ghosts in the machine: Fulminar the Stormweaver

(chatgpt wrote this one. basically, the idea, fill in the missing lightning spells, makes lightning a real identity you can pick for your guy)

A once-inquisitive tinkerer turned accidental master of storms, Fulminar, a Deep Gnome, stumbled into the Elemental Plane of Storms via a misfiring teapot experiment. Returning forever changed, he's now the Stormweaver.

Fulminar, the Stormweaver

Small humanoid (deep gnome), any alignment

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
10 (+0)	14 (+2)	16 (+3)	18 (+4)	12 (+1)	14 (+2)

Armor Class 15 (mage armor)

Hit Points 90 (12d8 + 36)

Speed 25 ft.

Saving Throws Int +7, Wis +4

Skills Arcana +7, Insight +4, Perception +4

Senses Darkvision 120 ft., passive Perception 14

Languages Common, Gnomish, Undercommon

Challenge 8 (3,900 XP)

Gnome Cunning. Fulminar has advantage on all Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saving throws against magic.

Virile Cantrip. Fulminar’s cantrips deal half damage on a missed attack or a successful save.

Spellcasting. Fulminar is a 10th-level spellcaster. His spellcasting ability is Intelligence (spell save DC 15, +7 to hit with spell attacks). He has the following wizard spells prepared:

Cantrips (at will): Thunderclap (see below), Lightning Lure, Mage Hand, Prestidigitation, Shocking Grasp

1st-level (4 slots): Stormweaver’s Bolthold (see below), Mage Armor, Thunderwave, Shield, Magic Missile

2nd-level (3 slots): Gust of Wind, Scorching Ray

3rd-level (3 slots): Counterspell, Lightning Bolt, Fly

4th-level (3 slots): Storm Sphere, Arcane Eye

5th-level (2 slots): Teleportation Circle

6th-level (1 slot): Chain Lightning, Globe of Invulnerability

Actions

Arcane Shock. Ranged Spell Attack: +7 to hit, range 60 ft., one target. Hit: 21 (6d6) lightning damage.

Fulminar's Arcane Tempest (Recharge 5-6). Fulminar casts his signature spell, creating a 30-foot radius of crackling energy. Each creature he chooses within the area must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw or take 27 (6d8) lightning damage and be restrained. On a successful save, the creature takes half damage and isn't restrained.

Legendary Actions

Fulminar can take 2 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature's turn. Fulminar regains spent legendary actions at the start of his turn.

Legendary Cantrip. Fulminar casts one of his cantrips.

Reverberating Bolt. Fulminar sends a bolt of lightning, dealing 5 (1d8) damage to a target restrained by Fulminar’s Arcane Tempest.

Thunderous Barrier. Fulminar creates a protective barrier around himself, gaining resistance to all damage until the start of his next turn.

Teleport. Fulminar magically teleports to an unoccupied space he can see within 60 feet.

(and here are the promised spells, which will make it so that you, too, can stormweave…)

Thunderclap

Thunder evocation cantrip

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 5 feet
Components: V
Duration: Instantaneous

You release a sudden burst of concussive sound localised in a 5-foot radius around you. All creatures in this area must make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, a creature takes 1d6 thunder damage and is deafened until the end of its next turn. On a successful save, the creature takes half damage and isn't deafened. Creatures deafened by this spell have disadvantage on attack rolls.

At Higher Levels: The damage increases by 1d6 when you reach 5th level (2d6), 11th level (3d6), and 17th level (4d6).

Stormweaver’s Bolthold

1st-level lightning evocation

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 60 feet
Components: V, S, M (a piece of fur, a glass rod, and a pinch of iron filings)
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute

You conjure a powerful bolt of lightning that streaks toward a target within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the target. On a hit, the target takes 3d8 lightning damage.

Furthermore, the spell creates an electrified zone in a 10-foot radius around the target’s position. Creatures, excluding yourself, within this area when the spell is cast or who enter it for the first time on a turn or end their turn there, must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or take 2d6 lightning damage. This zone persists until the concentration ends.

