Well, what did you expect?

It’s a very busy time of year at my job, and the main thing getting me through it is the fact that we finally rid ourselves of the most toxic member of the staff. Over the past year and a half, this guy–let’s call him Chungus, because seriously fuck this guy–has stuck around despite making the lives of everyone else in the office miserable. No indoor voice, no sense of boundaries, no concept of what’s appropriate for a work conversation. He probably only lasted that long because he’s related to someone on the board. Yay, nepotism (not today’s word).

And lest you think I’m being too harsh toward someone whose worst crime is having a voice like if Rocky Balboa was a frat boy, and a laugh like Woody Woodpecker with a traumatic brain injury, there’s also the fact that Chungus was caught driving drunk with a loaded gun in his car, which he may or may not have had a license for. But even that wasn’t what finally rid us of him–no, that happened after Chungus got drunk again and started harassing one of our female coworkers outside of work, and she filed a police report. At which point, I really have to ask, just what did you think was going to happen, you stupid prick? And that brings us to today’s word.

query, verb – to ask a question (also noun – a question, itself)

Learned from: Space Rogue (Apple II, Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, PC, FM Towns, Macintosh, PC-9801)

Developed by Origin Systems

Published by Origin Systems (1989)

Most people, if they’re familiar with Origin at all, probably know them as the developers of the Ultima games, but they did have other credits to their name. The Wing Commander series (which I’ve sadly never played), is probably the best-known of their other projects, but they had the odd standalone title here and there, too. Space Rogue is one of those, and for being a one-off project, it was surprisingly ambitious.

You start as a crew member aboard a ship that was sent to investigate a distress beacon (if memory serves). While you’re out on a spacewalk to investigate the small, derelict vessel, aliens attack and destroy the ship you flew in on, leaving you alone and in command of the abandoned ship you were sent to find. From there, you can…well, kinda do whatever. Try to discover why your other ship was attacked; become a pirate; learn the economies of various star systems and try to become rich as a merchant; help a robot find love; wile away your time on the game-within-a-game you can play on various space stations; just explore the galaxy, wherever the wormhole network happens to take you; etc. and so on. Space Rogue was an early example of what we think of today as an open-world sandbox; there’s no right way to play, and the story is largely optional if you want it to be. Exhausted everything to do in one star system? Pilot your way through a wormhole, and query your computer for points of interest where you end up–there’s always something new at each destination.

Speaking of the star systems, kudos to the development team for trying to account for actual physics and space hazards. Wormholes aside, planets would move in their orbits as you plotted courses to them; velocity was constant unless you fired your thrusters; inertia in dogfights felt believable; radiation and space debris were real concerns; you could crash if you tried to land too fast at a space station–this was impressive stuff for a game with 4-color CGA graphics that came on a couple of floppy disks.

The free-form open universe felt a little too open to my 7-year-old self, and I don’t think I ever beat this game, insofar as there was a way to “beat” a sandbox, sci-fi space adventure. But it was certainly different from anything I’d played at the time, and it left an impression on me, even all these years later.

*Look* at this guy, like he’s getting ready to drop Aldeberan’s hottest album of 1989.

It could always be worse

And it probably will. Speaking mainly to my US readers here, but I mean…*gestures broadly*. In a month, they’ll probably have banned schools, and sent children back to the mines, with breaks only for a few hours of sleep, and witch burnings where attendance is mandatory. I mean, what, do we expect kids older than seven to eat for free? What kind of traitorous, commie BS is that?

You might say that this country is broken. And that rather than fixing anything, the people in charge are just stomping on the pieces until they’re small enough that nobody will complain. Which brings us to today’s word.

banjanxed, adj. – ruined, broken

Learned from: Small Saga (PC)

Developed by Darya Noghani

Published by Darya Noghani (2023)

Small Saga falls into that timeless subgenre of fantasy that crops up every now and then, centered on tiny creatures that live among humans, and their hidden, unnoticed civilizations behind our walls and below our feet. The earliest example I’m familiar with is The Borrowers, published back in 1952, which is probably because Studio Ghibli’s The Secret World of Arrietty (2010), is a direct adaptation of it. But there’ve been plenty of others in between, from The Littles, to The Indian in the Cupboard, to The Secret of NIMH, and possibly Redwall (I never read that series, so I don’t know if there are humans in it). The point is, there’s something endearing about the thought that tiny animals (or people) are living complex lives all around us, just beyond our notice.

