#so this is theoretically the highest amount of dread it is possible to have as of right now | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

samueldays · 6 years

Text

Cultist Simulator is bad

Small annoyed disagreeable rant/review after seeing a tweetseries from people I like:

> Some of the most beautiful games involve the incremental accumulation of power and potential which is nevertheless extremely fragile to disruption and must be protected. The victory condition is often a dangerous and glorious consummation of force and willpower.

> What games do this well

> The thought was stimulated by Cultist Simulator, which distills the concept to its refined essence.

No. I’m really not seeing it. I played through the three original victory conditions to get my money’s worth, I was unimpressed with the game, and I definitely didn’t see a “dangerous and glorious consummation”. I saw grind and busywork.

The main danger of Cultist Simulator is recurring resource sinks. Money is constantly consumed, and you will need to earn more of it. Health may be intermittently consumed, and you will have to recover it, such as by resting or buying medicine. Sanity is intermittently consumed -- the game mechanically tracks it as Dread/Fascination counting up rather than sanity counting down - but the principle is the same, recover the resource or you’ll be in deep trouble.

But there’s no threat large and powerful enough to make any of these accumulated resources fragile. All the resource sinks always move one point at a time on a long track: 3-ish points for the intermittently consumed, and you can accumulate as much Money as you like (I’ve had 30+) against the constant upkeep cost. You can pretty much only lose by long-term neglect and letting these resources run out.* technically you can accumulate as much health as you like too

Nothing will come along and threaten to smash your shit. Bank robbers won’t take ten money and reduce you to penury, forcing you to scramble for money before the rent on your cultist HQ comes due. Sanity-rending monsters won’t rend more than one point of sanity each, nor will they appear in packs. You will never lose your strange tomes, nor will you forget the languages you’ve learned, nor will you become unable to perform a Rite once you have discovered it.

You might lack the ingredients for a Rite, but the Rite itself, as a game object you own, is indestructible and unlosable. And you can choose to destroy a unique artifact by ritual sacrifice or sale, but no game entity will ever come by to steal or break it.

The final threat that comes to mind is the Investigators seeking to have you thrown in jail, which is the only element I can envision as being anywhere near “fragile to disruption and must be protected”.

You can lose the game to an Investigator. If you are neglectful or don’t know the tricks yet. Because Investigators also move on a predictable track: you start with a spotless record and the investigator can look at your cult activities (Notoriety) to create weak evidence against you, and then can follow up on weak evidence to create strong evidence against you, and then can use strong evidence to make you lose if you haven’t erased evidence or otherwise stopped them.

The game’s design, at least when I played it, makes it bizarrely straightforward to ensure this doesn’t happen. There’s the "sensible" means like sending assassins to kill investigators, or speaking forbidden words to drive them insane, but even if you don’t have access to assassins or forbidden words, you don’t need any resources but player attention to ensure perfect protection against investigators in two silly ways.

1) Evidence times out after a while if an investigator doesn’t follow up on it. Investigators cannot follow up on evidence that you are holding in your “hand” (dragging with cursor). So when an investigator approaches, you can pause game, give orders, pick up evidence, unpause game with keyboard, let investigator wander around doing nothing for a minute until they give up and go elsewhere. Drop evidence once investigator is gone.

2) Investigators cannot follow up on evidence if they’re busy. You can talk to an investigator to keep them busy. You can talk to them repeatedly, back to back. You can even talk about your cult activities to them and they’ll be so busy listening to you monopolize their schedule that they’ll let the statute of limitations expire.

That mostly concludes my disagreements, some other general criticism below the cut.

The grind. Oh god, the fucking manual grind. Drag your Job Card onto your Work Verb. Wait 60 seconds. Receive money. Work Verb spits out your Job Card. Drag your Job Card onto your Work Verb. Wait 60 seconds. Receive money. Work Verb spits out your Job Card. Drag your Job Card onto your Work Verb. Wait 60 seconds. Receive money. Work Verb spits out your Job Card. Repeat many times. Repeat many times in a row, even, stop to use your Work Verb for something else, drag your Job Card onto your Work Verb another ten times. Can has automation of “keep working” plzkthx.

