I read something, and I’ve got things to say about it!
Cryptomancer, “a fantasy role-playing game about hacking”, purchased via drivethrurpg.com as print-on-demand hardcover.
What this is not: Shadowrun in a fantasy setting. Sorry if I just smashed your expectations, but I wanted to get that out of the way. So, what is this, then? Glad you asked.
Cryptomancer is a fantasy RPG with mechanics for instantaneous, but not inherently secure communication using crystal shards and the innate-to-all magical ability to work cryptomancy, a magic form of cryptography. You wont roll on hacking, though.
Foreword: No Man’s Wharf is easy (by Dark Souls 2 standards so far.) Don’t get too self-confident. You WILL lose souls.
And now on to today’s real topic: hardware.
I got myself two shiny new toys, a Unicomp Model M rebuild and a Synology NAS.I like both of them so far. More after the break.
As these things go, it costs a shitload of shineyz at launch. So I waited for the reviews to come out. Consensus was “if you like the building and planning of past parts, but weren’t into fighting, diplomacy and trade so much, this is your game”. Naturally, I screamed “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEYZ!” at the screen. I didn’t regret it, even if there are some things that mildly annoy me at times. Which is nice for “screaming bloody murder at my screen”, as my flatmate found out the hard way. Why, you might ask: because if you a) split combat from the rest of the game, map-wise, and b) make combat missions fully optional, then you really should not have your NPC reminding the player every x minutes about it. Especially not in the highly passive-agressive manner as some of the culprits. But let’s start from the beginning.
PSA 2: I still didn’t manage to play Ep. 4 of Life is Strange. Next weekend. Hopefully.
PSA 3: The Great War mod-Let’s Fail didn’t happen, and wont. As a total conversion, it took over the “machine guns don’t work” bug which, well, bugged me towards the end of Empire. The Great War becomes semi-unplayable without working machine guns.
And now – drumroll – the promised content:
Random Destructive Events in simulation games suck, and I can prove it. At least I will rant about it.
I recently picked up Fallout Shelter, the mobile spinoff of the famous postapocalyptic RPG-series, in which you build your own vault, tend to the needs of your dwellers and fight off random dangers. Continue reading On Random Destructive Events. Also: Fallout Shelter→
So, I did Anno 1404 for a while.
Sandbox-game on easy, if you really want to know. I scratched that particular itch for the time being, and there most likely wont be a detailed playthrough. At least not in the near future.
I used layouts from the wikia and and this production calculator.
However, I took some screenshots using the postcard-mode. So have some content that looked much better ingame and ignores even the few things I know about photography.