You are trying to move into an apartment with your favorite Pokemon. The building is strict about which Pokemon are allowed inside but it’s super affordable. How hard do you think it will be to convince the landlord to let you keep it in the building?
Easy as can be, perfect apartment dweller
Might take some convincing
Basically a coin flip
It will be an uphill battle but I might be able to, while saying goodbye to my deposit
No increased rent, deposit or argument could convince any landlord to let us in
You are trying to move into an apartment with your favorite Pokemon. The building is strict about which Pokemon are allowed inside but it’s super affordable. How hard do you think it will be to convince the landlord to let you keep it in the building?
Easy as can be, perfect apartment dweller
Might take some convincing
Basically a coin flip
It will be an uphill battle but I might be able to
No increased rent, deposit or argument could convince any landlord to let us in
I've had a couple of people ask for a digestible version of the whole "the real problem with Dungeons & Dragons is false advertising, not anything that's present in its text" thing I keep alluding to, so here's the bullet point version of that argument:
Dungeons & Dragons is owned by Hasbro. Yes, the same Hasbro that owns Monopoly and My Little Pony.
Hasbro wants D&D to be the only tabletop RPG that anyone plays.
In order to accomplish this, Hasbro needs D&D to be a universal entry-level game.
D&D is not a universal entry-level game.
All game rules are opinionated about how the game ought to be played, and as tabletop RPGs go, D&D's rules are more opinionated than most. This is not a flaw, but it's not what Hasbro needs.
D&D is also on the high end of complexity as far as tabletop RPGs go, and it's complex in a way that strongly rewards system mastery, so it's pretty far from "entry level".
Hasbro could produce a version of D&D that's at the very least less opinionated and more entry-level than it presently is, but they don't want to, because they've determined that certain rules features which run counter to both of those goals are critical to D&D's brand identity.
They also don't want to produce multiple versions of D&D tailored for different audiences, because they want every single D&D group to be a potential purchaser of every single D&D product; they'd be effectively competing with themselves for their own customer base if the published game was actually modular in any meaningful way.
So how does Hasbro square that circle?
Simple: they lie. They insist that D&D is in fact a universal entry-level game in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and back their advertising up with sponsored thinkpieces and podcasts and such to "prove" it.
Further, they've spent decades fostering a culture of play which conceals the gap between the game they're advertising and the game they're selling by ascribing any appearance that D&D isn't a universal entry-level game to the incompetence or malice of individual GMs.
The game the rules want to produce disagrees with the game the group wants to play? Nonsense – even the rankest beginner should be able to produce any experience of play using any set of rules, and if your GM can't, they're a Bad GM.
The game is hard to learn? No, it isn't – your GM is merely gatekeeping you. This wouldn't be a problem with a Good GM.
The upshot is that the published rules are more or less irrelevant with respect to achieving the desired experience of play, because they're operating within a culture of play which dumps 100% of the work of making that desired experience of play happen on the GM.
Indeed, much of what modern D&D presents as GMing best practices are really methods of working around the fact that the rules you're using disagree with you about what kind of game you're playing.
(It's not a coincidence that D&D's entrenched culture of play also insists that it's normal for GMs to be miserably overworked and treats GM burnout as a big funny joke, then turns around and loudly wonders why there's a constant GM shortage.)
The trick is, because you're still at least notionally using the rules of D&D, the fruits of all that GM labour are perceived as the product of "playing D&D", not of the GM's hard work.
In essence, Hasbro's business model for Dungeons & Dragons is selling you your own GM's labour with a D&D sticker on it.
It's a very neat trick, if you can pull it off.
Now, at this point some readers may be asking: well, sure, but not all GMs are doormats. What about "killer" GMs who do gatekeep and railroad their players and otherwise act like complete tyrants? I hear horror stories about them all the time.
That's the second trick: these are not opposites. The GM as human Xbox and the GM as tyrant of the table both represent the GM doing all the actual work of making the game happen. The latter isn't the outcome that Hasbro wants, but it's a logical conclusion of the position they want the GM to be in.
I've seen a few folks in the notes respond "okay, but if that's true, why is D&D so much more flexible than most indie RPGs?", and the answer is that it's not. That's part of the sleight of hand I've talked about where the GM's labour is framed as part of the product. To break it down:
As noted above, all game rules are opinionated about what kind of game they wanted to produce. This isn't just a matter of setting (though setting-neutral games are often misleadingly called "universal" games), but also a matter of the basic structure of the narrative which emerges when you follow the rules.
The rules of Dungeons & Dragons are not less opinionated than those of your average indie RPG, and in fact are more opinionated than most. (Again, having strongly opinionated rules is not something that's wrong with D&D; it's merely something that's inconvenient for Hasbro's marketing goals in a way they're unwilling to address.)