(no we can’t because the game is probably making an artistic statement about the drudgery of work by annoying the player with drudgery in play too, I suppose)

Replay value is low. There’s the same books, the same summons, the same cultists, the same rites the same commissioners. And since the occult books you get are drawn randomly from a pool, you can’t even do much strategizing of “I’ll go for this book today” - you just have to keep pulling from the pool until you’ve got most of the same ones all over again.

You can theoretically win with only one rite -- you can win straightforwardly with two of the ten or so rites in the game (Intercalate and either Sunset or Map’s Edge) -- or you can get five other rites and have no end of hassle because they’re five rites that all require permanent sacrifices of things which are bothersome to get or limited in supply or both. More draws from the rite pool!

When you first found your cult, you get a “Temporary Headquarters” card. It is actually your permanent headquarters, there is no change or upgrade or replacement to be done with it. This is an example of a wider problem of the game pretending to encourage discovery and exploration, but then deceiving you on several points about what is discoverable, so you can easily fuck around trying to get better headquarters to no avail for half an hour, during which you will Drag your Job Card onto your Work Verb another ten or twenty times.

The game also pretends to encourage risk-taking. Yeeeah no not with the amount of brainless grind required to get back to where I was if I lose a game and have to start over, Drag your Job Card onto your Work Verb again.

Some cards of the same type can stack, like Health and Passion. Painting a very artistic painting takes four Passion cards for highest effect. When you’re done painting, your Passion cards will be temporary exhausted and de-stack because they’re not of the same type any more. When they recover, they will not re-stack. Flarging barging card shuffle management for things that really should have been automated. Like Drag your Job Card onto your Work Verb.

Speaking of things that should have been automated, drag four Glimmering cards into your passion upgrader, now drag six, now drag eight, now drag eight Glimmering cards into your passion upgrader because you lost a passion to a rite by accident and misleading interface. Drag all these cards one by one because there’s no way we could just autofill with the only possible, necessary card to put in the upgrader, right? Do similar things for Vitality and for Erudition.

Speaking of misleading interface, a lot of the game has you inserting cards into a set of slots to produce an effect. Until you memorize what each of the slots want, there will be a lot of trial and error. To help a little in this, clicking on a slot will highlight which cards on the table fit in that slot.

It will also highlight some cards on the table which would fit in that slot under other circumstances but don’t fit right now due to what you have in the other slots, which is less useful than it could be because it doesn’t explain the circumstances.

It will also highlight some cards on the table that don’t fit in that slot at all, making it really unhelpful and you should probably just memorize what all the slots want already.

In closing, it feels like half the game only works when you are ignorant (discover! explore! oh no, a strange and unknown threat! spooky!) but the other half only works well with a manual at your side (to extract value from book A, you need to learn dead language B which can be gotten from summonable character C whose undocumented summoning requires quantity D of resource E, quantity F of resource G, and quantity H of resource I, and depending on whether you use Rite J or Rite K you will permanently lose either the resource E or the resource G)