At Higher Levels: When cast using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the initial target damage increases by 1d8, and the area effect damage increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 1st.

Arcane Tempest

2nd-level evocation

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self (30-foot radius)
Components: V, S, M (a small lodestone and a piece of fur)
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute

When you cast this spell, crackling energies spiral around you, manifesting a swirling storm of lightning within a 30-foot radius centered on yourself. Each creature of your choice within this area must make a Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, the target takes 3d8 lightning damage and is restrained by the arcs of electrical energy. On a successful save, the creature takes half damage and isn't restrained.

A restrained creature can use its action to attempt to break free, making a Strength check against your spell save DC. On a success, the creature breaks free from the restraints and suffers no further effects.

Additionally, as a bonus action on each of your turns for the duration, you can cause bolts of lightning to strike one creature affected by this spell, dealing 1d8 lightning damage. You must maintain concentration on the spell to use this bonus action.

At Higher Levels: When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, the initial lightning damage increases by 1d8 for each slot level above 2nd.

(chatgpt wrote this. it was chatgpt)

im watching ahsoka

the first episode, it's not good. there's a scene where sabine wren is like, denying the call by driving very fast on a highway and its not a very good one of these deny the call highway driving scenes

but it does get good

a big problem with star wars is it cares about a select few things too much, like for example it cares about anakin skywalker too much

what i think would be a good star wars, for example, is like a warring states period where there are many warring clans of jedi that dont really follow the established rules for jedi and sith, thered be like more cultures than we are normally shown

and another story would not care about the jedi and the force at all, for example

like you wouldnt have to have a force sensitive kid to ground the thing in the experience of a force sensitive kid, we could have other perspectives than this on this universe. another part of the problem is that star wars has to be for kids and its hard to have it also be for adults. its like asking pokemon to be for adults. but thats one of my problems with pokemon is that it doesnt grow up with you

anyway they kind of are doing that, at least, they are telling lots of star wars stories all the time and some of them will do the thing you want and some will hit

sometimes them doing the exact same thing they always do will hit

anyway asoka gets good in the bit with the cave where you conquer your fears, which as it happens is the bit where they bring in anakin skywalker as a like cosmic mentor figure and framing device, i think here the anakin skywalker bit does hit

one thing is, the clone wars has gone from being a hint of lore about a thing that must have happened in a mythic past to being a real event that did happen and has been shown from every angle, and in fact did happen 20 years ago, the characters look back on these events and you look back on them also and a similar amount of time has passed, and your experience can rhyme with theirs

my theory of whats a open world rpg is this

the governing principle is no essential non-player character
a game is truly open world if it does not have any characters that every player always meets

but outside of this pure state, games are more open world the more this is true:
-the fewer characters you always meet
-the less time you spend with them
-the less essential they are

the correlary would be, a truly open world game would have no characters that cannot die (and when a character dies, the game continues without them without breaking anything. a third thing would be, if they can die but dont, they still exist and matter as much as before. the player can choose to kill or save characters and it matters what they choose.)

other correlaries would be, no essential faction. no essential quest. theres no one central faction that every player must join. there's no one central venture that every player must support.
but these follows naturally from the first thing.

the underlying principle is that a true open world game would have each playthrough support a distinct player character. each character makes different choices and does different things. you and your friend play different campaigns. in subsequent runs you play different games.

but morgan brackish meadows, you will say, that doesnt sound very much like any open world game i've ever played. and maybe you will say, i like these games, why should they be otherwise? presumably some people like the grey wardens in dragon age or the dad in fallout 3, some people just play baldurs gate because they want to fuck astarion or something, and that's fine. but its not what we're talking about here.

the answer is, if you want a game that is a movie, that exists. and its done better when its not in the open world mode, probably. the open world mode affords us this other possibility, something to strive for.

everyones talking about mount and blade

mount and blade 2 bannerlord come out some time ago, ive been keeping a lazy eye on it, and im experimenting with ‘xbox game pass for pc’ this week, which is a cheap way to play it. i wanted to try starfield but it doesnt run on my machine. i think mount and blade is probably a better use of ones time, although who can say whats a good use of ones time out here at the end of the earth.

