|
Cyflan posted:Immortal trait is real easy to mod in this game. Indeed it does.
|
#
?
May 7, 2021 23:54
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 3, 2024 02:33 |
|
|
Holy poo poo holy poo poo holy poo poo
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2021 00:54
|
|
|
I don't remember if I've already said this, but I'm loving that the first Crusader Kings III LP on this forum is this
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2021 05:03
|
|
|
In defense of Isekais: They are good for drinking games.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2021 14:23
|
|
|
Mechanics Update: How to Pick a Fight : Hey everyone, it's me, Hanae, or I guess you could say Hanae Prime. When Mr. Morgenstern was first thinking of making this cursed Let's Play, he was going to have my various divinely boosted attributes personified in the forms of various chibis. They'd give me advice, act as a peanut gallery and comment on various events. He also has the art skills of a lemming, so he had to find other people to draw it for him. He did find a volunteer, but various life events happened and drawing chibis for an internet stranger understandably fell to the bottom of the priority list, so they weren't able to be completed in time for the LP's start. However, he liked the chibis enough that he felt like he had to put them somewhere, and I guess here was as good a place as any to use them. Say hello to Martial, everyone.And say thank you to Crescent Crossbow, who volunteered to make the chibis. She can be found on Twitter at @CrescentCrossb1.  :'Sup.: Martial here is my inner sword lesbian and an expert in the fields of violence and carnage. She's here to walk you through the basics of starting a fight and taking people's stuff in Crusader Kings 3.: It's a drat important thing too. Waging war is one of two ways you get more land, the other being inheritance which is a) harder to get and b) is for pansies. Anyways, we're going to be using this guy as a demonstration. If you're a veteran of Crusader Kings, you're probably familiar with this guy. He was the de facto tutorial character of CK2 and the official tutorial character of CK3.  He's an excellent starting character for newbies in a lot of ways. First, he's probably the strongest lord in Ireland. He controls two provinces himself and has a vassal. No one else in Ireland controls this much land, so you aren't in a lot of danger. He's also got a good set of traits and stats for a conquering king. 21 martial is pretty drat strong. Of course it's not as good as our 81 martial, but literally no one in the world has anything close to that. High martial is obviously pretty good for someone who's looking to start fights, but what exactly does it do? First, it increases the amount of levies by 2% for every point of Martial you have. Levies represent the various peasants you conscript into your army. They'll make up the bulk of your forces for most of the game unless you really go ham on Men-at-Arms and they'll do the bulk of the dying. They're not exactly fierce fighters, but they're better than nothing and you'll always need warm bodies for a siege. It also increases your Advantage in battle, which increases the damage your troops do by +2% for every Advantage. We'll go over Advantage in a bit more detail once we actually get a battle, but for now just know that Hanae's Martial skill of 81 gives us a 162% damage increase. That's a lot.  Our first target is this guy, Earl Muiredach Mordha of Desmond. He is, in military terms, a bitch. He has a pathetic Martial stat of 3 and on top of that he has the Craven trait, represented by the chicken icon in his personality trait slots. This not only decreases his Martial and Prowess stats (we'll go over Prowess in a bit), but it also means people don't like as much for being a wimp. He also only has 312 levies, so we outmatch him easily in military capacity. We also have a bunch of allies we can call in since we also married a few women for alliances.  Seeing as the war is already a slam-dunk, we declare war on him. To do that, we right click on him, which opens a set of interactions we have on him. Obviously, this is going to be the "Declare War" option.  So anyways, in Crusader Kings, you just can't declare war on people for no reason, especially if you're a Feudal ruler like we are right now. You need something called a "Casus Belli". What's that mean again, Hanae Prime? : It's Latin. It means "Case for War".: Thank you. Anyways, we need some kind of reason to beat him up, even if that reason is "I have Piety to burn and your land looks really good." (That's the Conquest CB) Unfortunately we can't do that because we need to have a Tribal government to use that. However, we do have a perfectly fine CB we can use on him: the De Jure CB. Prime, what's De Jure mean? It's another goddamn Latin phrase isn't it?: That is correct.: Westerners and their loving Latin. Anyways, let's take a look at a couple of maps. Here's what our current situation looks like in the Political Mapmode.  Here's what it looks like in the De Jure Duchies mapmode. You'll notice that Desmond is part of Munster in this mapmode. This means that it's part of the Duchy of Munster, and since we're the Duke of Munster, it's ours by right. : Note that since this is a De Jure war and this is his only province, we'll just be making him our vassal instead of taking his land directly. This means that while he'll still own that land, he'll be giving some of his income and troops to us in tribute. If we were to use a Claim CB or if he owned land outside the De Jure Duchy of Munster, we'd take all of that land for ourselves. However, we do not have a claim on his land and as we'll soon find out, just fabricating claims can be quite expensive for a small ruler like us. Using the De Jure CB is easier and faster for us to do. We can always just take that land for ourselves later, but that process is outside the scope of this update.You should also know that there are many CBs in Crusader Kings, such as the Holy War CB, which is used for fighting heathens. They all have their different requirements and rewards. Figuring out how to effectively use CBs is a big part of Crusader Kings gameplay.  : Before we get the ball rolling, we can call upon our allies, the relevant being... oh god what the gently caress is that name? Are those words? The hell kind of English is this?: It's Welsh. It's kind of a difficult language for non-speakers to read.: You don't say. Anyways, it doesn't matter since this guy won't join us anyways, mostly since he just doesn't like us that much. It doesn't matter, since we already have this one in the bag.  