Shadow Of The Comet – Development Hell

Written by limbeck

So, the last session finished with me recovering from last night's events and Dr COBBLE prescribing me some pills to stop a heart attack. As I get off bed and put on my clothes, I have two goals for the day: get these pills from the pharmacy; and develop the plates from last night, again at the pharmacy. So, without much delay, I gather the prescription from the desk and head out. Oh, I also have a look at the parchment from the ritual, but I cannot read it. Maybe JUGG will be able to help later. Just to be on the safe side, I try to use it very near the desk, but it doesn't work.

Maybe I won't come across Miss PICOTT this time

At the pharmacy, I give the prescription to Mr MATHEWS, the pharmacist, who says it will take some time and goes to the back to prepare my medication. Before that, he pointed me to the door at the back, where his dark chamber is, so I can develop my plates. He also mentioned that I will need to mix the four chemicals to develop the plates.

So, I go to the back to collect the four chemicals. Only there are eight of them. Fortunately, I have a good chemistry education and have the internet at my disposal to find the solution. As you can imagine, neither was really helpful.

...develop those plates. Well, I definitely won't work for them.

The scene in the screenshot played several times, because the chemicals I had in my possession did not really correspond to what instructions I could find online. I spent the better part of an hour reading everything I could about photographic film development and what chemicals are used. I am quite confident that I can pick up analog photography as a hobby again.

However, all this knowledge did not really help me much. My online research suggested that I need to use metol and / or hydroquinone first, then add something to raise the pH (benzene chlorate?) and finally sodium sulphite. This is the process for B&W photo development. I suppose I could add the 'chromogenous', whatever that is, in the end. Black and white works better with astrophotography, as there is not really much colour in space and requires less light on your plate / chip to produce an image. And it can be equally spectacular.

My first try failed, but I could try as many times as I wanted, fortunately. I was convinced that I had to use sodium sulphite at the end, so I tried various combinations, without success. Some more googling suggested that sometimes it helps to add a weak acid to control the development. I tried some combinations using the acids at my disposal (weak and strong). In vain.

In the end I resolved to brute force it. I was pretty sure that the Metol – Hydroquinone were correct, since I had tried several combinations with only one of them to zero success. After a few more tries, I found the correct combination. I will leave it here to spare others of this madness: metol – hydroquinone – benzene chlorate (which is actually sodium hyposulphite) – chromogenous (potassium metabisulphite).

I would disagree

Here, I must say that my first choice was very close to the solution, but honestly, I have no idea how I would have solved that puzzle if I did not have internet access. Maybe if I had an encyclopaedia at home, but again, I don't think I would get the exact combination of chemicals, because some of these were not mentioned in any of the sources I found online. Maybe the art is forgotten, what can I say? On top of that though, the names of the chemicals were different in my inventory and when I used them, adding to the confusion. A hint in the game would have been much appreciated here.

But I digress. After I successfully develop the plates, I am treated to a cutscene in which I slowly go through the developed plates, only to look at a horrid image in the third one, a set of eyes formed by stars looking at me with malice.

Game over. Or not

I naturally faint and I am saved in the last moment by the pharmacist, for just $10. My life is so cheap. Unfortunately, the plate shattered when I dropped it, so I have no evidence to defend my sanity. I collect myself and go out.

Outside of the pharmacy I met some Mr COLDSTONE who warned me not to go to the forest, because "it doesn't agree with some people". I don't know where I've seen him, but PARKER apparently knew him. Oh well.

I want to head to JUGG's house, but I wander around town a bit first. At the tavern, I buy JED a beer and watch him complain to ZEKE, the bartender, about the quality of his beer. About time I say. Now JED owes me one. In the town square, I see miss PICOTT again, all alone, so I try some small talk. She seems concerned about my pallor but then goes on with her Bible reading.

Technically, I was up to voyeurism.

In order of increasing unfriendliness, I also meet:

• Miss PICOTT's niece, GLORIA, who is hiding from her aunt and pleads to me not to rat her out. Naturally, I promise her.
• CURTIS HAMBLETON says that I made a mess and that 'they' know everything. Who are 'they' and what is 'everything'? Fine mess indeed.
• Outside of the dilapidated mansion, I meet the HAMBLETON boys, who suggest I leave and then go away.
• I also notice a bug. When I entered the hardware store from the north, I could not move at all. All the other commands worked normally.

Anyway, I finally collect myself and head to JUGG's place. Outside it I meet WILBUR. Was he at JUGG's? The door was locked, so I don't really know. Maybe he killed JUGG? There is nobody at the Archives, so the murder scenario seems very likely. Maybe I need to find WILBUR and have a chat. He didn't respond to the Talk command when I confronted him in front of JUGG's house.

Staring contest

I return in front of JUGG's house and I exit to the right, following WILBUR's path. Indeed, I can follow him as he enters MYER's store, stops in front of the counter for a bit and then heads out. I try to follow, but he has already disappeared. Clearly I need to look at the store. I do, and find a key at the counter, which I quickly pocket. I suspect that this is the key to JUGG's door, but why would WILBUR drop it here? Is MYER an accomplice? The plot thickens or I am becoming increasingly paranoid.

