Where Did Last Week Go???

Well, um... oops. Seems I missed last week. And I had things to talk about too. How did I manage that one?

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Honestly, Hubby and I had a lot going on last week, so I was barely home last Tuesday. Not much time to write when I'm not even in the same building as my computer. Then the rest of the week kind of ran away from me, so I didn't bother trying to play catch-up. I had other writing to focus on, which I'll discuss in a moment.

First of all, the coworker I tended to butt heads with is officially gone. She had put in her two-weeks earlier this month (er, I guess that's technically last month now... Happy June, everybody!), and Thursday was my last day with her. We also already have a replacement. The newbie is about my age, and seems real open to learn, which is already such a breath of fresh air. I'm hoping the personnel switch will be a major load off, and that ease of stress can help me get back to some semblance of writing normalcy (as well as just general mental health wellness). That said, part of the craziness of this week was that transition of the one coworker leaving and starting to train the new one. Yesterday was also Memorial Day in the States, which means "big weekend specials." Ignore that we've had the same sale on for about 3 weeks now, and it's still going for one more week; everyone decided to hit up the store this weekend. So.... that was hectic! Not terribly overwhelming though, so there's that.

What I've been doing the rest of the week, however, has been a combo between watching more NoPixel with Hubby, catching up on our watch list of Netflix shows, TV shows, and YouTube videos, and me continuing to world build - er, galaxy build? - for the upcoming Scum and Villainy campaign Hubby and I want to run. Well, rather, that I'll be running so Hubby can play a character, but I'm also running a lot of the set-up by him first to make sure it makes sense. With any luck, we'll be able to kick off our campaign by mid-June/early-July. Everyone involved should be well past their two-weeks post-final-shot of their vaccines, so we'll be good to go on the COVID front as well. Weeeeee!

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The opening of last week, and pretty much the entirety of the week before that, was spent just reading through the SaV handbook to get the rules down, and see how they might differ from Blades in the Dark. There are some changes that Hubby and I discussed, to see if we wanted to stick with the changes SaV did or revert back to how Blades does the same mechanic. More often than not, we decided to split the difference, as it were.

I have post-it tabs all over the handbook, and I've been slowly photocopying pages so I can highlight the bits I want to make sure to remember, as well as help cut down on the book tabs. This quickly turned into me photocopying about a 1/5 of the book, though. Shhhh, don't let my work know I've used so much paper and ink!

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Full disclosure: I STILL haven't finished reading through the handbook. Some of the more key things unique to this game - such as how to play an alien race - known as a xeno - or what happens when interacting with an ancient artifact, or what information is known about the ancient but now deceased race known only as the Precursors, or how to build things using the advanced technology typical of a space opera theme, etc - are towards the back of the book, but I've just plain skipped over them for the time being. Instead, I wanted to flesh out the actual life going on in this game.

In Blades, the closed-in city of Doskvol is already overrun with an assortment of criminal syndicates, corrupted political parties, and a dirty police force. Part of the game play involves your up-and-coming criminal crew siding with some of these factions while surviving the wrath of those the crew managed to piss off. For SaV, it's very much the same way.

The game takes place in a corner of the galaxy known as the Procyon Sector, consisting of four different solar systems: Rin, Holt, Iota, and Brekk. The whole known and developed galaxy is run by a Hegemony, but the Procyon Sector is on the edge of this governing power; all but forgotten by the Hegemony. This is where the players can either decide to go full Space Cowboy/Space Pirate, or they can do odd-jobs to just try and carve out a life for themselves on one of the inhabitable planets/moons in the sector, or they can fully rebel against the Hegemony, or anything in between, honestly. Think of the Star Wars franchise, especially The Mandalorian and its setting of nearly forgotten planets by the New Republic. Or think of Cowboy Bebop, or Space Dandy, or Trigun, or Outlaw Star, or just about any other space opera themed anime. Or Firefly or its movie Serenity. Or you could even go with Marvel and think of either Guardians of the Galaxy (both movie and comic versions) or the Starjammers from the X-Men comics/90s cartoon. In truth, one of the alien races introduced in SaV is called the Sah'iir, and it kept me SO LONG to not read it as the Shi'ar, which is a prominent alien race within the X-Men comics. I STILL occasionally read it as Shi'ar, frankly.

Sorry, got a bit off-topic for a moment there. My point is, much like Blades, SaV has a thriving population of Non-Playable Characters (NPCs) and factions that help make the world (well, galactic sector) feel more alive. There are 12 established docking stations (3 per system), and pages explaining how to create more. There are also 36 established factions the players could either ally with or compete against. These factions are broken down both by main allegiances - between the Hegemony, criminal activities, and just "general weirdness" (usually cults) - and by power tier, ranging from Tier I (the weakest) to Tier V (the strongest).

Since Hubby wanted to also include elements - mostly the RIP racing - from the game Gravity RIP in our campaign, I was already planning on pre-creating various racing teams and racers the players could interact with and start alliances/rivalries with. This helps prevent me from having to come up with something on the fly; I'm trash at improv. Well, since I was creating these racing teams and RIP racers - and their rigs - ahead of time anyway, why not also get a better feel for the factions of the sector, right? I figured I could have fun creating cheat sheets for the players on what would be considered common knowledge for their characters. Based on that, I figured I'd write up mini bios, as it were, on the top-tier factions. I figured they're so prominent throughout the sector that most people would know SOMETHING about them, so I could play with that.

In the books - both Blades and SaV - the factions are given a simple sentence or two intro, and then slightly more depth a couple pages later. For SaV, this more detailed breakdown of the factions includes the location of their HQ, as well as any other turf they might hold. It also lists notable assets that the factions own; assets the players might want to steal or protect, depending on allegiances. There's also a list of quirks about the faction, the main motivation/goal of the faction, the current situation the faction is trying to handle (usually heading towards that main goal), and a list of 3 or 4 notable NPCs the players could interact with when dealing with each faction.

It's great information, but there's also a lot there that the players probably shouldn't know right out of the gate. Easy peasy. As I mentioned, I can just take the top-tiered factions - the ones everyone would know something about - and create my own bio. It would contain "common knowledge" about the faction, some "notable rumors" about the faction, and "notable members" of the faction, along with a couple-sentence bio about each of them.