#all #cultist simulator

2 notes · View notes

cbdhash-blog · 5 years

Photo

Smoking CBD buds? Why are individuals smoking Weed? In this post, we will explain you the benefits and benefits of smoking female CBD buds. Additionally, we will speak about the risks and side effects when smoking buds from high CBD strains. There are several concerns asked these days. Billions of THC and Tobacco smokers are out there. Nevertheless, smoking the non-psychoactive CBD is quite new for a lot of men and women. You may possibly like the taste, the smoothness and the relaxing effect of CBD-rich cannabis buds. For that reason, we will explain you all in detail. Even how to smoke CBD Buds and how to vape it. Let’s get began with some fundamentals. The incomparable CBD cannabis and the typical marijuana (also known as Ganja). 1stof all, you want to understand the distinction among CBD (Cannabidiol) and THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol). The two substances within the cannabis plant, which partially can cancel each and every other out. It’s all about the genetics of each and every plant. We can breed plants higher in THC (which gets you high) or we can develop CBD varieties, to use the health-related rewards of the cannabis plant only. Is CBD a drug that tends to make me addicted? Clearly NO! Human studies presented some preliminary proof of a beneficial influence of CBD on cannabis and tobacco dependence. CBD has several therapeutic properties on its own that could indirectly be valuable in the treatment of addiction problems, such as its protective effect on tension vulnerability and neurotoxicity. does cannabis or cbd can make you addicted Therefore, CBD is potentially a lot more and intervention for Addictive Behaviors. Concerning the effects of CBD on cannabis and opioid addiction and there is one particular ongoing Canadian study on cocaine addiction. Te dreadful burden of substance-use disorder worldwide, combined with the clear require for new medication in the addiction field, justifies the requirement of further studies to evaluate the possible of CBD as a new intervention for addictive behaviors. Does smoking CBD Buds get me high? NO, not at all. Cannabidiol (CBD) is nonpsychoactive. Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the substance that gets you higher. CBD Weed is all about calm, serenity and making use of all healthcare advantages. It is a non-intoxicating compound of the cannabis plant that we use. Specially bred CBD species are cannabis varieties low on THC. does cbd make you get high Multiple studies have verified, that a hemp plant containing much less than 1% THC is nonpsychoactive and does not get you high. Can I fail a drug test from smoking CBD buds? Maybe No – Maybe Yes! Why possibly? Since it’s all about the top quality (THC worth) and the quantity (dosage) of what you take. Drug tests screen for either THC or the carboxy-THC metabolite (THC-COOH), but not for CBD. A consumer who uses standard serving sizes of high-top quality CBD hemp is highly unlikely to test optimistic. Even so, it’s crucial to know, that if you take really high doses, it might outcome in a optimistic test outcome. Consuming unusually massive dosages of CBD, such as 1,000 to two,000 milligrams per day, could theoretically trigger a good for THC on a urine test. As a result, you ought to only purchase tested and analyzed CBD items. cbd cannabis drug test Ultimately, you as a customer have to be aware of the CBD/THC ratio. If you get CBD buds, make sure that the cannabis shop can provide an actual lab-report of your item. Ultimately, make sure you have the particular regulations posed by your employer and adjust the consumption of cannabinoid items accordingly. What about CBD & Driving? Better not! As legal CBD hemp nevertheless contains a little amount of THC, it’s not suggested to drive. On top, there are still insufficient research on CBD consumption and driving. Thomas Krämer, deputy director at the Institute for Legal Medicine of the University of Zurich (IRM), says: “Since CBD has quite a few and at times really distinct mechanisms in the central nervous technique and thus produces a wide variety of effects, it can not be ruled out that there could be a damaging effect on driving capacity.” cbd customer driving auto A drug test can turn optimistic at any time. The effect is various for each and every person. Nonetheless, some test results have shown: Even CBD can leave measurable THC traces in the physique. For that reason, we advise you to stop driving following consuming CBD. This is also recommended by the Swiss Federal Workplace of Public Well being. What are the benefits of smoking CBD buds? If you want pure CBD and highest CBD values, then Buds is what you need. CBD buds are the most valuable parts of every plant. It is extremely straightforward to explain and straightforward to comprehend. Cannabis Buds (or Hemp Flowers) are the fruits of female plants. As a result, the dried herb does include by far the highest level of CBD (and or THC). If we analyze the CBD/THC ratio of a plant, then we measure it at the buds. Let’s look into the anatomy of a plant. As an example, we take a look at the Mountain Grades genetic, the MG Green Indica Seeds, and the plants grew indoor: The CBD Buds 21% CBD CBD Buds Indica have been analyzed with 21.7% CBD and .8% THC. A CBD/THC ratio of 26:1 is extremely unique and one particular of the highest available in the European market place. CBD Leaves four% CBD The 2nd highest concentration of CBD/THC will be found in the cannabis leaves. The worth will be all around five to 10 times reduce than in the buds. The CBD/THC ratio will be still the identical, although the values will be all around four to two% CBD. For that reason, CBD leaves must not be smoked but utilized to make Hemp Tea or Green Smoothies. CBD Stems .4% CBD 0.4 to .2% CBD are left in the cannabis stems. This indicates: You have to smoke 50 to one hundred times as considerably as from the CBD Buds to get a related impact. Exact same as for leaves, it can make no sense to smoke stems.