As predicted, the key opens JUGG's front door, after an unnecessarily long cutscene of trying to turn the key in the lock. When inside, the first thing I notice is blood on the floor. I am a bit disappointed there is no mention of it when I Look around.

As I head to JUGG's bedroom, I feel that I am being set up for a puzzle, because I find and pick up a statue of a baby (on the desk), a statue of a young man (in a cabinet) and a statue of an old man (inside one of the butterfly displays).

There is more blood in JUGG's bedroom, but what is more important, I can now pick up a number of books from his shelf and bookcase. The books are called: Youth, Beyond Chaos, The Old Man and the Sea, The Invisible Man and the Mystery of the Pyramids.

This time the puzzle made sense. I put the statues in the place of the books most relevant to them: Baby for Youth, Young Man for Invisible Man and Old Man for Old Man and the Sea. Not that the game let me put them anywhere else. Once I replaced the other books in their places, I got the satisfaction of a secret passage being revealed.

Honestly, I thought I was trying to open the door hidden behind the curtain

Going through the passage takes me to JUGG's secret library. The library is full of occult books, the likes of which I have probably not heard before, unless I was deep into the study of ancient and forgotten cults.

Oh! There is also a dying JUGG. I try to call for help, but he stops me, saying that he still has enough life in him to help me. I give him the parchment from the ritual and he translates it. It is the most common unpronounceable quote about Cthulhu.

Fortunately, there is a translation

He then goes on into a Cthulhu Mythos exposition about the GOOs who ruled Earth before man and the deluded cultists who try to bring them back. Apparently the Stars Are Right and the passing of the comet in 2 days the guardian of the portal that could bring these GOOs back will materialise in a stone circle. He throws in some names, Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, Yog Sothoth and Dagon. These should be the ones to worry us.

He also gives me some hints. I should read the NECRONOMICON, a book so horrible that drives people mad just by its words, so that I can find the formula to stop the guardian. I must read it here. On his desk there is also a note about someone who can help me. I must read it only in the safety of my room.

Finally, he speaks about the dead sorcerer NARACKAMOUS. This was the name that the Native American used.

This guy, in case you did not remember

After the exposition is over, I pick up the Necronomicon and the message. And I am stuck as I cannot do anything with them. Again. Apparently I need a key for the Necronomicon. I try to find some hints in the other books of the library, but nothing works with anything. Of course, I cannot read the message before I go to my room and I cannot leave JUGG's place before reading the book.

Another 20-30 minutes and 2 rage-quits later, I find out that it was a pixel-hunting solution again. The key was under the carpet in the next room. In retrospect it makes sense, but again I must remember to press L with every step I take.

I mean, why wouldn't I lift everything not nailed down. It's an adventure game

I use the key on the Necronomicon and get some more knowledge. The book speaks about Yog Sothoth being the portal and the key and provides guidance on how I should stop him from coming to Earth. Then I try to get out and I burn to death, because I stupidly forgot to put the book back on the desk.

Before I go on, I must say something positive about the tools at my disposal, and that is the Notebook I carry. I have omitted it in previous posts, but it is very helpful for people like me who rarely take notes when playing. It keeps track of important goals or gives subtle warnings. For example, it warns me that, now that JUGG is dead, I will probably be the prime suspect for his death. More on that in a bit.

Having learned the secrets about how to stop Yog-Sothoth from returning, I now need to get back to my room and read the message from poor JUGG. Only one route seems to be open though. In the others, there are cultists waiting for me and the policeman takes me to JUGG's home and arrests me for murder. I suppose I am summarily led to the chair or the noose or whatever they used these days. Maybe the plank.

After reloading, I head back to my room through the city square. Apparently safe, I read the message from JUGG. I cannot understand much, other than that I need to look at a map of the area and that the person that can help me lives "where the three colours float and 100 messages leave". Both of these clues lead me to the post office, where I have previously seen the map and sacks of undelivered mail.

But first: the obligatory Miss PICOTT scolding

When I arrive at the post office, the map is not in its place. I ask the lady behind the counter, which is more helpful this time. She says that David UNDERHOUSE borrowed it. He lives above the post office and has a keen interest in Native American history.

She also gives me some of her personal views on the matter

I go upstairs and meet Mr UNDERHOUSE, who is confined on a wheelchair. Considering that the only way to his room is via the stairs, he is practically at the mercy of whomever brings him food. Nevertheless, he is well versed in local myths, the Natives' culture and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Considering that his lookalike was a big racist, this is a big awkward

After a short discussion, he lets me look at the map and explains to me that the Stone Circle I point out is at an old Indian cemetary, which he was really keen to see before some locals broke his legs. I also learn that the NARACKAMOUS I met is supposed to have died 70 years ago, but it's possible that he is still alive because he belonged to a branch of the Mic Mac tribe that worshipped He Who Howls in the Darkness, Nyarlathotep. But of course this is just a story. Right?

UNDERHOUSE gives me another task, and that is to bring him a diary from the Mayor's safe. The combination has to do with the Bible and Evil. I would assume 666 but that would be too easy, right? Or I can ask the Bible expert in the town: Miss PICOTT.

I conveniently meet her outside, but I receive a royal scolding about getting into fights (to save WEBSTER) and spending time drinking alcohol in pubs (ZEKE's watery beer barely qualifies as such). She is also unwilling to lend me her Bible to mend my delinquent ways.

