Author: minceandskirlie

Writer, poet, musician, and sometime IT professional in the North East of Scotland.
Gaming, Thoughts

Baldurs Gate

minceandskirlie

It’s a couple of months since Baldurs Gate 3 released at the start of August. A game that I had accepted that I was interested in but not really excited to play, pre-release, then as the release hype hit and the reviews started to land I very quickly decided I needed to be on board. The FOMO was real.

Well that was a decision I am very glad I made. What a game. My only regret is that I don’t have as much time as I want to put into it. In the weeks since I made the purchase I’ve put about 25 hours in and am still on Act 1. Barely a dent in the overall story really. Without using my laptop to stream from my gaming rig while I sit on the sofa in front of the TV, trying to still be sociable with my wife, I’d have only managed a fraction of that. So, it’s not too bad.

Anyway, I am loving the game. Even as a fan of Larian’s previous awesome CRPG – Divinity: Original Sin 2, it’s shocking just how good it is. This is the purest expression of Dungeons and Dragons as a video game. I’ve been able to take everything I’ve learned in the last few years of playing a regular D&D session with friends and put it into the game. Mind you, this is a group which saw our party famously get TPK’d (total party kill) by a small band of kobolds in the very first encounter of one adventure. We’ve not set a high bar.

But that previous experience has been great, it’s let me jump in to BG3 unquestioningly and set about the game and it’s encounters armed with knowledge about short and long rests, spell slots, levelling choices and, most importantly, how to play each class without too much trial and error or reference to tutorials that totally new players may need. Which isn’t to put you off, if you’re completely new to D&D then Baldurs Gate is an awesome way to dip your toes in and get started. It is very welcoming to new players and the learning curve is much, much more forgiving than say a Dark Souls style game.

The writing, the size and scope of the game, the voice acting (oh so much amazing voice acting!), all of it shines in Baldurs Gate 3. If you have even a passing interest in D&D or classic RPGs then you should get on board. My friends who have been playing on PS5 say it’s great there too.

In fact my friends have also been similarly obsessed, most of them quickly overtaking me and filling our group chat with excited messages as they progress through the story. This does nothing to help me feel better about my slow progress through the game. However, I need to get over it as very soon I am due to restart my part-time degree with the Open University and will have very little free time for the foreseeable future (sad violin noises).

For the meantime I’m going to spend my last week or so of free time trying to get as much time in BG3 as I can. Which does make me feel guilty for neglecting all my other hobbies. But that’s a whole other thing I need to get over. If you’ve been playing BG3, let me know how you’ve been getting on, what’s your favourite class build?

Tabletop and Roleplaying, Thoughts

Octarius Kommandos

minceandskirlie

Games Workshop released Killteam Octarius (Orktarius), the launch box for a new edition of Killteam two years ago in August 2021. This week I finally finished painting the Ork Kommandos from the box! Let’s not talk about the Krieg squad and how they’re painting is going, or the contents of the Beast Snaggas box released a month before the Octarius box…

For the Kommandos I’ve been using Vallejo Xpress Color paints and this is the first full unit I’ve painted with them. I’d not used contrast style paints before so it was an interesting process. They are definitely quicker to deliver an adequate finished paint job, than traditional layer paints. If you use the “slapchop” (prime->zenithal->contrast->highlight) method you can get a really strong result. But, I still found myself getting frustrated with the paints at times. To get a good contrast effect you need a lot of paint. Putting a lot of paint on the model makes it difficult to keep things tidy. I find I keep spotting small areas, nooks and crannies, where I’ve missed or that have wee splodges of the wrong paint on them.

Of course, being contrast paint, if there’s a mistake somewhere you can’t just paint over it as the paint is not opaque. So if you put the correct contrast paint over a mistake you can still see the mistake. I am not a neat painter at the best of times so I find this pretty infuriating. With traditional layer paints I rely on going back over the model at the end to tidy up all the bits where I’ve gone over the lines, or whacked my brush on to the wrong part of the model. On the other hand, maybe this will train me to be neater?

Anyway, I do like contrast paints and as a firm proponent of Vallejo over Citadel (cheaper, dropper bottle supremacy), it’s good to see the Xpress Color paints giving great results. It’s just a different experience to the classic method of painting a model. Are contrast paints now the default standard? No, I don’t think so. I think I’ll keep using them for scenery and troops (I have a lot of Beast Snaggas still to paint for example, but we weren’t going to talk about that) but will probably go back to layering for characters, vehicles and elite units. With one exception. I love the effect of the Xpress paint on the Ork skin. I’m sorely tempted to use that as my new standard for the Greenskins.

