Geek Culture
The Misadventures of a Rubbish Roleplayer
Earlier this week, I decided to take the plunge and join up with a local roleplaying group halfway through a run of the Pathfinder RPG. This diary will chart my experience as a new player and the many misadventures of my first ever characters.
As a fan of numerous roleplaying broadcasts on Twitch and YouTube, I was eager to delve into the world of table-tops and to experience the feeling of a real RPG around a real table. With this in mind, I started to look for local groups that would facilitate my incessant questioning and awful attempts at cross-table banter. Luckily, my local student group seemed the perfect fit. I excitedly printed off my character sheet and spent far too long thinking of what kind of character I could create that could help me to break the ice with all these new people. Eventually, I settled on a Halfling Paladin named Callan, the Faithless.
Later that day, I set off to my local, feeling similarly to how I felt on my first day of secondary school, with the nagging feeling that maybe a Halfling Paladin wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had. However, after a brief and welcoming introduction from my fellow players and our dungeon master, I realised that my trepidations over my character were unnecessary as a lanky 6’9 bloke roleplaying a Halfling was in fact as funny as I had imagined the hours previous.
With the ice-breaking and introductions over with, I sat down with the group and was helped to flesh out our new Halfling friend with shiny new stats, weapons and ringses, Gollum. As the story was in-progress upon my arrival, Callan was immediately boosted to level three to match the other players and conveniently mask my incompetence. With that, my first roleplaying campaign was under way.
After a short description of our current setting and quest for the day, I quickly realised that I was soon to be thrown into the deep end of the roleplaying swimming pool, as our party had previously decided to hide out in an inn, dubbed the ‘party hut’ in a city devoted to Asmodeus, the… well, the devil. Devils aside, I was asked to introduce my character in further detail and explain how it was that Callan came into contact with the other player characters and their current quest: to gain access to the mansion of Devil Town’s Mayor by performing in a battle play to garner respect from the citizens and the Mayor alike.
Strangely, I hadn’t prepared for this, so I had to make something up on the spot. Luckily though, my expert roleplaying of a faithless Paladin allowed me to whip up a seamless story about Callan’s desire to keep his Paladin-ness a secret by legally changing his last name to ‘the Faithless’ so as to avoid the scathing looks of the lovely folk of Devil Town. Being a Halfling is hard enough as it is.
Introduction over with, we set out to the Mayor’s place and met the director of the battle play; a bloke whose name I forget. After a string of terrible auditions, the director was ready to quit. That was until he saw the confident swagger of Callan, the Faithless barge through his door with party in tow. After succeeding a persuade roll to convince the bloke that we were top actors and skilled fighters to boot, he gave us the parts and we set about learning the script. An actual script. The dungeon master reached into his bag and pulled out six copies of a ten page script for us to read from. After a week of rehearsals and palling up to various divas and rich folk, we took to the stage for the big performance, met by a crowd of devil worshipping, frankly bloodthirsty spectators.
The script was an interesting read. Our group was to be tried for crimes against Asmodeus by way of six deadly trials to win back his favour, or die trying. Pretty standard stuff. The trials consisted of various un-pleasantries; you know, eating parasitic eggs, barfing out their hatchlings, then fighting the six beasts that formed from our pools of aforementioned barf. It only got better, as our characters were forced to let Rockworms bury under our skin, followed by a ritual removal of said Rockworms by way of butter knifing our own arms open, all the while pretending to be aroused by the whole situation. The varying levels of mock grunts of arousal from around the room showed me that I was in fact not the most uncomfortable person at the table. So there’s that.
In our final trial, we were met by two skeletal trolls and I experienced my first meaty combat encounter in Pathfinder. After a ten minute fight and an unconscious party member, we dealt with the skeletons and were met with raucous cheers and general merriment from the bra slinging, pitchfork wielding devil folk, who we had evidently sated with our fine acting. With the Mayor pleased and the quest complete, our adventurers retired back to the party hut and did some levelling up and other such good stuff. Callan had finally proven himself, his faith restored; if not in the gods, then at least in the power of interpretative dance. Faithless our Halfling friend remains, but only in name.
And thus concludes the first entry in The Misadventures of Callan, the Faithless. As a new role player, I had an absolute blast creating my character, meeting my fellow players and acting out our ridiculous escapades in an environment that allowed me to be a complete idiot around a group of people I had never met. I heartily recommend finding a local role play group and joining up if you’re a person with any kind of interest in the Dungeons and Dragons formula, general Fantasy fun, or just all round nerd stuff.
Gaming
Shift Up unveils the intriguing details behind the physical packaging of Stellar Blade for the PS5
It appears that many
are eagerly anticipating the launch of the highly anticipated PS5 exclusive, Stellar Blade. Shift Up, the developer, has shared a lengthy video showcasing the “secrets” found in the physical box of the game for PS5. From what we can gather, these secrets include a reversible cover/dust jacket and a download code for cosmetic items.
We must clarify that while we do appreciate the variant cover, it may be more appealing than the game’s standard art. However, it is not something we would typically classify as a “secret.”. However, what’s interesting is that Shift Up has confirmed through the comments section that this will be the case in all regions. Additionally, the visually striking action RPG will remain uncensored worldwide.