I will stop this session here. Next time I will try to get into Miss PICOTT's good books and stop Yog-Sothoth. I feel that the second task is easier than the first.

Session time: 2:30
Total time: 6:00

Sanity lost: 5 from looking at the plate / 3 from reading the Necronomicon
Total sanity lost: 12 (there's definitely something hiding in that corner. MORE LIGHT)

PS. Bonus death scene: If I tried to visit the lighthouse before I develop the plates, I see WILBUR passing through the fence and the two gorillas warn me not to come closer. If I do, I get shot.

Not the fastest draw west of Pecos

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

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Storium Basics: Wild Cards

Welcome back to my series on Storium basics. Today, we'll be discussing Wild Cards.

When you create a character, you start with a defined Strength and a defined Weakness. Usually you'll start with more than one copy of each, making it your character's strong theme - the amount can vary depending on your game's settings. However, in addition to those, you'll also usually start with a few wild cards - some Strengths, and some Weaknesses.

These are how Storium handles the mechanical side of character development.

Wild Strength and Wild Weakness cards are Storium's way of letting you develop your character and reveal new traits about them. When you pick one, Storium will ask you to title it and write a description for it, just as if you were creating custom cards during character creation. You can also select from other cards the narrator had as options for character creation, or from cards you've already played in the game.

Which should you do? Well, that's up to you.

Early in the game, it's probably best to either pick another card from the character creation list that seems to apply to your character, or write a custom card.

Picking another card from the list is pretty simple - just find one on the "Existing Cards" list and select it. Make sure to pick something that feels like it applies to your character - something that fits with your concept.

My preferred method, though? I prefer to write my own Wild Cards. Once you've started the game, you're probably starting to develop your character's identity and traits in your head. The other existing cards might apply, but I tend to find that only works for one additional card, two tops. To really reveal who my character is, I find it's best to write up some custom cards.

It's also lots of fun.

When you're writing a new card, what you want is to aim for something that feels broad but still descriptive. Strengths and Weaknesses in Storium work best when they can apply to a wide variety of situations, but they still need to say something specific about your character. Not that you can't use very specific facts from time to time, but overall, I find it easier to write things you can use again and again. For more on that, see the links below.

The other thing you want to do here is say something new about your character. Something that spins off of what we know about them, but that is different in some way from what we knew before. You'll get the most fun out of Wild Cards if they differ from cards you've already played. They can be similar, but there should be differences. As an example, if your original Strength card was something like Brilliant, reflecting your ability to use intellect to find a way through your problems, maybe your new Strength might be something like Lateral Thinking, reflecting a particular and unusual strategy that allows you to find creative solutions, or Multitasking, reflecting your ability to split your brainpower to handle multiple tasks at once. They still relate to your intellect, but they tell you something new.


Now, it doesn't have to be that direct of a link all the time, but it's important to try to link Wild Cards to your character concept. You're describing new elements of your character, but they shouldn't (generally) feel like they come entirely out of nowhere. Build on what you've done so far or formalize traits you've hinted at in the past. There may be times where it's appropriate to reveal a totally surprising character element, but done improperly, or especially done too often, it ends up just feeling like bad writing. So: Tell us something new about your character, but not something outlandish about your character. In general.

Late in the game, when you've already made a lot of wild cards, you may find it easier to start using the "Previously Used Cards" tab to select cards you've played earlier in the game. In the late game, you've already got a pretty decent list designed and it may be hard to think of new traits for your character. That's when I find it handy to sometimes use this list and just bring another of my existing traits to the fore. In the early game, there's just not enough on this tab and using it will stop you from adding new traits to your character - but in the late game, it can be very handy.

Whatever you do, you'll then play that card just like any other card - write your move according to the traits you've revealed. Once you've written the card, there's nothing particularly different about using it than using other cards.

At Refresh (more on that next week), any wild cards you've played will show up with their names and descriptions as options you can choose. This is how you can change your character's primary, noted traits over the course of a game. A paladin who starts out with Toughness as his starting Strength may turn out to concentrate on Inspirational Leadership and Empathy by the end of the game - so Wild Cards don't just let you reveal new things about yourself, they can ultimately let you change your character in accordance with the story.

For more on Wild Cards and writing Strengths and Weaknesses, see these articles:

• Writing Good Strengths and Weaknesses
• Character Development Through Wild Cards
• Situational Strengths and Weaknesses
• Choose Cards You Want to Play
• Build Towards Something

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All You Need To Do Is Have Self-Compassion! And It's Rather Easy!

In training, the first thing we learned in therapy techniques was Carl Rogers' approach of unconditional positive regard for your clients. For me, he was the GOAT. Those who are suffering most likely haven't been given the love and nurturing they needed in childhood, adolescence, and even adulthood. 

Therefore, as therapists, you accept and support the person, without question. You accept the client, including their flaws, after all, everyone has weaknesses, no one is "perfect".

By giving unconditional positive regard, the client then begins to regard themselves more positively after being heard, accepted and supported, they begin to see that they're worthy. And, because they're worthy, they'll be more motivated to change - you take care of things that are valuable, which includes you!

