And managed democracy!

I’m playing a lot of Helldivers 2 and The Talos Principle 2, and I’m having a great time from both games.

Curiosity. It began while trying to play around with programming, and finding a lot of talk and resources about Linux, and then trying it. 3 broken Debian installations just for messing around, then Ubuntu as a more permanent install, all of this alongside Windows.

Then I began using less and less Windows until I just deleted the Windows partition because I needed more space.

I’ve always felt that pair programming is more useful on early stages of a task, where there is enough doubt about implementation details and discussing them is worth.

This way it felt more of a meeting between two persons discussing details first, while testing them live to check if we were on track second, instead of programming first and discussing second.

By the time we stand on the screen without talking too much we just stepped aside and separate the task if needed.

Any other kind of forced pair programming feels wrong, either because the task was already planned enough to no create enough discussion, or because it was small enough and the discussion was not worth. I’ve found myself on situations where “we needed” to make a task in pair programming and was dull as you say.

I thought so, but no. On their FAQ they say it’s a revision of the first edition, which wasn’t behind Free League and technicaly it isn’t the Year Zero engine, but it also uses d6 pool dices because the first edition already used them.

Been playing Call of Cthulhu and a one shot for The One Ring 2e.

The One Ring uses dice pool of d6. Never played a game based on dice pools, and I think that I like it more than d20 + modifiers.

I think I’ve been lucky building an horror atmosphere, because the only one I played was for Call of Cthulhu and was with a combination of casual DnD players and new players to TTRPG in general. So, explaining to them the kind of game keep them on the mood since first minute, since CoC has pretty hard rules about sanity and the posibility of dying, and there is a lot of emphasis on not beign combat focused.

Then, the adventure I played had a lot of elements that create a build up for the sessions. Things I can identify that helped where:

• That the players where given a clear objective as a premise, but then an aircraft accident happened and they were completely lost. The whole adventure is escaping from the town were they are after the accident, the premise was a lie, and this gave them a sense of constant danger and a direct problem that they can not just forget about.
• In the adventure, language was a barrier. They were on a town where everyone spoke an old romanian dialect. Their only way of communication they had were trying to use their hands or talk to only one person in town which could translate their requests. This augmented the isolation factor.
• With the first two points, everything else flowed, because if they found, like, signs of blood somewhere, or strange paintings, talking about them ment using this one character that could translate their requests, but they didn’t trust them, because everyone on that town felt like an enemy, so everything else exponientialy grew in possible theories because trying to just grab information felt dangerous in itself.

This may be too much specific, but could be translated in other contexts by using those kind of barriers and immediate unavoidable problems that felt real, that augment a normal spooky scene you can imagine, supported by a game system that danger is a real threat in the rules.

Alien! I’ve got it on my hands a few days ago at my local store. I’m probably going to buy it by Monday or shortly after.

I’ve only read good things about it so far.