Would you care for Christmas parody covers of Green Day? https://redandgreenday.bandcamp.com/album/cookie

But for something standard, Wynton Marsalis’s Crescent City Christmas Card is a standby of tolerable Christmas music for me. Carol of the Bells kicks ass swung. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F86XJI4YiJs&list=OLAK5uy_kNjYdnyCDoZrYRVme1KHfI4Bo3YOwxP0M&index=2

How did your comment omit the context you felt the article was lacking???

Dipped into Manor Lords to see how it’s coming along. Game is in a decent spot overall with a lot of minor annoyances. You can make a stone castle now, although you have a limited number of parts. Production chains have been updated and new goods introduced since I played last, which I am quite enjoying. They also are redoing the settlement perk/specialization system into I think a more streamlined, but interesting one. Instead of piecemeal unlocking buildings or abilities, you choose from a variety of development cards representing the nature of your town at each level (only the first is implemented yet.) Each card has a set of bonuses and a malus, which I think is a fun way to encourage specialization and gives you different ways to consider what your particular region is best suited towards. I haven’t actually managed to progress to level 3 burgages in this version yet, so although I’ve been experimenting with the difficulty, the game is I think more challenging now. One interesting new challenge is on-map opponents. They’re not especially dynamic yet, but I did have a really massive and extended battle with one of them that resulted in over 300 dead by the end of it. The opponent then waited a year or more while I went into debt and neglected rebuilding my military trying to get a second settlement set up to automatically trade a bunch of required resources between it and my larger town. Just as I got everything set, they made another push for the territory and I was caught without a levy or money for mercenaries. I reloaded to try again and jacked my town’s taxes all the way up to afford some while prioritizing producing more spears and shields. We’ll see if it’s enough to win this next fight!

Most of my gripes with the game are bugs or fiddly UI elements and mixed organization. Probably my biggest irritant in the game right now is that logging certain areas produces broad swathes of brush and small trees that don’t grow or get cut, so just sit there indefinitely. You can clear them yourself by building over them (pastures work very well for this) or you can attempt to reforest the area, but the computer players do neither of these things, so their towns end up with a radius of this weird scrubland around them that just doesn’t look quite right. It seems like, at the least, these areas would be gone over for firewood at some point rather than felling giant oaks much further away.

But overall I think the game is a lot of fun and actually has a fairly compelling production chain management side with plenty of sinks for your surplus. Also gorgeous, also has a good soundtrack.

The little shrines are there to serve as a temporary service and later to decorate the entrance to a larger temple zone in my figuring. I guess I also just like to torment myself getting specific sculptures produced.

I did already unassign the bolts from the hunters, so unless they’ve been claimed again it might just take a minute for them to go to the throwers. One can manage ammo in the ‘other’ tab of the labor menu.

I also grabbed a couple of books off of traders and wasn’t sure to do with that little statue room with the windows, so it might make a good library.

From the notes of Moonworm Lolordesis

Praise Ral the Ivory, may the accounts herein show a blessed and prosperous record.

Granite, 202

A year into carving these halls, past the sodden ground, we look proudly on the grand chamber that hosts our cells and workshops. We live here, work here, and he we take our repast. But it is time to strike deeper. The caverns stretch beneath us, wealth glimmering in their labyrinth. I will lead the charge to bring us closer, starting with the commissioning of a new temple and residential complex in their midst, from where we might appreciate the majesty of the deep earth. My pick hungers to strike the shale!

The new chambers are progressing well. I’ve made the decision to let the growing number of adventurers access the caverns to clear out some of the dangerous wildlife.

Slate

I’ve made a masterpiece of an altar for the new temples.

Unfortunately the dwarf seems to have either stopped making a record or the remainder of the notes have yet to be found. But through careful archaeological reconstruction and collation from other sources we can determine that Moonworm’s projects in year 202 consisted of creating an expansion to the fort on the level of the upper caverns, including bedrooms, the beginnings of a temple quarter, a tavern, a new entrance to the caverns defended by pressure-plate-triggered bars and a pair of bolt-throwers, and a barracks and hospital nearby.

There is evidence of limited steel production from this period and a corresponding charcoal industry, although the levels suggested indicate the presence of outside trade for fuel. There are a handful of armor pieces consistent with the cultural imagery associated with this period, suggesting that the militia was re-equipped and expanded.

Curiously, there is a lack of evidence of dwarven migration to the fort at during this time. Theories about this are mixed, with some pointing to the overall low dwarven population in this period. There is however some evidence in bardic tradition that point to Beardrenched as a fort that hosted numerous adventurers seeking to slay monsters in the caverns, which is supported by the writings of Lolordesis.