For some reason, this message has been strangely forgotten after my training, because the concept of self-esteem was the fetish. To the point where we have clients write positive things about themselves to improve self-esteem. Esteem, meaning, that you value yourself for your positive qualities, and the more positive qualities, the better your self-esteem. 

Do you see the fatal flaw? When you start thinking of your negative traits, and we all have them as human beings, your self-esteem will fall. Also, what if one of the things you find positive about yourself is that you have beautiful skin, but as you age, it will "sag" and then your self-esteem will crumble. Or, that you're a kind person, but there are going to be times when you act unkindly (out of stress, we're all human), so that will also lower your self-esteem.

However, if you can accept yourself fully, warts and all, because you know that you're not perfect, and no one else is perfect, you begin to accept yourself, and in turn, accept others for not being perfect as well! Thus ending the deadly poison of self and other-criticism, that destroys creativity, inspiration, passion, productivity, and love.

Once you have self-compassion, you will be more motivated to act in more healthy ways such as exercising, not procrastinating, not being critical of others because you see that you're a valuable person. And if you're valuable, like all valuable things, you want to take care of yourself.

Here is the scientific breakdown for why self-compassion works, and why self-esteem doesn't:



How do you have self-compassion? The easiest exercise is to treat yourself as a best friend would treat you. You don't even have to be that mindful it's very obvious when you feel bad because they're such strong, obvious emotions:

Anger, stress, hatred, comparing yourself negatively to another person leading to jealousy and envy, criticizing yourself (which makes you feel down in the dumps), and so forth.

In this post, I will outline the steps with the best friend strat, and then give five very common scenarios when we tend to be really mean to ourselves, and show how you use this best friend approach.

BEST FRIEND APPROACH

Step One: As soon as you feel that sinking, negative gross feeling, stop and think about what you're upset about.

Step Two: Talk to yourself (internally or out loud) as if you're your own best friend, using this three step method:

• Best friend will acknowledge the shittiness of how you feel and allow you to bitch and complain.
• Next, best friend would say this shit happens to all of us, you're not alone, and of course you'd feel horrible, who wouldn't?
• Lastly, how can we move forward and problem-solve?

EXAMPLES

Scenario One: You failed a test (or whatever project), you then begin to criticize yourself harshly and say that you're a complete loser and a fucking failure, you feel dejected and depressed. You feel like crap and crippled to do anything, which is the signal where you go into best friend mode:

As a best friend, he would tell you, that really sucks you got an F (or whatever failure), that's crushing and heart-breaking. He will say that we all fail, Edison failed millions of times, it never feels good but at least you tried and had the guts to show up and take that test (or do whatever project).

How can we do better to crush that test? And then come up with solutions in terms of studying "smarter" not "harder" (i.e. Gordon Greene's "Getting Straight A's"). You get excited and motivated so you order this used on Amazon.com and thank your best friend for support. Your friend says, "that's what friends are for!" You then get an A (at worst B+) on the next test.

Analysis: We see in this scenario how your friend acknowledged your feelings of suckiness when you got that big fat F.

He then universalized failure, that you're not the "only one" in the world who fails, so you're not the "sole loser outcast". Rather you're human just like everyone else.

Lastly, what can we do to change the outcome? Problem-solve and act upon the problem at hand!

Scenario Two: You're too tired to exercise yet again, even though exercising a mere 13 minutes, three times a week, can prevent major cardiovascular conditions that lead to death. 

You say to yourself that you're a lazy, pathetic, useless piece of shit who can't even do something as short as 13 minutes. You feel awful, which is the signal to go into best friend mode.

Best friend would say, no one likes to exercise, why do you think there are all these memes about hating exercise, and there's this viral cat video where the cat's so miserable to even move her left paw!

You're not lazy, you're human and like all the mammals in the world! ALL mammals are biologically wired to go the path of least resistance since calories are so scarce back then! Pampered pets tend to be overweight to obese, and inactive. The goal was to conserve the energy and hibernate in winter!

You feel better about yourself. Then he'll problem-solve and say, just go to the gym as the goal. If you don't want to exercise, then go back home. Most likely what happens is that you'll end up doing the 13 minutes, perhaps rounding up to 15 minutes or more.

Scenario 3: Your boyfriend dumped you, and you feel anger toward him. You also start feeling that you'll never find love again because you failed in this relationship. You tell yourself that you're unloveable, hideous, disgusting and trash. No one would love you ever again. You become depressed, which is signal to use the approach.

Your best friend might actually have a girl's weekend at your place to wallow in the sadness Friday night after work. She'll bring 12 different flavors of Ben and Jerry's, various chocolates, and order out pizza. You process the breakup and she tells you that everyone goes through breakups, it's a part of everyone's life - you're just like everyone in the world who's gotten rejected, I still love you. You feel better because of this truth. Then binge on Downton Abbey episodes.

But, on Sunday night, after you enjoyed the binge and wallow fest, your best friend tells you that you need to work on yourself and get healthy. She doesn't want to see you wallow in self-pity for months on end.

She tells you to go back to your life, go to work, take it one day at a time, socialize with your friends - you may meet eligible men. Feeling encouraged and supported, you begin to get over the break-up and taking healthy steps.

