#gameify it

[0verthinking1t]

Roll for initiative!

Good morning mental health blog! Yesterday I talked about my task menu and Megaboard, and the ridiculous system I have for organizing tasks. I'm happy to say that so far, it's working pretty well! It's been especially helpful keeping track of the tasks I ended up wandering off to during the day— it helps my self esteem to realize that I'm still accomplishing a lot, even if I can't see it on my to-do menu. I don't have to feel bad or argue and justify to myself why nothing got done in a day.

Today, I want to share something I call Random Encounters! I got this idea from How To ADHD on YouTube, and I decided to call it something fun and D&D related to gameify it and make it fun. It's pretty simple.

all it takes is a D20 die, some phone alarms, and a place to write/type a list. I wrote out a list of 20 small activities I can do without effort or planning, with a focus on physical movement and changing my environment. It's important to be REALLY specific; "do 3 squats" is a lot less paralyzing than "do squats", so I'm more likely to just accept it and do it right away, and "throw a juggling ball for 5 minutes" is less likely to distract and throw off my whole day than "throw a ball". Being specific helps quiet the brain fog voice that says "but that could mean anything, what's even the point? Will just throwing an object once or touching my toes for 5 seconds really even do anything??" And empowers me to actually do the things, because I know they're quick, effortless, and will definitely make me feel healthier. Some of the activities are more complicated or more sustained than others, but having to take the chance of rolling them adds to the fun. It's like playing a game with your friends where you could end up drinking a shot of pineapple juice with sugar OR straight lemon juice; the fun is in the chance that you could get a challenge instead of a treat.

To keep myself accountable and make sure I actually use the tool, I set 3 alarms at slightly weird times through the day. Times like 11:13 and 2:20, when I'm less likely to get into the rut of expecting it to happen. I also used a ringtone app to set the noise to JoCat (A Crap Guide videos on YouTube) saying "clickity-clackity you're about to get attackity" for a little added D20 fun 😛 every time JoCat tells me to roll for initiative, I roll the D20, check the list, and do whatever activity I landed on. After, I'm free to continue whatever I was doing, or use it as a refresh point and pick another Menu item to accomplish.

And that's it! It's just a fun little way to break up my day a bit and get me doom scrolling a bit less, and the bonus is that it helps my awareness of time. Here's my Random Encounters table, in case anyone wants to use it or take inspiration from it:

5 toe touches

Hang off my bed upside down

Go to the living room for 5 minutes

Put some ice in my waterbottle

Look for Blyth (he's very good at hiding)

Bug my roommate's cat for 5 minutes

Play with my roommate's cat for 10 minutes

Go to the porch for 5 minutes

Move to a song - you only have 2 minutes to pick one!

Spin in my desk chair for 3 minutes

5 lunges

3 squats

Stretch my arms and shoulders on a doorframe

15 calf raises (tiptoes)

Throw a juggling ball for 5 minutes

Change a piece of clothing

Hang from a doorframe

Plank for 10 seconds

Put one thing away

Wash 1 dish

Ironically, my Random Encounter alarm went off as I was writing this post. I rolled a 3 for going to the living room, and then realized I haven't had breakfast yet, so instead of timing it for 5 minutes, I decided to use the excuse to change my scenery and have breakfast in the sun 😊 because of that random encounter, I'm eating a meal, taking my meds, got to say good morning and pet Mars, and I got to see another human as one of my roommates was on his way out for the day. Promising myself to be accountable for at least the bare minimum has already made a major improvement to my day and my health.

#personal journal #personal experience #adhd #adhd coping #adhd hacks #mental disability #mental illness #mental health #little things #take breaks #youtube #gameify it #make it fun #life hacks #coping strategies #d&d #d20 #roll for initiative #random encounter #how to adhd #jocat #a crap guide

[hellionil]

Concept: typemoon puts out a full otome game with the Fate series round table boys.

