It varies within the genre. Some games try hard to take steps to minimize the ability to sit around and grind, such as by a food clock or lack of respawns. Sil, which is a *band game that tries to be closer to the original style has an XP system that grants XP for seeing an enemy the first time, and the same for killing it, and then 1/n times that XP the nth time you see that same kind of enemy thereafter. Sixth orc you see is worth 1/6 the XP, so it’s not worth farming an area hard, and still rewards exploring a lot. It also eventually just forces you deeper as the desire for a silmaril becomes more irresistible as you become stronger. Seeing 6 orcs and killing 2 is worth 3.95x an orc’s stated XP, seeing 30 and killing them all gets up to almost 8x the stated XP.

Others like most Angband variants or Tales of Maj’eyal made the decision to just let the player grind. Many of the games in that style have more open-ended progression and aren’t necessarily trying to force the player into constantly dangerous situations. The very popular Caves of Qud would fit this category.

The judge’s other main role in a trial with jury is to actually run the proceedings of the trial. Order of operations, keeping the two counsels in line, scheduling, etc.

Crypt of the Necrodancer.

Really fun roguelike game where you and enemies have to move to the beat of that floor’s song. I think part of the reason I still play it a lot is that it’s amenable to very short sessions. I’ve played enough that runs go fast and I either clear or die within 10 minutes.

Over 1200 hours now almost a decade after release, and a huge chunk of that is probably sessions of under 30 mins in length.

I only played the original one. I had a fair amount of fun with it for what it was. It can feel a bit empty and wide, but the gameplay was quite fun, even if the combat is kinda painfully easy most of the time. You can build basically however you want and become pretty OP.

Is the remake worth looking at for those who played the original? I was kinda ignoring it because I’d played through it once already. Wasn’t super sold on a second go-through.

I tried punching in 243 and it gave me an equation that resolves to 235.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=(lim+((x^2-100)%2F(x%2B10))%2C+x->13)^5+-+([lim((e^(8x)-1)%2Fx)%2C+x->0]+-+[[lim+((x^2-36)%2F(x-6))%2Cx->-5]+-+lim(cos^2+x+%2B+sin^2+x)%2C+x->36])

Tried it a few other times and it seems to sometimes like giving something that results in 3^5 (which would be 243 on its own) followed by subtracting a bit from it, which ends up making it the wrong answer. In the link above, it basically goes (3^5) - (8 - (1 - 1)), so if you only keep the first brackets it would be correct.

I think there’s a couple reasons they do it this way.

One is that the pre-order bonus is still available despite the game effectively being out. I imagine they spare themselves some unwanted difficulty or dissatisfied responses from people who otherwise would have missed it.

The other is this very thread. Server issues are common on an expansion pack release. This gives them a convenient excuse to put in the apology announcement. It’s a small thing but who knows, maybe it has some impact.

It’s definitely a silly twisting of words (and their double key system for the pre-order and full purchase only sillier).

The Founders Trilogy (book 1: Foundryside) by Robert Jackson Bennett uses a system of magic called Scriving wherein objects have written upon them instructions that sort of convince the objects that the laws of physics work in different ways. Over long ages engineers found ways to build engines for scriving that had commonly used instructions and essentially allowed more advanced technologies by creating “programming languages” of a sort, if you will, that work in proximity to the engines. So you get this very advanced society with technology built over this magic system, and a main character whose MacGuffin allows for messing with others’ scriving as your setting.

I quite enjoyed the trilogy, and they seem to fit the kind of vibe you’re looking for. Over the course of the books they dive a lot into both the way the magic functions and the history behind how it came to be as it is.

Pretty close to the same at least. The main distinction would be that the Steam version still requires a copy of Steam to be running and logged in on the computer you copy it to, which at least means Steam has to have been online once ever to get the account logged in before using offline mode. GOG has offline installers that can be backed up and used without any client.

For the vast majority of use cases, it’s a pretty minor difference, but one way in which it might be significant is that the GOG installers will never stop working, but if one day years down the road Steam were to shut down, the Steam version could only run on computers that could be running offline-mode Steam. There’d probably be ways to break that simple bit of DRM, but a legal offline installer is a very nice bonus for things like archival sites or research applications.

It’s the kind of thing that even if you’re not choosing to use it, it’s nice that it exists, and hopefully it can continue to.

I took that zip file and imported it at Storygraph. That site isn’t perfect either but at least it’s building up instead of falling down, and seems to have heart. Also its recommendations, while hit and miss, are a lot better than what Goodreads has offered in the last couple years.

The two things I occasionally go back to Goodreads for at this point are the list of releases by authors I’m following, as you mention, and an FSF book club I’m in over there. That said I haven’t bothered tracking my books on GR for a while now. I really can’t see it turning around any time soon, especially now it’s Amazon owned, and Storygraph deals with that aspect of things very well.

I’ve also seen Bookwyrm mentioned around here lately as a Fediverse alternative. I’m not familiar with it or its features, but it’d bear looking at for comparison.

Another Kobo user, I have the Clara HD. I like having an eInk device for ease on the eyes, it has a good backlight with a natural light setting for warmer usage at night which is nice.

I suspect most basic ebook readers would be similar. I just wanted something feature-light that was purely for reading.

I did specifically want to avoid Amazon. Basically every other retailer uses the same ebook format: Epub, either DRM free or with Adobe Digital Editions DRM. This means most ereaders can use books from most retailers. The exception is Amazon - they use their own proprietary format with its own DRM to lock you into the Kindle ecosystem. Kindles can now read non-Amazon ebooks but non-Kindles can’t read Amazon ones due to this. I find that particularly scummy and want nothing to do with supporting it, especially when most books I buy through Kobo or other sites are completely DRM free by comparison.

(There are ways to get Amazon books you own onto other devices in a pinch if you do some searching. Questionable legality, even if you own the book, which is crazy to me, but it’s not impossible. Amazon has been updating their DRM against it, but it’s still doable.)

I honestly had no idea that a 1.0 was even in the works. I thought this was one of those roguelikes where they’d just keep adding new ideas to it over time on and on, like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup does for example.

I personally can’t. I find it too distracting, even lyricless stuff. Oddly the opposite is often okay… I can listen to an audiobook while doing something else mindless and not miss out on details. But a physical or ebook generally takes my full attention.

With the DLC arriving in late September, I figured that’d be the best time. Probably will be on some kinda promotion again for that (and if not one won’t be far off) and then get the fixed game, with the improvements that’ll release alongside the DLC, plus the DLC itself all in one go.

Staying caught up with Nick & Lever, that one is nuts in the best possible way.

Read through The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn’t a Guy at All. I’d caught bits and pieces of it on the sub in the past but finally caught up with it. Cute, fun, great style.