Small Saga takes that premise, and gives it a bit of a darker twist. Humans are seen as literal gods; their tools are seen as holy (or at least incredibly powerful) relics; their pets are guardian beasts out of legend. And they are not kind to rodents. You play as Verm, a young, aspiring mouse knight, whose foray into the gods’ food vault goes horribly wrong. The real story picks up when you’ve gotten older, more jaded, and filled with an enduring desire for revenge against the Yellow God (an exterminator in a hazmat suit), who ruined everything.

Along the way, your quest for vengeance will see you joined by various other rodents (and rodent-adjacent animals), from a squirrel with a flute made from a hollowed-out pencil, to a mole wizard who secretly collects human relics (including a not-Gameboy with a banjanxed screen). They make for quite a colorful cast in a JRPG-style adventure that truly has a lot of heart. And it’s even more impressive, considering I think this game was made by just one person. It’s nowhere near as astounding a feat as Expedition 33, but if that smash hit has got you curious about other worthwhile indie RPGs, Small Saga is definitely worth a try.

Here comes the new boss

It’s always a little surreal for me, when a piece of news takes the world by storm, and I personally end up finding it hard to care less. Nothing against those who do, but when all everyone’s talking about is some British monarch getting married, or some celebrity having a baby, and I’m sitting here with my life not having changed one bit, it’s just…weird. It’s the same thing with the new pope. But since it’s functionally the only piece of news for the day, I figure I may as well use it as a lead in for another word.

zealot, noun – a religious fanatic

Learned from: Diablo II (PC, Mac)

Developed by Blizzard North

Published by Blizzard Entertainment (2000)

Okay, okay, put down the pitchforks and stop building the pyre, because–plot twist–this word is not in any way a direct commentary on the new or previous pope. Francis seemed like a genuinely kind, compassionate person from what little I read about him in the news, and while Leo, the new guy, might get less glowing reviews from the LGBTQ community, he doesn’t sound too bad overall. If nothing else, any prominent figure who pushes back against the policies of the current US government has to have something good going for them. Because honestly, the red hats seem to embody zealotry far more than Pope Leo–his followers might actually hold him to certain standards of conduct.

But enough about real-world cultists; let’s talk Diablo II. Act 3 of the game takes you to a sprawling jungle, filled with ruined temples, sodden caves, and enough dead-ends and switchbacks to make it my least-favorite section simply due to all the backtracking. But amidst all the tribes of poison dart-spitting pygmies and swarms of giant spiders, you’d find bands of crazed followers of…I think he was a fallen paladin, or something? It’s been a pretty long time, but I remember having to cut my way through swathes of zealots at various points, to press forward. That, and the fact that they were about the only things in the entire bloody jungle that weren’t poisonous in some way, shape, or form.

The fact that I have so few solid memories of Act 3 is a testament to how little impact it left on me, despite being one of the bigger parts of the game. But even the bad parts of Diablo II can still be pretty fun…sometimes.

Dimly lit, full of dead-end paths, broken up by rivers that make progress take even longer…I can’t defend this. I’m not in a cult.

When you boil it down

If you’ve been on the Internet at all this week, I think it’s statistically impossible that you haven’t heard about the Oblivion remaster. I have mixed feelings on it, but the original did teach me some words, so let’s get that out of the way first.

alembic, noun – an obsolete device used in distillation

Learned from: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC, XBox 360, Playstation 3, Playstation 5, XBox Series X/S)

Developed by Bethesda Game Studios

Published by Bethesda Softworks (2006, 2025 for the remaster)

Alchemy can be a big part of Elder Scrolls games if you want it to be. You can start with stuffing random toadstools in your mouth, and end up with an entire collection of beakers and tubes to distill more potent tinctures.

There, I’ve got the word out of the way. Now I want to talk about this remaster, starting with the good: It’s more or less an entire remake from the ground up, and it looks fantastic…and it costs $50. In an age where Nintendo is selling remakes of 8 year old games for $80+, this game that’s old enough to vote looks better than the shinier versions of Zelda, undoubtedly took more work, and is selling for at least thirty bucks less. That’s admirable, and I think more people should be talking about it, because it’s selling like hotcakes and it blows Nintendo’s bullshit pricing out of the water.

Unfortunately…it’s selling like hotcakes. Look, the industry is positively drowning in remakes of games we’ve already played. And the hotcakes sales of Oblivion Remastered is only adding weight to that trend. Plus, there are other games coming out–including some very, very good ones this very week–from indie developers who could really use the sales.

Want another RPG? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been incredible, just in the few hours I’ve gotten to play of it. Gorgeous world. Likeable and well-written characters. Engaging combat. Surprising emotional notes. Also $50.