When we order our troops to engage his army, we get this pop-up over where the province the battle will take place in. This pop-up is honestly fairly self-explanatory. Green modifiers are good, red ones are bad. We have a better general and more troops. We also have a special general trait.  As for our leader trait, it's uh, not particularly useful for our situation. If our opponent were some variety of filthy heathen, this would be very useful. As he's a member of our religion, it's not. Anyways, battle sites also have their own advantages. Our opponent knows we have to attack his capital, so he'll sit there on some nice defensive terrain, along with defensive buildings.  And here we go. This is the battle screen. You don't control troops directly in Crusader Kings like you would in Total War. You just send your guys to the field and hope for the best.  Let's break down the battle screen. In the red box we have a battle progress bar. This shows who's winning the battle. The more your color controls the bar, the more you're winning. One of the most nerve racking things in this game is watching that thing in a key battle where the odds are even. One of the most frustrating things is watching it go back towards your side of the bar when you clearly should be winning. In the yellow bar underneath is our troop counts. We have 857 troops and they have 312 troops. It also shows how many have fled the battle. In the orange box to the left of the battle progress bar is the terrain indicator. This shows what terrain we're fighting on. We're fighting on the Wetlands terrain, which gives Advantage to the defenders and increases casualties to the losing side. The two gentlemen in the beige(?) boxes are the opposing generals. The green box shows the battle phase. The CK3 Wiki posted:The light green boxes show the Advantage battle rolls. These can change as the battle goes on and the commanders attempt to gain an advantage over each other. The pink boxes show what kind of Men-at-Arms the opposing sides have. You know, if we had any. Below that are our Knights. Knights are a special kind of combat unit. They come from our actual characters and each knight's strength is dependent on the Prowess. Bigger Prowess means bigger killyness. The light blue boxes with the number in them show the generals' leadership, which is based on their martial stat and a few other modifiers. The blue box shows the coat of arms of the attacker and defender, and can serve as a usual reminder of who's getting the warscore in a major multi-army battle. Finally underneath that is any leader traits the commanders might have. But what's that +12, you ask?  That's the advantage we have. Here you can see all the modifiers that go into calculating advantage. It's a good thing we've got a good commander! Now if you’ve just come in from Crusader Kings 2, you’ll note that this is a lot simpler than in CK2. Some complain that this is an oversimplification, and that CK2 did it much better. These people are liars and snakes. CK2’s combat system was a goddamn incomprehensible mess that was never explained in the game.  We win that battle and in the next one we get extremely lucky and capture the enemy war leader and his heir. Capturing the enemy war leader automatically wins the war, as you can now negotiate with them at the point of a sword. Even if we'd just captured his heir it would have won us the war. See, wars in Crusader Kings are decided by Warscore. Warscore is your accumulated successful occupations, victories, and defeats. Each battle and siege will give or take warscore depending on the outcome. Once you get 100% warscore, you can impose your terms on the enemy. However, taking your enemies' heir prisoner gives you a whopping 50% warscore boost. We can go home without having to sit through a months-long siege.  After that, we assign our Bishop to fabricate claims on one of the neighboring counties. This will give us a claim on the county and thus a Casus belli. In CK2 you would have had your chancellor do this, instead of your bishop. Additionally, instead of having this work using RNG, it works via a timer. This was a much needed change, because in CK2 your Chancellor could sit there forever, never making the claim you need.  : It's also important to make sure you hit this button once the war ends. Armies are expensive and you don't want to be footing that cost any longer than you have to. It's not like the author has ever forgotten to do this until a year later. No, he has not. Whenever you assign a Councilor to a task, you can see an icon on the province they've been assigned to, along with a progress bar.  : We also ransom a bunch of random people we captured. Capturing prisoners and ransoming them is an excellent way of funding a war effort. How much money you get depends on the rank of the person you captured, so ransoming a duke nets you a lot more money than some random dude. We can use this money to hire actual professional soldiers instead of peasants with sharp sticks. Behold the Bowmen, our first Men at Arms. MaA are much better fighters than levies, if a bit more expensive. In the release version of CK3, you could buff MaA to absurd levels, but that's been dialed back a bit. Bowmen get a combat advantage in forests, hills, and taiga. There aren't a lot of those of Ireland, seeing as in CK3 Ireland is mostly Plains, Wetlands, and Mountains, but the more important thing Bowmen do is counter Skirmisher units, which small AI counties love to pick. When a MaA counters another, they reduce their damage proportional to the size difference of the countering Men-at-Arms.  About a year or so later our bishop finishes his bribing and we get a claim on Ossory. We'll be going to war shortly. Also that 72 gold is a lot of money right now. Like at least a year or two worth of income.  We also get this handy event from our Martial focus. We pick up the Siege Engineer Leader trait, which speeds up the siege progress siege engines make. We don't have any of those yet, but we will eventually.  