In brief, D&D really, really wants your game to be a sword and sorcery dungeon crawl. If the GM is using the framework of play furnished by the rules at all, or if the players are responding to the rules' player-facing incentives even a little bit, it's going to squish your game into something dungeon-crawl-shaped.
(This should not be surprising; it's literally in the name!)
The rules of D&D being opinionated in this way tends to fly under the radar for a couple of reasons, one less problematic and one more so.
The relatively benign reason is that many popular RPG premises are not done any great violence by being squished into the shape of a sword and sorcery dungeon crawl.
A cyberpunk smash and grab caper? Basically a dungeon crawl already.
A special forces op in a modern military game? That doesn't need to be shaped like a sword and sorcery dungeon crawl, but it can be shaped like one and remain intelligible as what it's supposed to be.
Gritty logistics-driven survival horror? Not inherently dungeon crawl shaped, but the two genres are compatible – a game can be both at the same time, as video games like Fear & Hunger and Look Outside demonstrate. (Indeed, Look Outside's apartment building follows the structure of an old school D&D megadungeon nearly beat for beat!)
Thanks to D&D's pervasive cultural influence informing what people expect a tabletop RPG to be, as long as this kind of compatibility is present, many folks won't even notice their intended premise is being squished into the shape of a sword and sorcery dungeon crawl.
If your chosen premise isn't compatible in this way, or if the group notices what's happening and decides to push back against it, though? That's where the sleight of hand I alluded to above starts to come into play.
Remember: a Good GM™, even a total novice, ought to be able to use any set of rules to produce any desired experience of play, right?
So get to work!
i.e., just as much of the game's putative approachability is the product of Hasbro selling the players their GM's labour in a D&D-shaped box, much of D&D's putative flexibility is the product of the GM being sold their own labour in a D&D-shaped box.
To be clear, this is not militating against homebrew content or rules. Homebrew is perfectly cromulent, and certainly, some games are more or less structurally amenable to it (though modern D&D tends to fall on the "less" side).
The problem is that what we've got on our hands is a culture of play that wants to have its cake and eat it too: when doing extensive homebrew is treated as part of the GM's basic, entry-level responsibilities, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking of the product of that labour as merely being a feature of the game.
Which is, of course, exactly what Hasbro's marketing ghouls want.
Got Kingdoms of the Dump on sale about a week ago, and it was really good, but unfortunately a bit unpolished.
It was a kickstarter that reached its goal and released in a fully functional state, with all of the story and dungeons fun and complete, but with just a few barren areas between, some awkward sprite layering issues in some places, and a couple of foreshortened lategame sidequests as well as lacking use of some material items that say they are useful for forging but ultimatelyarent implemented yet. It claims Earthbound and Chrono Trigger inspiration, but I feel more Super Mario RPG with its overworld enemies, timed hits, platforming, and various isometric locations.
I think the best thing it has going for it is great sprite art, and a very fun concept that gets taken all the way. You play as Dustin Binsley a young dustbin who seeks out to prove himself a hero in the Lands of Fill (there are fun names like this all throughout, so if that sentence made you happy you would probably enjoy the rest of the game). You get a party of a rat, a cowboy trench coat, a laundromancer (pajama wizard), a stinkbug, and an instrument. The world is covered in trash and manages to still look beautiful despite it. Also, all of the animations are great, especially for the big bosses. Some side character portraits are a little lacking in the excellent shading of the rest of the game, as well as some sprite layering issues in the overworld, and the equip menu, but the art is still good.
The music is great, with lots of varied battle themes, which is appreciated. But not many stand out tracks to my non-musician sensibilities. I think I was expecting some more "trash" sounding songs, but no all of them are faithful snes sounding songs.
While I think each of the cast are fun characters, some are definitely more fleshed out than others, with the main conflict eclipsing a lot of other interesting things the others were doing or motivated by. Dustin himself goes from a pretty overconfident naive kid to a more responsible leader in a decent arc, but a lot of the supporting cast sort of put leadership onto him rather than him displaying much good leadership beforehand. He makes a lot of "nice" choices that end up working out, but everyone still treats him like an idiot for the first half of the game. And while that ends up with some funny moments, it is the strongest characterization in the game. After the halfway point he also gets an uncanny knack for making the "right" choices instead of just the nice ones and I don't know, after being separated from his best friend and going to a temple that allows him to speak to anyone, I feel like it would have been nicer for him for his conflicted feelings to manifest in him trying to talk to Ratavia to show that he has matured enough to have hope for her but is now worried about her. This leads him to speak to her dead younger brother instead of getting a plot of the necessary exposition dump. Then he could learn the mysterious past of his friend, see how he has taken on the little brother role for Ratavia, and pass on a well intended message to her when he meets her next instead of leaving it to a lategame sidequest with one dark platforming challenge and no boss. Ratavia especially doesn't feel like a best friend and more like an annoyed babysitter at his antics, especially when Dustin is way more supportive and friendly to Cerulean after just meeting him and gets to have a way better ferris wheel conversation. It's a little disheartening because she is also the only female party member and one of the very few important female characters in the game for her to sort of get sidelined.