Had a fairly quiet year in the fort. I procrastinated my turn until last night so I didn’t do any huge projects and just tried to complete it. But the fortress is stable and continues to function, so I’m sure future players will be able to make use of the few new facilities I got done. For now the adventurers and guard dogs have been sufficient to deal with any dangers, but I’m curious how effective the cavern entrance defenses will be. I set up a few more recurring work orders, but recommend more. Look forward to seeing how the fort progresses!

I sent you a dm with the link the save file on DFFD

I don’t know that there is a functional model of IP law that will not be eventually bent to serve the most powerful at the expense of everyone else. At this point I feel the whole thing needs to be thrown out and rebuilt from the ground up with great care and trepidation, if at all.

Ready to rock and roll

the vibes have been dogshit and everyone is nasty to each other

So disgusting to pearl clutch about this as corruption in the age of super PACs.

I’ve been taking another shot at Rogue Trader these last couple weeks. Game is really quite good. Previously I had tried it around when it came out and got hard stuck at the chapter 1 boss fight. I don’t know if I just have better builds and comp this time or if the updates since then have made it better, but I managed to get into chapter two now and I’m loving it. The game really does a good job of portraying the strict and monstrous hierarchy of the setting. I know it’s not Owlcat’s first rodeo having a very powerful and important player character, but they are still very good at it. Makes me quite curious about their next 40k crpg where my understanding is you’ll play as more of a nobody.

The game seems to be fucking massive in both length and in scope, which is a double-edged sword - it’s real nice to spend a lot of time in the setting, get to know all the characters, and go on all sorts of adventures, trying all kinds of shit out, but it can also be pretty fatiguing to be presented with yet another set of decisions to make for your ship or your domain or simply leveling up a dozen characters yet again. Still, I’m glad that someone is doing that sort of thing even if the execution is uneven.

The art direction, but especially the music are great, and the writing is generally skillful. There’s a lot of intrigue in the squishiness at the edges of Imperial authority, particularly with a rogue trader involved, and the plots and prose do well in that space. The vocal performance range from adequate to relatively inspired, although it is limited to particular dialogues.

Besides that I have been playing some Darktide, as I am in the grip of 40k. Game is still a solid horde shooter with good action and well-designed missions - it just got some new ones that shake up the format a little too, which is fun. The big improvement from when I played it a year or so ago though is in the gear and character progression, which seem to have been revamped into a much freer and less rng format. For me the game is definitely a casual romp, and I think is performs that role excellently. It’s tremendous fun to explode ogryn heads or cleave through waves of heretics with a big fuck-off sword while trying to avoid getting tackled by mutants. My understanding is that the game has a pretty high difficulty ceiling, if you’re into that sort of thing though.

I have booted up Space Marine 2, but it crashed my graphics card when I lost the tutorial boss fight so I haven’t tried it again. I’m less into the space marines than a lot of other aspects of the setting, but I’ll probably give it another go at some point. I do like the Tyranids at least.

I’ll play. I could take next week prolly. I’ll take the miner, not fussed over skills.

I was just goofin anyway

kinda fucked up you’d eroticize that, ngl

Everybody’s accepting of kink until it’s something they don’t like.

All of my kinks are morally righteous and the correct amount of deviant. My personal and experiential relationship to the kink exonerates me from endorsing what would otherwise be objectionable about it. Your kink is disgusting. There’s no way you could be into it in a way that is anything but wicked; you clearly endorse what is objectionable about it.

It’s very sandboxy, so go at your own pace. You’ll run into lots of quest threads wherever you travel.

If you want to just do trading runs between the first major city and the crystal settlements or back down to the border, that’ll sustain you while you figure things out and there should be a couple questlines that you can start along those routes.

Otherwise just go nuts exploring wherever you think is cool. The game is usually good about signposting significant danger. Do make sure you have enough supplies to get where you’re going or can resupply en route.

There are a lot of companions and I think you can’t keep all of them at once. I also know that for at least some of them, if you say no when they have the chance to join you, you’ll likely not see them again in that playthrough. There’s a neat lady you can meet early on I’m thinking of in particular.

I still don’t really understand the caravan level combat. The tactical combat is odd, but if you can figure out a good combo with your team, it should carry you pretty far.

Have fun learning about the setting and all the different towns and their niches!

It’s like mar-a-lago face where it’s at least as much about ritual submission to conformity as it is any actual aesthetic goal.

I’d been putting this off, but it was fairly painless. No clean install was necessary, just follow the instructions faithfully. Took about under an hour including install and update time.

Oh, coming from windows 10 though. Don’t know if you can avoid a wipe downgrading.

Yeah that would suck dick.