We also finish off the Strategist lifestyle in the perk tree, which gives us the Strategist trait, which grants us 1 diplomacy, 3 martial, 25% more fatal casualties dealt to the enemy, and removes the Advantage penalty for crossing rivers. By the way, Prime, you need to get working on that Lifestyle tree update. : It's going to be so long though.: Just do it you big baby. Anyways, here's our next target, Domnall of Ossory. Despite his higher martial stats, he doesn't have that many more troops than the last guy, which is probably due to different buildings that he started out with.  With our new MaA, this battle should go extremely smoothly.  You can now see our shiny MaA at work. I'm not going into all the nerd stuff of the stats and stuff, so I'll have the wiki do it for me again. CK3 Wiki posted: We whomp him pretty good, but we don't capture him, so now we have to go and get him from his castle.  Sieges take a long rear end time, especially if you don't bring siege equipment. Guess what we don't have. MaA can also boost siege progress with the Sapper lifestyle perk, which we have, but for some reason it's not showing??? Whatever.  Siege events can also help speed up a siege or drop a deadly disease on your soldiers. It's all in the hands of RNGesus.  Anyways, we take the city and since this was a Claim war instead of a de jure war, we take the province directly for ourselves. However, just because we took it the county doesn't mean we actually have everyone's loyalty. We'll be getting a penalty to taxes and levies until our marshal beats sense into the peasants, represented by the county's Control. : This, by the way, is the reason I took the Authority lifestyle focus in the story. The other lifestyles are redundant with the incredible bonii I get from the Isekai Cheat trait, but Authority gives a boost to your Control growth in all your provinces, very useful for when expanding rapidly.: Did you just use the term "bonii"?: Yes.: What the gently caress is a "bonii"?: It's the plural of "bonus".: I thought that was "bonuses".: Well that's kinda right but in the original Latin it would be -: NERD! Anyways, we pick up our first siege engines, the Mangonels. These will increase our siege speed by 50%. The less time you spend sieging, the better.  And hey, we're going to war with Leinster again.  Remember this guy? He's got a friend this time, including his son, Murchad, since family members can form alliances with each other. Back in the early days of CK2, all dynasty members had an alliance with each other, which made attacking the Karlings of the 867 startdate a pain in the rear end, since they controlled all of central Europe. And that's why there's so many "gently caress Karlings" memes in the CK fandom.  Unfortunately for him, we've also got a friend. The Duke of Lausitz isn't going to be much help, but the Duke of Gwynedd is right across the sea.  He could take on Diarmait's allies by himself.  And this time the Duke's willing to show up. What a nice guy.  You'll notice something new in this battle. Our bowmen have a green outline on them, while Diarmait's light infantry has a red outline. This means the bowmen are countering the light infantry, greatly reducing their damage output.  You can now see our siege equipment at work. Loch Garman should fall shortly.  And there we go.  A few more things before we go. We didn't get a chance to see these, but another option for soldiers is Mercenary Companies. Mercenary Companies are hired for a lump sum and then you get to do whatever you wish with them for three years, after which you either pay the sum again or they're let go. Obviously only one person can hire a particular Mercenary Company at a time, so if you had a lot of money and were feeling dickish you could hire all the local Mercenary Companies to stop your opponent from hiring any. In CK2 you paid these guys monthly and very bad things could happen if you weren't able to pay the money. Like, “lose your entire kingdom to rampaging mercenaries” bad. : On that note, always check your opponent's bank account before going to war so you don't get surprised by a thousand angry sellswords. : Finally, Holy Orders are a unique type of Mercenary Company. They can only be hired when at war with religions that are considered Evil or Hostile to yours. Instead of gold, you pay piety. However, if you are a patron of that holy order, you can hire them for free. I actually don't know how to become a patron of a holy order without founding one, but in any case since we are Insular Christians we don't have one yet. Holy Orders become more powerful the more holdings they control, and they can get more holdings via special events. The more you know!Anyways, that's all for today. The author's got to watch some anime involving a smartphone or something. Sounds pretty bad to me! Mr.Morgenstern fucked around with this message at 23:52 on May 13, 2021 |
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 23:44
|
|
|
I honestly wish battles in Paradox games were a bit more interactive rather than just a dice throw, at least getting to set some tactics or something prior to the fight.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 00:04
|
|
|
I was getting a craving to pick up Crusader Kings III again, but it’s better for my budget to wait until next month to sign up for Xbox PC Games pass again. So, I came to the forums wondering if anyone had finally made a LP. This is the best wish on a monkey’s paw I have ever made.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 06:19
|
|
|
The guy beat up and made a vassal will be a bit mad about losing his independent rule but not too badly since you were the de jure lord, Another way to get more land is to get people to willingly become your vassals, generally you need to be their de jure liege for it to work but in some cases you can pick up lone counts to add to your court.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 06:39
|
|
|
“Art-related delays necessitating a total rework of the presentation” isn’t the most devastating manifestation of the LP curse, but I’d say it counts. Fortunately it’s a good long way from whatever this is: https://mobile.twitter.com/FunkyFujoshi/status/1392185055573913604
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 13:33
|
|
|
... Oh gods, we get body-brain That aside, this is amazingly close to the source... substance that is Isekai, and I am fully seized and ready to follow this wherever it leads. bibliosabreur posted:“Art-related delays necessitating a total rework of the presentation” isn’t the most devastating manifestation of the LP curse, but I’d say it counts. I... Am going to give it props for the dark joke, but at the same time what the actual gently caress, people? 