Scenario four: This is taken directly from my recent experience. You compare yourself negatively to another person. You begin to think why can't you be as fluent, as on point, as passionate, as humorous as Dr. Ramani:



Your friend notes that of course she's on point, she teaches this stuff every day to her students so she has to know the material like the back of her hand. For these interviews, she most likely prepared these answers in advance, and she has done so many, that it gets easier and easier!

I then feel better and interestingly, I felt gratitude (rather than feeling down on myself for "not measuring up") toward Dr. Ramani for helping people avoid getting involved with a narcissistic partner in the first place! Avoiding these people who destroy and crush others' souls (a malignant narcissist can conceivably kill his partner), literally saving lives.

Scenario five: You berate yourself for procrastinating yet again because you'd rather indulge yourself by playing video games. You call yourself pathetic, lazy and useless because you can't accomplish anything at all! 

How would you treat yourself with self-compassion? This is what I would tell myself, using the best friend approach:

It's so frustrating and annoying to not get things done because of procrastination! In fact, it's such a huge and universal problem that if you go to Barnes & Noble self-help section, most of the books are on procrastination! Of course you'd rather play video games, who wouldn't? Wow, you got work to do, so why not take a short break from gaming and just do 5 minutes of the chore and then you can go back and play the game. Feeling better about yourself for not being the only person who procrastinates, you spend 5 minutes and then more minutes as you get into the task, surprised that you got the bulk or almost all of the chores done!

I consciously tried self-compassion at work today which compelled me to write this post.

It was the first time where I felt light-hearted and a genuine joy, feeling full-hearted toward my coworkers without effort. I always feel the irritability when I'm at work, and use immense amount of energy to be pleasant to my coworkers since I like all my coworkers.

While they all say that I'm very easy to work with and non-intimidating, it takes up so much mental energy that I get drained at work. Which is why I end up playing video games after work. However today, having self-compassion, I have enough mental energy to write this post!

Despite being stressed today, interrupted every minute to sign, to make calls, and having to eat lunch in front of clients, I didn't feel mental fatigue, only physical fatigue. (The physical fatigue was my fault for not realizing I didn't have iron or synthroid in my weekly pill reminder box for the last 2 weeks, as well as untreated sleep apnea, and not exercising for being so tired).

At any rate, it was a wondrous feeling of being light and having this outpouring of love toward my coworkers (I do love them, I just don't feel it often due to work stressors), that I came up with rather creative solutions for a family, that surprised even myself!

The trap of doing any other exercises aside from self-compassion - activities such as keeping a gratitude journal, exercising regularly, and the like, is that if you don't do those things, you start feeling bad about yourself for being lazy, and you quit out of demoralization.

However, with self-compassion, you start feeling better. Even when you get down upon yourself for having a critical thought about yourself, you can snap out of it due to feeling the warning signs.

You may even laugh at yourself because of the irony. You're criticizing yourself for criticizing yourself! But by laughing at that, as your best friend would (perhaps even teasingly saying that you're a dork, but that makes you lovable), you can regain self-compassion.

Finally, as you accept yourself, flaws and all just like everyone else, you feel a sense of connection for others when you see them struggling, and end up having compassion towards them.

This feeling of love that you have to others make you feel even better and light - no jealousy, no bitterness, just a wonderful feeling of connection. We humans, as all the researchers say, are hard-wired for connection, and people tend to depression when you feel disconnected.

With self-compassion, as you feel better and find yourself worthy and worth doing all these hard things. You become more motivated to make healthy choices, do the gratitude exercises, eat healthy, get enough sleep, eat fruits and vegetables, just from self-compassion alone. 

The love you feel inwards and outwards becomes effortless, love being the powerful force, empowering you to do the hard, necessary things that are fulfilling to you.

The How of Happiness Review

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ASOIAF: Starks And Lannisters Overview

So.. who's it going to be?

It's probably worth saying that I got into the game fairly easily because my favorite major house in the show is Lannister.  My wife really digs Starks but she has yet to try the game because it looks too nerdy.  Don't worry, it's just a matter of time because I see her eyeing the dinner table that I've fully converted into playing daily games.  It's a good thing that I bought enough stuff to get some variety into the mix so the newer players I'm trying to get into the game can experiment and mix and match units.  Even though I have my favorites, I have probably played at least 40% of my games with Starks because I feel that the best way to learn the game is by playing a lot.

Whenever someone starts with the game, no matter what minis game, I always tell them the same thing:  Go with the aesthetics and look of the faction first above anything else.  With this game, however, I don't think the same principle applies as much in this game because everyone is human (for the most part).  When it comes down to picking a faction, I think one of the things everyone needs to do is examine a bit of their psyche and pick a faction that best aligns with their personality.  It's like picking a color in MTG and understanding that each color represents a bit of your personality.  If you want to go a little bit deeper, picking a faction in this game would be like picking a guild from Ravnica, or even building a character in a D&D campaign.  That is, unless you really really like dogs.  Then I would say just pick Starks and never look back.

Alright, so back to the two starting factions from the Core set.  Since you need this set to play the game and they're the factions with the largest amount of units choices right now, you need to decide if you want to go with House Lannister or House Stark.  Remember what I said about picking the right faction for you, as this will do you big favors because a lot of the game's mechanics are designed around how the houses behave in the books/show whatever.  There's a big chance that if you don't like the houses' personality in the books that you will not like how they play in-game.  It's actually one of my favorite things about the game so far and that's how on-point a lot of book to table translation has been.