It was tricky to read through each faction's official bio and try to organize it into "yup, most people should know this about the faction" vs "the players should still know this info, but maybe it's not confirmed facts, so this would be a 'rumor'" vs "the players' characters probably wouldn't know this, so I'll have to remember it in my back pocket." For instance, the only Tier V faction is called the Guild of Engineers. Their turf is listed as "mining concerns in every system" and "advanced research facilities in Rin, Iota, and Brekk" with the space station SB-176 as their headquarters. This all feels like common knowledge anyone who had spent significant time in the Procyon Sector would know (especially since the location of the research facilities is unknown; just that they exist in nearly every system). Meanwhile, in the Situation area, it's listed that the Guild is "beyond the ability of the Governor to police. The Guild is exploiting this, using this remote sector to perform experiments banned by the Cults and the Hegemon." This all feels like rumor to me; something the players should suspect to be true, but something they realize is only spoken in hushed tones and denied by the Guild themselves. Finally, the conclusion of the Situation paragraph says, "Their current project involves converting Way energy into a highly unstable but physical compound." Now, Way energy is this game's version of The Force from Star Wars. This feels like something virtually no one outside the Guild would know, along with the Notable Asset "Technology even the Hegemon is unaware of..." Both of those tidbits were completely left off the bio for the players since their characters probably wouldn't know any of that.

Now, once the info was sorted out, I then tried building mini-bios of the NPCs listed. This is where the majority of my writing energy went this week. To save space in an already large game rulebook, the creators only gave names, possibly a title within the faction, and a few descriptive words for each NPC. More often than not, the characters aren't even given a gender, allowing the GM just about free-rein to build these character suggestions into whatever the game needed.

Here are the examples from the Guild of Engineers:

• Avalon Riat, Chief Executive (cybernetic spider legs, megalomaniac)
• Thiel Kharrat, Operations Head (brutal, connected, influential)
• Oevers Star, Head Researcher (genius, reclusive, overworked)
• Yast Jor (commanding, shrewd, bold)

It's enough to get you started, but not much there to pull out on the fly. So, instead, I spent the week trying to think of who these characters are, and what the general population of Procyon might know about them.

Since the Guild of Engineers is the most powerful faction in the Sector, I also felt like the notable members will be too far removed from society for people to really know much about them. Also, these were the first bios I had written, so I hadn't found my groove yet. In the end, the above bios from the official rulebook became these extended bios:

• Avalon Riat, the chief executive. Not much is known about him beyond the fact that he's clearly a megalomaniac and has cybernetic spider legs replacing his biological ones.
• Thiel Kharrat is the head of operations. He has made a few news appearances, and everyone knows he is not someone to be trifled with. Not much else is known.
• Oevers Star, the head researcher. All anyone knows of Oevers is their name.
• Yast Jor. No one truly knows what her job is among the guild, but people certainly know her name. Many assume she's some sort of enforcer for the Guild.

Some NPCs have context clues within the faction bios that reveal their gender, such as Tallon from the 51st Legion. In the Legion's situation section it's stated, "Tallon earned many commendations on the battlefield, but swore to cleanse the Hegemonic military of nepotism when his command was sacrificed to a Noble's daughter." Obviously Tallon is meant to be male. Cool. However, most NPCs weren't given such context clues. As I mentioned above, this was probably purposefully done so the players can give these NPCs whichever gender (or no gender) they feel best fits their narrative.

So, for our game, I basically rolled the names around on my tongue to try to see how they sound, and then try to guess what gender would typically use that sound. Honestly, I debated for quite some time if Avalon should be a female, but in the end the cybernetic spider legs just reminded me too much of Dr. Loveless from Wild Wild West, so that's kind of how I picture Avalon now.

Dr. Loveless during the climax of 1999's Wild Wild West

As I shook some of the writing rust off, however, the bios got significantly longer and more detailed. Perhaps a bit TOO detailed for my players; I might have to rewrite some of it, and then have one version for the players and one for myself with the more detailed info.

The funniest part for me is that the lengthier bios I've written usually started with me going "this list of adjectives is too vague; what am I going to do with this?" and then this whole story just kind of popped up.

A prime example would be the Lost Legion. Here's the list of NPCs I got from the book:

• Commander Eterin (disciplined, veteran, inspiring)
• Captain Rowan (tough, stoic, unhesitating)
• Lt. Yon, ace pilot (bitter, just)
• Haya, a royal guard (potent, unstoppable)
• Her Excellency, the One True Hegemon (elite, royal, resplendent)

Again, I stared at that list and was just kind of like, "ooooh-kaaaaay????" Reading the faction's situation did help though:

"The 1st Legion - the Hegemon's private guard - rebelled when the current Hegemon ascended. They protect a young girl, heir to the last Hegemon, whom they hope to reinstate. They plan to capture the head of the Church of Stellar Flame and convince her to bless the girl as required."

Rolling that around in my head while re-reading the list of NPCs ended up ballooning into these bios:

• Commander Eterin, the Legion's leader. He has developed a weird dynamic with the Legion's young ward: part devout protector, part father figure, part teacher, and part loyal servant. He's massive for a human, both tall and broad, and distinguished with a square jaw, facial scar, and salt-and-pepper hair.
• Captain Rowan, Eterin's second. He is a much more calculated man, caring little for the wishes of the Legion's ward; instead protecting her solely out of duty to what he believes to be the true Hegemony. He fears Eterin has grown too much of a soft spot for the girl. He's clean-shaven, voluntarily bald, and more lithe than bulk in his muscles. He has the precision of an assassin.
• Lt. Yon, an ace pilot that rivals just about any other pilot within the sector, maybe even within the whole Hegemony. She's also cold towards the girl; making sure there is a distinct line in the sand about their vastly different class statuses and the girl doesn't mistake Yon for her friend. Yon is still loyal to the former Hegemon, but also feels it is partially his fault the current Hegemon was even able to raise to power; he had grown too soft and complacent.
• Haya, a royal guard. She is always by the girl's side; head on a swivel. She's of a broad build; specializing in upper body strength to handle the recoil from her blasters as well as to-the-death hand-to-hand combat. She does have a soft spot for her ward and may show some playfulness if she believes the girl perfectly safe. Otherwise, watch out for this wolf of a guard dog.
• Her Excellency, the One True Hegemon, the girl (of about 9) that the Lost Legion will defend to their dying breaths. No one ever refers to her by name; only title. Most of the public couldn't even begin to guess what her name actually is (then again, most couldn't tell you what any of the Hegemons' names were). Some question if the girl truly is the heir to the previous Hegemon. If she's a fake, they found a great actress, because the girl has an elitist air about her and is the most resplendent child anyone has ever seen.