xbox game pass is like 10 bucks and you can also play citizen sleeper on that (in which: you’re a dying replicant on the run trying to make a life for yourself on a potentially hostile station while your body slowly betrays you, which plays kinda like blades in the dark if it were a visual novel, and is very good) so i think mount and blade is a budget friendly game, although it costs a lot of your time. mount and blade is a hobby.

this is the third mount and blade game ive played, they are very similar, so you could play an older one and it might run better. mount and blade is a big medieval battle simulator with a dynamic overworld map where simulated nobles ride around fighting battles and burning villages and taking castles from each other. i have not played and will not play the multiplayer. the singleplayer campaign is sort of the scope of the thing we are talking about.

im not sure what game reviews are for. if this is a product review, then yes, you should get it if you like this sort of thing. if this is a critical analysis, then no, its not a ‘good video game’, unless you like this sort of thing, which of course you should.

mount and blade is accurate in the sense that you can shoot your bow over the left side of your horse but not the right side. if you mime being on a horse and trying to shoot right handedly to the right you can sort of see why this is so. mount and blade thought this was an important enough detail to include and its preserved in all the games. so like, its accurate in this way. you can be a mongol horse archer. its that kind of thing. if you want to hit a guy, your sword has to actually pass through that guy.

the combat is really goofy. you spend a lot of time trying to find guys and hit them. when you finally get the guy, he slumps over sillily and you get to laugh heartily and then youre off chasing the next guy. if you go down, the combat keeps going, perhaps for an hour if you dont stop it. you can just watch other guys try to clobber each other, perhaps in fast forward, until either you get bored or there are no more guys. a combat can have thousands of guys in it, your graphics card permitting.

what wins combats is almost never you clobbering guys in person and almost always bringing more guys than the other team. you can choose not to resolve the combat manually and just simulate the outcome, and this is almost always the way I’ll do it. sometimes the type and quality of guys in an army matters, but nothing matters as much as having more guys. 

so yeah, why do this thing? why, this year, should we spend any of our time doing anything other than to build communism, blow up oil pipelines, and tell our loved ones that we love them? how can we apportion any of our time or braincells playing this sort of thing, or to deciding whether to play this or starfield or baldurs gate? deciding which of these is the real game.

well, let me tell you about the overworld part of mount and blade. i wanted to start my description of mount and blade by saying, its a bit like skyrim, but its not very much like skyrim. your army is a pawn on an overworld map where other pawns represent other armies. you travel between villages collecting more guys for your army. you try to find enemy armies of a smaller size than yours. you run away from enemy armies of a larger size. some times you come around a mountain to find that theres a large army right there that you could not see. some times you raze villages to the ground, or otherwise force them to give you all their stuff. if an army you’re chasing has a higher speed than yours theyll sometimes take you on a wild goose chase for several days into enemy territory until you sandwich them against a coast or a mountain or another army thats trying to get them, or they lead you into a larger enemy army that gets you.

when you enter a battle, you can choose to either go to the battle or just send your guys and simulate the outcome. you mostly only do the battle when the outcome is uncertain and you think your being there might swing it (either because you’re a tactical genius or because the game’s difficulty setting swings battles in your favor when you’re there). this is a nice feature because it lets you decide which battles are important to you and how to spend your time. personally, i try to avoid playing out most battles, get to the looting, but you get to choose.

if you win a battle, you get to take loot and prisoners. then you can go to a larger town to sell those. this is the gratification you were seeking. if you lose a battle, you lose all your shit and you become a prisoner. and it takes you to the overworld map to see yourself dragged around by the enemy army until you get an opportunity to escape or buy your freedom. you get to keep your equipment, your horse, and your hidden wealth, but youll have to build your army back up from just having your one guy. this is the risk. perhaps you savescum to avoid this outcome. but thats the meat and potatoes of the game. you’ll do this for hours and hours until your clan grows large enough to start taking castles and towns, thats the siege game. and even then you’ll continue to do this stuff but now you’re also trying to capture these properties in times of war and retain them to build them up in times of peace.