It feels like a lot of scenes were just a couple of degrees off from getting me actually emotionally invested. The wanton death of story important allies also cheapened the experience for me because I stopped expecting them to last long. Recepticles gets to be mysterious and intriguing for 2 whole scenes before his reveal and immediate death without actually making an impact, and 5 master laundromancers get wiped out off screen right as they get introduced and join in the war effort.
The bad guys being nuclear waste is a good idea and works with the concept, but other than making glowing green goo a very useful canvas for making eldritch abominations, it doesnt seem to want to say much thematically other than "nuclear waste bad, friends good". I dont know. Maybe I was expecting a little more when nukes come into play, but nah, it's just a cool backdrop and doomsday-weapon-shorthand that the audience understands the importance of more than the characters. Since it comes from deep underground and is tied to a lot of the Knicks of Knack I was expecting it to be the reason why all the garbage was sentient in the first place.
The combat is great, the only caveate being that it is very easy. I only lost to the first boss because I didn't heal up beforehand and was at a low level where any encounter is somewhat dangerous. The combat style is on a 3x3 grid with the forward squares giving you increased attack, but lowered defense, and the backmost squares doing the inverse, with this applying to the enemies in their 3x3 grid also. The combat is fun and engaging despite the difficulty with not very impactful timed hits but still worth going for and some interesting strategy to be utilized moving yourself and allies around the field to avoid or place down hazards or tanking them and be at risk in order to do more damage.
At each level up, you get the option to increase your Atk, Def, or Skl by 1 additional point, and it's an easy Skl all the way on almost everybody. The basic attacks are still effective even if you dont invest in them but you will be spamming all of your Skills in most combats since the mana system is pretty good at allowing you to refuel often, with Dustin having a great drain move and the overworld segments usually being generous with barrels or screws to break.
A couple of party members also draw the short straw in equip-able items, with 3 of them not getting very many at all and Lute not even getting a weapon on top of him joing the party late, his skills being very similar to another character, and him having the least interesting design, basically dooming him to be a benchwarmer. His overworld ability also barely gets to be useful either.
This is now your Pokémon Partner. Whatever you would want to do in the Pokémon world, your Result goes with you. It would be your Ace in Battles and/or contests or they might just help you around with your regular Not-Inherently-Pokémon Job or just hang around your house as your beloved Pet. If you really really want to BE a Pokémon than this is the Pokémon you just turned into.
How are you feeling about it?
HELL YEAH!! THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE POKEMON!!
OH!! I LOVE THIS POKEMON!!
Yeah, this Pokemon is great!!!
This Pokemon is good!!
This Pokemon is nice, but nothing more
...I mean, it could be better
This Pokemon is okay…
I have mixed feelings about this Pokemon…
Not bad, but I’m still kinda disappointed…
Well… it could be worse?
I mean, at least it’s better than NOT having a Pokemon, right?
My friend educated me on the origins of this meme, and some funny variations and told me "Vi would say this at Leif," and so I had to make it a reality
Multiplayer with The Regent feels very much like you are doing your own sword-based/star-based/creating-card-based sidequest and occasionally tossing a colourless card to the others that may or may not even do something. Fun times, really makes you feel like a self-absorbed space monarch who bosses everyone else around.
Multiplayer in general is very silly. 3/4 Silents with Sneaky, 2/4 with Accelerant, a mish-mash of shivs and poison in between with weakness for days? Yeah that was a very quick act 3 boss kill, especially with one of us cycling the deck a bunch with a lucky corrosive wave from a potion. Always looking forward to more crazy combo runs with other people.
Multiplayer with The Regent feels very much like you are doing your own sword-based/star-based/creating-card-based sidequest and occasionally tossing a colourless card to the others that may or may not even do something. Fun times, really makes you feel like a self-absorbed space monarch who bosses everyone else around.
