Leap large lengths of miles

Made it to a Blood on the Clocktower event after watching tons of it on No Rolls Barred this past year. We played a couple of rounds of the basic setup, Trouble Brewing, but ended them with the special win conditions — a Mayor win and a Saint loss. With “correct” play, the evil team should’ve outvoted our Mayor win, but I think we had it figured out.

I was totally outplayed by someone both times — a fake Fortune Teller ping getting me nominated and killed, and a fake Investigator claim of a Drunk (implying no Saint) — two bits of information I happened to trust without question. Not sure if I could’ve done anything to salvage the second game — there wasn’t much ongoing information after an Imp/Poisoner/Spy’s second night. Just an hour as a stressed chef.

Will see if being “too forthcoming” is a problem in future games, but I think I played these about right. Was also swayed a lot by a louder voice despite the quieter ones doing a lot of good work, but that made sense since they were Virgin-confirmed/Virgin both times. Dunno.

It really is amazing how videogamedunkey has managed to put out a video which brings me joy every week for well over a decade. He’s so consistent in being unexpected, yet every video has a few great jokes or killer lines, balanced with some tempered and genuine insight. He does such good job of distilling the essence of a game into a tightly edited few minutes.

Or at least, it feels that way…

One thing I realised is that I don’t think he’s actually influenced me to play† any of the games he’s covered. I guess it’s because the videos mostly fulfil that need to play a lot of games to feel part of the zeitgeist. I can’t quite tell whether that’s a loss, a convenience, or just a sign that the way I engage with the hobby has shifted without me really noticing.

It's taken over six months for me to actually miss Barclay Bluestring. I guess I've used the time to revise who he was compared to how I was able to play him.

I love that he swore an oath to protect the world, after spending a youth mocking knights. I love that his final action was to take a gamble with a cursed glove, dooming his soul. I love the only thing he's remembered for is ridding a city of its rat problem.

--

As much as I enjoy introducing myself as Barclay Bluestring, the music always felt tacked on. I like Bards in the sense of a polymath / dabbler / wanderer. Some martial proficiencies and a wonky spell list of tricks -- nothing that encroaches on the domain of a specialist. That flies against being a virtuoso. And I hate the idea of pulling a lute out in combat.

Maybe I’d drop the range on it. Maybe let it provoke Opportunity Attacks. Maybe it costs all of your movement. Maybe the range varies or it has a chance to fail.

But it’s more of a fundamental tactical combat problem (movement has no cost → things that limit movement need to be more debilitating → cheap teleports are especially strong), so I guess everyone just bamf-s everywhere.

† About as bad as me taking Shield whenever I can (just about any character, unless they prioritise Healing Word). It’s an arms race with these combat spells.

Enjoyed reading this post about preventing memory exploits with a bit of hardware that requires you to also have the right tag to access any "granule" (16 bytes). I don’t think I’ve read a research paper in years, and yet it used to be one of my favourite things at university†. I definitely appreciated doing so alongside Grok — a pretty great way of reinforcing understanding in a way that doesn’t feel like I’m capitalising someone’s time.

Learning points:

Why we don’t zero out memory after freeing? (Fairly costly, and only prevents a certain class of exploits. MIE can just randomise the tag.)

What is a Spectre attack? (A set of vulnerabilities that exploit speculative execution, which might still cause memory to be cached when it shouldn’t.)

A general refresher on memory protection.

† Granted, those were ones chosen for accessibility — I don’t think I ever self-directed my way into one that clicked.

I just learned that the Christmas Bonus is a thing. An antiquated vote winner from 1972 that somehow has never been adjusted for inflation. I guess it’s similar to the fuel payments around COVID-19 if they kept on happening every year..?

I can’t believe it survived all of the Winter Fuel Payment discussion.

My immediate instinct was to scrap it but apparently the more popular/obvious idea is to increase it. I hope that’s more of my leaning towards minimalism than anti-boomer sociopathy, but even folding it into pensions† would have the benefit of automatically adjusting it for inflation.

The Triple Lock is so untouchable. What brilliant and dooming branding.

Geyser Run: White Mage, Berserker!, Geomancer, Time Mage

Finished in 18:33 (which includes 2 hours for Quick-Sap on Omega), at Level 35, which might be the lowest/fastest I've managed besides Esuna for Corona.

Karnak and Purobolos gave me the most trouble -- it's just a low damage party for most of the game (even if Equip Axes was cheaper, they still miss too much). Maybe I should be more willing to break rods in regular fights?

White Mage and Time Mage take care of all of the bosses, but I'm surprised how many instantly died to Death Sickle. !White on Berserker for extra Rune Axe damage and out-of-combat healing was also a fun discovery.

Played a bunch of Starcraft II last week using the Archipelago.gg mod, which lets you run through the campaign(s) with the unit/upgrade unlocks and mission order randomised. It’s a fun remix that starts off incredibly challenging and requiring a lot of improvisation, but eventually lets you become more powerful than the game intends by stacking upgrades and bringing in elements from the co-op missions.

I think Archipelago is at its best with just the Terran missions — Raynor’s Raiders get to feel even scrappier, accomplishing what they can with niche units and a limited selection of mercenaries. Protoss and Zerg tend towards generalist units which make missions play too similarly after some unlocks (also, Kerrigan / Spear of Adun are overbearing).

I don’t like Liverpool — not just because they’re top — but a bunch of irrational, historical reasons:

Traditionally defensive counterattacking football. I don’t think it bothers me as much now, but I hated it as a kid because I thought “big teams” shouldn’t play that way.

Don’t like Fowler, Owen, Gerrard, Redknapp. Probably a circular argument here, but vague memories of bad England games?

Quick free kicks and scoring when players are down. This one against Fulham in 2018 still bothers me. It's probably more confirmation bias at this point because all teams are pretty horrible.

Mo Salah goes down in the box a lot.

They have the most boring kit.

Carlsberg is a bit rubbish. (Though it'd be nice to see CPG sponsors again.)

I prefer Everton in the Merseyside (Dyche, Rooney, Yakubu, Pickford).

Benítez and Houllier weren’t as memorable.

Szoboszlai is probably the only player I like in the current team, but he always looks really scruffy with his socks down.

They actually give him Iron 1911s! I thought someone was joking, but this scene didn't disappoint.

Mostly from a tactical perspective, though. Cristiano Ronaldo turned 40 the other day and it makes me a bit sad that there’s less individual brilliance because teams are so much better now. I’m not really following a team, but probably find Brighton’s style the most interesting. It feels weird to be a “fan” of any institution these days.

Very few of the things I remember from the season are about the football:

Onana’s free kick

Gordon’s “cross from the nineties”

Rice/Lewis-Skelly/Trossard red cards

Arsenal’s away kit vs. Tottenham

Cucurella’s shoes