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 18:05
|
|
|
I'm curious to know what Hannae's Domain Limit is.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 18:55
|
|
|
SirPhoebos posted:I'm curious to know what Hannae's Domain Limit is. I think it's about 22.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 19:33
|
|
|
Mr.Morgenstern posted:I think it's about 22.  I think that's higher than the number of counties in Ireland.AtomikKrab posted:The guy beat up and made a vassal will be a bit mad about losing his independent rule but not too badly since you were the de jure lord, And with a 16 Diplomacy, he's almost certainly the most qualified candidate to be Chancellor. Being on your council will mollify getting his rear end kicked. SirPhoebos fucked around with this message at 20:34 on May 14, 2021 |
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 20:31
|
|
|
SirPhoebos posted:
It'll also put him in a better position to try and betray you, but he'll get over it
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 20:39
|
|
|
Xelkelvos posted:It'll also put him in a better position to try and betray you, but he'll get over it And if he doesn't, you can throw him in the dungeon.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2021 21:06
|
|
|
This is probably a little late to the party, but El Cid Campeador showing up in this thread led me to discover the etymology involved. That "El Cid" probably came from "al-Sayyid", i.e. "the lord", I already knew. But whence "Campeador"?Wikipedia posted:Rodrigo Díaz was recognized with the honorary title of "Campeador" during his lifetime, as is evidenced by a document that he signed in 1098, which he signed in the Latinized expression, "Ego Rudericus Campidoctor" or "I Rodrigo Campeador." The title "Campeador" comes from the Latin "Campidoctor," literally meaning "Doctor of the Field" but can be translated as "Master of the Battlefield." Holy poo poo. The chosen husbando of our thread, Spain's national hero, earned himself a title that translates to "the Lord, Master of Battle". 
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2021 18:41
|
|
|
Yeah, I got an honorary Ph.D. in murderin', no big deal.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2021 19:09
|
|
|
Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:Yeah, I got an honorary Ph.D. in murderin', no big deal. It's called Murderology (or was it Murderonomy?)
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2021 19:39
|
|
|
Isekai Review: In Another World With My Smartphone In Another World With My Smartphone was written by Patora Fuyuhara and illustrated by Eiji Usatsuka, who also illustrated The Familiar of Zero, an anime that some of you might also be familiar with. It began its publication in 2013 as a web novel, and was released as a light novel in 2015. In 2017, it was adapted into an anime , which is the version that I watched. It was definitely an experience. 99% of the show is the most bog standard isekai you could imagine. This is a series that has carefully sanded down every single possible interesting world building detail you could think of. We’re talking a main character who’s basically a platonic ideal of a self-insert; a cast of heroines who can only really be told apart by how horny they are for the hero. And the cheapest animation you could think of. And yet, when you aren’t expecting it, the show gets completely buckwild. You go back and replay a scene. Did that twelve year old really just bring up having children with the MC? Did they reuse entire names and roles from the Sengoku Jidai for their Not! Japan?. It’s moments like these that kept me hooked, for lack of a better phrase. I needed to see what crazy-rear end thing the show would try to slip by me. Still, even with those slight slivers of insanity, I could only get myself to watch eight and a half episodes of this garbage. Anyways, let’s meet our cast of characters. Cast of Characters  This is our hero, Touya Mochizuki. I forgot his name for most of the series. I can’t think of a single interesting character trait of his. He’s never shown any emotion other than embarrassment or vague happiness. I don’t recall any sorrow, anger, or anything interesting coming from him. He also looks bland, like a mayo on white bread sandwich. This is because he isn’t a character in any real sense. He’s just an empty vessel for the audience to fill. His only real motivation is to be nice, as far as I can tell. He helps out random strangers with their problems, even entire kingdoms, because he can solve them with a combination of ridiculous magic and his super phone. I’m not even joking, he obliterates an entire army of undead in like five seconds.  This is Elze Silhoueska (gotta love those fake Western names), the first of the wives. I can’t remember anything super interesting about her. I think she might be a little competitive? Her role in combat is to punch things.  On the left is her sister, Linze. Lizne is, uh, gentler than her sister, but nothing she did stood out to me that much. She’s the first mage in the party.  This is Yae Kokonoe, the third wife, and the only character I kinda liked. Her personality is mostly liking to eat and being a brave warrior, but her design was the most tolerable to me. She's a Not-Japanese samurai girl who's good with a sword. That's fine in my book.  