Feel free to add propaganda for your choice! Reblogs are appreciated 👍

#fate grand order #fate series #fgo #lancelot #gawain #tristan #bedivere #mordred #arthur pendragon #percival #galahad #agravain #merlin #the winner may or may not receive a piece of art of them all shojo gameified 👀 #poll

[notbecauseofvictories]

I will say, choosing to make your way through a bunch of point-and-click games on itch.io will single-handedly remind you that creativity is not "dead" or "corporatized" but actually, we as a species are still amazing, wildly inventive, and largely unhinged; if you claim otherwise, you're just not looking at the right bits.

#between horror games on itch.io and nosleep on reddit I think the horror genre might have a really specific crown #the ''congratulations on maintaining the unglamorous grassroots creativity so vital to the overall human project'' crown #gameify horror

[britcision]

Y’know the way it was presented to me, I thought people were committing Korok Crimes entirely unprovoked and in a way no devs could have reasonably foreseen

But no, you are specifically given MULTIPLE mini quests that are basically “move this korok by any means necessary they can explicitly be fused to vehicles”

And then they’re surprised that people are Moving These Koroks

#tears of the kingdom #totk #totk spoilers #tears of the kingdom spoilers #korok crimes #they’re the ones who made ‘em grabbable #tbh this should have been not only expected but gameified where is korok achievements

[meirimerens]

genuinely and legitimately when i see how so chronically incurious about the world some americans are i wish i could buy everyone a geoguessr subscription and every evening mandatory 15 rounds of Country Streak so you get to see how other people live

#“oh we just don't know how [country] looks we can't travel 🥺” i'm going to force you to play gameified google maps #and if you don't find which country you're in 7 times in a row (being soft on a beginner) i'm not giving you your phone back #''i didn't know they had [x] in [foreign country] they don't teach us this in school!!!'' they didn't teach it in mine either and yet #i went Google Maps Drop Me In This Country and i wandered around #you're on the allmother's internet and you don't even google search image? at this point it's on you #you are getting dropped in brazil and if you cannot pick it between all the latin american countries your computer is shutting itself off. #you are going to wander the beautiful countryside of slovenia for 30 minutes not knowing where you are and you will discover some places #have accents on their letters you didn't even know existed.

[mishapen-dear]

no but like. does bad know what that book meant. does he know. because if he did then he gave it to forever Anyway. he gave it to forever as part of a GAME. bad never tells people how he feels about them to their faces (rememebr the 14 elegant letters in festa junina! the 14 anonymous letters that were so fucking lovely!!) and he always plays with people and he gave forever a book. that says eu te amo. as part of a GAME.

#DO YYOU UNDERSTANDDD #idc if he knows or not i am convinced that bad would Not confess without having something silly to hide behidn #he's just Silly okay listen he's Silly #qsmp #i forget the name of the trope but this is my fave enactment of it #4halo #qsmpshipping #these goddamn cubitos #bad can't tell someone his feelings to their face so he confessed his love in a fucking GAME #<- delusional #im Right about the characterization but i doubt this is gonna go farther than bad going yeah :D we're Besties #queerbaithalo <3 #im obsessed with him and this is some Good material for fanfictions pay attention everyone they are feeding us some Ripe crumbs #god. love confession gameified. because you can't say it directly. #god.

[krogerkryptid]

Research Research

I have converted my friend to the ways of TMA, in the fact that she finds the fears and their categories and manifestations so so interesting. AND she's a psychologist and is planning to write a little research proposal to study why people chose/identify with specific fears and I just...that's so fun but also so nice to have friends that support my interests and then double down on the interest with me. That being said! Tell me your fear! We have a whole spreadsheet going it's very "serious" and "official" and we love data so!

#tma podcast #tmagp podcast #the magnus archives #the magnus protocol #tma #tmagp #I am the eye in case anyone hasn't caught that yet... #We've essentially gameified the whole tell us your fear thing #We have a ppt and everything #Once again though put me in those archives #So I can be a little evil and all-knowing as a treat

[anneapocalypse]

Did it become trendy to dunk on the Mass Effect loyalty missions or something, like I know it's gameified and in the real world this wouldn't be their CO's problem to solve, but I don't really get what's so silly and laughable about the idea that people on an extremely high-stakes high-pressure mission will probably do better if their heads are clear, they're fully invested, and they don't have personal issues hanging over their heads.