A touch longer than the bios I had for the Guild of Engineers, huh? And I don't know if details such as "[Haya has] a soft spot for her ward and may show some playfulness if she believes the girl is perfectly safe" should be so common knowledge that my players would need to know that factoid. Instead, it should probably be something to keep in my back pocket. Something to know about the character in case the players ever interact with her or spot her "in the wild". Along those lines, I have a few other characters where I'm mentally picturing them as androids, but I also know that's a tidbit I don't want to be considered common knowledge, so I left it off the bios.

So.... yeah.... looks like I'm making one of these cheat sheets for me and another for my players.

Or... maybe not? Considering I'm not done yet and my "cheat sheet" is already 12 pages long!

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In the SaV handbook, there's a small section that talks about how to set up your own NPC factions to add to the game. One of the things you need to figure out is what Tier they would fall into, and the book gives examples of what each Tier's power level roughly means:

"Strong locally or weak on a few planets? Tier I. Strong in one system or weak in a few? Tier II. Strong in a few systems or weak throughout Procyon? Tier III. Tier IV is strong in multiple systems, and Tier V has reach and dominance beyond that in some way."

Based on that information, I knew that the PCs would know all of the Tier V and IV factions, and possibly the Tier III ones as well. However, I didn't bother checking to see how many factions that would actually be before undertaking this task. The answer is 20 out of the 36 factions listed in the book. Whoops. I mean, that list drops down to only 9 factions if I just stick with the Tier IV factions and the lone Tier V: Guild of Engineers. But what about "strong in a few systems or weak throughout Procyon"?

I'm still working on the Tier III factions, so I might have to pause and research if they're supposed to be just strong in a few systems, or if they're known throughout Procyon, and pare down those final 11 factions. Or, maybe I'll just keep going, add in the final 16 Tier II and Tier I factions, make that my master log - going back to include details I thought of but aren't necessarily "common knowledge" for the PCs - and then thin that master log down for the players.

In other words, I've still got a LOT of work ahead of me. Especially since I haven't even touched the Gravity RIP side of these NPC builds.

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by Yanare Ku

It's beginning to look like maybe we won't start playing until July after all....

I'm having so much fun trying to flesh out these NPCs though, and I'm already mentally plotting out how these factions will interact with each other during player downtime or between gaming sessions, in order to help make the universe feel more "real". The NPCs are all still doing their own things on the side; they aren't all there just to help push the players forward in their story. It helps make the players feel like their characters are part of this living and breathing thing.

I'm so hyped for this!

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Oh! That Bitmoji reminds me, I haven't talked about what I wanted to say last week. So, the reminder comes from the fact that one of the streamers Hubby almost religiously follows now - Ray_C - says "Let's Gooooooo!" all the time. It's basically his catchphrase (along with "I've got a plan" and "I need an akuma"... just... check out this Soundcloud song someone wrote for his character to get the idea).

Anyway, the reminder of Ray_C brings me back to nopixel. While talking to ChibiSunnie a couple of weeks ago, I kind of spit-balled an idea of making a Miraculous Ladybug non-magic, streamers AU. I even came up with how the Love Square shenanigans can still show up in this AU.

This post is already so long, so I won't get into the details this week, but if you want to see what I've come up with so far, you can check out my Tumblr post about it: Yet Another Plot Bunny Joins the Masses

For this week, though? I think you've listened to me ramble long enough. Take care, peeps, and a very happy Pride to my LGBTQIA+ friends, family, and random readers.

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Creating My Own Game Mechanic

Whoo-boy! Hello again! I'm trying to get back onto my Tuesday updates, even though not much has happened since my super-late posting on Saturday. Also, ignore how late this update was posted today....

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As predicted, I didn't really have time to read or write anything new since Saturday. However, what I DID manage I'm soooooo excited about! Like, I know I said last time that I'd show off my picrew images that I made of myself, and talk about the game When the Past was Around, but... I already have a full blog post just talking about my prep work for Scum and Villainy, so... raincheck?

On Sunday, while I was reading through the rulebook to see what differences there are between Blades in the Dark and Scum and Villainy, I actually thought of a potentially fun House Rule mechanic for the game, especially since we're trying to merge the game with another RPG anyway.

To better understand the mechanic I came up with, I think I need to first explain what got me to think of it, as well as a little bit of the Forged in the Dark game mechanics. Forged in the Dark is the name of the game mechanics first introduced in the game Blades in the Dark. However, the creator John Harper welcomes people to make their own RPGs using the same mechanics, and thus Scum and Villainy - along with many others - was born. So, for ease, since I'll be inspired by Blades but prepping for S&V, I'll just talk about the established game mechanics as simply Forged in the Dark.

Good? Okay.

So, part of the Forged in the Dark character creation includes picking one NPC to be your friend - "a close relationship (a good friend, a lover, a family relation, or similar)." - and one NPC to be your rival or enemy. Well, I SAY "pick" but you basically design your friend and rival as well. See, each character architype a player can choose from has its own list of five NPCs, and the player chooses one to be the Friend, and one to be the Rival. However, the game just gives the broadest of strokes: a character name and their position in society, be it their main job or their social standing. From there, the player creates who this NPC is and their connection to the player's character.

For instance, Hubby's Blades character Ashlyn was a Lurk architype; they specialize in stealthy infiltration and burglary. The different NPCs Hubby could choose from included a beggar, a bluecoat (cop), a locksmith, a noble, and a city clerk. Hubby decided to befriend the noble. More specifically, he created the backstory that Ashlyn was in a relationship with the noble's daughter, and the noble continued to keep close ties with him even after the daughter passed. As for his rival, Hubby chose the locksmith because he liked the flavor of someone who constantly breaks into places and things having a rivalry with a locksmith.

Coincidentally enough, when the Oxboxtra crew started posting their game sessions of Blades in the Dark back in January, Andy Farrant had chosen the Leech archetype - saboteur and technician - but somehow stumbled his way into kinda-sorta having a locksmith as his rival as well. Instead of choosing one of the five NPC options - apothecary, psychonaut, corpse thief, blood dealer, and priestess - he created his own rival. Basically, he modeled his character Edvard Lumière off of Nikola Tesla, and created Edvard's own Thomas Edison: a man named Amadeus Astor. According to Edvard, Astor is a hack inventor who just steals other people's invention ideas and markets them as his own. He further claimed that Astor did this exact thing to Edvard multiple times, most notably when Edvard created the incandescent lightbulb. Astor, much like Edison, is a great salesperson and master of PR, so his brand is all over the city, and his highest seller is his line of locks and safes. So Edvard has made it his life's mission to prove Astor a hack by breaking every last Astor brand item he could find, such as cracking every supposedly impenetrable safe.

