More than Nothing: The Goat Getters

[Part of the Party Time journal]

Ug (Juris), Rou (Rose), Ma (Mom) and Jerg (DL) are young cavemen out to prove themselves on their first unsupervised goat hunt, armed only with their wits and fists. It's a ritual of the "Goat Getter" tribe (PC named) that has followed this massive herd of goats over the years. 

Having tracked their prey to the foothills of the Black Mountain, Ug accidentally spooks the goats which sends them running. A sabertooth cat takes advantage of this, killing one goat and running off. Somehow the team loses track of the herd but finds the cat tracks and not willing to return empty handed follow them to a lone tree beneath which is the goat carcass.

The sabertooth strikes from hiding, mauling Jerg but Ma kills it by bashing it with a rock and saving him. They take both dead animals back their nomadic camp but on the way find a group of weeping, dark skinned mountain folk who have been brutalized and or killed by something. The hunters decide to go past quietly.

Back at base, tribe leader Mama Yapa is happy with their performance, beating even the veteran hunters who returned bruised, scratched and empty handed. Over dinner under a pitch black night lit only by two stars, Ug overhears the veteran group boasting about their exploits against the mountain tribe.

The next day the four are off hunting again but this time Rou spots a child seemingly made of light high atop a cliff. They go to investigate and the celestial child, "Sunny" asks for their aid in rescuing an ally from his enemy who will not expect the intruders to be more than nothing, and in exchange will lend them his power if they are successful. They agree and are instructed to leap off the cliff onto an invisible bridge. Ug goes first and sure enough he doesn't fall, so the party follows the bridge directly to a tear in the sky, leading to a realm of dark and freezing cold - a large, chained wolf imprisoned beyond icy stalagmites.

They work quickly to free the creature (taking cold damage over time) when a voice commands them to stop. It is the darkness, and it doesn't want Sunny to gain more power than he already has so instead offers to give them a weapon to kill the child instead. Ug tricks the darkness into gifting him obsidian blade (an ever sharp rock) with a false promise of slaying Sunny. They free the wolf, who turns out to be Luna, and exit just in time.

As a reward, Sunny teaches them how to summon his light: to stare directly at the sun and yell "I am bright!". The pair then vanish and since night is fast approaching the young hunters return to base, noticing there is now a moon in the sky. The peace is interrupted in the village when a giant "centipede" made of a mass of congealed corpses arrives and starts killing their tribesmen, by folding them in half and putting their heads in their asses. 

Ug distracts it while Jerg locates the puppeteer mountain tribe caster on a nearby hill, using a dead baby as a hand puppet to control the creature. Jerg kills him with a large stone then tears the baby corpse in two, destroying the monstrous centipede.

Mama Yapa decides to move the survivors off the cursed mountain to pursue the goat herd into the misty forest beyond.

More than Nothing: The System

[Part of the Party Time journal]

It's homebrew time again, and this time around I'm using a simplified Ironsworn system which uses five base stats: Edge for dexterity stuff, Might for strength and fighting stuff, Wits for smart stuff, Heart for will and talking stuff and Shadow for hiding and spotting hidden stuff. Skills go up or down when I deem them to do so. :P

These all start as blank and can go down to -3 and up to +3. When doing a dangerous or interesting action the player will roll 1d6 and 2d10. The d6 result then gets modified based on the number against the relevant stat (plus any extra situational bonuses or negatives) and if that beats both d10s its a success, if it beats one d10 its a partial success with consequences, and if it beats neither d10 its a failure with consequences. Should the d10s have the same number that's a critical (success or failure defined as before).

Characters have 13 boxes for health and stress, health being marked off from the left while stress starts from the right. Health being harder to recover. PCs can spend 2 stress on their own character to reroll all dice, or 1 stress (for themselves or their team mates) to reroll one dice. And they can just keep doing that. If the bar fills up with stress and/or damage then the character is "out" and quite probably dead.

I'm also adding occasional table top warfare here using old toy figurines, with simple rules of you can walk 3" and do something or run 6" and do nothing else. Heroes need to be within 2" of allies to command them (and said allies have to be a chain of 2" or less apart each to move together) and at the end of movement all units have to be facing the same direction (usually, unless it was an intentional "spread out" command). In instances where I have grid maps, its the same with the walk being 3 squares and the run being 6 squares.

Bad guys don't really get to roll in most situations except in the table top warfare bit. There its simply a dice roll (and I determine the situation on how many dice) and the result equals how many soldiers die and/or how much damage goes to a PC. 

Lastly, each character has an option to avoid damage by using limited "plot armor". These are basically a set of flashback questions made from plot threads I couldn't incorporate into the main story that lead us to know more about each character's past, usually shady or dark. It's funny that my group knows what I'm like and try their best to avoid using it at all costs!  