to win sieges you need to to either find soft castles that everyone’s already besieged a million times, or gather significantly more dudes than are inside a castle, and sit there for a while, vulnerable outside the castle, while other armies are still roaming around. when you’ve sat for a bit you’re allowed to attack the castle. in these battles you’re at a significant disadvantage and you’ll lose more dudes than the defenders. if you sit for a while your wounded guys will come back, but being a siege camp draws a big target on your back. so its sort of a higher risk higher reward version of the normal combat. once you take a castle you leave it in a weakened state, so keeping castles sometimes means you have to revisit them and keep them flipped to your side. so keeping a hold of lands you can grab is sort of the long game.

i guess i should argue that mount and blade is in fact the real game, the ‘good video game’. and that its worth doing this rather than blowing up pipelines or whatever. but youll only like it if you like this sort of thing. i dont really know who has time to do any of this stuff. but noone ever talks about mount and blade, noone else is doing it like mount and blade, and i think its worth your time.

this is my review of doom 2016 on the switch in 2023

have you never played doom 2016 on the switch and you want to know should you buy doom 2016 on the switch in 2023 read this review to find out! 

if youre a switch person,  theres not a lot of options for your first person shooters, and even outside the switch nobody makes singleplayer campaign shooties anymore because its all fortnites and call of duties these days. the last new campaign shooter was titanfall 2 and it was just ok. but you cant play that on the switch! i tried bethesda wolfenstein 2 but the wheelchair level did not get me and i didnt stick with it. so really ive only been able to play borderlands on there. this is pretty dire state for that genre to never really get a foothold on such a longlived system.  if you like doom and quake, you can play ports of every version of doom and quake. me i dont like doom very much but its ok. i wanted to try this doom, the old new one, for a while, and it was on sale so why not

you might be better off getting it in a box, if you can find that for cheap. if you get it on the online store youre gonna need a 64gig sd card to download it! me, i bricked my raspberry pi so i could play doom. so you cannot say im not a hardcore because you know im willing to make these sacrifices and hard choices for gameing. 

which difficulty setting did i play it on? well i tried “hurt me plenty” which means “medium”. remember doom? but you have to shoot the guys too many times and its really annoying and boring to do it! so i put it on “im too young to die daddy” or whatever. which is “easy”. remember doom! maybe ill put it up higher when i unlock more abilities but i dont really like shooting the guys so many times! 

i changed the gun in the settings so it would be in the middle. like in doom!

so youre going to notice some things right away. firstly everythings going to be orange and its going to be hard to see the guys because its like, orange on orange. so look out. secondly all the player movements gonna be a bit floaty and marshmallowy. the ‘mantle’ thing where you jump and climb on platforms feels bad! but maybe youll get the hang of it later. theyll probably give you a double jump or a jetpack or something later. 

on loading screens theres no big tell that its done loading, you have to pay attention and push the button when the tiny prompt comes up. thats doom baby. i think in general the menus couldve used more love. they have a map (like in doom!) but i dont like to look at it!

when you shoot guys you have to punch them as well. when you punch them they glow blue and glowing blue enemies drop health when they die, so you want that. if you punch them to death it does a long animated execution kill. youre supposed to be excited to do this but its pretty annoying. youre gonna have to watch a lot of these. thats just how it is. the punching i dont love it, its a little jarring and its not super clear if youve hit the guy or how effective it was. you often punch past the guy, and youll then have to find them again, if you want to shoot or punch them again.

the pistol you start with, well….. its the start pistol and maybe you can mod it later, its not supposed to be the most effective weapon. but my review of it is that its bad and it feels bad to shoot guys with. pretty soon after that you’ll pick up a shotgun. sadly, again, the starter shotgun isnt super effective, youre going to have to shotgun each guy several times to put them down. youre gonna have to mod it to be good. thats just how it is. you pick up the first weapon mod halfway through the first level. do you want your shotgun to be triple or exploding? youll have to get both of these, it doesnt really matter which you choose first. if you aim down sights you can do it. if you wait a few seconds you can do it again. if you have both mods you can switch between them at will. its a pretty good.