Is horror more your jam? Post Trauma looks to be a decent stab at the Silent Hill formula, and came out the same damn day as Oblivion Remastered. I’ve seen no one talking about it–and yes it’s a different genre, but that doesn’t stop all the attention on the Internet from being on Oblivion. Oh, and it’s only $15, and I’m sure the developers would love to make another sale or two.

Hell, one of the creators behind Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, a mix of visual novel and turn-based tactical RPG from the minds behind Danganronpa and Zero Escape, has reportedly sunk his life savings into this project. And here comes Oblivion Remastered to possibly drive him into poverty. This is the most expensive, at $60, but also potentially the most distinctive of the three I mentioned.

Look, I’m glad people are enjoying revisiting a game they grew up with, or discovering it for the first time, and I’d never tell them to stop having fun. But I really feel like I need to highlight that other games do exist, that actually have original concepts and fresh ideas. Just…look around at what else is out there? Please? Bethesda doesn’t need your money as much as some of these smaller developers.

The “N” is for “Nowledge”

As we still live in the vicinity of our old alma mater, my in-laws tend to get season tickets for hockey, for themselves, my wife, and I. It’s a way to stay connected to where we went to college, and oftentimes, the team is at least halfway decent. This season…is not one of those times. It’s a rebuilding year, sure (the team is mostly incoming freshmen), but our record is still pretty abysmal. Which, in a roundabout way, brings us to today’s word.

sieve, noun – a utensil used for straining liquid out of a substance

Learned from: Betrayal at Krondor (PC)

Developed by Dynamix

Published by Sierra On-Line (1993)

As with any sports team, there are a variety of traditions and in-jokes associated with the NMU Wildcats. There’s the, er…glowing endorsement of the university as a whole, in the title of this post; shouting “And Tech still sucks” when there’s one minute to go in a period; and most pertinent, chanting “Sieve!” and pointing at the other team’s goalie, whenever we score a goal.

In a recent game, we were actually doing pretty well for a change, so there was ample opportunity to do this chant. Which was actually pretty invigorating…until a college-age girl a row or two back loudly asked her friends “What does it mean when we shout ‘sieve’ after we score?” I mean, okay, if you’re not thinking about it, it might take awhile for you to come to the realization that it means their goalie is full of holes, and lets everything through. But as this girl’s friends stumbled over the explanation (and my wife turned around to spell it out), I came to the mortifying conclusion that these adults, who presumably had made it through 12 years of basic schooling and were now shelling out tens of thousands of dollars each semester for college…didn’t know what a sieve even was.

Granted, growing up, I think we usually just called them “strainers” in my house, but I still knew this word long before I was old enough to vote.

So, you’re probably asking how this all fits in with Betrayal at Krondor. Is it a cooking RPG? Because I’ve certainly played a few of those (Battle Chef Brigade, the Atelier series, to some extent). But no, Krondor was an open-world, standard fantasy RPG, trying to compete with the likes of The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall, and generally falling short, as people actually remember Daggerfall.

I gather the game was based on the Riftwar novels, by Raymond E. Feist, though I’ve never read them, so I can’t say how it connects. Which also might explain why I don’t remember much about the plot–plus, I got the game for free, when Sierra was having some sort of giveaway for some reason.

I do remember a few choice things about Krondor though: First, it was surprisingly hands-on with some of its mechanics. In a lot of games, you might find a book about stealth, that your character reads and gets a stat boost–here, you can have someone teach you some tricks…and they actually teach you. I still remember the instructions to step with your heel, and smoothly pivot your foot down along the outside of the arch, so that you don’t step too firmly on the ground. A really cool touch, with unexpectedly real-world applications.

The other thing I remember is the chests. Rather than relying on just a lockpicking skill, or anything like that, many of the chests in Krondor were sealed with words. They’d have anywhere from 3 to 5 (possibly more) tumblers with various letters on them, and when you had them spell the right word, the chest would open. And that word might be the name of an important NPC or a place, and there might be clues around the chest. Or it might be a simple word like “sieve.” It was neat and different, and it clearly stuck with me more than most of the rest of the game.

I didn’t even realize how cool the box art was until today; like I said, Sierra was giving this away as a free download for some reason. But *look* at this!

The times, they are a-changing.

So, it’s been a pretty momentous week. But one of the least-seismic, and perhaps best developments is the mass exodus of users from Twitter. Sorry, Elon, nobody is going to call it X. That platform has been a cesspool for awhile now, and I don’t think I’ve used it since WordPress removed their auto-post integration, but the recent TOS change, saying anything you post can be used to train AI…well, that’s actually been kind of great, because it’s made people realize there are other options out there.