I am a big fan of the first game, and the highly anticipated sequel doesn't disappoint. I have gotten to ascension 4 with each character, so while I am not an expert, I have at least won 4 runs with each character, which felt like a good point to stop and think about the game as a whole
As sequels often do, the game has scaled up a lot of things, primarily enemy health, damage and variety, but most interestingly in the attack cards. I find myself taking more and more attacks rather than primarily skills and powers. The whole game seems to be faster with less emphasis given to turtling up, as many late-game threats scale quicker, or clog the deck.
The boss rewards have been shaken up a lot and are also now positioned at the start of the next act's map so you can determine what option is best while looking at what is to come. No more taking Black Star only to have a layout that lets you fight 2 Elites maximum. Some of the Ancients feel very strong, and give some powerful no downside benefits, while some do a little less, or would be nice in different circumstances. Although that was the case with the boss relics in the first game too, so the additional thematic flair is interesting and keeps runs unique.
The Ironclad has changed into a very fun snowball character who has a little less emphasis on exhaust synergy and status cards, instead getting access to force playing effects, especially on every card with "strike" in its name, which leads to very fun cascades of cards flying at the enemy before you have even figured out what you are doing for the turn.
The Silent feels a lot stronger, despite her unchanged starting deck, as she is my only undefeated character. She now has more defensive Poison synergy and lots of fun things to do with Shivs. The new Sly keyword is also fun to trigger, and Weakness is far easier to apply and benefit from.
The Regent is new, and I think is the most difficult character at the moment. There are a lot of powerful mechanics and powers to take advantage of, but its very hard to get your foot in the door with them early, as many of them rely on you having good star generation. Still a very fun character to play, but he is the character I have gotten the furthest with the most and still died, as opposed to everyone else where if they make it to act 3 they are usually able to take it to the finish line.
The Necrobinder is also new, and is also pretty difficult, with very separate builds on offer. Doom is, quite frankly, worse Poison if only for the fact it triggers after enemies get their turns and feels awkward if it isn't your primary method of getting through encounters. Osty can get very strong defensively with Summon essentially being permanent block until its spent, and combo attacks off of his specific cards, but you already need the combo pieces in your deck to make taking others worthwhile. She struggles to get out of act 1 for me.
The Defect returns and has stolen the Ironclad's status cards and made them so much more fun. Overclock is now a top tier card because of the many ways to deal with the burns it makes. Temporary Focus is new with Defragment getting booted into being a rare card. They are still my favorite and even the runs I lose with them are fun.
Looking forward to seeing more story and lore, as it appears to be a larger focus.
I have been thinking about this fic idea for well over a year now and after working on it for a significantly shorter period of time, and bullying my friend into looking it over, I finally have the first chapter ready!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Y'know? I've yet to post another of my 1-a-day works. This one being Bug Fables. Don't know why I waited this long since it was done months ago, but doesn't matter; Here it is!
Started off on April 1st, 2024. Ended April 17th, 2025. All done to just keep me sane with the Silksong drought at the time. And I really wanted to improve my backgrounds compared to the last two, so I went and try to multitask during this one.
Close-ups
Also, it's funny to note that during this, the devs dropped a new version that included 10 new fishes, which made me panic and had to figure out how to implement before I got to Chapter 5's area. And, After a whole year, we'd end up getting Silksong news, making all the time spent working and uploading for my sanity worth it in the end.
I've said it before, but I really like that Hornet is a character. She interacts with the world and others in ways that make me go "wow, thats such a healthy and normal response" and I wanted to give a go at writing her perspective on things midway through her journey.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
An analysis of Hornet's characterization, relationships with others, responsibility, freedom, and the connections of parents to their children (yeah, its a big one)
Man, playing a video game as a separate character who has their own thoughts and feelings is awesome. Plenty of people have already praised the way she is characterized by both her notes in the hunters journal and by her dialogue and responses to different characters. I think another thing that is important is that Hornet is very perceptive, has lifetimes of experience to back up her knowledge, but is not all knowing.
For example, after the Lace 2 fight, she says that she sensed that Lace was made of silk back when they first met in Deep Docks. In their first encounter Hornet also calls Lace a "child". While we can just assume thats because Lace acts childish, and Hornet is trading barbs with this youthful adversary in front of her by calling her inexperienced and not fully developed, Lace is also described as a child because she is the child of a higher being. Like how before getting her name Hornet is referred to the gendered child. Children in both Hollow Knight and Silksong are defined by who their parents are, they are yet to make a name for themselves, especially in the case of higher beings. The relationship to the higher being takes precedent over the child's autonomy.
