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TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia)

@thedevteam.itch.io

1K followers 520 following 3.1K posts

Hyper-focusing on RPG design, Scroll & Steel (out now!), PBTA, Pathfinder 2e, etc. he/they, free Palestine, blocks AI slop

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TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · Jul 31

Scroll & Steel, my tactical fantasy PBTA roleplaying game, is available now!

Not sure how those things go together? Download the game for free and read it yourself.

thedevteam.itch.io/scroll-steel

Scroll & Steel by The Dev Team

Tactical PBTA adventuring

thedevteam.itch.io

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TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 1h

This is even more true for the flying enemies. I understand why folks get annoyed at them. You can’t brute force or speedrun them.

You have to slow down, goad them into an attack, and take advantage of the opening.

Which can be annoying, sure, but I prefer it to HK’s practically mindless enemies.

TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 1h

It’s overall way more involved. There have been far more enemy attacks that I think, “Well if they hit me with X, I’m screwed.”

So you have to make sure that they’re not able to hit you with X, like getting the fuck out of Dodge during their wind-up or pressuring them to make other attacks.

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TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 2h

In Hollow Knight, combat was very reactive. Learning an enemy was all about going, “When they do A, I should do X, and when they do B, I should do Y.”

Meanwhile Silksong is a lot more proactive, esp for the harder enemies. Way more of, “I’m going to do x so that they do y and I can counter with z.”

TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 16h

I have the opposite problem. I feel like premade companions pigeonhole my main character into specific roles. I liked being able to create a party as a whole so I can build different synergies.

(Esp for Dawnsbury, just let me know if you need a couple other class concepts. I have, like, tons)

TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 1d

Yeah it’s not entirely clear if they’re talking about the same show.

Granted, Legendary Defender is 7 years old, so maybe?

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TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 1d

I really want to read that paper.

Crowd Control (on Dropout) @crowdcontroldo.bsky.social · 1d

Who has more trauma in Voltron: the characters, or the fans? 🤖

#CrowdControl

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TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 1d

This feels like a Metal Gear plot, like a costume introduced as a joke but has real stats and ends up being the meta choice for parts of the game.

TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 1d

Not surprising but disheartening all the same.

TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 1d

This would be an amusing story of executive disfunction for any feature, but it’s especially hilarious because it’s about the fucking Metaverse.

Using one overhyped shitty product to build another overhyped shitty product.

404 Media @404media.co · 1d

NEW: an internal Meta message we obtained tells employees on its metaverse team that they should be using AI to “go 5x faster”. That's 5 times faster, not 5 percent more www.404media.co/meta-tells-w...

Meta Tells Workers Building Metaverse to Use AI to ‘Go 5x Faster’

Meta says that its coders should be working five times faster and that it expects "a 5x leap in productivity."

www.404media.co

TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 1d

Hey I think you uploaded the wrong pic. This looks like an excellent drawing of a Draw Steel guy.

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TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 1d

James Gunn operates on a very particular wavelength that my brain is completely attuned to.

Which is to say that I think Peacemaker’s finale had some issues, but I’m also still completely on board with it.

TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 1d

Scroll & Steel uses a Masks-inspired system where players make up NPCs related to them from prompts.

But the real sauce is that it also asks you to set relationships with other players’ NPCs they create.

So from Session 1, there’s already a bunch of PC-NPC-PC triangles.

TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 1d

If it’s from his 1:1 conversation series, it’s good to keep in mind that one of the segments is literally, “Let’s have a hot take conversation where Brennan has to take the counter opinion and argue it.”

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TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 1d

And I imagine that you spent a lot of the church’s money.

TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 2d

Cal is technically more interesting in the second, but that’s a very low bar.

And a large part of that is that they give you a lot more customization options, so I spent a lot of time making him look like he was going through an arc that the actual text didn’t do much to support.

TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 2d

I’ve already said too much.

(But yes but it’s better than that might seem but also worse too)

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TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 2d

And also that design space is already well occupied by spells. There are even spells that take multiple turns to cast!

TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 2d

This is really close to my Jedi Survivor take.

Dr. Doofenshmirtz talking to a hand puppet saying, “If I had a nickel for every time Darth Vader killed a badass woman who should’ve been the main character, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice.”

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TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 2d

I played around with it in Dawnsbury and my impression was, “This is why we have spell slots.”

For so long, people were like, “We want spellcasters without those pesky restrictions,” and the class really shows how you have to sand down the interesting design when you do that.

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TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 2d

It’s a great example of a question being seemingly neutral but actually biased. Make the question, “Should children be required to show proof of their genitalia,” and I bet the results would be very different.

TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 2d

I really enjoy Team Cherry’s ability to subvert or at least avoid expectations.

Sometimes you’ll come to an important objective after a grueling area and then… you just get it.

Meanwhile backtracking through an area might result in a huge elaborate boss fight.

TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 3d

No Twitter Blue is the big reason for me. Putting replies from the most annoying people ever over all the other replies was the thing that made the platform unusable for me.

So if we get a similar BlueSky Blue feature here, I’ll be looking at other platforms again.

TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 3d

I’m sure he’ll be great, but you did pull in someone who, famously, cannot win.

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TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 3d

The little dings where you were like, “Oh this can’t get any more ridiculous” were wonderful.

TheDevTeam (🔜 Metatopia) @thedevteam.itch.io · 3d

And it’s a surprise every time.