#tam babble

[skelevenn]

Wow jeez, clearly I should have checked up on this earlier. Thanks so much to everybody that likes Nyx’s design, and welcome to those that suddenly started following! Maybe Tumblr isn’t a lost cause after all, hahaha.

[tambutt]

I finally got sick of trying to find a physical copy of BotW for Wii U - even online its already got the price jacked up, and I just do not want to wait another 2 weeks or whatever for shipping - and bought it on the eShop.

Got it downloading now. I just realized, I can’t think of the last time I was this excited for a game. The hard to get a hold of aspect just made me that much more interesting, I think.

Also I probably shouldn’t actually start it till like friday night, cause theres a very real risk of staying up too late playing it...

[tambutt]

Working in videogames means free office pie for Pi Day.

Neeerrrrrrds.

[tambutt]

How could you do this to me

[tambutt]

id really like to sTOP BEING SAD

[tambutt]

Having listened to the next part of the Adventure Zone finale... My opinion really hasn’t changed since last time. I still feel like while it may be a good story and be well told, that it is a bad DnD podcast. I can understand starting out as one thing and changing to just a story but like. Just drop the pretense already. It really feels like its just Griffin’s story and the rest of the family is along for the ride. Very little of what they do seems to matter anymore. More importantly what they DO do is essentially pre-scripted. Very little outside decision making.

Again, this is fine for a STORY. Not so much a collaborative storytelling game, as is DnD.

The other thing is just... more on me. I just don’t really enjoy it, period. And I don’t know why. I see so many people on my dash having emotional breakdowns over story beats that had me rolling my eyes and hoping for that section to be done already. I just... don’t know. Like yeah okay different people like different things and maybe its just not for me but I just. Am not sure. It feels like something’s *wrong* with me or some nonsense. Yeah I guess depression can make you just sort of Not Like Things, but... idk. It’d be cool to be enthused and excited about something. 

[tambutt]

So I finally caught up on The Adventure Zone and that last episode made me realize what it is about the whole thing that never quite sat right with me. Like, I wanted to like it, but it never quite hit the right notes? It was always at least partly good, but really never satisfying. So, unpopular opinion time:

It boils down to this: I don’t think this should have been a  D&D podcast.

Griffin is undeniably a good writer, the overarching story is super compelling when you get really into the meat of it... but it’s too thick. The entire last arc felt like there was no agency left to the actual players. Like you wouldn’t have lost anything by just writing it as a story instead of doing an interactive game. 

Maybe its also because theres something I can’t pinpoint about the general Mcelroy humour that I don’t really “get”, but the ~witty banter~ always just felt like it was getting in the way of the story. That Griffin had this deep, complex, and serious story that had to try so hard to squeak through three players of really goofy characters. Obviously they all had some good points to bring too but it just felt like they were never all on the same page regarding tone. 

So for the back half of that last episode especially, we were really just listening to Griffin reading his story. And it was good! But the others really contributed nothing. It was like railroading to the extreme. And yet it was like the most satisfying episode, for me. 

I dunno. I just think the bottom line is Griffin is a good writer and storyteller... but not a very good Dungeon Master.

I don’t really know why I wrote this all out, not like I’m in the fandom or anything, but... eh. There you go.

[tambutt]

I was sick for a solid two weeks so my sick days plummeted into negatives

My depression has reared up like a beast awoken after 10,000 years. I haven’t been so low mood for so long since like... I wanna say high school. Fucking what.

We’ve got some stupid tight deadlines on some stuff at work, so because of that and my currently negative-sick days I’ve been asked to do some serious overtime. To be fair, it’s me and the two other artists working exclusively on this deadlined thing (I’m still doing Crusaders stuff in between) so it’s not like they’re singling me out or anything, and they’re letting this overtime compensate for the negative sick days while the other two aren’t actually getting time in lieu vacation time or anything...

But the prospect of working 9am-8pm for at least a month, maybe a month in a half is... painful.