Hear me roar!

Alright, let's begin with the Lannisters.  In this game, the Lannisters are the faction that has a lot of panic shenanigans, morale tests, weakens, and counterplots.  Their Tactics cards play heavily with the Crown and Wealth zones on the Tactics Board and controlling those will open up many secondary effects of your cards.  Lannister Commanders come in many shapes and sizes from the destructive and brutal force of The Mountain to the cunning strategist that is Tyrion Lannister (yes, you can take him in combat!).  My favorite Commander for the Lannisters is Tywin Lannister (also my favorite character in the show) because a lot of his Tactics cards and abilities intimidate and Weaken enemy units.  Another Commander that I've tried is Jaimie Lannister because his abilities center around defense, parry, and riposte; turning the opponent's attacks and crappy rolls against them.

When it comes to NCUs or their Tactics cards, the Lannisters focus heavily on debuffing and control elements that limit the opponent's options.  Pycelle's Weaken effect and Cersei's No Confidence are prime examples of debuffing the opponent or making them worse for morale tests, while tactics cards like Counterplot can outright stop an opponent tactics card from going off.  I tried to get some examples of the kind of tactics the Lannisters can employ and I think this lot sums it up pretty nicely.  For the Lannisters, they are all scheming masterminds with several abilities that kicks players while they're down.

Kick 'em while they're down.

As for Lannister units, they are well-supplied and fairly diverse to take on a large breadth of enemies.  The Mountain is its own unit just because he is, Lannister Guardsman are slow with lower attacks but has an excellent defense and a great ability (Lannister Supremacy) that only gets better with attachments, and Lannister Crossbowmen are no joke.  I've recently started playing them and having a unit that just hits units with ranged attacks on a 3+ with Sundering from Long Range is incredible.  Lannisters also have some interesting unique units like Pyromancers that can toss their Wildfire from ranged or in combat and it ignores defense saves while suffering -2 to the defender's Panic tests through Vicious.

While the Lannisters have a solid lineup of units, I would say their strengths come from their debuffs and stopping your opponents from what they want to do more so than just strength of arms.  For that, you want to get into House Stark.  If you're looking for a faction that doesn't care about the subtleties and just wants to beat face, you've come to the right place.

Winter is coming.

When it comes to striking hard and striking fast, Stark is the faction to do it.  One of the many things I enjoy about the core set is that you have two factions that have radically different playstyles.  Just like it is in the books, the Starks and the Lannisters are probably the two houses most different from one another.  While the Lannisters rely on debuffs and abilities that stop your opponents from doing what they intend, Starks are all about battlefield combat and maneuver.  They see an opening and go for the jugular just like the Dire Wolf, their house sigil and in doing so, deliver massive damage to the enemies and leave them reeling.  With Commanders like Robb Stark who can take maneuver warfare to the next level, or Roddrick Cassel and his ability to exploit the Vulnerable enemies, the Starks are the faction you want if you want to destroy the opponent's army rather than play the more drawn-out  game of politics and scheming.

Of course, this doesn't mean that the Stark units or playstyle are just centered around this niche.  With both the Lannisters and the Starks, there will be Commanders and units that will change the regular composition from what you expect from the two factions and that's always a good thing.  For example, on one side, you have the fast-moving and lightly-armored Umber Berserker that has built-in Sundering (-1 to defense saves) and their attacks increase when you lose ranks rather than decrease.  You compare this to the rock-solid Tully Sworn Shields with the Shield Wall ability and good luck trying to break their 3+ defense saves from the front.  This unit variety not only keeps different playstyles fresh and exciting but also gives units legroom to perform depending on the game mode that you play.  Either way, when you think about Starks, their humble foot soldier in the form of Stark Sworn Swords move 5, have excellent morale and rolls 8 dice just because they can.  When you pop Stark Fury on them, they gain +1 to hit and Critical Blows on their attacks (6s deal 2 hits) at the cost of D3 models to your own unit.  If that's not a healthy representation of angry Northmen I don't know what is.

Winter is seriously coming.

When it comes to Tactics cards and NCUs, Stark is pretty straight-forward:  It's all about Combat and Maneuver and taking those zones will be extremely rewarding.  Catelyn Stark can remove a condition from an afflicted unit while buffing them so they're attacking with max dice, and Sansa Stark can instant tutor for any tactics card you need, even if it's a previously discarded card.  That is great tactical flexibility and I have her in almost every single one of my Stark lists.

Well, that's about it for the high-level overview of which armies you will get in the core box.  With so many different commanders, tactics, NCUs, and units to cover, list building deserves its own article.  I'll take you guys through the basics of list building and show you a couple of Lannister and Stark lists tomorrow so you can better grasp some of the things discussed today.