She is also suspicious of The Caretaker in Songclave, and what exactly he wants, but she doesn't pry into what he is planning or what he knows more than the bare minimum to get what is needed, and gets the whole kingdom near-doomed because of it! She had no clue he and his cousins were snails who were gonna void all their problems away making an even bigger mess of things. She fails to assess the danger against her own desires to be free and to free the kingdom. She refuses to leave until she has taken care of the danger to herself in Act II and then in Act III she refuses to leave because she caused the current downfall of the kingdom and she has to take responsibility for that.
Hornet has been abandoned by all of her parental figures. Herra became a dreamer, Vespa fell to the infection, The White Lady bound herself away in her gardens, and The Pale King took his own castle into dream and faded to the void. Hornet takes up the mantle of the protector of Hallownest to take responsibility that nobody else can. Vessels are escaping the abyss, and are being drawn in by the Hollow Knights cry, that could free the Radiance and make everything worse, gotta take care of that. Grave robbers and glory seekers are strolling into the kingdom to steal from the dead or foolishly get themselves killed, gotta take care of that. The entire kingdom is in stasis, and everyone she knows or cared about has died, gone mad to the infection, or left in some other way, cant really take care of that part, probably best to distance herself from emotions, after all thats what dreams The Radiance preys on. She only manages to hope for something better when The Knight proves themselves to be capable of what was thought to be impossible; killing the god for realsies.
Fast forwards an indeterminately large time to Silksong, and we get a Hornet who guides people away from defending undead kingdoms, who knows that gods can be slain, who has had multiple partners who all got outlived, who tries to make a difference, even if she is "really only in it for the reward" (Vi Bug Fables reference). She still tries to keep herself at a distance from others, but is far more polite to almost every bug she meets compared to how she spoke to The Knight prior. She has probably undergone some amount of character development in between games, and gotten back some of her social graces and feelings, but she is still pretty stoic and especially at the start of Silksong, rather distant.
Unfortunately Hornet fails the first rule of being in an apocalypse and gets attached to all the cool friends she meets on her journey. The way she instantly respects Shakra and seems genuinely happy to converse with her, the way she checks in on Garmond after they slay enemies together, she tells the Second Sentinel after their fight that she hopes they can be friends, she originally says that she will aid any fleas she comes across on her journey, but will not go out of her way while she is busy with her own quest, and yet with how hidden the little pests(affectionate) are, she would need to directly go out of her way to find a flea tracker, and then pay rosaries to figure out what dead end nooks in random caves did she miss because holy moly they sure are hidden. Heck, despite slapping her, Hornet is still concerned over the wellbeing of Nuu, and is only indifferent to Grindle unless he is trying to grab something of hers. She is so nice and kind, and while her first question is "Are you some sort of ___?" her second is usually "What do you need me to do?"
She very rarely gives commands or tells others what to do and I think thats intentional. She clearly doesn't believe in the pilgrimage, being kidnapped by some of the higher ups and all that, but she doesn't discredit it either, even if it is dangerous and for a bad cause, it is giving people purpose, and they are free to follow their own paths and reach their own understanding. Essentially, Hornet came out of Hollow Knight with the message that "everyone who needs to be told they aren't a person, is a person, and people should make their own choices and live their own lives" and while she offers guidance to some of the more concerningly devoted, she won't uproot them from their beliefs just because she thinks they are wrong. And even back in Hollow Knight she encourages The Knight to get the kingsbrand, and understand themself in the abyss, but she always lets it be The Knight's choice.
Even if there isn't a romantic reason for it, Hornet risks her life for others and especially Lace. The true ending of the game is entirely about saving her, and yeah the kingdom gets saved too, but Hornet could have hopped in broken Granny's neck like she did to that cop and bolted out of there, but no, she needs to keep Lace alive, and prove to her that she is alive, and not defined by her mother, or higher beings, but by herself. Hornet dives into the void to fix her mistakes, but she almost falters at the last moment because she chose to save Lace, and she could never made a different choice than that.
Game good :)
Makes me think about a lot of things
Also as a bonus for reading all that, have my various mspaint doodles I made while playing
The idea of spontaneously getting on a train and going somewhere far might be romantic in another country but England is too small for that. Pull an Eternal Sunshine and go where? Fucking Slough? Go to fucking Slough and get a fucking boots meal deal?
This was inspired by the songs "And Now For Today's Sponsors...!" and "MIKE, the BOARD, please!"
They sound SO much like Mario Party music, and when I started thinking about it, ch3 reminded me a lot of Mario Party for the GameCube, which I played a lot of as a kid. Specifically, I drew inspiration from Mario Party 7 since it was such a large part of my childhood. Tenna's design also just screams Mario Party host to me, maybe because he reminds me of MC Ballyhoo.
The board is based on Neon Heights from Mario Party 7.
I dont know what to title this, its just my tumblr what do you w @flabaghastedflabawaba - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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