. I pay my bills, act mostly responsible (except at grant time, that makes me slightly crazy, as any family member or close friend can attest), and hold up a few friends as much as I can.

But not going out much means I don't meet many people, except the assholes who decide to make your life shittier because their life feels shitty, and they wanna take it out on someone. I don't blame those guys (and it is mostly guys), because they've been schooled by a lot of things to believe that they can't get out of their lives, their chase for something that'll make them feel less dead inside. And that doesn't help matters.

Stay with me here, because this is gonna be long, and it's going to sound like whining. Don't think of it as whining. Think of it as a confession. Because I know I can't get better without getting this off my chest.

I don't blame my family, either. I'm a terrible communicator (ironic, considering how much I write, and sing, and apparently make other people feel better to the point that some folks call me a "legend" or an "alright guy"... Believe me, that's high praise, and it'd be wrong not to feel flattered). They've got their own problems to deal with, their own life to live, and I don't want to be a burden to them. But I can't depend on them for my safety net. Not because they won't help out if they can. They would, and they have, pretty much every time I've been in trouble. Bless 'em, they've coped with this Durbin Jr for years.

In fact, there's nobody to blame, even myself. Because even if you make a conscious decision to fight it, there are going to be days like the past couple, where I know I've done nothing of substance. In fact, I'm currently fighting the temptation to destroy what little progress I've made on something, because of the other facet of what makes Depression such a bitch. Little things.

See, when you're depressed, little things hit you more. That one line (whether drawn or written) that just doesn't sit right. That one time where you can't find a way to fix things with a ctrl+z and a quick wave. That one slightly shitty game that you just don't want to write words about, because you might piss someone you vaguely like off, and the remote chance they'll cut you off from reviewing their stuff, from talking to them more, because you showed an opinion they'll get over when their next good game comes out. Or even the slight shittiness you get from people when they're drunk and angry, and act slightly racist. All of these little things add up, whether they're from outside of you... Or inside.

And you don't want pills for it. You want to beat it, because you've had pills before, and they make your mind move too damn slow. But there's no easy answers here, folks. No happy ending, no Superman to make things right all of a sudden. I'll be honest here, I'm not sure what to try. People say "Find a routine, stick to it, it makes things better."

It's a solution. But it's also one you can't do alone. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a god-damn saint with a cast-iron will. It's also one you can't do with just one person. I tried that with an ex (no names, because that would be decidedly unfair to the person in question), and believe me, it wears you down, because they look to you, and you're not always there... And when you're not there, suddenly you're an asshole who can't do anything right, and god why don't you feel for them, and... Oh, look, a week after the argument, they're back, and only you can help them. We don't talk anymore, and it's not just because we grew apart interest wise. It's because, even if they have gotten better, Depression is a sneaky son of a bitch that can come back, and I'm not strong enough to deal with that again. I know I'm not. And I wouldn't wish that on any one person.

All I can do is my best, but... I guess I'm askin' for something. Friends, family, people I know but don't really talk much to (It's not your fault, it's mine... Terrible communicator, not gonna apologise for that, just gonna outright say it's so), think about me a little. Not a lot, that would be selfish as hell, and I've seen where that goes in my past, and the past of others. Just a little. I can't be inspired on my own, I can't deal with this on my own, and I know, again from past experience, that the majority of folks, even in the psychiatric field, don't really know how to deal with depression, and don't really have the resources to do it safely, even when they do know.

And hey, even if I've made you a lil' sad reading this, don't be. Or rather, accept that it's a sad thing that happens, even to the best of us, and... I would say move on, but it's not that sort of thing. Keep on making the world a better place in your own ways, is what I really wanna say... Because hearing about that may make me feel briefly shitty, but it'll make me feel better in the long run. I guess. Heh. It's kinda hard to put it into words.

Terrible communicator, like I said. :P

Tell you what, let's find a picture of a pug. Pugs make everything better.

As an aside, go read Mike Norton's Battle Pug. It's pretty cool, and is one of the things I use to cheer me up for a bit.

Dating Site Trust Issue Blues

I've been single for... Well, a little while now, and, out of curiosity, I recently decided to get back into the online dating scene. Two particular sites from the same family gave me some grave concerns about... Well, the whole group of sites. Specifically, these are Seek-A-Geek, and GeekyDating. Yeah, I know, stereotyping and all that, but it's not amazingly easy to find folks in a service industry and tourism heavy place (IE - Somewhere where you're not going to be able to hang out somewhere most people go without making a £3 cake/drink last for four hours)

In any case, what happened next was intriguing. In all the wrong ways. The profile got set up, was waiting for approval, and... I got a message from another user. Profile hadn't been approved yet, so there's little chance anyone could have seen my picture, or much of anything, for that matter. Okay, that's weird, but not outside the realms of possibility, right?

But then I found that only browsing was free. This is fairly common among dating sites, so I wasn't too worried about that. Although £7.50 a month isn't something I want to pay where there's a total of something like 129 people who actually bothered to upload a photo, and most of those didn't bother to write anything in their profile text.