0 notes

constant-fandom-migrator · 7 years

Text

The Larger Truth: A Carmilla AU

An AU in which Laura is a fired and disgraced reporter who unknowingly meets the senator’s daughter Carmilla. Laura begins to realize how narrow her world view really is. Meanwhile Danny is a rival reporter ready to take Laura’s place. Lafontaine and Perry find themselves as head assistants to opposing political powerhouses and find themselves accidentally in a modern Romeo and Juliet situation.

Chapter 1-21

Chapter 22:

Shouting echoed through Laura’s desolate apartment. Constant protests and marches were underway throughout the city. Internally she cheered the forward momentum of wide spread social justice. Externally however, she groaned at the distraction.

She gathered the last pieces of her story the old fashion way; with sensible business shoes against the pavement and a mouth that wouldn’t be silenced without a quote from a reliable source. She pieced together a timeline of the senator’s actions and spiral into manic decisions.

Lastly she gathered what she could on the death of Carmilla’s father. Trouble was, no one besides Senator Satan herself had the full truth. Though even without a confession from the Senator, Laura had enough for the question to be asked, “Was Senator Karnstein a murderer?”

It was merely a question, but in politics, that was enough.

After material and quote gathering came the phase Laura affectionately called the glue time. It’s where she got to put her own loose thoughts together with ridged facts into one work of open dialogue the world could understand. It was her favorite part of the process honestly. It was a constant gift to communicate knowledge to the world that people were previously unaware of.

The challenge was to do so in a way that came across as enlightening and motivational rather than condescending and chastising.

After the glue phase came the dreaded editing phase; this being the part where she reads what she meant to write instead of what actually made it onto the page. In a normal situation an editor would step in to tame the wild words. But this wasn’t a normal situation; it was sabotage, an outright act of guerrilla warfare.

Laura had been swimming in icy water for weeks, to the point where her skin became impervious to the bite of the cold. She swam too far to go back now.

The editing was taking the longest, despite her rushed timeline. Lafontaine had moved Laura’s deadline back by a full week. The environment was unstable, and for once leaning in the direction of Burley. The story was just what people needed to push them over the edge of tolerance and into the icy water of intolerance where Laura proudly called home.

The people on the street were doing their part, and she was doing hers, one line at a time.

Still, the people on the street grew louder. So much so that she was unable to concentrate on the task at hand.

There was one voice that stood alone in cutting through the noise, taking a direct path to Laura’s heart with an angry growl no one could ignore. Rushing to the window Laura gazed at the face she knew she would find, Carmilla.

Anger clearly radiated from her entire body, creating a bubble around her nothing and no one would dare penetrate. The veins in her neck bulged and threatened to escape her throat along with the screeches rolling off her pointed tongue.

She was captivating with her seething anger and body morphed into a weapon of pure rage. Even through the engulfing anger was a beauty no one would ever compare to. She was a neon butterfly, while the rest of the world resembled flying cockroaches. It was unfair really, that she should be so irresistible, no matter the circumstances.

The whole scene was too much for her to handle. Laura thought at one point Carmilla looked right at her, but she decided it was wishful thinking. She left Carmilla to fight her newly waged war, closing the windows and putting her headphones in. She had life changing work to do.