All of this is to say, I’m now on Bluesky Social: brainrotblog.bsky.social

Also, this brings us to today’s word.

climacteric, adj. – constituting or related to a major event or critical period

Learned from: Mass Effect 2 (Playstation 3, PC, XBox 360)

Developed by Bioware

Published by Electronic Arts (2010)

The Mass Effect games fall into the same category of RPGs as your Fallouts, your Elder Scrolls, and even your Genshin Impacts, in that there is a metric boatload of in-game lore to read through, if you’re so inclined. You could easily just ignore the plot for an hour or two, kick back, and read through piles of data logs about anything from the Reapers, to the complex interrelations between the Hanar and the Drell, to the centuries-long life cycles of the Asari. I think it was the latter where I first saw climacteric, in relation to when Asari reach adulthood, or something. (It’s been quite a long time since I’ve played this series; I should fix that.)

Fun bonus fact: Climacteric is also a noun, meaning a major event or critical period. This also makes it one of my least-favorite words, right up there with “chiropractic.” Some people hate the word “moist.” I hate nouns that end in -ic. It’s like saying, “I’m going to study scientific.” There’s nothing about that that sounds right.

“Liara is aesthetic.” You see what I mean? It’s just wrong!

Come together

Hey, it’s been awhile. Sorry about that. Life’s been kind of crazy lately, but what happened last night really takes the cake. I’m not going to make this post overly political, but it’s undeniable that in the aftermath of the 2024 US election cycle, a lot of people are feeling lost, angry, scared, confused, etc. It really does seem that our political system is fully off the rails, and in times like that, I think the only thing any of us can do is refocus. Concentrate on yourself, and the people closest to you: your friends, family, neighbors, and try to do what you can to make their lives better, as well as your own. In this case, I count whatever small audience I have for this blog as part of that–and neither education nor entertainment are ever a bad thing. If nothing else, it’s a lot better than getting swept up in an endless wave of negativity.

And, in a very tangential way, that brings us to today’s word.

pool, verb – to aggregate things into a common supply

Learned from: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Champions of Krynn (Apple II, Amiga, Commodore 64, PC)

Developed by Strategic Simulations, Inc.

Published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. (1990)

Champions of Krynn played by old school, 2nd Edition D&D rules, where a lower armor class was a better armor class, you had to visit a trainer/mentor to level up, and I’m pretty sure they included encumbrance, where carrying too much incurred severe penalties. This, if memory serves, included money. Because metal coins get pretty heavy after awhile.

Enter the pool option, after combat. Selecting this would combine all the various bits of copper, silver, gold, etc. dropped by enemies into one big pile, which you could then disperse to your individual party members as you saw fit, without having to do quite so much math.

Small concessions like that, automatically assigning XP, and calculating THAC0 for you made the game somewhat more accessible for a seven-year-old than the tabletop version, but it was still a pretty dense game. I don’t think I ever did beat it, but it was still my first real introduction to the hobby of tabletop roleplaying games–a hobby which I hold near and dear to my heart to this day.

And on that note, if you’re struggling with current events, there might be no better time to try out the hobby for yourself and your friends. If fantasy isn’t your thing, there are systems out there that tackle sci-fi, horror, the wild west (with or without zombies and such), or even where you play as a crack team of vampire commandos on a mission to drain Hitler’s blood during WWII. If this world sucks, there’s nothing wrong with finding solace in another one.

Tabletop RPGs really do offer something for everyone.

Cryptic messages in the Lands Between

As I write this, Elden Ring‘s DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, drops in a little over a month, so I figured I should really get back to Limgrave and sharpen my skills. And, you know, maybe actually beat the game. Which brings us to today’s word.

baldachin, noun – the cloth canopy above a throne, or carried above an important person

Learned from: Elden Ring (PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, XBox One, XBox Series S/X)

Developed by FromSoftware

Published by Bandai Namco Entertainment (2022)

Early in the game, you unlock an area called the Roundtable Hold which acts as a sort of hubworld populated by a diverse array of NPCs. And in true FromSoft fashion, most of them are…ambiguously helpful at best. One of the, Fia, is a woman who came to be bound to this place due to “circumstances.” She also offers hugs, claiming she’ll receive the warmth of a warrior in exchange for what is surely a “baldachin’s blessing.” Possible minor spoiler: Hugging her might not be an entirely good thing to do.