#this feels like one of those 'the game's been out so long we're running thin on things to complain about' things #wow bioware gameified human relationships lol a thing they are known for #and largely loved for #wow there are consequences to how you interact with your squad members even when you think some of their problems are trivial #yep that's how people work! #mass effect problems

[museofscale]

Calliope's Drainage Drive - A dice game for sluts of all ages (above 18)!

"Ummm, can someone help me? i cant er, remove myself..." Uh oh! Looks like Calliope has, through a series of elaborate faux pas, gotten her giant cock stuck in a wall. Her massive cumkegs are too big and full of jizz to be pulled out of the hole, at least while they remain undrained... All you need to do to help Calliope is reblog with a post where you make her cum and roll a d100 online to determine how many litres of cum you've coaxed out of the cherub's schlong! Once her balls are fully empty, she'll be free! Only you can save her!

TOTAL AMOUNT: 1709 / 1709l

#dunno if people will be into this #but I like gameifying ERP and I thought this would be hot ok

[g0nta-g0kuhara]

Me and my friends are inventing multiplayer v3. Do any of you have any ideas for what a competitive trial could look like?

#We all have copies of v3 at the trial 5 starting point so will be playing together all at once #Can we gameify this. This is funny as is but can we make it funnier #shut up me

[tao-lay]

slamdunk!

#gmm 2517 #gmm #good mythical morning #they love gameifying things so much #they are JUST BABIES #my baby boys #i love them so much!!!

[0verthinking1t]

Your task menu for today, sir

It's day 2 of getting my shit back together and infusing life with the structure I need, and the method I came up with and want to share today is called the Task Menu. I was inspired to reformat my to-do list and reminders this way from watching some YouTube videos about the Dopamenu (Dopamine Menu); it's not the same concept, but it helps in a similar way.

Pardon the gross looking piece of clear acrylic board on the random shipping package, that's a tangent for another time. Suffice to say, it is now a whiteboard, because the little magnetic CVS board is not nearly big enough to contain the explosion that is my brain.

So the Task Menu. First off, it's important to me that I write the day of the week at the top, and wipe the entire thing clean at the end of the day, regardless of what I've done or not done. The purpose is to make me more conscious of time and stop the days from all blurring together, so I have to start fresh every day. I decided to use the menu structure from now on instead of just a boring "today's to-do list", because I wanted to focus more on getting to pick the tasks I feel up to accomplishing throughout the day, and less on feeling like I HAVE to or SHOULD be doing the entire list in one go. The menu is a list of options for my day, not a set plan. Sections of my daily task menu include:

Appetizers - the simple, basic tasks I need to be aware of throughout the day. These include things like taking a shower, remembering to eat meals, feeding my hermit crab every 2 days, remembering if I have d&d or social stuff today, etc.

Mains - the closest to the traditional To-Do list. These are the tasks I should really focus up on during the day. Most of them have a fairly low spoons requirement, and I feel they are well attainable on any given day. Examples of mains are things like making important phonecalls, filling out paperwork, sweeping my floor or putting things away, going for a walk, or watering plants.

Specials - the daily specials are like a bonus challenge list. These are higher spoons, more project-like tasks that I have a lot of trouble motivating for. They're the restaurant's famous megaburger you get a gift certificate or T-shirt for finishing in one sitting. My goal is to aim for getting one special done a day, but it's no big deal if it doesn't happen. Examples of Specials are cleaning up my storage drawers, repotting and pruning plants, getting out all the supplies and pumping the creative juices to paint something sellable, having to go out to an appointment or getting ready for a job interview.

Sides - sides are my daily reminders. They're things I have to make sure I hold on to while I'm doing all the other menu stuff, like the fact that I have a D&D game that night, or that I still need to pay rent when I get the chance, or that I have a trip with a friend coming up this month. Because of my struggles with time blindness and object permanence, I often forget things like this until they're right on top of me, get swept up in some hyperfocus of the day, and feel like an ass when I realize I should have been online half an hour ago or that I procrastinated packing until 10pm the night before, or that it's father's day and I really should have called home. It's not that I forgot about the thing itself (I'm well aware that game is on Thursday nights, in theory) but that I forgot to associate that thing with a concrete time and date and keep track (in practice, I forgot that Today is Thursday, and that I shouldn't get sucked in to a cross stitch project an hour before game.)