As usual I'll throw in more systems as we go along but those are the basics, and a lot of this is based off the many RPGs I've been reading through. :)

Greenland 2: Migration and Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man

Two sequel movies with ":"

Greenland 2: Migration

The survivors of Greenland have made it to temporary safety, but that wouldn't make an interesting story so the first thing to do is take that away and get them moving again. Only this time they have to travel much farther, but its ok because most of the deadly things are only deadly when they're mentioned and then forgotten about and the party gets loads of expendable helpers on top of the ridiculous amount of plot armor to get them through the string of roadblocks that basically make up this film. It's a more epic journey, but its somehow a worse movie than last time.

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man

The finale to the series sees protagonist Thomas Shelby (Cillian Murphy) having become a recluse and handing over his gang to his gypsy son who is doing his best and succeeding at being an asshole to everyone, all while making some really bad decisions. So bad that his dad has to be awoken from his slumber to come fix everything. 

Everything considered the plot is actually quite small scale and would really only appeal to people who have watched the series. If you were a fan then yes, this is for you, complete with cool non-era music and shots of just "looking cool". 

Hounds of War and A House of Dynamite

Two movies that should be exciting but aren't.

Hounds of War

After a group of mercs are setup on a doomed mission, the lone survivor seeks violent revenge on those responsible. You could do many things with that generic plot line, but this movie decides to make the protagonist only involved with a third of the action - delegating somewhat important tasks to nearly nameless side characters. It also feels like they did a lot of work for very little / indirect payoff and that combined with the terrible editing of putting cuts everywhere in the action sequences just really makes it bad. Not recommended. 

A House of Dynamite

When an ICBM bound for the USA is detected, everyone starts to panic as plans fail and hard decisions have to be made. Only they don't really - because while this movie might have good actors and an interesting hook, it lacks content and makes up for it by showing different viewpoints on the same overlapping number of minutes. Conversations you've already heard are spoken again, and really things you know and don't know remain the same throughout. Don't expect any resolutions here. Not recommended. 

Arknights: Endfield

Set in a universe of anime style characters who have spaceships but still use swords and spears, this free to play single player game (currently on Epic Games) features some nice graphics, decent voice acting and a click fest of combat that rewards timing.

Not only do you have to balance your team of four from a roster of operators (most of whom are possibly teenage girls) who will each individually require leveling, gearing, leveling the gear, and such - you also have to get lucky to recruit them from the gachapon style lucky draw that you earn every so often.

You can see more characters in the trailer.

Base building is also a pretty big component of this game (which caught me by surprise). Sure, you can hit minerals and gather bushes to craft stuff. But you can also setup auto mining rigs, processing plants, fabricator factories, conveyor belts between said parts to move materials around and electrical generators and have to run electrical cables to each of these for them to activate. Cable not long enough? Build a relay to keep it going! 

You can easily spend sessions not fighting at all but just harvesting, expanding and such. Oh, and you also build outposts that you can assign one of your team to manage, that can then trade and grow on its own too. There's also a stock market where you can buy goods and hope that you can sell for higher, because this "single player" game still takes into consideration what other players are doing. And if that isn't enough you can then fix up and build out your space ship. :O

Yes, there's A LOT going on here with tutorials galore in the form of simulations, including the base building part. Cool game but ultimately just too much for me, and you can almost taste the grinding as you need loads of things to level up your people, build your base and the like.

Of almost forgot one more negative: every single enemy, regardless of your level, feels like an HP sponge. Not sure if that's intentional but it certainly is annoying! 

Zootopia (1 and 2)

Disney doing something right!

These animated flicks where everyone is an anthropomorphic animal takes place in Zootopia, where predators and prey live in peace and "anyone can be anything". That doesn't mean it will be easy though as learned by protagonist bunny cop Judy Hopps who takes in on herself to take on a missing persons case and discover why some predators are going feral. 

Zootopia 2 continues the story of our heroes and does more world building with another case, and while its still a good watch it isn't as strong as the first one.

Regardless, both have good CGI, a well written plot, cute and likeable characters, and many funny moments to boot! Disney is doing very well with these. Highly recommended!

Cozy Grove and Clone Drone in the Danger Zone

Two games starting with C that get old quick.

Cozy Grove

This game has you play as a spirit scout sent alone to a small island that is haunted by spirits! But no, it's not a horror. The silly bear spirits all need help and its pretty cool that as you do help them remember who they are which adds more color to their section of the island, and expands the island to unlock more spirits to help. It's got easy controls and cute graphics but THE WORST collect and deliver quest system I've seen. You'll need to scrounge the place to find things that only SEQUENTIALLY SPAWN. Need three branches? You need to find the first one somewhere before the second one EVEN SPAWNS. That's just absolute shit and a complete waste of time. Not recommended.

Clone Drone in the Danger Zone

This voxel arena battler has you fighting robots using swords and bows with the main catch being that all weapons are vorpal - any piece hit of you or your enemies is easily chopped! You also get to upgrade after each match but one death and you get to start from the beginning again. The robot commentators are intentionally annoying and occasionally funny but the repetitiveness of the actual play isn't great.