Some might say it’s immoral to hate a child. But I loving hate Yumina. No other character filled me with as much rage as this horny twelve year old who makes no bones about the fact that she wants to gently caress Touya. gently caress you, Fuyuhara, for writing a child like this. Anyways, I think she’s good at magic and bows or something, who cares.  Not going to lie, I started to lose the last of my patience with this show by the time Leena showed up. She’s some sort of 600 year old fairy woman. Good with magic. Apparently horny.  Supposedly the last of the haremettes introduced in the show, but I had quit by then. Notable for being loving ten years old. gently caress. What a goddamn mess. Let’s get to the, well, what the show calls a plot. We’re mostly going over whatever pictures I managed to take of the anime, because frankly, the overarching story is almost nonexistent. The Plot(?)  So here is how our story begins. Our Hero, Toyota Mochkizuki, is dead. He was killed when God accidentally dropped a lightning bolt on him, and God feels really bad about it. Toyotomi, for his part, isn’t really bothered about this. You know, mistakes happen sometimes.  God informs Tomothy that he can’t resurrect him in his original world, so the best he could do is send him to a magical world. He also asks if he can do anything else for Toronto, but Tom Bombadil says he just wants to be able to use his smart phone. God assents to this and sends him over.  Oh yeah, he’ll also be able to use magic.  Immediately after landing in the other world, Tomborino is accosted by a merchant who gives him 20 gold in exchange for his modern clothing. Considering that literal dragon parts go for 10 gold coins in this world, this is probably a lot of money. So right off the bat, all of his monetary issues are cleared.  Afterwards, he finds a pair of girls being accosted by some thugs. These are his first two wives, Elze and Linze Silhoueska.  This is where we find out that God also gave Tomato a bunch of boosts to his physical attributes, because He’s just that nice of a guy. So Tolonski effortlessly beats down the thugs, and the girls are completely grateful to him.  Then it’s time for monster hunting. Just about every fantasy Isekai world has RPG mechanics, and this includes RPG quests.  There’s a fight scene with some wolves and it’s not that exciting. We learn that Elze punches people and Linze uses magic.  Anyways, Tom Marvolo Riddle asks the girls to teach him magic, and it turns out that he’s super good at it. He’s just overflowing with mana points.  Not only that, while most people can only use one of the six elements of magic, Tombombski can use all six! What a super awesome and cool dude. He basically can use any spell that’s shown or taught to him, even the super rare and awesome Null magic spells.  Later we meet another one of the wives, Yae. She’s introduced beating up a bunch of thugs and honestly, she’s alright. She’s from Eashen, aka Not!Japan.  Oh, yeah, I did actually see Sushie in the episodes I watched, but she’s just a noble girl early on, not one of the Wives. Toledo and co. save her from monsters or something and get a reward out of it. I’m not sure, I only put as much effort into watching this show as the creators did into making it.  That’s the correct response to an Isekai hero, miss. Anyways, this is a Beastwoman, an Isekai staple. She also introduces one of my least favorite tropes in fantasy writing “Racism as Written by People Who Don’t Get Racism”. See, humans in this world don’t like Beastpeople and act kinda like dicks to them all the time. Not Tomomily and his wives, though. They’re cool with Beastpeople. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Is this one of Tobaro’s wives? No, she actually isn’t. Tobias may have literal pre-teens in his harem, but he doesn’t have any catgirls or foxgirls in there. Maybe he is racist against them after all…  Tomsk and friends go to the ancient ruins to look for treasure or something (fantasy settings are just lousy with ancient ruins) and run into a killer robot.  Oh no! Elze got stabbed! She’s dying! Actually, wait, she’s fine two seconds later. It was just a flesh wound. I’m dead serious. There’s all this blood coming out of Elze one frame and in the next one, there’s no wound, but it’s back a few frames later. they beat the killer robot and move on.  So here we move on to something interesting. So the Kingdom our Heroes are in, Belfast or something, is having a bit of a political crisis. The monarch has been poisoned and it’s not looking good. See, the current king is a bit of a reformist and is opening trade with the Kingdom of Mismede, the Beastperson kingdom. However, most of the nobility is racist and wants the trade to stop. So it looks like they've been poisoning him so that his daughter Yumina inherits, and then they can force her into a political marriage. This means the racist nobles will be able to seize control of foreign policy and stop the reforms.   Racist nobles like this guy on the top. He’s blaming the Mismedian ambassador (the fox woman on the bottom) for the poisoning. Just look at this guy. I’m convinced this is a toad wearing a man suit. Anyways, it’s up to our heroes to find an antidote, save the king’s life, and find the real culprit behind the poisoning.  