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Tech Book Face Off: Game Engine Black Book [Wolfenstein 3D Vs. Doom]

After all of the heavier reading I've been doing lately—machine learning, CUDA programming, fundamental Lisp programming, etc.—I wanted to kick back and read something a bit more relaxing and entertaining. Luckily, at just the right time a friend lent me a couple of books that promised to fit the bill perfectly: the Game Engine Black Books for Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, both by Fabien Sanglard. I grew up with these games, with them being my first and second PC FPS games. I played countless hours of these and other id Software games and other games that used id Software engines like Rise of the Triad, Heretic, and Hexen. I couldn't wait to dig into these books and see what was underneath the games that pleasantly wasted away the night hours of my youth.

VS.

Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D

I quickly realized what a beautiful book this was going to be with nearly full-page, glossy color pictures of the game and die photos of the Intel 80386-DX processor that ran the game when it first came out on May 5th, 1992. It was incredibly fun to just page through the book and look at the different pictures, and peruse the various explanations surrounding the pictures about the game engine's design.  It took a little while to settle down and actually start reading through the book.

This Black Book starts out with forwards by John Carmack, Tom Hall, and John Romero, and then there's a short introduction that gives an overview of the game market, the PC market, and the state of video games in that era. This was the time of Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, and the i386 processors had been out for a few years by the time Wolfenstein 3D was released. The i386DX-33 was over four times more powerful than the Super Nintendo processor, and even more powerful i486 processors were coming to the market from mid-1989 to 1992. The video game consoles were primarily sprite-based hardware designs, so they weren't set up for running a 3-D game like Wolfenstein well at all. The PC was definitely the hardware of choice for this game, power-wise, but as Sanglard goes on to explain, it had its own downsides for game development.

The next chapter went into the state of the hardware that was targeted for Wolfenstein 3D in detail. The game was designed to run okay even on an i286 CPU, but even on the i386 processors, the compromises that were made in the design were astonishing. I had forgotten how bad things were back then with no hardware floating point units, only a handful of registers, and an utter mess of a memory hierarchy with real mode and segmented addressing. The state of video cards was not much better with no direct double-buffering in hardware, an essential feature for running smooth animation in a 3-D game. These VGA video cards were not set up to run games in the least, so double-buffering needed to be hacked and kludged together. Thankfully, that was possible to do. Sound was just reaching a tolerable level of performance at the time with AdLib and Sound Blaster cards, if you sprang for the add-in card and were able to get it working. Sound cards were rarely included in PC builds at the time, and I remember many a night fiddling with vaguely understandable IRQ and DMA settings before plug-n-play. Funny, now I actually know what those things mean, and what they're used for, but it's all handled automatically by the chipset and the OS.

That chapter was definitely a fun trip down memory lane. The next chapter switched gears and was all about the decidedly small team that made the game, especially by today's standards, and they completed the game in four months! There were four full-time people that founded id Software a year before starting Wolfenstein 3D. John Carmack and John Romero were the programmers, Adrian Carmack was the artist, and Tom Hall was the creative director. Another four people contributed, but did not work on the game full-time from start to finish. These were Jay Wilbur in business, Kevin Cloud as a computer artist, Robert Prince as the composer, and Jason Blochowiak as another programmer. The development studio was none other than the first floor of John Carmack's two floor apartment. Wild. The rest of the chapter went through the development tools they used and built to make the code, level maps, artwork, and sound assets of the game.

Chapter 4 gets into the real meat of the game architecture, and it's the longest chapter of the book. It was fascinating to learn about the ingenious performance hacks and algorithms they (mostly John Carmack) implemented to achieve playable frame rates with the hardware they had to work with. The game is restricted in numerous ways so that the code doesn't have to spend much time calculating things like clipping or player perspective. The floor and ceiling were solid colors, and all walls were orthogonal. The player couldn't look up or down, jump, or crouch, so walls were always perfectly vertical and the (obscured) horizon was always dead-center on the screen. The only polygons in the game were the walls, which were rectangles. Everything else was a sprite. The maximum view port was smaller than full-screen at 304x152 pixels, and it could be adjusted down from there if needed for a faster frame rate on slower hardware. These along with plenty of other restrictions made the game playable on the i286, although the best experience was still on an i386DX or better CPU.

The other common optimization was to code critical loops and code sequences in x86 assembly. Quite a few code listings in the book are just lines of assembly code, mostly of moving values around in various registers. Dropping down to assembly was necessary because compilers at the time weren't the best at outputting even remotely optimized code, and a smart developer could arrange assembly code much better than any compiler could. This deficiency in the compiler shouldn't all be blamed on it, for x86 assembly was truly horrendous. I am at the same time in awe of John Carmack for doing what he did with the code and eternally thankful that I never had to do x86 assembly programming like that myself. Even today it's something to be avoided because the complexity is now nearly unmanageable and compilers have made huge strides besides, but oh my gawd, that assembly programming must have been the most awful, tedious exercise in memorizing and recalling useless instruction set trivia.

This whole chapter was pure gold, covering everything from the renderer in detail to the enemy AI to the audio programming and sound effects. The writing wasn't always the greatest, but explanations were at least insightful, and I could always parse out what Sanglard meant, even with numerous typos and grammatical errors. Normally these kinds of mistakes would be obnoxious, but the book was so full of great pictures, diagrams, and information that was completely engrossing to me that I was willing to overlook that shortcoming.