So, both Ashlyn and Edvard have this rivalry with lock manufacturers, and make it part of their life goals to master cracking every last one of this rival's locks to prove they aren't as good as everyone believes.

How does this relate to the mechanic I came up with?

In one of the Oxventure Presents: Blades in the Dark episodes, Edvard goes to pick a lock, and Luke, who is their Game Master this time instead of a player, does what's known as a Fortune Roll. Basically, if there is something that involves some sort of luck, but isn't directly affected by the players - and therefore would make no sense for them to roll an action for it - the GM can opt to roll to see how good their fortune is. In this occasion, Luke ended up rolling that the lock was an Astor brand, which ended up enraging Edvard. As I was reading through the Scum and Villainy rulebook and reread about the three main positions the players could be in at any given point of a job - Controlled, Risky, or Desperate - I thought back to Luke rolling to determine the lock's brand.

That's when I came up with the mechanic of a permanent Devil's Bargin. See, the Forged in the Dark games use standard six-sided dice for their action rolls. If a player wishes their character to do anything, they describe their intent to the GM, and the GM decides if it's simple enough to just happen or if the player should roll to see if they're successful. If the GM determines that a roll is needed because the results of the action aren't definite, the player then chooses which of their abilities best suits what they're trying to do, and roll. If a player rolls a 6, the action is a complete success. If a player rolls a 4 or a 5, it's a partial success. The action still succeeds, but with a complication. If the player rolls 3 or under, the action fails.

The players get a pool of dice in order to increase their chance of success, because only the highest dice roll is used. The points they put towards different action abilities on their character sheet give them a die per point for said ability. For instance, if they have two points in Stealth, they get two dice to roll. If they have three points in Sway, they get three dice to use that ability. If they only have one point in Tinker, they only get the one die. If they have no points, they can still attempt to use that ability, but now they roll two dice and take the LOWER number rolled.

The player can also choose to push themselves to add another die to their pool. This adds 2 stress to a counter on their character sheet. Their character gets a permanent trauma (hinderance) if their stress meter gets too high, and if they get enough traumas their character retires from the life of crime. Another player could also opt to add 1 stress to their counter in order to "assist" the rolling player, adding a die to the pool. So there are lots of ways for players to try to increase their chances of rolling a 4, 5, or 6.

The Devil's Bargain is just one more option. In the Forged in the Dark games, a Devil's Bargain is something the GM could offer the player for any given action. The player can accept the bargain and add a die to their pool without any added stress. However, as a Devil's Bargain, there's always another price. Regardless of how successful the player's roll, if they accept the bargain, this price will be paid. It could be that the crew gets more heat on them, and they are more likely to be arrested. It could be that there is unintentional collateral damage. It could be that their relationship with someone suffers greatly or their social standing plummets. It could be that they leave behind more evidence. The list goes on. The player, of course, could always decline the bargain, or negotiate the terms to something they're more willing to accept. The other players are even encouraged to offer Devil's Bargains or help negotiate terms. It's a fun mechanic that doesn't seem to be used nearly enough either when Hubby and I played or when the Oxboxtra crew plays.

Okay! To FINALLY get to my mechanic, now that you know the broad strokes of how the game works. I thought about the Controlled, Risky, and Desperate positions a character could be in. If the character is in a controlled position, even failing their rolls won't be of great consequence. If a character is in a desperate position, failing their rolls could create grave consequences. Risky is more-or-less the default position most of these heists take place in. I also thought about Ashlyn and Edvard and their rivalries with locksmiths. I then thought about a D&D mechanic called "Favored Enemy."

The long and short of this Ranger class feature is that the character has one thing in particular that they have studied obsessively. The rulebook has a list of options the player can choose from with such things as 'fiends' or 'giants' or 'undead' or 'orcs', etc, but a DM might allow the player to specify if the player requests something reasonable, such as a specific dragon that razed the character's village. Because of the intense study to master ways to take down this specific enemy, the character gets bonuses when confronting or tracking said enemy.

Side note, in the last D&D campaign I played in - that sadly died when the pandemic hit - Wolfhearted's character bashed down so many wooden doors that Hubby thought his character became properly experienced. Although it's not what the feat is intended for, and Wolfhearted's character wasn't a Ranger, Hubby still gave him Favored Enemy: Wooden Doors. He now had a bonus to attack rolls against wooden doors, this was to showcase that the character became skilled enough to masterfully find the weak points in any given wooden door, and therefore was capable of easily smashing through them. Plus, it was hilarious to us that a party member had inanimate objects as their 'favored enemy'.

So, anyway... I thought... what if I found a way to bring Favored Enemy into the Forged in the Dark games? Have it function kind of like what Hubby did for Wolfhearted and the wooden doors? What if there's a specific Devil's Bargain set up for each player, and it comes into play whenever that character's chosen rival is involved? Or, if they struggle with something consistently at first - such as locked wooden doors - and have purposefully roleplayed their character doing whatever they can to overcome that? What I came up with ended up as a multi-faceted Devil's Bargain, because it's technically a Devil's Bargain to accept a specific Fortune Roll agreed upon ahead of time.

My example that I sent Hubby revolved around Ashlyn's and Edvard's rivalries with locksmiths.

Specifically, every time that character comes up against a lock, they can opt for their Favored Enemy Devil's Bargain. If they accept, they get their extra die, but then the GM rolls the pre-established Devil's Bargain Fortune Roll.

• On a roll of a 6, the lock was designed by the rival. The character has spent so much time studying this design that they have mastered cracking it. There's still skill needed, and the character can still be distracted, but they are also in a controlled position.
• On a roll of a 4 or 5, the lock is indeed designed by the rival, but it's a new model the character isn't particularly familiar with. The character is in a risky position, and if they fail their attempt, they will gain a stress as they fixate on mastering this new lock.
• On a roll of 1, 2, or 3, the character doesn't recognize the lock maker. The character's expertise is specifically for their rival's locks, and so they are now in a desperate position. If the character's attempt fails, they will fill in 2 ticks on the Alarm is Raised clock. If no such clock is already started, start one and fill in the first two ticks.