Haha! Psych! Toblanto just walks in and uses his super magic to cure the poison. Crisis averted! We almost had a plot for a second there.  What about finding the culprit, you ask? Easy! Toramba can just use his super awesome magic to find where the poison was. Who could the culprit be though? Is it the cute fox woman or the goblin man?  (Is this… Amogus?)  In a shocking twist, it was the goblin man. Who could have possibly guessed?  Yumina is now super in love with Tozambique, and she wants to marry him. Her parents are super cool with this, because 12 year old girls are very good judges of who to marry.  Actually, it’s because she has the Mystic Eyes of Intuition, which allows her to see the character of other people. It’s never explained why she didn’t use this to rat out the goblin man noble. Frankly, I can’t remember if they even brought up the Mystic Eyes again.  Tolaska is a little disturbed at people trying to force this twelve year old on him, but it’s mostly portrayed as him being an old fuddy-duddy who doesn’t understand the value of love regardless of where it comes from.   God gives him a phone call later and tells him it’s ok to marry her along with other women. Stop being a Japanese killjoy, man. Embrace wild and exotic traditions of having multiple women belonging to you and you alone.  Also Tobraska decides to learn summoning, and since he’s such an awesome spellcaster with unlimited mana, he summons the super awesome Divine Beast Kohaku, who is blown away by his super awesome mana well and is his loyal servant now.  There’s also this insane sidequest where they go to an abandoned mansion full of slimes and discover it was the work of a researcher who was studying how to create a harem of slime girls who’d gently caress him to death. He actually succeeded and truth be told I find this random dead pervert to be a far more interesting character than the rest of the cast combined. Shine on, you crazy diamond.  As the result of this whole adventure, Tortoise and his wives now have an entire mansion.  Complete with servants, including those from the deadly and terrifying Maids’ Guild. I’m not an expert on medieval history, but I don’t think they had Maids’ Guilds in the Middle Ages.  Also I just need to share this episode summary. I love how the dragon they fight on the way to Mismede is described as an orthodox dragon, as opposed to a Presbyterian or Anabaptist dragon.  I also need to share this image, which is one of the funniest images in the series. Toothsome is using his portal magic (yeah, he has a super awesome portal spell he can use to transport himself to places he’s been instantly), but it just looks like he replaced his body with a sunflower. Anyways, they beat this dragon and head over to Mismede, where Townsperson meets the king, this guy.  Honestly, he was one of the few likable characters. He’s just a boisterous beastman who loves to wrassle. He gets into a duel with Toxicology and reveals his secret Null Magic spell, Accel. Accel lets him move at super speed.  Naturally, Tobacco can immediately use the spell after seeing it used just once. It’s now time for a lightning fast duel.  What follows next is incredible. You see that bit of light there? That’s supposed to be the two clashing at superhuman speeds. That light just fades in and out across the arena. That’s the fight. Anyways, Toboggan obviously humiliates the King in their duel, and the King thinks he’s super awesome.  Here’s Leen, the next wife. She’s a fairy woman and the court magician of Mismede, and teaches Touchstone how to use the spell Program, which lets the user give magic commands to inanimate objects.  Naturally, Tomahawk uses this to make a loving GUN, along with a spell called Model, which he can use to make just about anything he wants as long as he has the materials.  He can also turn it into a gunsword, because why the hell not.  He gets to use the gun shortly thereafter on a couple of mysterious ninjas with his harmless rubber bullets. Note that rubber bullets IRL still loving hurt like hell and can kill you.  Anyways, it turns out the ninjas were just the maids at the mansion keeping an eye on Yumina. I’m not sure if them being ninjas is ever brought up again.  We also get this wonderful shot of white people eating spicy food.  We move onto our next kingdom, Eashen. Eashen is just like Japan. Almost too much like Japan. Like, the names ARE THE GODDAMN SAME YOU LAZY PIECES OF UNORIGINAL poo poo HOW DID THIS GET loving PAST AN EDITOR GODDA- Ahem. It’s time for Not!Japan and the gang discovers that Yae’s daimyo, Tokugawa Ieyasu, is under attack from the- *checks notes* Takeda clan.  This loving show. This assfuck pissdrop of a show. I don’t know why this was the breaking point for me, but it was. But I kept going for half an episode. It turns out that the Takeda clan are using zombies to attack Ieyasu, which might make for a gripping and thrilling holdout mission, except Toadstool takes all of them out with a single orbital bombardment. Yes, you heard that right. Tortilla can use his smartphone’s GPS to auto-locate all the enemy soldiers, combine it with his magic spells, and then eliminate every single one simultaneously. This is where I gave up. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t stand this boring slog of a show. Even all the occasional flashes of insanity weren’t enough to make me stick with it.   