「Stellar Blade」 Physical Package Secrets⚠️#StellarBlade #PS5 #Disc pic.twitter.com/WQSzKUSDQ4
— StellarBlade (@StellarBlade) April 22, 2024
It’s refreshing to witness a developer going the extra mile for physical collectors, and it’s evident that the developer is determined to leave a favorable mark in the console realm. Stellar Blade is set to make its highly anticipated debut this Friday, April 26th, exclusively on the PS5.
Gaming
Here are all the patch notes for the new PS5 firmware update that adds the community game help feature
Sony has recently launched the newest PS5 system software update, which is always an exciting occasion for avid PlayStation fans. With a size of slightly over 1GB, you can download and install it right away. As always, the question remains: What exactly does the update bring to the table?
According to the official patch notes, there have been some notable improvements, particularly in the area of game help. We are introducing an exciting addition to our platform: the Community Game Help feature. This feature enhances the PS5’s Game Help system by providing you with gameplay videos from fellow players. Players have the option to choose whether or not they want their gameplay videos to be shared using this feature.
If you’re concerned about it, you can now hide your Remote Play connection status as well.
Presenting the complete patch notes:
- Game Help has been enhanced with the addition of Community Game Help features
- Within Game Help, players can find Community Game Help hints in supported games. These cues come from gameplay videos that other players have shared.
- If you’re up for it, you have the option to contribute to Community Game Help by giving permission for your gameplay video to be automatically recorded and included in the feature after it’s been reviewed
- If you want to join in, navigate to Settings, then Captures & Broadcasts, followed by Captures, Auto Captures, and finally Community Game Help. From there, simply choose the option to participate. Users have the option to unsubscribe whenever they choose
- During Remote Play, players now have the option to hide the persistent message “Remote Play connected.” that appears on their game screen. To ensure a seamless gaming experience, navigate to the Settings menu, then proceed to the System section. From there, locate the Remote Play option and activate the Hide Remote Play Connection Status feature
- The system’s software performance and stability have been significantly enhanced
- The messages and usability on some screens have been enhanced
While not the most groundbreaking update, the Community Game Help feature has the potential to be intriguing, contingent upon the number of games that offer support for it. What are your thoughts on the latest update? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Walton Goggins’ character, who plays someone in the first episode of the new TV series Fallout on Amazon, mentions a “rule of thumb” when it comes to nuclear explosions.
According to the character known as “The Ghoul,” he learned in military school that if you raise your thumb and extend your arm toward the blast, you can tell if you are going to live or die. According to the rule, some Americans will be safe from the radioactive fallout if the mushroom cloud is smaller than their thumb. If the mushroom cloud is bigger than their thumb, they won’t be as lucky.
Many other survivors will probably ask you why you’re giving a mushroom cloud the big thumbs up. Is it worth it?
The idea has been looked into a bit thanks to the Fallout video game series, which caught the attention of physicists in their first year at the University of Leicester. They had heard a false rumor that the show’s mascot, Vault Boy, was giving a happy thumbs up to show support for the thumb rule. They wanted to find out if the rule was true.
The team looked at smaller blasts that would fit with the setting of the show and chose a 15-kiloton blast, which is the same size as the blast that happened when the US dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima. The first thing the team did was figure out how far away you would have to be from the mushroom cloud for your thumb to cover the blast. They came up with a number that was about 12.6 kilometers (7.8 miles).
“Assuming the detonation occurred on the ground, the radius for avoiding all burns is 4.67 km [2.9 miles] away from the blast center, and the radius for radiation sickness symptoms is 1.56 km [0.97 miles],” the team said in their paper. “This would mean that you would be safe from the initial blast effects of radiation and burns.”
Even though you just saw a nuclear explosion nearby, that doesn’t mean you are safe. And that’s before you worry about nuclear winter. The radiation coming at you from the wind should be your main concern.
“Assuming an average wind speed of 24 km/h, the fallout would reach you within approximately half an hour if you were to be standing directly upwind.”
Getting caught in this wind will give you enough rads to make you sick. One more rule, though: run like hell. This might help you lower your dose.
“This investigation showed that if a 15-kiloton nuclear bomb was to detonate and your thumb extended at an arm’s length just covered the blast, you could survive most negative radiation effects by running laterally in the direction of the wind for a minimum of 1.65 km [1 mile] in half an hour, given that you are standing directly upwind from the blast,” the team said.
But this only works for a blast much smaller than the weapons the world has now. And even for smaller blasts, the rule probably won’t help because of the radiation that is released into the air and the fact that the wind can change quickly. Ruth McBurney, who is the executive director of the Conference of Radiation Control Program Directors in Frankfort, Kentucky, told Inverse that “shelter is the best thing to do if you think you might be in a place where fallout might be present or coming.”
More plans call for temporarily taking refuge in whatever is available, and then moving to better nearby shelters about 30 minutes after the blast. There are, of course, official rules about what to do during a blast. In short, you should stay inside and away from windows, wash your hands, and wait for more instructions. Please don’t condition your hair while you’re doing that.
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