Okay, quick aside. So "clocks" is another way of creating tension in the Forged in the Dark games, or a way of showing progress in general. The GM, with potential input from the players, creates these clocks to showcase how the world around the players is still moving. Most clocks either take 4 ticks, 6 ticks, or 8 ticks to fill, and once filled, the event the clock is for happens. These can be such things as: an alarm is raised, a guard finishes their patrol loop, a war breaks out between factions, a project a character is working on is completed, or an overheated engine explodes, etc. Actions players do could advance a clock, such as failing a sneaking action could add a tick to the Alarm is Raised clock, or assassinating one faction member and claiming it was in the name of another could advance the Factions at War clock, or pushing a car to go faster could add to the Overheated Engine clock. Alternatively, players could untick the clocks, slowing down the inevitable outcome. Things such as making it look like a stray cat made all the noise could lower the Alarm is Raised clock, or saving a faction member and claiming it was another faction's plan could lower or even erase the Warring Factions clock, or slowing the car or pouring some water on the engine could lower the Overheated Engine clock.

Going back to my house rule, though. The way I see it, the Rivals angle doesn't seem to get nearly enough gameplay, nor does the Devil's Bargain mechanic, as I mentioned. It is also fairly infrequent, for the most part, for a player character to come up against this "favored enemy," as it were. So why not amp it up on occasion? It shouldn't happen often enough to break the game by making it either too hard or unfairly easy for one player or too easy for all of the players for the game to no longer be fun anymore. Even if it does get that bad, it's easy enough for the playgroup to agree to retire this mechanic. 

However, including it also allows the player to really feel like their character is a badass if they choose the Devil's Bargain and get a 6 on the Fortune Roll. And even then, there's no guarantee they'll succeed, it just makes it easier for them to do so, and harder for them to irreparably screw up something their characterization says they should be an expert at (something that frequently happens to my D&D characters because dice hate me). I mean, I might even go so far as to let the player get an extra die if the Fortune Roll is a 6, just to make them even more excited about the outcomes. So, that would be their initial dice pool, plus one for accepting the bargain, plus a second one for that 6 on the Fortune Roll.

Let the characters be a bit overpowered for this ONE instance. Let this ONE specific type of Devil's Bargain have the potential of NOT including something bad happening to them (kind of defeats the title of DEVIL'S bargain, but ignore that). If allowing that little imbalance and inconsistency in game play means the players get enough dice to roll a six every time they come across their rival's locks, then that just adds to their legend and to the rivalry. Let them feel like a badass as their character basically looks at the lock and it comes undone.

Look, over lockdown, Hubby has really gotten into watching the streamer Sykkuno. Most recently, Hubby has gone back to watch Sykkuno's highlight reels of his gameplay on Grand Theft Auto V online. Specifically, the NoPixel GTA roleplay server. Sykkuno is almost ungodly good at the hacking, lock picking/hot wiring, and thermite detonation minigames in GTA. His character Yuno is fairly well known on the server as Los Santos' best hacker. Well, last night, Hubby and I went over to Sykkuno's Twitch stream, where Yuno and some friends decided to hit up the most secure bank in-game: The Vault. This is Top Tier if you're a GTA bank robber.

The whole stream was cursed with constant server crashes, and it kept FOREVER to get to the actual heist because of it, and even the epic getaway was ruined by a server crash. It was painful to watch because I felt the players' frustration about everything.

Point being, Sykkuno routinely told his chat over the course of about three hours, that it's insane that he was the sole hacker for this job. Most crews would have at least two hackers, that way if one got too nervous the other could tag in. There was something like 5 locks to hack through, and each lock has something like 5 puzzles to correctly answer in the hacking minigame. I'm always dumbfounded when I watch Sykkuno, because there is no way my brain could process the information fast enough, and yet he makes it look like it's no big deal. He's suuuuuuper humble about it too, which is adorable and so endearing.

Anyway, his friends just have him as their sole hacker because they know he's good. They all told him they trusted he could do this job. On top of that, they didn't really have the time to come up with back-up plans because of all of the server crashes. So, if Yuno couldn't crack into the safe, they were out roughly $100k that they had put into planning the bank heist, and they'd all be in jail. The poor guy was so nervous, he did indeed screw up three times, but, as luck would have it, they brought exactly enough supplies for him to still get all the way through and get away with the money. He's there on his stream sweating, a nervous wreck as he kept telling everyone, "This is it. This is the last shot. If I screw this up we don't have another option. Why do I keep being handed the last shot? What if I screw up?"

It was SOOOOOOOO tense, and both Hubby and I were holding our breaths as we watched him go through each hacking level. In the end, he just kind of wandered around going, "that was the worst I've ever done! I've never had to go to my third attempt of hacking anything!" Meanwhile, his friends are all cheering him on about how unbelievable he is at hacking; he's a hacking god! Sykkuno is panicked about nearly screwing it up, but all his friends see is "he got most of those on the first try, and QUICKLY too! It's like he looked at the door and it opened!"

I think my new Favored Enemy Devil's Bargain house rule might add that same type of tension and excitement. If the player gets that extra die for the 6 on the Fortune Roll, they just seem even more epic as they get through the lock with virtually no problem. If the player STILL fails, it will be all the more devastating and investing. Also, if the GM fails the Fortune Roll, and the character is now in a desperate situation because they don't recognize the lock, can you imagine the cheers if the player still manages to roll some form of success?

I really like this mechanic, guys. I think it can really add to the overall storytelling and engagement in the games. I'll want to come up with something like this for every player's rival so they all get that opportunity to be a badass on the table. If they wish to pick it up, cool; if not, no big.

I'm so excited about this!!!

I might also change the 4/5 roll on the Fortune Roll table slightly. I'm debating if I want to keep the one stress side effect. I want there to be a consequence, but it doesn't feel right. In Forged in the Dark games, after completing a job, the players have two downtime slots. They can use them to have their characters do a variety of things from healing to destressing to working on a project to helping take some heat off of their crew to improving the efficiency of their crew. I might change "add one stress" to "remove one downtime slot" because one of those slots is automatically filled with the character obsessively studying that new lock design.

Yeah. I think I like that better, but I also don't want the consequence be TOO severe, especially since there will still be a normal consequence to the failed roll, AND Forged in the Dark already has a mechanic called "entanglements." Basically, it shows the aftereffects of taking on the job in the first place. Some of these entanglements already have the potential to remove a downtime slot, and what if the player goes up against more than two locks? Granted, that's to the GM's discretion, but things I might have to think about and playtest a bit. Talk it over with Hubby some more.

I do like the flavor of losing some downtime to studying the lock, but I also like the flavor of the character getting stressed about more new locks they have to learn to master....

Either way, I'm just having so much fun with this! I can't wait to see what other bits of inspiration I'll get while continuing to prepare for our playgroup to start up this campaign! I mean, I know it's not writing per se, but it's still getting my mind thinking creatively again, and for the betterment of the overall story the campaign will tell.

