A short little catch up

Man, it has been a long time since I've touched this. I doubt people even care, but that's alright. I'm free enough I can try again on hunting down a regular viewership. I initially stopped updating, telling myself it'd just be till I had some news, I had none, sickness and events caused me to miss finishing my game right when schedulaed, which would'a been a major subject, then games like Deus Ex added onto that.

Now though? I think I've got news in droves. How to sum up the last month or so?

• New games, Deus Ex has been awesome fun, though I can add nothing new that's not know, its awful outsourced bosses almost ruin the game. I haven't actually beaten the game, I faff around too much with othet things to focus on it, then I think about making new characters that are built smarter. It's a mess.
• I've been spending more time on old games, trying to catch them all in pokemon, a goal I'll never achive legitimately due to event legendary and living in Australia, but I try. Mount and Blade, probably one of the most fun games ever, and most of all a recent (re)purchase of GTA 4 on the PC, as opposed to my old 360 copy. It was cheaper to get it with the episodes, rather then just get them on xbox live due to Australian point costs. Plus I don't have to deal with my SD TV and inability to enjoy the Euphoria engine, I hate it.
• My SD TV evidently hates me back, it blew up in my face when I last tried to play on it. Good riddence. Now I have... the spare old SD TV we couldn't even sell. At least it does work for non HD games.
• Jobs have been interesting. I got a big interview with the suicide hotline I've been going for, an indimidating as fuck pannel interview, But I actually did great at it. Maybe too bad. I could visibly see a bit of disappointment when, on an attempt at grossing me out with a story, I spent several long seconds debating on if I should answer with empathy and find that offputting, or misanthropic and honest and say I find it interesting, and finally picking the latter. When I got talking of plans for furthering study in psychopathology, I was offered the papers I needed to sign on the spot, I'll be attending the training next week.
• Only a few days latter I got an interview with a company I was seeking a job from a long time ago. like, years, specifically the one I stopped bothering with on being told they'd only accept 'official' jobs that I'd been paid for. The interview, just for setup, was hellish. No cothes were clean or ready, hair was a mess, car wouldn't work. I finally get in, and my interview goes okay, I slaughtered the written part but I recorded myself during the one on one part and I was a tragedy. Plus I had already made commitments with the hotline and confirmed them at this point. 
• A week later, after not only had the hotline details been done even more, I'd already completed it's online components, but I was looking into tying it directly into education, furthering it all for myself, it'd shave just a little time off the 8~10 years I kind of want to spend on study. And the motherfuckers offer me a job. It'd kill every one of these and give me 4 hours a day not spent sleeping, working or commuting. If I don't sleep in. Oh and they want me on weekends too. I have to turn this down, I'd literally have nothing to live for besides this. Maybe two years ago I'd consider this, but its three months till education again, two weeks till hotline training. And so I do.
• But then the unemployment agency find out I've turned down paid employment for filthy plebeian volunteer work. The hell I get for this is so bad I even gave up for a while and tried to see if I could get the job they were offering still. I don't. They don't care. How could I try and help with people that are suicidal (Less then 1% of suicide callers attempt suicide. Its merely potential/now criminals or the extremely depressed. Thats even less important) while furthering my life long career goals, as opposed to burning myself out of wanting to work ever, doing nothing for three months straight, quitting for education, and getting shit for quitting a job when I now have university fees to pay. Maybe after having my unemployment pay removed for 8 weeks'll learn me.I hate Excelior for this so much, I'd boycott everything they touch but since their main focus is helping with Australian taxes, I'm gonna have trouble avoiding that, for now...
• On an infinity happier note, I finally finished my long, long, long running campaign. Not only that, actually, but I got it finished in a way that I think my players found fun and interesting. A little minor drama happened but that kept it all being a happy ending, too, instead of a sad one. It had a lot of closure. Frankly I kind of surprised myself at how well it turned out. A quirk of RPGs is that endings for them are probably the single hardest thing to do. That, or a little of monster design are going to be my next post, which'll be here soon. Hopefully. Now though, my focus is on the next game.

It's been an interesting mess. I definitely do not want to have a pause like this in my activity again. There's no excuse for letting all this slide by the wayside.

Just as planned

I've been waiting a while for this one. Just a casual look at my anime collection and on seeing both Death note and Code Geass taking up large parts of it, I'm a fan of the just as planned type of move. A big one. This is no secret as elements have come out in several games of mine. What's a secret about it is normally the how.

Yesterday, in one of the final sessions for my current game (not including at least one more combat will (hopefully) take) I finally got to reveal the major one, revealing that an NPC the players have been around for a long time is an avatar of Nyarlathotep, and oh boy how fun this has been~

Complicated systems

Ahh, I'm finally 'officially' running the end game, wherein lies points of no return and such for my game. It was a busy one today, and some weird things came up.

Nothing else has also reminded me of how I feel about Cthulhutech in a long while.

I certainly like the system, its complex set of rolls make the game feel dynamic. It gives it a very anime feel, where even without skill, a little luck can turn an attack into something massive, skill only adds to it. It really adds a lot when not only are you in a fight with some sort of lovecraftian tentacled monsters, either in a mech or in a fleshy monster suit, and it can suddenly turn around on you and leave you very wounded, or go in your favour ripping it apart like something from Evangelion mechanically.

But boy oh boy, rolling six attacks, then six dodges, then six armour checks, then a tenacity check for each of the six attacks that did damage, then a duration for how long the poison lasts every time it works as just one action among many, on top of doing this for combat of all sorts, such a lovely mess.

Mutants and masterminds is certainly just as complex at times, especially with certain plans of mine, but oh boy. A single save or two a turn, combined with only the very occasional defensive rolls, will be such a load off of my mind.

A friend of mine just did a post detailing a recent test, and while we discovered a few issues we're gonna have to work on for my upcoming game, but even in spite of that, simply rolling attack, receiving toughness, then adding trip? Childsplay to me. Adding all manner of other negative effects are just a little more of this. D20 has issues but complex rolls in my opinion aren't one of them.

Another good thing about a new game, hopefully, a fresh start for players and gameplay. One of the funnier things today, having to talk one of the players being very stupidly stubborn into spending a limited but easily enough regained resource to avoid something that'd possibly kill them due to a massive roll. They have a tendency to be stupidly stubborn on these things. Or maybe they were just suicidal, who knows.

In the mess, I offered to even make a secret deal to forgo damage to help me with plot a bit. Then proceeded to get into around an hour long discussion basically about how I'm awful for offering such. Seemed valid to me at the time, I want more then one player dealing with the last game session or two and saving the world and all that nonsense. It'd probably cancel the game, that'd mean a LOT of wasted effort. Maybe I shouldn't have offered such, and normally wouldn't, but circumstances got to me. Still, of all the things to complain about. Mercies like that are rare things, especially from me.

I guess I can only hope that thy won't bitch so much when it doesn't come up with the upcoming sessions, or my next game, I've shown my players this before and happily will again, where sudden and unceremonious death will be not just happen, but likely be standard, because with its circumstances I know I'll always have room for another Player Character to fit in.

Hinting to players, a constant strugle.

I should have done this after my game yesterday but was distracted.

Spoiler warning: (At this point minor) Tager-chan spoilers can be gleamed from this post, read on at own risk.

I always remember back to this this one event at the tail end of a campaign I played in under a GM now considered reviled in the group. Their desire was to more or less say "This is today's adventure you should go there", a fair goal, by having a NPC with circumstances exactly like my own do certain actions to provoke us to take the same actions. Much snickering at how awful this was handled took place behind their back.