Carmilla spent two weeks working the ever growing crowd she found herself surrounded by. She raised their anger, or motivation as Perry liked to call it. The media had a field day with the senator’s daughter who rebelled. She gave no personal details to fuel the fire, but her presence alone was enough to encourage a larger body of protesters to show up, and that was enough to satisfy her.

She participated as anyone would, chanting with the crowd, climbing the highest city monuments possible to scream from. She was even the strongest link she could be in a wall of people blocking entry into business not cooperating in the cause. A simple we support you would have sufficed, but some were too stubborn for that.

What they didn’t count on was her own unwavering stubbornness. She had committed to the cause of her people, and over her dead body would she willingly drop that cause. A part of her wanted to understand and place reason into Laura’s choices, but she still felt betrayed. It wasn’t a feeling she had been able to let go of for others, and she wasn’t sure she could make an exception in that, even for Laura.

The day a march led Carmilla past Laura’s apartment, her resolve almost broke. A glimpse of Laura, stoic and perhaps fearful, was nearly enough for her to drop to her knees, begging to have her back. She hated to see Laura without any of the light she fell in love with. But as her knees began to buckle and head started to swim, Carmilla caught sight of an overgrown goon; she knew to be employed by her mother.

He was one of the many who had begun to follow her around, no doubt reporting her whereabouts and company to her mother. She couldn’t risk running to Laura. As far as her beefy shadows knew, they were over and Laura was out of the picture. There was no way Carmilla could risk bringing her back into the crosshairs.

If she knew her mother at all, and she did, there was a plan in play. No matter their relationship status, Carmilla had to keep Laura safe.

The sound of two stomping feet filled the alley Lafontaine was angrily thundering through. The whole city was being flipped upside-down, and yet they were on their way to an important early dinner.

Was this the true heart of politics? Musing about theoretical problems while real people were left to deal with them?

Lafontaine was determined to make a difference, a visible and substantial difference. Originally that’s what the sudden move in politics about. However, each day they spent behind a desk or at a table of snobby aristocrats, diminished their once rock solid resolve. Perhaps this was a mistake. Was it really their place in life or in the movement they worked tirelessly for?

Though the concern had to quickly be put on the back burner. They arrived at the restaurant Burley said to meet him at. Everything was too white, too neat, and too stiff. This wasn’t a place Laf would have chosen, but they trusted Mike, so a little earned faith was given.

“There’s my favorite prodigy!” Mike greeted them with a suspicious amount of enthusiasm.

“Careful Burley, your head might not fit through the door if you keep that up.”

“What? I can’t appreciate my right-hand person?”

Lafontaine eyed the man cautiously.

“What did you do?”

“Oh, nothing much.” He waved over the hostess. “I just may have asked someone to join us for dinner.”

“Gross, are you trying to set me up again? Because last time---”

“No, I am not setting you up. If you happen to fall for our dinner guest Ms Karnstein, that is all on you.”

“Karnstein as in Carmilla?” They asked with deflated hope.

He looked around, with just the slightest shameful dip of his head, confirming what they already knew to be the unfortunate truth.

Anger boiled inside of them at the blindside. How could he do this?

“I can’t believe you would just spring the Senator on me like that. I’m not in the slightest bit prepared. She’s a new strain of the plague and I’m the poor sap going in without a hazmat suit.”

He gave a small smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“I am preparing you now for the inevitability of being unprepared. It’s a crash course in the subject. I should hope you are in a receiving mood.”

“What is this?” They scoffed “A wax on, wax off moment?”

“Why don’t you wax yourself to the table and wax off the evident aggravation on your face.”

“Mike” They stared pointedly at him, “That is not at all how that metaphor works, but in the interest of time and obligation, yes, I will.”

Lafontaine settled into the table the hostess led them to. They of course chose to sit back against the wall, to avoid anyone behind their back or standing over them. It was a petty power play, but in that unexpected time, it was all they had.