Here are the summaries for the last two episodes of the show, not including the beach episode. Look at them. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it anymore. Concluding Remarks Watching this show made me a fundamentally worse person. It is one of the most solipsistic series I have ever seen. Every conflict, every worldbuilding element, every character, exists solely to jack off Toilet Mochiball. He literally can do no wrong and solves every problem instantly, while onlookers gawk in awe. In a genre already filled with naked power fantasy, this series stands out for its MC masturbation. Watching this show was a goddamn chore. What stood out to me the most was the blandness. There isn’t a single original idea to be found here, other than the slime girl harem dude. None of the haremettes seemed to have any kind of interesting character to them. The use of the smartphone could have been interesting if it was Tourist’s only tool, but combined with his absurd magical abilities, it’s just a way for him to look even more awesome. I looked online to see how the series progresses, and it just gets even more masturbatory from here. Not only does Our Hero get an entire secondary harem of ancient biomechanical sexbots, he also becomes a duke and then the most powerful person politically on the entire continent. The most aggravating thing about this show, however, is that it managed to get an anime at all. I haven’t read the light novel or the web novel but I have little hope they are better than this. This is the most bland series I have come across yet, but apparently enough people liked it that they made an anime of it. I checked the Crunchyroll ratings. 4-5/5 ratings for the episodes. People actually loving like this show. Perhaps the elements that make it so boring to me are what makes it enjoyable for them. There’s nothing challenging. There’s nothing that makes you think. Nothing to disturb the pure and empty fluff. Am I really going to judge them for this? Can’t people just like what they like? Yes. I can judge them for this. Get some actual loving taste. Anyways, next time we’re going to look at an isekai that’s actually good. An isekai whose setting is incredibly evocative and alien in many ways. An isekai with an actually interesting cast of heroes and villains. An isekai where you reach Heaven through violence.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2021 20:46
|
|
|
Mr.Morgenstern posted:Anyways, next time we’re going to look at an isekai that’s actually good. An isekai whose setting is incredibly evocative and alien in many ways. An isekai with an actually interesting cast of heroes and villains. An isekai where you reach Heaven through violence. You're gonna do a Lets Play of Morrowind? (Morrowind totally fits the isekai mold, in spirit if not in technical fact  )
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2021 21:03
|
|
|
Oh. Yeah. If there's any argument that Isekai should not exist, Smartphone is a really good way to start. I tried reading the manga and it's just as bad as the anime. It's horrible, bland, and a complete waste of time.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2021 22:09
|
|
|
I have never understood why these shows gravitate towards bland blobs as main characters. I get the idea is to have people imagine themselves as the main character or some crap like that, but who on earth imagines themselves as having no personality?
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2021 23:34
|
|
|
I actually like Smartphone, despite it being the most generic isekai you could possibly create. What I love most about it is that they never even try to pretend to have any tension. Like you see all the other shows with OP MCs and it's like "Oh my god it's the ultra fuckinator demon who has been sealed away for 5000 years! Can our hero possibly win?". Smartphone doesn't even let you finish the question before it answers with an affirmative "Yes." Yes, the MC can win. He can do it easily, in fact. He can do loving anything, and the show never lets you forget it. I admire the sheer commitment to the bit to just say "No, this terminal illness will not be a problem, nor will this ancient dragon or literally anything else." It's basically just a slice-of-life show, though admittedly not a great one since slice of life shows live and die by the quality of their characters. Right now in the light novels (I am not even halfway up-to-date) the MC is the ruler of a small nation and is building an army of giant loving mechs and training his soldiers to pilot them in order to combat the threat from another world. Truly deranged stuff, but that's what makes it such a comfy read, if that makes any sense at all.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2021 23:53
|
|
|
I'm stealing the "Maids' Guild" idea, but the rest of that is... 
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 00:03
|
|
|
Things I like about Smartphone Chibi Kohaku is very cute I really like the World Map of all things. There are a lot of countries and its a big world Build your own Gundam
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 01:06
|
|
|
Haven't heard that Smartphone was this bad, but I have heard that it has since been outdone a few times as the worst you can get in the genre. Not naming anything yet, just in case OP feels like stepping on those particular land mines. 