Along with the daily menu board, I have the bigger Megaboard to pull daily task ideas from and keep track of what I actually accomplish. Here is a master list of tasks and reminders, sorted into "levels" based on spoons requirement. The color coded levels are similar to the Tsp idea I posted about a week or two ago. Level 1, green tasks, are easy, daily repeatable, little things that require almost no effort themselves, but that I just need to be better about structuring and self motivating for. Level 2, red tasks, are those Daily Specials; these are bigger projects to do around the house that require some time and activity energy. They're finite milestones that I can check off and get rid of once they're done. Level 3, black tasks, are the big spoons tasks. The thought of any one of these is overwhelming, and I've put them off for way too long. These require a plan to spend most of the day on them, and should be planned in advance.

Also on the Megaboard is a section labeled "today I accomplished:". Sometimes (a lot of times) life with squirrel brain doesn't always go as planned. I want to acknowledge the menu items I do get done in a day, as well as whatever tasks come up naturally during the day that I wasn't expecting. I might look at my menu and feel bad that I didn't knock a lot off it in a day, but then I can remember that's because I did 3 other things that day that I didn't even know would come up when I wrote it. Just because they're not on the daily to-do list doesn't mean they don't count. I also keep tally marks of the tasks I complete from each color level, just for the dopamine hit of seeing how much I've done at a glance.

It's a lot of writing, rewriting, moving things around, and meticulously planning out the details of my day, but right now, it's helping. I have no daily habits formed at the moment, and I have trouble juggling all these thoughts in my head. If I weren't writing everything down, I'd basically get lost in my own daily doings, and not know how I end up at bedtime every night. I think of this stuff as less of a daunting list of tasks to get done, and more of a helpful guide or set of instructions for being human.

So what do you think of the Task Menu and Megaboard? Do you think it could be improved or streamlined? If you plan to use and adapt this to your own needs, what kind of changes will you make? I'd genuinely love to see outside perspectives on my ideas 😊

#adhd #depression #improvement #self care #structure #life hacks #gameify it #to do list #daily accomplishments #self motivation #dopamine #spoons #personal journal #personal experience #mental disability #disability awareness #coping strategies #getting healthy #let me know what yall think #Task Menu #dopamine menu #dopamenu

[witchblade]

um i did play a little bit of freedom cry and i want to say clearing this games equivalent to a warehouse is 1000x more emotionally taxing because instead of just like. Losing out on loot for a bit, if you fuck up a PLANTATION clear, the penalty is watching a counter go down as slaves are killed. Because of you

#im like on the fence about how gameified and ubisoftified this particular topic is here like Well... #maybe im just mr crybaby sensitive but this is like. fraught #end thought.

[notbecauseofvictories]

Halloween Week of Horror (Games)

It's that time of year, and as someone who (a) loves horror, but (b) hasn't had much of an appetite lately for full-length horror films, I've been struggling to find a way to embrace spooky season. Then I hit on it---text-based games!

Even I, a known video game hater, love a good text-based game. Half poetry, half clicking, and all artistry, they're one of the great, underdiscussed treasures of the modern internet. Therefore, come join me for a week of indie horror "games" about haunted houses, ghosts, secrets kept, and also Mary Toft.

My list of games is cribbed from this post and this post.

DAY 1: childhood homes (and why we hate them), vacant, i am still here, flesh, blood, & concrete, domvs

childhood homes (and why we hate them) 

after a decade, you return home

Starting with this particular game was ingenious---it plays to exactly my weaknesses: poetry, unreliable narrators, unhappy families, and the house as locus of memory/witness to horror/horror in itself.

