Wow. Sorry. I totally crit failed. I was trying to talk about DaggerHeart but I wrote DragonBane instead.
Oh, oops! Yeah, I don't get the Daggerheart hype. It's getting all the YouTube oxygen because it's a Critical Role invention, and CR brings the views, but only from people who don't want to hear a bad word about it.
I poked about with the beta waaay back when it first got released as a preview on Demiplane, and hated it. Damage is particularly stupid:
- Roll the attack's damage.
- Compare the result to the target's damage thresholds*, to see how much damage they actually take.
- Reduce that number by armor.
- Actually take the damage.
Who looked at that and thought it was a good idea!?
*I can't remember if that's the exact term, but it's something like that
Yeah, it's fine. Rolls tend to be more swingy than D&D, particularly damage, because you aren't adding modifiers to anything. Monsters work a bit like Xenomorphs in Alien, where you roll from a list of attacks that mostly just auto-hit.
All of that means it's a bit more unpredictably lethal, and I think it's probably more suited to one-shots, or at least shorter campaigns. I don't know how well it would work for a big, multi-year campaign.
It does also have some inherent wackiness built in (it advertises itself as "mirth and mayhem roleplaying"), which maybe appeals to #content creators?
Alien 2e has had its second beta preview after feedback, and they've addressed pretty much all of the issues I had with the first version.
There are a lot of math nerds and would-be game designers on the forums throwing around phrases like "inherent dichotomy" and arguing for more crunch, but for my money it's in a pretty good place right now, and hopefully they don't mess with it much more.
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
Not a disappointment, as such, but a bit of a damp squib on the heels of Dead Reckoning (which we watched two nights before). You could probably trim at least half an hour off the thing if you cut some of the copious re-explaining they do, and leaving out a few of the flashbacks (most of which happen twice, for some reason). It's the sort of film where you can really see the writing, if you know what I mean? The big action sequences (most of which are in the trailer) are the least organically integrated they've ever been, and they're all about a third longer than they need to be, too.
It's a film that feels weirdly lacking in momentum, despite all the running Tom Cruise does (and he does a lot of running). Nobody but Ethan really has anything to do until what should have been the last 20 minutes, but is instead the last 40. Paris (Pom Klementieff) is particularly robbed, because she's the best thing in Dead Reckoning.
I kind of understand the logic behind a lot of the changes for TLoU2, but I still think it's weakened the show more than strengthened it. The Red Hallway in particular seems a bit extreme/left-field in the show, whereas in the game it's more of an inevitable escalation of what's been happening. It doesn't help that we've not seen Ellie make her way down the path to get there - she's hanging out with her gf and having pretty lighthearted chats, then all of a sudden PIPE TIME.
Saving all the flashbacks for one episode was a weird choice, because you end up not having context for a week or more after events have happened. One podcast I listen to suggested that episodes 6 and 7 should have been in the other order, because then we'd be reminded of what was lost just before the hallway, which might have worked better.
Ninchilla