After all that paint chat, the important thing is that I have a fully painted Kommando unit and I even got a game in with them at the weekend. Not only that, but I won. A hard fought victory against some Ultramarine Intercessors. Mistakes were made at deployment as usual and most of my most special specialist boyz got shot clean off the board in the first four activations. But points win prizes and I managed to rack up enough objectives by the time we talked it out at the end of turn three I had an unassailable lead. And a large squad of dead Orks.

Review, Thoughts

The Ocean At The End Of The Lane

minceandskirlie

With my return to regular blogging (let’s see how long this lasts), I guess I want to use this as a way to express my thoughts on whatever I’ve been up to. Most of the time that will be gaming, music, writing, running, or whatever other hobby I’ve picked up that week. I actually wrote a big list of things I want to write blogs about and then stared at it blankly, paralysed by choice. So, instead of picking one from the list I’m going to write about something very cool that I went to see at the weekend.

I don’t go out on the town very often these days. Trips to the theatre are even rarer. Barring a couple of comedy shows, the last time I went to see a big dramatic production was to see The Ladykillers in the west end while in London for my first wedding anniversary a decade ago.

A few years ago I saw Neil Gaiman post glowing review after glowing review for a theatre adaption of his novel The Ocean At The End Of The Lane. Each one described it using words like “magical”, “thrilling” and “spectacular”. Now reviews often use words like that without really meaning it, but the general vibe for this show was that it was something very special. It made me sad that it was stuck in the west end while I was at the other end of the country.

Mostly, the only shows that tour are big musical productions like Wicked, guaranteed to draw a crowd in even the most provincial theatres. But then His Majesty’s Theatre in Aberdeen included in their programme for 2023 a surprising entry amidst the musicals, operas and comedians – Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean At The End Of The Lane – now touring the country. Tickets were booked, time passed on and this weekend we made our way into the theatre for a magical adventure.

Now I don’t want to post spoilers. I went in to this very cold, having not read the source novel and deliberately not looked for reviews of the show (aside from aforementioned Gaiman twitter posts) for fear of ruining any surprises. I am very glad I did! With that in mind I’ll be keeping this quite vague.

The show centres on family and relationships, but it’s also a story about old magic, witches and evil spirits. It packs a lot in. There’s bits of coming of age stories, some retro horror (my wife was reminded of Stranger Things), fairy tales and classic psychological thrillers all thrown in the mix.

But what really stands out are the staging and the performances. Firstly, the actors and the stage hands / dancers are superb. All the performances were brilliant. There was a weight at the heart of the story so that where the beats were heavy and emotional, you really felt for the characters. All credit to the cast for that.

Then there was the staging. The use of large, moving props, puppetry, stage magic, dance, lighting and sound was awe inspiring. The sheer inventiveness of each spot and how well they pull it off is amazing. Not only that, the hit rate. It’s like the joke rate in Airplane! but for stage tricks. At one point there’s a clever piece with an actor and a door, where the first time it happens you think “oh that was clever, but I see how they did that” then they do it again, and again, and again, and again. Each time building it up until you’re driven as mad as the character on stage. It’s so good.

They really pulled all the stops out to make a fantasy story feel genuinely magical on the stage. I can’t fathom how much effort must have gone in to designing each set piece and moment of sorcery. Not to mention the rehearsals required to get such a physical performance right, night after night.

Of course, at the end of it we all turned to each other and said those fateful words “we need to go to the theatre more often”. Hopefully, at least, it won’t be a decade before we make it back for another show. But for now, if you’re reading this and near one of the tour locations for The Ocean At The End Of The Lane, go book tickets! It’s magical, thrilling and spectacular!

https://oceanonstage.com/

Thoughts

Is blogging back?

minceandskirlie

I’ve been thinking about blogging a lot lately. As a certain once popular micro-blogging site descends further into chaos and irrelevancy, I’ve been missing the days when I could just spout my opinions on things into the internet without a care in the world.

Somehow it’s been over two years since I last wrote a blog post here. Why? I still have things I want to say. Words to write. I feel it would be helpful for me to get stuff out of my head and onto the page, at least virtually.

Threads is some kind of replacement for the thing that shall not be named, but let’s be honest, that thing wasn’t a great replacement for blogs either. Short, pithy, posts about what’s happening right NOW in your head don’t really make for nuanced reading. Then there’s the constant barrage of negativity, bigotry and hatred that seems to seep from every pore of that anti-social media machine.