The last few short chapters were also quite interesting, and a nice way to wrap up the book. Chapter 5 described the sequel to Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny. Chapter 6 covered a number of ports to other systems, including Super Nintendo (heavily compromised), Jaguar, iPhone, and VR ports. Chapter 7 concluded with a little information about the successors to Wolfenstein 3D and where each of the designers and developers are now. The whole book was an excellent tour of a classic game that changed the video game industry forever, and if you're at all interested in the details of one of the games that started the FPS genre, you have to read this book.

Game Engine Black Book: Doom

This Black Book followed a very similar format to the Wolfenstein 3D book with the same result of an incredible experience digging through the game engine of one of the most influential PC games ever made. I went through waves of nostalgia as I paged through pictures of the Doom game world and explanations of how it calculated and rendered the intense game that consumed hours upon hours of my free time growing up. It was fascinating to see how all of it was implemented, and on such meager hardware, too! id Software achieved an incredible amount of performance and features with their idTech 1 engine that they created for Doom.

The book starts off with forwards by John Carmack and Dave Taylor and a short introduction just to wet your appetite. Then it jumps into the hardware that Doom was designed for in chapter 2. Doom was able to run on an i386, but by 1993 when Doom was being developed, the i486 was becoming affordable and was over 2x faster than the equivalent frequency i386, so that was the new target system. Everything else was improving rapidly as well. Video cards took a big step up in performance with the VESA VL-Bus and tighter component integration on the cards. Sound cards became even more fragmented, unfortunately, but sound quality was improving by leaps and bounds. Networking was also becoming possible by this time with multiple ways to connect PCs for multiplayer co-op and deathmatch play. Finally, compilers had improved to the point where it wasn't necessary to do nearly everything in assembly. The Watcom compiler allowed id Software to code Doom almost entirely in C, freeing the developers to think at a higher level and implement more features more rapidly.

Chapter 3 is entirely new because id Software used an entirely different development environment for Doom. Instead of developing everything on unstable DOS PCs, they took the chance on using expensive NeXT workstations. Even a fairly basic NeXTstation cost $4,995 in 1991, and a NeXTcube ran $12,395! It turned out to be worth it, though, because these workstations were rock-solid and allowed John Carmack and the other developers to make incredible progress instead of constantly fighting with crashing machines and a poor development environment. This chapter did a great job going through the architecture and benefits of the NeXT systems, and how id Software used them to full effect.

The next chapter was about the team and tools, like chapter 3 in the Wolfenstein 3D book. Things had changed dramatically, with the team moving to Dallas, TX and growing to fourteen people by the end of development. The tools were evolving, too, with some of the character sprites and animation done using stop motion capture, and the map editor (DoomED) taking on new features to support the multitude of new capabilities in the game engine. Walls in the game no longer needed to be orthogonal, although they still had to be vertical for rendering to be fast enough. Floors and ceilings could change height to create steps, platforms, and other environmental features. Various kinds of traps and ambushes were also possible now. It's quite amazing how many features were added to idTech 1 when compared to the Wolf3D engine. These new features, especially the non-orthogonal walls and varying heights, required a more efficient data structure for the maps, and the BSP (Binary Space Partitioning) node tree was commandeered for the job.

Nearly half of the book is taken up by chapter 5 on the idTech 1 game engine. This chapter is just a monster of awesome information about the engine. It goes through every detail from the game tic design and use of fixed-point arithmetic to sound propagation and enemy AI. The section on the 3D renderer was especially interesting and detailed. There are great explanations on how the environment was drawn with its additional complexity, texture mapping with perspective correction, sprite clipping and animation, and diminished lighting to give the game its intense horror movie feel. This renderer section in particular was so interesting that it made me want to go implement a bunch of the algorithms myself just to be able to recreate them and see them in action. It looks like it would be immensely satisfying.

The last chapter described in fairly good detail how a number of ports of Doom were done on other game consoles. The console ports included the Atari Jaguar, Sega 32X, Super Nintendo, Sony PlayStation, 3DO, and Sega Saturn, and both the system architectures and Doom engine implementations are described. I was in high school during this era of the great console wars, although I never played Doom on any of them, just the excellent experience of the PC. I had forgotten how different these console architectures were, and some of the design decisions that went into those systems were truly remarkable...and strange. The sections on the Super Nintendo and PlayStation ports were my favorites. The Super Nintendo would have never been able to run Doom on its own, but with the extra power of the SuperFX chip that was used in Star Fox and a few other games, it was able to pull it off reasonably well. The PlayStation port was the most faithful of the ports, and even added some cool new features like colored ambient lighting. Of all of these systems, the PlayStation was exceptionally powerful for making great games. Even though other systems might have looked more powerful on paper, they all had disadvantages and unfortunate design decisions that handicapped them while the PlayStation was so easy to develop for that its potential could consistently be achieved in practice.

I enjoyed this book as much, if not more than the Wolf3D Black Book. From the beautiful full-color pictures to the detailed explanations of technical feature implementations to the well-chosen code listings sprinkled throughout the book, this was an incredibly fun guided tour of a legendary game engine. I devoured this book, and through it all, I wanted to do two things: go back and play through Doom again and re-implement some of those rendering algorithms for myself. I can't think of higher praise for a book, so if you've ever played Doom and want to know how it works, you need to go treat yourself to this book and the Wolfenstein 3D Black Book, too.

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