Otherwise, Fia is pretty innocuous, and seems a rather sad figure. Not that anybody in a FromSoft game ever comes across as terribly happy, but there’s a special melancholy to her. Curiously, she doesn’t seem to have anything resembling a baldachin in her room, which makes her initial claim even more confusing. But while there’s no canopy, she does have a mirror in her room that the player can use to change their appearance, so she’s got at least some accoutrements.

Don’t let it bug you

It’s been a long, kind of weird week at work. A lot of strange transactions that I’m tempted to blame on the upcoming eclipse, the same way people blame weird behavior on the full moon. But one thing that stood out against the craziness was something as simple as a shirt one of my coworkers was wearing the other day: It was basically black, but had this interesting green and purple iridescence to it, that brought to mind a beetle’s shell. Which, after a few detours, brings us to today’s word.

carapace, noun – the shell of an insect or other arthropod

Learned from: Lunar: The Silver Star (Sega CD)

Developed by Game Arts

Published by Working Designs (1993)

For as much as I love RPGs, I never really owned many of them as a kid. Aside from this, The Ancient Land of Ys on my Apple IIGS, and if you count action RPGs like Landstalker, most of my exposure to the genre was from my local video rental store (thanks for the memories, Major Video!). And they didn’t really have a ton of Sega CD games. But I’d begged my parents for the clunky Genesis add-on (as I would again a few years later, for the 32X, much to my lingering chagrin), and I wanted to make use of it. And Lunar looked amazing, from the previews in the magazines. I think I actually had to do a mail order for it out of an ad in one of those same magazines once I’d saved up the money, because the Internet didn’t exist in any real capacity yet, and it turned out Major Video wasn’t the only place that barely carried Sega CD games.

I remember checking our mailbox every day, afraid someone would steal something that was so hard to acquire if I wasn’t vigilant. And when it finally arrived, my 10-year-old mind was blown. The sprites looked crisper, the world was huge, it had an opening cutscene–with a theme song! (Which I still mostly remember to this day, actually.) I knew I’d made the right choice in tracking this game down.

Looking back at it all these years later, objectively Lunar is a fairly run-of-the-mill 16-bit JRPG, with a questionable translation (e.g. there’s a Wheaties reference at one point), an unremarkable overall plot, and some admittedly nice art. But at the time, I had a blast exploring its vast world, filled with bizarrely modern humor. Even when I expected that world to be more cohesive and immersive than it ended up being. Case in point: the carapace armor.

This was back in the day when games still came with (occasionally well-illustrated) instruction manuals, and reading through them on the ride home from the store, or in this case, simply before playing, was part of the experience. So when I saw that carapace armor was made from “shells of bizarre creatures on the southern continent,” I got it in my head that I shouldn’t wear that armor in that area, because I thought parading around wearing the corpses of the native inhabitants wouldn’t be a great idea. It…never became an issue–though there was some equipment-based, outside the box thinking they put in toward the end of the game, in a sequence that’s one of the game’s shining moments. So I was actually sort of on to something, in a roundabout way.

It’s weird that a lot of modern JRPGs have actually regressed in how they display gear. In the ’80s and ’90s, even if equipping new armor or weapons didn’t necessarily change the look of your character, they usually had unique sprites in your inventory. Now, a lot of them just have generic helmet or sword icons, with names by them. Sad, really.

Please take me off your call list

I recently played through the first Dragon’s Dogma, in preparation for the sequel, and frankly, the game delighted me. Even with its massive amounts of janky moments, there was such an earnest heart behind it all, right down to a solid attempt at period-accurate Medieval dialogue. And I’m happy to say the sequel follows suit quite closely. Which brings us to today’s word.

roborant, noun – a tonic

Learned from: Dragon’s Dogma 2 (PC, Playstation 5, XBox Series X/S)

Developed by Capcom

Published by Capcom (2024)

Part of what I love about fantasy RPGs is that they so often unearth words that would have otherwise been lost to antiquity, and place them front and center before a modern audience. Even when the word in question somewhat confusingly sounds like slang that very same modern audience would have invented, themselves, perhaps around election season. Even though “roborant” only dates back to the 17th Century, and isn’t as period-specific as Capcom might have thought when deciding to use it, it’s still collected one hell of a lot of dust.

Here, it’s both a strong healing item, and the subject of an early quest involving a little girl who’s studying to become an apothecary, but she can’t afford a fruit roborant to further her studies. But, good ser, you are a hero, aren’t you? Mightn’t she impose upon your valiant sensibilities and kind heart, and ask you to procure one for her? Truly, what is a bit of coin, compared to furthering the education of the next generation of healers for her community?

I totally expected her to pick my pocket when I left to go pay for her school supplies. And no, I won’t spoil whether that happens or not.