That being said, I feel like this would reward subsequent walkthroughs even more. I took it too quickly, wanted to rush to the end when there’s too much ambiguity for that. Did Lottie kill her father? Is the house still whole and there, even after all these years, or is that a fever dream? How long was her returning? Is she there still? (....and given the mention of the house being a “second son” are we meant to understand that Lottie is trans?) I also played “my brother; the parasite” from this same creator, and would say it's even better---that kind of identity/body horror ambiguity, wrapped up in twisted maybe-love, maybe-hate, is very much my speed.

SPOOKY LEVEL: 6/10, though it's largely uncanny and reality-bending rather than actively frightening

OVERALL GRADE: A-

vacant 

Film a ghost-hunting show.

Of all the games on this list, this one felt the most lived in, the most normal-devolving-into-horror. The set-up is reasonably familiar: you are a camera woman hired at the last minute to help a ghost-hunter with her local shoot. You meet her out in what seems to be the middle of nowhere, explore an abandoned hotel that was home to some weird stuff (cults, mysterious disappearances, more than one death), crack some sarcastic jokes---

Unfortunately, it gets even weirder at that point.

Despite getting tripped up on some of the mechanics (it took me too long to figure out that there was another room on the main level) this ended up being haunting, resisting easy answers. The sudden randomness of the violence bursts through, and the ending in particular is sharp, lovely, and even more unsettling.

SPOOKY LEVEL: 4/10, aside from some sudden noises (things breaking, etc.) the horror is largely atmospheric

OVERALL GRADE: B

i am still here 

a short, unconventional ghost story and vignette reflecting on the end of a long lockdown.

Unlike some of the other entries on this list, this is not a horror game at all. Perhaps a little uncanny, since it's just you---a purple thing on a screen---wandering around a pandemic-emptied Melbourne, musing about the way the world has changed. Still, as someone who did live through lockdown, it was surprising affective.

Brief, but moving. When the screen fades to teal blue, and it’s just the ambient noise of a small pond? That was lovely.

SPOOKY LEVEL: 0/10

OVERALL GRADE: B

flesh, blood, & concrete

you find yourself in a vast, empty apartment complex.

I have gone back and forth on this one. On one hand, the central story is affective---the main character's car runs out of gas in an unnamed town, in the middle of a snow storm; she finds help in a strange apartment complex, seemingly abandoned except for a lone girl, and her "parents." The more you explore the complex, the more you reveal about the woman's intentions, and the more uncanny, unworldly, the scenery becomes.

(I would have given anything to “see” the scenes of destruction, decay and otherworldliness in full color---even in 24-bit, they were lovely.)

On the other hand, the concept and the worldbuilding had such potential that the "frame" story (a little boy, sent out to play in the snow) and the ending came as something of a let-down? Or...maybe not the ending itself (a melancholy, depressed woman driving off into the snow and being swallowed alive by meat that is love---that's a good story) but the framing device made no sense. And why could you collect items if the aim is to surrender to that powerful, overall lure?

Still, I think the replay value here would be immense. Scrolling through the comments afterwards, there are a lot of people who got very different endings, so it's a game that rewards that exploratory path.

SPOOKY LEVEL: 6/10, and mostly for body horror (meat/blood) and uncanny worldbuilding

OVERALL GRADE: B+

domvs 

a gothic mystery game in which you rely on your environment to uncover the truth.

A lovely little story, where you play madlibs and discover why an unnamed hero chose to sell their soul to the devil—and the thing it makes them into, the tragedy that finds them regardless. One of the shorter entries on this list, and less a game than wandering through an abandoned house to admire its poetry.

Also, I loved the Latin. More games should incorporate Latin.

SPOOKY LEVEL: 2/10

OVERALL GRADE: B

#gameify horror #the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind

[bugeyedfreaks]

...Tumblr, I have made exactly 12,008 posts on my blog, what in the world is this badge thing about?

#??????? #are we........ are we gameifying tumblr now #what in the h #i mean i don't hate the concept but honestly what i would really want is a personalized badge #that recognizes my passion of writing and posting about large-eyed freak kids

[unwrathful]

how can i turn writing into a competition if no one else is in the sprint room huh. strangers on the internet im looking at u

#i gameify writing what about it