Hubby and I were also talking about somehow recording our sessions this go, either via old-school tape recorder so I could better transcribe everything, or actually taking video of the session. Again, probably just so I could transcribe, but if we can get a set-up good enough, maybe Hubby and I will have a reason to use our Twitch accounts for more than watching and following streamers.

We'll see where we go with all of this.

In the meantime, I'm back to the grind. I'm excited to see what else I'll have to talk to you fine folks about next week!

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August was Trash, Okay?

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OMG, guys, August was suuuch trash!

Sorry I've been so absent lately. Sorry still that my writing has YET to return to the land of the living. This past month? Well... it IS 2020, isn't it? I'm now feeling a bit guilty about using images like this at the conclusion of last year:

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When you feel bad about how you "treated" 2019, and kinda wish to go back to THAT year? You KNOW the current year is beyond trash.

I'm just so exhausted. I've been exhausted for a while now, and August did NOT help that in the slightest.

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Also, side note, the new formatting for Blogger? 

It's supposed to be more streamline, but a lot of the things I personally do with this blog now takes extra steps. I also do a lot of HTML edits and tweaks, and reading the code is now a LOT harder for me since it all runs together. Here, see?

If you are a programmer, that might look helpful. It's color coordinated, and you're probably used to it all running into itself. Me? I am NOT a programmer. The old HTML view used to have everything set up in paragraphs that I could easily read and understand. To demonstrate, I took the above code and edited it best I could to look like how it used to.

Yeah, it was all one color, but so is just about any text I'd read. The important thing was the paragraph breaks so I could easily skim through and find what I wanted to edit. Now? Well, thank God someone created the CTRL+F search function, because I'm probably going to use it a LOT now. I mean, it's cool and all that code is red when it's incomplete, and then turns green once you've completed the line. That helps me make sure I didn't forget to close a function or something. But I tried to put a little tweak on one of the above images, then continued writing while in HTML mode - something I used to do a LOT originally, just to make sure the spacing is how I want it - and when I want to switch back to composition mode I got a pop-up saying some of my code may be invalid and may not stay if I switch out of HTML. I spent a solid 5 minutes or so tweaking what I did and reading through the above code to see how to mimic it in what I had done, and I still had no clue what I did that would have been considered "invalid." So, in the end, I ended up deleting all the coding I had done, hit "okay" to the "may be invalid" pop-up, and just continued on in composition mode. 

I hope this blog looks the same as it always has, but I may have to consider completely revamping it so I use less coding. Because right now? Well, not to be overly dramatic or anything, but check the shirt.

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I mean, when I previewed this post thus far, I noticed there was a MASSIVE gap between one of the above images and the text following it. It looked like I had hit the Enter button about 3x to create line breaks. Just a few weeks ago, with the old formatting, I could easily go into the code, see the extra <br /> or <p></p> code and know I can delete those to get rid of the surplus spacing.

With this new coding layout? And, frankly, I feel like the HTML somehow got more complicated??? Well, I spent another 10 minutes or so trying to read the code to see where the extra space came from, because it wasn't there in compose view for me to just delete. I finally saw that a line of code was out of place from when I initially tried going into HTML view to edit one of the image codes. Again, something I used to do weekly, so I thought I generally knew what I was doing by now.

Well, after shifting where the code was SUPPOSED to be, I hit Preview, and.... now the entire blog after that picture was center aligned instead of left aligned.

Yona from Yona of the Dawn
Created by Mizuho Kusanagi

Another 10 minute battle or so as I copied and pasted the code ABOVE the image - where it was still properly left-aligned after an image - and edited it to include the proper image (the one I had messed with originally) and the proper text (that had somehow become center-aligned). It SHOULD have worked. I literally used the EXACT SAME CODE of a portion of the blog that was formatting properly.

It... didn't.

After, as I said, 10 minutes of adjusting this, tweaking that, hitting the Undo button about a dozen times, and reading the code with painstaking focus to try to understand it enough to mimic it... and it STILL not working, I gave up. I just went back into compose mode, selected all, and hit the Left-align button.

And I STILL had to select 2 different paragraphs separately and left-align them independently, since apparently they weren't included in the Select All??????

Hacker Girl
Facebook sticker
by
Birdman, Inc.

Yeah, I hate this new format...

BUT BACK TO AUGUST!

Throughout August, my one co-worker's daughter got married, my other co-worker had a bridal shower for HER daughter, the 1st co-worker had a family event, and then the 2nd co-worker's brother got married, so every weekend one of them requested a 3-day or 4-day weekend. Also, the first co-worker had needed oral surgery for about a month, so she finally managed to get that taken care of and needed a week off to recover. We all have all of this vacation time, and boy were those two using it.

And yet, one of them was particularly snarky about me taking a week off in July for my birthday, but whatever....

Anyway, because of all of that, I had to work two Tuesdays in August, the most recent time being last week. Hence me missing two blog post updates last month.

Also, on top of all of THAT, one of our branch stores had a whole new staff hired, which isn't as extreme as it sounds since it only has 3 employees anyway, but still. So I was asked to travel about 40min to the other store in order to train the new employees, as was another employee from one of the other branch stores, that way the other could cover while one of us had a day off.

I trained the new sales associate two days the one week, and then the following week the sales assistant came on and I went out to train her.

And then, apparently the one owner felt the assistant needed more training, so she was sent to my home-store for me to train her while helping cover the store I normally work in - ya know, because the tag-team of my co-workers requesting off.

Now, when I was hired, all employees had two solid weeks of training in their home-store, and then another month of shadowing the sales associates as a way to learn how to sell (back then every employee was in sales). About two years later, there was a shift to include hourly employees as sales assistants. Fast forward another 7 months or so, and that's when I started to get tapped for training the newbies and driving to the other stores for a day or so. For the most part, the "2 weeks of training" were shrunk to just one week - since the 2nd was typically training on how to sell merchandise, something most of the new employees weren't doing - and then that week of training was usually split between me and someone who worked in that employee's store. I'd start with the real meat-and-potatoes of how to run the main program we use for sales and a broad overview of what product we carry, and then the other employee would finish the training with getting into the minutia of the day-to-day and rare issues that might come up.

For the past year-and-a-half or so, this training system seemed to work. Heck, even with that sales associate I had trained early August had that sort of training regimen set up.

For the new sales assistant though? We're not sure why, but the one owner for whatever reason believes this woman needs 3 solid weeks of training with me.