No, what worried me was that I was, for some bizarre reason, chatted to by tech support. Hadn't clicked the button to chat with tech support, hadn't changed the page, just tried to read a message twice before I realised messaging wasn't really a thing without paying. First thing they say after "Hi" is "Do you want to upgrade?"

What comes next is my thought processes over the chat, and when I looked at my email after deleting my accounts on both sites.

"Er... No, I want to leave, because I don't feel comfortable that support magically appeared."

"Er... I definitely feel uncomfortable now, because you're trying to hard sell me this upgrade, even offering a discount. This is beginning to sound suss as hell. Check, please!"

"Okay, I've deleted my accounts and... wait... Tech support magically messaged me on the other site as well? Why is it I have a distinct feeling I know what they were going to say?"

So... Mega awkward. On the one hand, I don't think any bots were involved here. On the other, that was an oddly specific series of events, with a very odd timeline, and it seemed geared to get me signed up for a monthly fee as quick as humanly possible.

Which was, to put it bluntly, suss as hell.

Some Flawed Games Which Nonetheless Showed Promise

So right now, I'm listening to the best of Rainbow. Rainbow, in case you lived in a cave or were born after the 80s, were an awesome band who had the late, great Ronnie James Dio as their lead singer, and mostly wrote fantasy rock. This has absolutely nothing to do with anything, by the way, although tabletop players will be happy to know there's a series of adventures based on Dio's work on DriveThruRPG. It's pretty easy to find, and pretty cheap. I may well give it a go at some point.

But today, I just want to ramble a bit about some games I've had for a while that, while disappointing, definitely had something that makes me come back to them every now and again. We're going to start with Gentrieve 2, by Phr00t.

Doesn't look inspiring, does it? And overall, it definitely isn't. Enemies are a collection of geometric 3d shapes, mostly cubes, spheres, and cylinders, it's hard to see what they can do to you without them going active and attacking you, bosses are a bit random as well (and can mostly be defeated by hiding behind walls and playing popamole), and, worst of all, certain obstacles are such a pain to pass in the area transition rooms that it's better to just go for a customised world and disable certain weapons, so you're guaranteed never to find them (physics gun, I'm looking at you!)

But it at least fulfills part of its mission statement, which is to make a procedurally generated MetroidVania. In fact, many of the weapons are pretty much identical to the famous Metroid franchise. And, masochist that I am, I go back to it every now and again.

Deep Black Reloaded is another one, and I actually did a Let's Try of this game a year or two ago. What does it do right? Underwater. It does underwater combat fairly well, it looks good, and the grappling hook/hacking device idea is a nice one in theory. But it's bogged down in some truly awful writing ("Wait, this is a wetworks mission? FUCK THAT"... "Nope, you're doing this, even though I lied to you"... "Oh, okay... But don't expect me to be happy about it" sums up one of the most retarded early game exchanges), some extremely frustrating cover combat, and, our old friend, fucking Quick Time Events. Good luck dodging those, or the surprise mines that sometimes pop up.

Games like this make me sad, but what also makes me sad is that many of these experiments won't be refined or continued. Deep Black, for example, Biart, while still around, have gone into underwater hunting sims that cash in on the Oculus Rift), and another promising, but flawed start, Hydrophobia, will never see a second part that refines the game, because the company went under due to shitty sales of Hydrophobia and the mostly improved PC port, Prophecy. That one also used water in clever ways, but was marred by a shitty endgame with, surprise surprise, a mechanic that relied on Physics (a tricky proposition at best) and somewhat iffy controls for the SUPER WATER POWER you had.

There's really no winning state there, sadly. Sword of the Stars 2 proved, among many other games, that letting a flawed studio produce big concepts is not a winning recipe, and a different studio with the same license/idea will often produce things in a very different way.

Okay, that's enough rambling from me for today.

It Begins

So, it begins. A descent into madness. Or rather, blogging. Which is just as bad. So what is this blog going to contain? No fucking idea, probably game related stuff, bitching about things that fall under the purview of The Evil Daystar, that sort of thing.

Oh, I guess you might want to know who's writing this. Well, let's begin simply.

No, not the hot tall guy on the right. The other one holding the screwdriver. That's little ol' me, a slightly crazed welshman who loves geeky stuff. As if the glasses weren't a dead giveaway. So what else can I say about me? I'm in my early 30s right now, between jobs, I like to do creative stuff, long walks when the weather isn't terrible, and that last bit is kinda rare these days, because I live in the arse end of Pembrokeshire. A scenic little place called Fishguard. Once a year at New Year, there is a street party, and that's cool, but for the rest of the year, unless you really like Folk and Jazz, Fishguard ain't so hot.

Isn't it lucky I'm not too picky about music?

To be fair, Fishguard does have some cool people. But it's also cliquey as fuck, so for someone who's already not much of a joiner (hi!) it's not so grand. But whatever, I get to sing during the day with nobody bitching, I get to carry on with my studies (planning to be an english teacher, a game designer, or a well known games journalist... One of those has been on hold for a short while for health reasons), creative dabblings, and my Let's Plays.

So, if you like unfocused ramblings, you've come to the right place. :P