This is part four of a four-part article that begins here. Observations In preparing this essay, I became aware of how much my process resembles that of making a movie: composing each shot; understanding the properties of the camera; consider what's in-frame; location scouting for the background in the images; organizing the cast (not all characters are…
This is part three of a four-part article that begins here. Poses Let's deal with the obvious: Those four pictures are the same image with different captions. There's no operative difference between that and something like this: Ah, that's better. I picked the name "Tav" because I was trying to hide. The name "Tav" was so common,…
This is part two of a four-part article that begins here. Position Remember when you learned about co-ordinate systems back in high school? BG3's Photo Mode lets you put that knowledge to good use. There are two coordinate systems to keep track of. Warning for the math-adverse: If your head starts spinning, just scroll to the Composition…
Forward This was originally a single long essay. I've split it into four parts to make it easier on folks using phones to read it. If you see something like "I discuss this below" it refers to the entire article, not just the page you're reading. CW: There's at least one photo in the overall essay with…
John couldn't make it, so last night Maria, Andrew, and I made another attempt at Soul Raiders. As a reminder: Last August we played Chapter 1 and got through it successfully in a single night. In September we started on Chapter 2. It's a bigger and more complex story. We were only able to go part of…
TL;DR: I never should have purchased this game. The last time I opened a "semi-review" with those words, it was for Expedition 33. It was a negative review. While I maintain that I shouldn't have purchased 007 First Light, this is going to be a positive review. Why? Let's start with the obvious question: Why shouldn't I…
Premise The main difference with playthrough 9 is that I wanted to try Honor Mode for the first time (with mods). I try to play as different classes for each run, both to see how combat develops through the game, and to see if there are any class-specific events/dialogue. This time, I tried a Way of the…
Last night John brought some unusual and hard-to-find games. I've linked to them as best I could. Although I won twice, it was not due to skill. I mis-understood the rules of both games more than once. Shinjuku would have played out differently if the rest of us had understood why John was building his Railroad network.…
A picture with a blue border around it is a link. Click on it to learn more. Or forget less. This may be one of those posts that's of interest only to me. I'll try to make it worth the reading anyway, for the pictures if for nothing else. In my previous Baldur's Gate 3 post, I…
For the first time in a while, Maria was able to join us. She and Andrew brought a couple of new games for us to try. Cháng'ān vaguely resembles Wingspan, in that the engine is built from cards that relate to resource production. However, the relationship between producing and engine creation is quite different. The game has…