NevelioKrejall @ Krejall @ttrpg.network Posts 0Comments 79Joined 2 yr. ago
Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters has an excellent story and wordbuilding, and you can talk to all kinds of weird aliens. If you don't like the ship combat, you can set up the game's AI to fight for you.
If you liked this game, you might be interested to learn that Pistol Shrimp games, an independent game dev company started by Paul Rieche III and Fred Ford (the original creators of Star Control and Star Control 2), are making a sequel, with story written by Paul Rieche III.
The re-release on steam is partly to get the word out about it. Join our discord to learn more!
Hey, this is my exact story, including the undiagnosed ADHD, dropping out of college, the dead-end wage slavery for way too long, and now having a decent paying job that isn't what I went to school for, but that also doesn't kill my soul.
Except: I have an epilogue!
I still don't have a degree, but I never stopped practicing my art because I am simply incapable of stopping. It's what I do. I recently got a side gig that was my absolute unrealistic pie-in-the-sky dream job when I was in college, working for the very creators that inspired me to choose my major in the first place. College wasn't what got me there. It was passion for the artform, introspection/therapy to develop a more forgiving and accepting attitude toward myself, and sheer perseverance. I spent the first 18 years of my adult life thinking failure and dead ends were all the universe had to offer, but I kept trying anyway (mostly to spite that hostile universe in a 'fuck you, kill me yourself' kind of way).
It's not over until it's over. You don't know how your story ends. Keep trying. If someone says you missed your chance, fuck 'em. They can't see the future any more clearly than you.
Disgusting things, children. Glad I never was one!
Even if you didn't like their coffee, they sell like candy and sandwiches and mugs and stuff? That's not a useless gift card and I'm sorry you lost it!
First Draft: It would have that weird lighting that turns everything greyscale, a fancy dress code, cold war era decor, and atomic bomb themed novelty cocktails.
Dr. Strangepub
or
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cock
Classic PC game Star Control II did this joke in the year of our lord nineteen hundred and ninety-two. There was an entire alien species whose culture was just capitalism taken to its furthest extremes. If you scan their home planet it's a 'dust world', the same planet type as Mars. Through conversation, you learn that it used to be a water world like Earth. Fantastic game. Getting a true sequel now, too!
This isn't stupid, it is righteous
I think I may be an outlier here. I really don't want to die in a sudden 'didn't-see-it-coming' kind of way, like getting hit by a semi or a freak accident with heavy machinery kind of way. The idea of going from living, thinking, feeling, person to chunk(s) of meat in an instant terrifies the shit out of me. Especially if it's caught on video and people watch it for laughs or whatever possesses them to watch that kind of thing.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to die in some slow, painful way either, but something I had some agency in would be worlds better. Like taking a bullet to save a loved one, or punching my own ticket after getting a terminal diagnosis, or even just taking a deliberate, calculated risk.
The best horror film for Halloween isn't a horror film, exactly. It's a cartoon miniseries called Over the Garden Wall. We put it on for the Halloween party every year.
Two approaches. Mixed success with both.
- Choose games that don't make you feel bad. This can mean playing more cooperative games, or it can mean offering to referee or sit out games you know will just piss you off. For me, the chance of winning isn't appealing enough to outweigh the chance of ruining the game for someone else. It helps to identify what exactly it is about losing that makes you so sour. I have a hard time with games like Cards Against Humanity because the card combinations that are funny to me usually aren't funny to anyone else because they didn't go on the ADHD field trip with me to make those connections. It starts to feel like a popularity contest that I'm losing because my brain is wired wrong, and it's hard not to take that personally.
- Set different goals in the games you're playing, and define 'winning' for yourself based on those goals. I used to get annoyed every time my friends pulled out settlers of Catan. I would do what made sense to me each turn, but I'd always lose anyway either to random chance or just not having enough RAM in my brain. Even on the rare occasions I won I often wouldn't have fun with it because I spent so much of the game being frustrated. So I decided the only thing I cared about in the game was getting one of the bonus goals, usually 'longest road'. That was much easier to focus on, and it took all the pressure off me to win. After a while it became kind of a running joke.
It's not perfect, and it doesn't happen in a vacuum either. Sore losers often have anger issues they're not dealing with (I know I did!) and figuring that stuff out will help in more areas of your life than just board games.
Your mileage may vary.
Good luck!
Two approaches. Mixed success with both.
- Choose games that don't make you feel bad. This can mean playing more cooperative games, or it can mean offering to referee or sit out games you know will just piss you off. For me, the chance of winning isn't appealing enough to outweigh the chance of ruining the game for someone else. It helps to identify what exactly it is about losing that makes you so sour. I have a hard time with games like Cards Against Humanity because the card combinations that are funny to me usually aren't funny to anyone else because they didn't go on the ADHD field trip with to make those connections. It starts to feel like a popularity contest that I'm losing because my brain is wired wrong, and it's hard not to take that personally.
- Set different goals in the games you're playing, and define 'winning' for yourself based on those goals. I used to get annoyed every time my friends pulled out settlers of Catan. I would do what made sense to me each turn, but I'd always lose anyway either to random chance or just not having enough RAM in my brain. Even on the rare occasions I won I often wouldn't have fun with it because I spent so much of the game being frustrated. So I decided the only thing I cared about in the game was getting one of the bonus goals, usually 'longest road'. That was much easier to focus on, and it took all the pressure off me to win. After a while it became kind of a running joke.
It's not perfect, and it doesn't happen in a vacuum either. Sore losers often have anger issues they're not dealing with (I know I did!) and figuring that stuff out will help in more areas of your life than just board games.
Your mileage may vary.
Good luck!
Absolutely not. Discomfort isn't a thing to be avoided, and contentment too easily becomes complacency. Everything I've ever done that materially improved my life was motivated by not being content with the status quo. Each positive change was (physically or emotionally) difficult, unpleasant, or even painful to make, but it always made life better afterward. Pain is a fantastic teacher. I would rather struggle than sleep, and I don't want rich assholes doing my thinking for me.
Don't do that. Don't give me hope.
There's coffee in that nebula!
I am having a hell of a time trying to find this image without text already on it
Looking back, I understand it. At the time, it was devastating. I was depressed, had lost my job, and hadn't learned to enjoy my own company yet, so I hung around constantly needing his attention. He didn't sign up to be a therapist. He was as gentle as he could be about it, but it still hurt to be abandoned at my lowest point. I needed the wake up call though. I'm doing much better now.
My strategy for these days is to let myself off the hook for finishing anything. "Just put three dishes in the dishwasher, then you can go back to the project your brain will let you think about." Sometimes that's enough to break the spell and load the whole dishwasher.
Good news! The devs released it to the open source community under the name The Ur-Quan Masters. You can play it now for free! And they're developing a sequel as we speak over at Pistol Shrimp Games