Thankfully, last week and this week were in my home-store, so I didn't have to travel, but my days are completely consumed with trying to think of ANYTHING that I could still teach this woman so we're not just staring blankly at each other for 8 hours straight. Or, alternatively, so she's not like my co-workers: just sitting bored at a desk, wondering what to do, while I have a HUGE list of things *I* need to do still. Things like creating and hanging tags on the new product that comes in explaining the options available for it. Things like keeping up with the company's social media accounts. Things like keeping on top of the new company website so I can send glitches or other such errors to the web master ASAP. Things like updating some of my data spreadsheets so it's easier for us to look up things.

Granted, a lot of this stuff either of my co-workers could also learn to do - such as the spreadsheets or the information tags - but neither puts in effort to learn how to do it. So now it's backlogged by about a month.

And I STILL have to figure out what to do with this woman I'm supposed to be training despite us going through everything she needed to learn in the first 3 or 4 days.

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So.... yeah, work has been EXHAUSTING, and so all I want to do when I come home is zone out. For the most part, I've done that, with the exception of the couple of times I've GM'd our sessions of Blades in the Dark by John Harper. Those have been quite stressful in and of themselves. 

The sessions themselves seem well enough. The group appears to be enjoying themselves, and that's all that matters. Plus, with the scores I keep coming up with so the group has options, I'm slowly building a story of the world going on around the group. I am enjoying the brainstorming sessions Hubby and I have to try to come up with those world-build side-stories we could play off of. While the crew is doing this, off in the background these two warring factions are doing that. The way this score concludes affects this bit of the city. That sort of thing.

The first score the group chose my last GMing session was a continuation of one of the scores they did the 1st time I GM'd. In that first session a professor and his rival were both researching this one particular piece of technology in a race to see which of them could finally solve the problem the scientific world was having in improving the effectiveness of the tech. The professor knew his rival was further along than him, so he wanted the crew to steal her notes so he could have the advantage instead, and he wanted it to look like a random burglary.

Well, the crew did ransack her office and steal a bunch of random items that seemed valuable, along with her notes, as an effort o stage it as a burglary instead of a pointed attack. Problem is, they literally only hit the rival's office. So, I had a new score in which she knew that her rival had plotted the theft and wanted either proof to take to the Bluecoats or wanted the professor to be framed. Either way, she wanted him in jail.

The guys LOVED the continuation of this random side-plot of these two tech rivals, and got a kick out of the fact that she only knew her rival was involved with the theft, not that the crew was the one who actually did the burgling. So they agreed to set the professor up for masterminding the theft of her notes.

It's moments like that - where they gleefully passed around the index card the score was written down upon, and each of them going "OH!" after reading it - that makes me happy I've agreed to tag-team GMing with Hubby.

But then I go to write down what happened.

As I've commented throughout this post, it has been a busy and stressful month. I barely have the free time to write anything down, and when I do, it's a week or two after the session. So far, between 4 game sessions, we have played through 8 or 9 different scores. Hubby had that opening score in the first session. Then we went through three in my first session as the GM. Then we went through 2 or 3 more scores when Hubby took over again, and we went through another 2 when I last GM'd.

The fact that I can't remember how many we went through when Hubby last GM'd is part of the problem. I wanted to write the sessions down SPECIFICALLY because, especially with all the chaos and stress of 2020, my memory is trash. And yet, I only managed to write down the first 2 scores I GM'd before I ran out of time. So I'm now staring at so many backlogged game missions and struggling to remember what even happened. At the same time, as I write out what happened during the scores I ran vs reflecting on the ones I have to write down that Hubby ran, I began getting super depressed. I felt like I wasn't giving anyone any significant challenges. Which of course made me wonder about my overall writing and storytelling skills.

Was this why I have so many stories focused on inner conflict instead of outer conflict? Is this why I seem to write exclusively Man vs Self stories? Am I just incapable of coming up with external conflicts for characters?

Total. Writing. Existential. Crisis.

So even when I did have time to write down the sessions, I still didn't. I couldn't. I shut down. I just got depressed whenever I thought about my sessions. I felt like I was making things too easy for the players; that the complications I came up with the group just kind of shrugged off. 

To try to help, Hubby decided last week's Blades game session would actually be the group watching Let's Plays. That way Hubby and, especially, I could see how other GMs come up with scores and consequences/complications, and the guys could see how other groups played. We hoped it would help everyone get a better feel on how this game played different than D&D and break us from that D&D mindset.

Namely the idea of critical-failures, excessive pre-planning, the fear of complications causing us to fail the mission entirely, and the #1 D&D rule of "never split the party". The mechanics of Blades in the Dark is done so specifically to address and negate all of those issues of D&D.

In the end, Quarthix concluded that the session we watched on YouTube played fairly similarly to how we already play. Hubby more-or-less agreed. I had also noticed that the "consequences and complications" the GM came up with were things like "the floor creaked, but none of the 'sleeping' bodies beside you move". So maybe the complications and consequences I came up with weren't so mild after all. That did help my overall outlook.

Also, because we watched Let's Plays last week, and talked more about our character backstories, Hubby is still on-deck for GMing the session. That also helped because I didn't need the added stress of trying to come up with scores for the guys to do this session. Hubby's in charge again tonight, and it will be nice to just be able to play.

Especially since work wasn't my only bit of chaos. In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, today is the start of both a new month and new season. At the end of each month, the game cycles out an assortment of bugs, fish, and deep-sea creatures. It also brings in new bugs, fish, and deep-sea creatures. So I already knew there was a list of creatures leaving at the end of August. However, these were also summer-only creatures, so I wouldn't see them again until next June or July. Normally not that big of a deal except for three things:

1. I was still missing a total of 10 or 11 bugs/fish that I would have been able to capture by this time in the game. Two of them weren't active over the summer, but one came back today and the other would be back in, like, December or January, so it wouldn't be AS long of a wait.
2. I'm a completionist player, which means I try to go through 100% of the game. This is why one of my daily "chores" in-game is to go to both shops, and check the Nook Stop, and buy up everything that was "new," even if I don't like it. There's a "catalog" in-game and every time your character has possession of an item - via purchasing it, picking it up, or being gifted it - it is added to your catalog. So, I buy anything not already in my catalog, so I have a record of it, and then sell anything I don't wish to keep.
   This also means that I want to fully complete my Critterpedia: the listing of all the bugs, fish, and deep-sea creatures you could catch in the game. I don't want to have to wait until JUNE OR JULY in order to complete this thing!
3. There is a set of 6 main breakable tools that you frequently use in-game: net, slingshot, shovel, watering can, fishing pole, and axe. You can get the ultimate upgrade of a Golden tool once you achieve certain milestones. You learn the watering can when you have improved your island to the highest rating: 5-stars. You learn how to make a golden axe after breaking your regular axe a certain number of times. You get the golden slingshot recipe after popping x-number of balloons with your slingshot.
   For the golden shovel, you have to assist a side character that literally washes up on your island at least once every two weeks. You have to help him 30 times, so it will take a long time to get the shovel, but it still shouldn't be a "have to wait until next July" sort of situation to complete that task.
   The net and the fishing poles? You learn how to make the golden versions of those tools by completing the bug and fish critterpedias respectively. So, not only would catching these bugs and fish help me 100% my critterpedia, but also allows me to unlock the final 2 tools of the game. On top of THAT you also get Nook Miles - in-game points you receive for completing specific tasks - and stamps for both completing the tasks and building the resulting golden tools.

