kaztiel

I have been just mainlining Stardew Valley the last few days because. . . sick and brain no work. . .but somehow SDV clicked for me this run when previous runs hadn't. I actually am chalking it up to Coral Island familiarizing me with the setup of the farm sim better than my first runs with SDV did. Ive gotten to where I can access the desert and Ginger Island now, yet. . . .the eternal loop of finishing chores on the farm first always hijacks me from getting to the island for long. My brain won't let me just ignore them for a few days. At least I am nearing the 1 million gold mark in the pocket XD

I been rereading Apothecaria and realizing I need to mock up a character sheet and ailment/treatment logs just for my own sanity. The setup of the system seems to encourage rolling up/charting your session before journaling it out, and some crunch tracking logs would help with that. It wouldn't be too far different from how the creator set up their previous title, Delve, where its a mapmaking game charting the trip of you and your dwarven team/ army making your way to digging or reclaiming infested mines, and facing events and foes in the effort to dig down as far as you can, but you had to roll up each room and its event (if there was one) and resolve it before drawing that room in. (Rise is the 'companion' game, but its a demon army fighting its way to the surface from the opposite direction).

I think its safe to say I like BlackwellWriter's work, since I've picked up 3 of her games and several expansions. Now I just need to commit to finishing one of them.

I am considering focusing on actually making a run of this instead of just rereading the little zine, as I tend to do with rpgs anymore. And if I do, I will prolly journal it here,and if I feel inclined to make scribbles, I will prolly share them here too. This could be a serious thought, or my brain currently addled by flu meds and pain killers trying to form an idea. We'll see how this works out.

Apothecaria on itch.io

Note- left links to some other types of solo rpgs I particularly liked down in a reply. Some you need to pay for, but a lot are free, done for love of the game.

Finally watching the rest of Ash vs the Evil Dead because I stopped halfway thru s2 when it was airing and had never got back to it. It hits a little different now in light of Bruce's announcement of his cancer diagnosis a few months back.

A couple thoughts on it as Im halfway thru the final season:

Bruce is a damn good actor. There's moments in this show where he got to step out of the comedic asshole role and actually show a serious side that's damn impressive. He leans too easily into the physical comedy rho, and its worked for him, tbh. I watched most all of Burn Notice because of him. I can't see Bruce in an Hawaiian shirt without thinking 'that's Sam Axe' now.

Secondly....there's no way this could get made now. Even getting made 10 years ago was a questionable thing. I do love the show leans in on what a piece of work Ash is and its pretty much a tale of how even the wrong guy can be in the right place. There's a lot of raunchy humor packed with casual -isms that was def par for the course for the 80s when Evil Dead was originally made, and Ash is definitely a character of that era. As frustrating as seeing some of that packed in there, it feels it was handled decently enough with all the pushback Ash is constantly getting from everyone around him.

Despite that, there's a charm to it of the eyeroll sort, and its DEF not for everyone, but given that I know Evil Dead as comedy horror and not the serious horror that the reboots are, its follows the formula damn well.

*fyi there's also an 'Evil Dead' episode of the new Tales from the Crypt shows, set up like some antiques show that the book gets put on, and all hell breaks loose. Also some goofy shit.

I did end up watching Colony last night. Its a very different take on zombies, and it is very, very . . . gooey. I did like that there were the usual zombie tropes of being isolated and trying to escape the situation without dying, but there's also a weird bit of crime story some of the characters have to go thru that made it a bit more interesting than your usual zombiefest.

If you got issues with people throwing up, this movie is NOT for you. I thought I would after the first couple, but when it morphed into something else, it became less of an issue than I expected, but it was still pretty prevalent.

I found some charming goth crochet books. They are also printed and delivered via Amazon, and I dun trust anything from them anymore. :(