the doomguy character that you inhabit is a mute irreverent vagabond meathead, who communicates mostly through just punch animations and being a destructive force. the animations will be lovingly rendered and casually brutal in a way that feels a bit samey and mealy after a lil while. the game has a story but youre playing as a character whos not really excited about their story and just wants to wreck stuff. theres tilda swinton who wants the demons to win. theres the other guy who doesnt want the demons to win. its hard for you to care about the story when the character does not care. like you can try i guess. youre on your own team which is just you, killing the stuff, and going forwards. you will move from one scene to the next, collecting everything and killing everything else.

ok so this is the fresh new take on doom circa 2016 (i think its the current fresh new take but i havent played doom eternal which i suspect is at least a little bit different. i expect there will be a even newer fresh new take on doom announced soon, and im not sure what thats going to be yet. but this one, the 2016 one, i believe is a well regarded fresh new take on doom by players of dooms and by the gameing press in general) - in this one, you are supposed to feel big and strong and powerful, but also kind of skilly clever, but most important, youre a brawly kinda shooter guy who runs in and fights in the thick of it, you dont  just hide behind stuff and snipe or whatever.  its brawly. you punch guys. you drop into little locked off arenas and shoot and punch guys until there are no more guys. i think this is ok. its at least not the same as every other game, it has its own lean and it works when you lean into it. its not a stealthy snipey and it does not reward that mode of play.

it being a doom means they can do a fresh take on the old shooter gameplay that you dont see so much these days. so it has access keys, and levels with discrete ends, and secrets. so thats kind of fun. it being a fresh new take means they can put in the new shooter gameplay that you do see so much these days. so you have upgrading and checkpoints and achievos. i think its cobbled together pretty good. looking for secrets kinda feels weird and archaic and at odds with the keep-moving-forward pace of its gameplay. but finding secrets is still a fun thing to do in a video game. i found one of the two secrets in the first level. i do not know if i ever intend to play that level again. it does not feel like it contains multitudes or will reward further exploration. 

the second level is the first puzzley level, which is to say, youll have to figure out what to do next to advance. youll need to find keys that are not right in front of you, and youll have to pay attention to environmental hazards that instantly kill you if youre not paying attention. (youll have to reload, and youll have to wait for it to load, and youll reload from a checkpoint, so youll have to kill back up to where you were so you can try the puzzle again). this shows willing, right? we do have more than just a punchy gunshoot, theres this other searchy mode as well.  so um, the searchy bit how do i like it? honestly i dont like it much. so unlike sneaky snipeys, the game requires and rewards this mode of play. it breaks up the arena shooting. it paces the levels a little. but it doesnt offer a lot of choice. youre doing the things or not doing them. youre being killed by the things or not. youre either taking the main route through, or the b route which is largely the same. id like to feel sometimes like ive cleverly gone a better way, but theres not much of that. i think if you did it just right you could use the hazardous environment to kill dudes, but thats really just a different way to kill dudes and not really a transformative different mode of play.

its hard to place this game in a larger schema of sort of scifi horror themed shooters. its doing its own thing by being doom, which is novel in 2016 when most of the shooters arent being doom. its environments would look at home in deus ex or half life or dead space or something, but this game is secure in its lane, as a doom, and doesnt explore the whole space of scifi horror shooting, and there isnt really anything wrong with that, but the space it explores is nevertheless limited. i think if you compare it to a n64 game like goldeneye or perfect dark, it is a pleasant fellow in that company.  it is sometimes a vent crawler but it is not a role playing game, and doesnt want to entertain that sensibility.

anyway im only pretending to be a game journalist and im not sure if youre supposed to write like product reviews or critical analysis or what in these guys. i think if you have a switch and youve not played this game and you want to, you might as well get it while its cheap and the switch is still  a viable platform. i like it better than the wolfenstein but not as much as i’d like to.