Burley took the opportunity to order the table a bottle of wine. Of course, the Senator was late, so they wasted no time in diving into their liquid courage.

It was sweet against their tongue, but every other sip or so left a bitter after taste. The wine was of course red. How fitting, considering it reminded them of Perry; An unpredictable mix of sweet and bitter, with a distractingly red hue. But just like the wine, they craved her in both the happiest and darkest of moments.

It was odd really, to see the red dancing circles in their cup, but also red to creep into their peripheral vision. Their heart leapt, and knew even before their eyes even did, Perry had arrived with the Senator.

“My apologies for the late arrival, Burley.”

She purposefully excluded Lafontaine, which was fine by them. After all they were pouring all of their will power into regarding Perry as a stranger. Despite their previous anger towards her, it wasn’t an easy task. Perry had taken the steps needed to build the bridge she burned. Without a soul full of disdain it was more than difficult to appear angry or even neutral towards her. Truth was they were glad to see her, and wished the other parties at their table would just go away. Dinner and wine with Perry, not much more could they ask for.

She sat like stone next to the senator, playing her part accordingly. Meanwhile, the Senator somehow mimicked something even harder than stone. Harder than concrete, it was something as absolute as the laws of the universe. To most, it would have been intimidating. Laf however, required a degree of respect in order to feel intimidation. They refused to give up on releasing the Senator’s grip on Perry and their community.

“Senator Karnstein,” They boldly exclaimed “how fantastic that you could make it tonight.”

“Ah yes, and you are---?”

Of course she knew who they were. There was no way she couldn’t between Burley’s endorsement and the media frenzy surrounding Carmilla helping their campaign. It was just a game, like everything the senator did.

“Lafontaine, former head assistant and campaign manager to Mike here,” They smacked him on the shoulder harder than necessary “And now I am the current democratic candidate for Senate.”

“I see.” She sipped her wine, pursing her lips in clear disapproval. “So is that like in the movies where the team of misfits make it so far, and just at the end the unexpected occurs and they lose? But still they say they tried their best so they won anyway?”

“No” They clarified, “It’s more like Austin Powers defeats Doctor Evil, but is kind enough to preserve his dignity during the takeover of power. Of course, in this instance, we can subtract the dignity from the equation.”

“What a strange reference from an even stranger little person.”

“As opposed to your oh so eloquent Shakespearean metaphor?” They snapped back.

“I think it is time we ordered. Get some food to level our heads before getting down to business.” Burley wisely interjected.

A few minutes of awkward clanking of silverware and wine glasses later they quietly placed their orders. Lafontaine excused themselves to the bathroom. Shortly after, Perry claimed to need to make an urgent call.

Of course that was neither of their intentions.

The backdoor to the restaurant flung open as Perry followed them into the alley.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is not to look at you like you are my everything?” She asked.

Laf pulled her close and turned to push her against the wall.

“I can assure you, it cannot possibly be as hard as it is for me to keep my hands off of you.”

Pushing apart Perry’s legs with their own, Laf stepped between them while grabbing a fistful of red curls.

“I am going to need you to prove that darling.” She teased, running her fingertips up their back.

It was more daring than Perry had ever been. Maybe it was the wind of change, or perhaps it was just the covert operation that put her in deep cover effecting her actions. No matter the reason, Lafontaine loved the demanding side of Perry.

They gave in, kissing her with all they had. Perry searched for friction on Laf’s leg as she pulled them in closer.

Just as things started to get heated they pulled away from her. “I intend to prove it, tonight after we figure out what our bosses are up to.”

Perry clicked her tongue and pointed her toes inward in a show of innocence, as if she hadn’t just been rutting against their leg in a dingy, dimly lit alley.

“I suppose you're right sweetie. Let’s go mediate a ceasefire for the night.”

They followed her in, pulling back on their mask of indifference. It was back to business.

#Carmilla #Carmilla AU #Carmilla fan fic #Carmilla Fanfiction

1 note · View note