I want to enthuse about stuff I like. I want to write in longform as I wrestle my thoughts into something resembling coherency. I want to go into far too much detail about what’s exciting me and not worry about the reply guys shooting me down for it or shitting on my new obsessions.

I also want to be in control of what I can write and not worry it’s going to disappear in a cloud of chaotic smoke.

Now, I’m not fully in control of this site. I gave up my own hosting a while ago as it wasn’t being used and I needed to save the cash. But I can always move back again if WordPress start being douchebags. I have enough control. So, it’ll do for now.

Is blogging back? I dunno. It might not get back to it’s heyday but I think I need to be writing again so I’m going to give it a try.

Thoughts

Death to Doomscrolling!

minceandskirlie

Apparently I’ve been on Twitter for 12 years. For a lot of that time it’s been a positive thing. A way to chat with friends, or keep track of favoured musicians, writers etc. and what they’re up to. There have been a lot of cat videos liked in that time. But over the last 6 or 7 years it’s also been a key source of news and political gossip. Which is great, if you don’t mind being swamped by people’s angry opinions every time you open your phone or sit at a laptop.

A couple of years ago, probably not long after the Brexit vote, I got so fed up with being constantly reminded how much of a shitshow things were that I decided to curate my Twitter feed to something more positive. I unfollowed most political pundits and the people who filled my feed the most with content which just made me angry, sad or anxious. I replaced them with more musicians, writers and accounts related to things that interest me in a positive way – like environmental scientists (as I’m studying this with the Open University).

Gradually, as the twin disasters of Trump and Brexit came to a crescendo, followed by the apocalyptic events of 2020’s global pandemic, the pendulum on my timeline swung back to politics and current affairs. I couldn’t help it. It turns out that musicians, writers and a lot of other people all have thoughts about the depressing shit that’s going which they have to share on Twitter! I started following political pundits again and actively started seeking out accounts which kept me up to date with just how big a mess our government were making of things. Then I spent most of my spare time, and a large chunk of time that I didn’t have spare, scrolling forever down this timeline of unrelenting doom.

Unsurprisingly I also found I had problems with general anxiety again for the first time in a couple of years. Now, this might not just be due to my Twitter use, but I don’t think it helped. Every time I found myself scrolling through Twitter I didn’t find myself being cheered up, or relaxed. It wasn’t a positive experience in any way and I was spending HOURS doing it. That’s time I could spend doing things that were fun instead! Or at least studying for my degree or even working at my dayjob…

So a couple of weeks ago I deleted the Twitter bookmark from my browser, uninstalled the app from my phone and posted a short message saying I was taking a break. You know what? It’s been brilliant. I haven’t missed doomscrolling at all. I’ve managed to get my current uni assignment completed in plenty of time. I’ve hit the ground running at a new bit of work for my day job. I’ve fallen down numerous YouTube rabbit holes. I’ve spent more time actually engaging with my kids! I found time to pick up some instruments and strum some music again. But most importantly, I’ve felt a lot better mentally.

Now I’m still interested in how shit the government are at managing a public health crisis and all the other things that I was so keen to keep to date with before. But now if I want to find out what’s happening I have to make a deliberate effort to go to a news site and seek it out. It’s not just constantly picking away at my mood as I scroll, and scroll, and scroll, and scroll.

The other thing I’ve realised is that Twitter just doesn’t matter. It’s completely irrelevant to most people. For all the anger, the hate and the ridiculous rhetoric that floods Twitter, none of it makes any difference to the vast majority of people outside of it. If you are expressing an opinion on Twitter you have already 100% made up your mind on it and you will not be changing it for anyone, thank you very much. Yet no matter how correct you may be, or how much of an expert in your field you are, or how innocuous the comment, there will be people on Twitter who will hunt you down and shout about how wrong you are right in your online face. That’s not good.

I used to be quite firm in my opinions. I still am really, but I’m very much reluctant now to express my thoughts anywhere online because discussions about almost anything have been poisoned by Twitter and it’s endless tide of sealioning users. I don’t have the energy to spare arguing with people and getting into conflict with others stresses me out. So instead I just sit online, quietly tweeting about not very much at all and wonder what the point of it is.

To hell with it. I’m better off without it, I even found time to write a feckin blog post! I’ll keep my account (I still want to occasionally retweet cat videos) but the bookmark is staying deleted and I’m not going to reinstall the app. Death to doomscrolling!