dogmestein 95

in this liz ryerson blog post theres mention of 'dogme 95 but for video games' sort of in the style “sometimes people propose a dogme 95 for videogames and that's a little silly, for these reasons” and it got me thinking that it would be fun to do a sort of dogme 95 for videogames, bit of a cheeky dogme 95

so im making a bit of a wolfenstein, at least, i'm telling people im making a wolfenstein, and i kinda like the idea of having a club that makes wolfensteins, like a little wolfenstein makers club.

anyway if youd like to contribute, well, i don't have an explicit list of which videogame things not to do like in vanilla dogme 95, but basically we'd pretend that theres a list of ten-ish explicit rules for things that you must not do in the execution of your video game, in order to be able to claim that it was made to the dogmestein 95 spec (because, when i read the actual dogme 95 list im like, oh this is a nice idea but i dont want to not do these specific things because it seems hard, so you get to maintain your own list of things, but we don't mention the rules explicitly so we can pretend that we are all doing the same things. )

oh and because, game jams theres like a billion of them all the time, this one it starts whenever you read this or whenever you commit to creating your wolfenstein, and you have.... 20 years to do it, you can release at any point in those 20 years, release as early and as often as you like, but once those 20 years are up, that's it. and then... you don't have to tell me that you're doing dogmestein and in fact if you do tell me its frowned upon. but i will assume that any game that comes out in the future that seems to fit these restrictions is actually a dogmestein 95 game. even if you tell me its not. i'll be yeah, sure, wink.

anyway thats a lot of rules for i told you i wasnt going to tell you what the rules are, so you dont have to actually do any of the things i said, but that's the framework. it doesn't have to even really be a wolfenstein. but there are rules and we all secretly agree what they are, and not to discuss them, but they're real.

#also i propose that we pretend that#whatever year it is#actually its 1995

suppose that the matrix is not trans enough

i understand that thats a contentious opinion, but suppose that they werent under any clear restriction from the studio to make an apparently straight movie and they could put… like the thing where switch is a lady in the matrix but a man outside the matrix, like they wanted to, suppose they were allowed to make it like 10% transer, what kind of things could you do?

im kind of dithering back and forth on this because i think somehow its still good if theres a disenfranchised male libertarian read on the film, but there are more clues. so its more, but you still have to read into it a bit. it would be the kind of movie that could enchant a male dipshit and confuse them into becoming trans - like that doesnt have to be the only point to the film but its a window left open

one thing is cast a woman as morpheus. seems really obvious. im not sure why they didnt do this when they recast morpheus for revolutions. why its trans, i think it clearly posits morpheus as a trans elder, in a way that lawrence fishbourne sadly is not (i think its a good performance but very straight) - so you could cast like angela basset or expand the role of the oracle or something and i think that would be transer

color grading. do that bisexual lighting but in pink and blue. i dont think that trans flag was around at the time of the original matrix, but its very matrix and i think its a good subtle clue. honestly were expected to read a bit of retcon into it like with the pills, were supposed to retroactively accept stuff thats not explicit in the film but still intended, think itd be cool if someone did this lighting at the time unknowing, and it was understood now as a sort of delirious oracular trans theme encoded preactively by a canny editor

obviously to make it transer you could just put a little more trans-adjacent subculture shit in. put some lesbian stuff. put some furry stuff - and it has to still read as the matrix but you’d do a lil bit, like maybe neos name is neko. i think that gets you a lot of the way there. 

i think in general make neo more of a failson. like hes too competently living as a man. i think its good move to have smith be a fbi man in the original matrix, but it would be much transer if smith was more of a father figure, even like a stepdad or a gym coach or something

the previous wachowski movie ‘bound’ has all this very aesthetic lesbian shit in it, i think the matrix would read more trans if in the first act there was more of a lesbian vibe to the world that neo feels like an outsider in. like in the fish out of water club chasing trinity bit. i think trinity has a very gay look and this is kind of in there, but, idk what if two girls kissed or something. a bit gayer.

make the body horror stuff hornier. i wont say why.

anyway this is kind of a cursed argument, people will say the matrix is obviously trans or obviously not and noone will prefer this discussion. but i think its a useful conversation. like if you had to make either a movie in the mode of the matrix but more explicitly trans, or if you were making the matrix, how would you make it transer