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 11:29
|
|
|
Somewhere else on the forums (Book Bran?) I discovered the existence of LitRPGs, which I lump into the same general category as these stories together with children’s literature about being stuck in video games of various kinds. What struck me about them, apart from the atrocious plots, vacuous characterisation and general ewww factor, was that there is virtually no descriptive writing. Just (badly written) dialogue and a bare minimum level of functional text to explain what is happening. It’s like the RyanAir of fiction. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the books these isekai stories are based on are the same.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 17:30
|
|
|
Beefeater1980 posted:Somewhere else on the forums (Book Bran?) I discovered the existence of LitRPGs, which I lump into the same general category as these stories together with children’s literature about being stuck in video games of various kinds. quote:I want to live my entire life surrounded by books. If I can, I want to spend the rest of my life in a dark, but well-ventilated archive, where the books are shielded from the sun’s damaging rays. I’d spend every second I could reading, inseparable from my books, until my skin became ghostly pale, my body weakened from lack of exercise, and I forgot so many meals that I had to be pulled away by force. I want to die buried in books. I don’t want to quietly pass on in bed! Being smothered to death by a mountain of books would make me so unbelievably happy.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 18:12
|
|
|
LJN92 posted:I have never understood why these shows gravitate towards bland blobs as main characters. I get the idea is to have people imagine themselves as the main character or some crap like that, but who on earth imagines themselves as having no personality? It's not that people imagine themselves as bland no-personality ciphers, it's that in the absence of a contradictory personality, they can project their own personality onto the character.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 18:46
|
|
|
SoundwaveAU posted:I actually like Smartphone, despite it being the most generic isekai you could possibly create. What I love most about it is that they never even try to pretend to have any tension. Like you see all the other shows with OP MCs and it's like "Oh my god it's the ultra fuckinator demon who has been sealed away for 5000 years! Can our hero possibly win?". Smartphone doesn't even let you finish the question before it answers with an affirmative "Yes." Reminds me of when I was going through Magical Girl Site. A truly awful show, but it had so many bonkers plot points and sequences that I was completely hooked, despite its wretchedness.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 21:16
|
|
|
It involves someone from our world getting sent to a fantasy world, so I guess it counts. A very good story I've read is There is no Epic Loot here, only Puns. Here is a link: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/there-is-no-epic-loot-here-only-puns-dungeon.590739/
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 22:57
|
|
|
When we get the next update, can we get a peak at the situation in England?
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2021 17:17
|
|
|
Mr.Morgenstern posted:
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2021 11:26
|
|
|
Anime must be stopped before it ever comes to be
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2021 11:55
|
|
|
I am not okay with this. Thank you for asking.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2021 19:03
|
|
|
This loving rules, I an nourished by your suffering and also by Ireland's growth. Regarding how old isekai is, the oldest "this is definitely an isekai" I can think of is the story of Jesus of Nazareth, who was isekai'd to Earth and then isekai'd again to Hell, both times using his literal godly powers to fix humanity. I think there's arguments for some classical greek texts being at least partially isekai e.g. Orpheus and Eurydice, and the verb tenses are a little fucky but I think the Cannibal Hymn is a sort of isekai where Unas of Egypt gets isekai'd to heaven where he eats the gods. Mr.Morgenstern posted:Anyways, next time we’re going to look at an isekai that’s actually good. An isekai whose setting is incredibly evocative and alien in many ways. An isekai with an actually interesting cast of heroes and villains. An isekai where you reach Heaven through violence. I'm very excited to see some people get introduced for the first time.
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2021 01:22
|
|
|
Flesnolk posted:Anime must be stopped before it ever comes to be Anime in general, and the Isekai subgenre in particular, is more or less a live, empirical proof of Sturgeon's Law in action; 90+ % of it is absolute poo poo, and with the sheer volume being produced, it's no wonder that it ends up where it does. Coupled with the... ideosyncracies of the power-fantasy and wish-fulfillment elements of the base target demographic of the Isekai-genre, and a lot of it ends up being thoroughly heinous, yet offensively cookiecutter bland at the same time.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2021 16:18
|
|
|
TLM3101 posted:Anime in general, and the Isekai subgenre in particular, is more or less a live, empirical proof of Sturgeon's Law in action; 90+ % of it is absolute poo poo, and with the sheer volume being produced, it's no wonder that it ends up where it does. Coupled with the... ideosyncracies of the power-fantasy and wish-fulfillment elements of the base target demographic of the Isekai-genre, and a lot of it ends up being thoroughly heinous, yet offensively cookiecutter bland at the same time. The Webnovel side of isekai is even more egregious since there's even less investment needed by the publisher to put it out to an audience and get revenue from it. They more or less fall at the same tier as a lot of LNs but the cost and effort to publish and distribute is so extremely low compared to manga that the publishers almost take a quantity over quality approach. Those that are actually popular (not necessarily good) get to be adapted into a manga and later turned into an investment vehicle (an anime).
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2021 19:44
|
|
|
 Ever since I started working on this LP, my Amazon book recommendations have become very strange. Thanks Businessman in Another World.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2021 00:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 3, 2024 02:33 |
|
|
Maybe it thinks you're a certain type of Paradox game player. You know, the ones that unironically support totally not Fascist ideologies from their favorite mods?
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2021 01:36
|
|