So... yeah, my Completionist Butt didn't want to have to wait until these bugs and fish returned to the game next July, and I didn't want to start "time traveling" in order to get them sooner than intended. Which all means I HAD to make sure I caught all of those bugs and fish before the end of August. Of COURSE I didn't realize how many bugs/fish I was missing until last week, so when I dropped Hubby off at work at 6am I would then spend an hour or so trying to hunt down any of these missing bugs or fish before getting ready for work myself. Then my Friday off was largely spent trying to hunt down the missing bugs and fish. Again Saturday morning - a rare Saturday off for me - I did little more than try to grind out the bugs and fish I needed, but I also had to deal with the surplus of flowers that had popped up and were going to overrun my island. 

Tanuki Facebook sticker
by Yanare Ku

Sunday morning before work and then more Sunday evening were spent once more searching for the remaining elusive creatures. Sunday post-work was also spent playing a couple hours of Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening on the Switch, a game I FINALLY started up Saturday afternoon while waiting for the next time bracket where the bugs/fish I needed would spawn. Two hours of playing a game within my favorite franchise. A game I had already played the Game Boy Color re-release version of. Two hours, and I somehow managed to die NINE TIMES! This is NOT a hard game. I went through two dungeons on Saturday, and died ONCE. Granted, I left most fights with only half a heart - your character's health meter - but I still managed to survive MOST of the game session. Sunday, though? Nope. I ended up saving in a new slot in case I wanted to go back to my original file and redo everything. Which I did do yesterday and did MUCH better: no deaths. My reflexes were certainly a lot better and I was a lot more focused last night.

Anyway, I was back to searching last night, having but two beetles left to find.

All-in-all, I think I personally clocked about 15 or 16 hours of doing little else in the game other than running around searching for these dang fish and bugs! It was certainly more a chore than fun, and it was EXHAUSTING and FRUSTRATING. But, at the same time, I didn't want to give up, because then I'd have to wait a year to officially complete the game. I mean, it may take me that long anyway, and I may be actively playing the game still anyway, but I didn't want to force it either simply because I didn't catch those creatures before they left for a year.

In the end, it was Hubby, playing my game for me for another TWO HOURS while I was working on this blog post - I'll explain in a moment - for my game to FINALLY get every creature I could by the end of August.

That being said, while I do have an insane amount of hours poured into this game since the end of March - over 800 hours, for sure - my official gamer profile says I have something closer to 860hrs clocked for ACNH. That's largely due to the amount of times the game goes idle while I do things like stop to eat, forget to log off before doing laundry or going to work, or, what happened this weekend, I fall asleep while playing so it just sits there - idle - for the 6 to 8 hrs I'm sleeping.

This ended up being beneficial, however, because there's this trick with the game. You can leave your main island and go on what's known as "Nook Mile Tours" or "Mystery Island Tours". These are tiny islands you can go to harvest things, and sometimes meet new villagers you can invite back to your home island. When you're on one of these islands, time moves normally, just as it would anywhere else in the game. HOWEVER, certain creatures have time restrictions for their spawning. For instance, the beetles I still needed as of yesterday only show up in the game between the hours of 5pm and 8am. So, if I were playing the game at 4pm, the beetle would never show up, but the moment it hit 5pm they would start to spawn, only to vanish again at 8am. On those island tours, you're locked into the time-block you reached the island within. So, to again use that beetle example, if I hit up a Mystery Island at 8:45pm, I'd be within that 5pm-8am time block. Any bugs/fish that didn't spawn at 8:45pm, but might spawn at 9pm wouldn't be spawning at all on that island, even if I stay on it until 10pm. While the clock still advances, and the lighting changes from night to day and vice versa, when it comes to critter spawn restrictions, you are locked into the time it was when you first landed on that island.

So, as I said, this proved beneficial. I had passed out playing ACNH while on Nook Mile Islands both Sunday evening and Monday evening. Which means, as far as the game's creature-spawns were concerned, it was still 10pm. Hubby had yesterday and today off, so I ran around in-game for an hour before getting ready for work yesterday morning, found one of the 4 critters I still needed, then passed the game over to Hubby. He played for another hour or so before letting me know he caught the last fish I needed. Then, as previously mentioned, I passed out again last night with just TWO MORE creatures to go, and Hubby spent a couple hours this morning finding them for me.

"Crisis" averted.

But holy heck was that stressful and NOT. FUN. the past week. Especially since that meant that - except for the few hours I played LoZ this weekend - I was pretty much exclusively playing this game whenever I had downtime. And it wasn't even stress relieving like it was meant to be!

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Sooooooo, yeah. That super sucked. I'm going to try to be a bit more diligent on which critters are leaving each month, and try not to save them for the last week or so of it. Thankfully, the largest collection of critters leaving the game comes at the end of the summer - so August in the northern hemisphere and February in the southern hemisphere - which means I shouldn't be as overwhelmed again while playing this game. A word of caution for any of my readers who also play this game and are in the southern hemisphere, or at least has their game set up for the southern hemisphere: DO NOT SLEEP ON THE SUMMER BUGS/FISH. TRY TO GET THEM ALL ASAP SINCE THEY ARE ONLY AVAILABLE FOR 2 MONTHS TOTAL THROUGHOUT THE FULL YEAR!

My one co-worker's daughter is getting married on September 19th, and so she took that whole week off to prepare and then recover from the wedding. That will be a LOOOOOOOOOONG week and I'll most likely miss my September 15th update due to that, but I'll try to be more on-the-ball this week.

So long to that crappy summer and doubly crappy August. Here's to September being better over-all. And here's to games RELIEVING stress instead of adding to it. (Yes, I'm also looking at you, Link's Awakening, and your stupid 9 deaths...)

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Edited by LycoRogue

And, finally, here's to 2020 being kinder to us, pretty please!

Hope to catch you next week!