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[None]

Have fun, and don't go landing in any flower patches now, y'hear?

[Kagus]

I was hit by a peculiar and unexpected burst of nostalgia recently, and ended up reinstalling the original Age of Wonders (as well as the fanmade patch that lets it actually run on modern machines).

And, y'know... It's been good. Seeing graphics, hearing sounds, reading the story... Getting these rushes of emotional memories from times long past and the hours I used to put into this game as a dumb kid who didn't know how to play.

Been rolling right along, actually understanding the stats now and using them with a more mature mind that can evaluate and strategize, building uberheroes because I just want a casual playthrough and it's fun, humming along to the amazing soundtrack... It's not one of those games that most folks wax nostalgic about, or even are familiar with, but... It's got a big place in my heart, and it's been nice reliving some of that magic.

[Frumple]

It's held up decently enough to still be a pretty enjoyable play these days, yeah, even if you're not particularly attached to it otherwise (the first AoW I played was shadow magic, aow1 came many years later). I think the campaign might actually be somewhat more compelling than the immediate sequel (and about on par with SM).

[Kagus]

It's held up decently enough to still be a pretty enjoyable play these days, yeah, even if you're not particularly attached to it otherwise (the first AoW I played was shadow magic, aow1 came many years later). I think the campaign might actually be somewhat more compelling than the immediate sequel (and about on par with SM).

Heh, as someone who started on 1 and really got sucked into the atmosphere and the lore and all that jazz, and then was seriously hyped about there being a sequel to it, I...

...well, mostly I got confused and pissed off at what they'd done to my treasured world Yaka, king-god, the all-seeing eye and the all-consuming flame, he whose single footstep will cause the entire world to smolder and curl like burning papyrus... Was now just some dude in a funny hat who liked hanging out at furry conventions (I did learn to appreciate the Tigrans for their own merits, but c'mon man... Why'd they have to go and do the Azracs dirty like that?). The mysterious, solemn, nigh-uncontrollable primordial guardians of power too dangerous for mortals to command, were now a race of extraterrestrial leather enthusiasts. Not to mention the all-new lolrandom bios so many of the old heroes got.

Don't get me wrong; Shadow Magic is great fun and brings all sorts of really good stuff to the table. It just... It didn't have the same atmosphere as the first game, the same "soul" that I'd fallen so in love with, and the jabs and retcons it made towards the original just hurt. It took me a long while before I managed to start really appreciating it for what it is.

...learning that I could horrifically break the campaign via magic forge abuse may have contributed a little bit to my newfound sense of admiration. Or maybe not. Hard to say, I was rolling in mana crystals at the time, it's all a bit hazy.


And then 3 rolled around and slapped me with a fresh bushel of mixed feelings.

[Dunamisdeos]

I only played 3, but I did enjoy it.

[Il Palazzo]

Gotta agree with Kagus. SM was a better, fuller game. I've fond memories of hotseat MP. But the first one had all the feels.

[MrRoboto75]

Recently finished off my collection of "lantern entities" from Heroclix.  In spite of being rather old they've been something of a meta staple for most of my clix tenure, though these days they are a bit eclipsed. The DC comics "emotional spectrum" is also kinda cool even if half the execution ain't great.

Spoiler: "a full rainbow" (click to show/hide)

[hector13]

It makes me happy to see you happy.

[dragdeler]

They look fancy all next to eachother... When I type lantern entities on google image search there is only psychedelic art so I decided that these are some cool ass figurines.

[McTraveller]

Level 2 charger installed!  Now if only I had a car with which to use it... logistics system, please get moving to fill my order!

[JoshuaFH]

Genuinely glad you have something that you like to do and you're proud of Roboto.


A little website called Craiyon is cracking me the fuck up. You just give the AI a keyphrase and it spits out some "art" which is a distorted mess of images it cobbled together, melted a little bit, and placed into the blender for a second. The results after experimenting with it a few times never fail to destroy me. If you give it a specific person to mock up, it can make a barely recognizable monster that vaguely resembles the person in question:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But as you can see, it has a lot of trouble keeping consistency with eyes and mouths and everything else XD

It can make some magic though if you give it a single ambiguous word though. Just to experiment, I gave it the word "Memes" and let it generate. I couldn't be more pleased with the result:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

They look like legit meme formats stolen straight from our own bizarro dimension. I'm so tickled by the monstrosities this thing produces.

[Frumple]

the prompt of "yer mum" gave... one distorted picture of some woman... and then a bunch of wonky pictures of flowers

yer okay unthinking bot thing, yer okay

[MrRoboto75]

They look fancy all next to eachother... When I type lantern entities on google image search there is only psychedelic art so I decided that these are some cool ass figurines.

Its something from the greater Green Lantern comics.  Essentially there's a whole rainbow of Lantern corps, not just green, and each color represents a different emotion.  Green was supposed to be will, which I guess is generally courage.  Yellow lanterns are powered by causing fear in others, Red lanterns are rage fueled and seek vengeance, and so fourth.  In one of the bigger lantern comic events, there was also white, for life as in the combination of emotion, and black for death as the lack of light/emotion.  Most lanterns have the basic light construct abilities Green Lantern does, though most of the other colors have their gimmicks.

Anyways these entities are basically cosmic space animals of light that are physical embodiments of each emotion color.  In comics they usually possess somebody, generally granting the abilities of a green lantern without necessarily needing a ring.  In game they have same sort of gimmick; one of your characters can equip one of these figures and gain some bonus stats plus each turn they can borrow a power from the entity.  They also gain the associated lantern corp keyword, for making theme teams or for even more bonuses from a matching Power Battery resource.

You could also play the entites as actual characters themselves but no one really did that much, the equipment half was more interesting.

[Frumple]

if you had two of them could you have one using the other as equipment, though

alternatively could you daisy-chain one wearing a different color until you have all of them stacked up on some other critter

[MrRoboto75]

IIRC you used to be able to, entity possession was its own thing, them using equipment rules was a later errata change.  That being said, these guys (other than Black Hand, who is the black lantern entity for some reason) aren't able to use equipment, as most of them are giant size and all of them have a "peanut base" as they occupy a 1x2 area.  Black Hand could, as he's a standard character.

You also couldn't really "nest" them as I'm fairly certain you need to be on the board to use equipment, plus you'd have to be on the board to even take the action each turn to even receive the benefit of the entity.

Although a dream team of mine involved the lantern rings, they use the old relic rules which means one guy could (theoretically) pick up all of them.  And there's Lord of the Rings sets with Gollum.  Think of all the rings I could give him.