Grimoire Thread

[Crispy]

Working on Lethal Blow, which clearly helps. Best percentage of monster health I've seen it 'proc' on so far was about 46%. I assume once the skill gets higher the frequency of instakills will go up even more.

And yes, I know about SPD and disables; I couldn't have made it this far without them.

It's just that I'm a little disappointed to still feel like a n00b party all over again after climbing down from Crowl. I was hoping to feel a little less vulnerable, but I'll keep grinding.

 

[Gunnar]

Grimoire is a big game, samhain is just the beginning section. Once you have combat figured out, it ceases to be an issue. Then the problem becomes that the combat is too easy, and if you’re like me you’ll be wishing there was something in the game that could pose any sort of challenge. Struggling in grimoire and trying to figure everything out is the fun part.

 

[Crispy]

For what it's worth, I've only multiclassed four characters so far: my giant berserker to a warrior, my saurian warrior to a berserker (heh), my human cleric into a bard, and my human thaumaturge into a wizard. The first two were nearly painless and both enjoy loads of stamina and HP now (and both have Lethal Blow with good weapons), the bard uses the IndieGoGo boots to dramatically increase his speed which is nice combined with a paralyzing or confusing instrument, and the thaumaturge is much happier now with a much larger magic pool. I likely won't make any other class changes from here on out.

Yes, I know that the human choices were poor ones, but I think part of me wanted to avoid too much of what you're talking about, Gunnar; I was willing to put up with some amount of pain relatively early using a combination of less-than-optimal character/races, while at the same time having a superior character (my drow assassin) to carry the group through much of that content until they're much better themselves.

It's funny how you can actually see something like an assassin start to fall behind once the other characters either get better weapons or just improve. Then again, I haven't found the super bracers that I read about for him yet. It's like a competition within the party.

 

[Lady Error]

There are also one-killshot enemies in one area in Waterport, but that's about it I think.

 

[unseeingeye]

I apologize in advance for my verbosity. I haven't posted here since August last year, so almost a full year ago. During that time I would occasionally load up Grimoire and mess around in the Library, and a few times (three) I actually managed to start the game and wander around a bit, getting through a dozen or so encounters and exploring the forest and one of the dungeons. My intention was to fully immerse myself in this game and commit to completing it because of how much I adore Wizardry 7 and the work of D.W. Bradley, but for a number of reasons I would only play for one session and then too much time would pass to where when I managed to regain the desire to try playing it again I'd have to start over, my enthusiasm a recurrent cycle of ephemera.

Truth be told my relationship with gaming over the past year and more has been very strained despite my efforts, a consequence of several factors (mainly severe depression and addiction recovery, I've been clean from heroin since 2014 but still struggle with the association I'd made habitual of necessitating chemical ardor for my two strongest interests, gaming and reading history) and as such I've only superficially played any games throughout the duration of this extended phase of dysphoria. Elden Ring is the only game in well over a year that has managed to captivate me, and I basically played it inside and out within a month of release to the point where I'll need quite a lengthy break before I'll be able to pick it up again. Souls games, while I sincerely love each of them, aren't my favorite kinds of RPGs but the so-called 'renaissance' wave of RPGs hasn't produced any games that are even remotely comparable to their predecessors for me, and so for a long time I've mainly been content to replay games from the past and to explore the many that I missed for systems I never owned, like the Atari ST or Amiga.

I have installed instances of Morrowind, Stalker: Anomaly, Fallout: New Vegas, and Fallout 4 backed up and preset to run through MO2 with hundreds of mods, a process for each game that was built up over many years as the respective mod communities grew, and yet I barely touch them anymore because I most certainly burned myself out and unfortunately all of my regular "old reliables" (such as the first two Fallout games, Daggerfall, Planescape: Torment, Arcanum, Wizardry 6 and 7, Darklands, Might & Magic 3 through 8, non-Enhanced Editions of Baldur's Gate and its sequel, the usual suspects) are similarly too familiar, memorized too thoroughly and for too long I've been unable to fall back on them. So then there is my licensed copy of LaunchBox, which I have on my gaming laptop and on my phone, which has a library of over 23,000 games for consoles, computers and handhelds ranging from Commodore 64 through to PlayStation 3 (for Demon Souls), some of which are (near)complete sets such as for the Amiga, Atari Jaguar, Super Nintendo, MSX and MSX2, and then the two biggest sets are a recent MAME set and a "light" install of ExoDOS with just under 800 DOS games actually installed. This setup is a literal dream come true from back in my childhood when I used to daydream and try to envision what gaming would be like in the future, back when the original Nintendo was a fairly recent thing, and no doubt I have had fun reading the forums here, or the CRPG book, discovering all kinds of fascinating games I'd never even heard of and being able to access them at a moments notice through ExoDOS or from GOG, &c.

Yet nothing really grabbed me, despite how much I enjoy the discovery of games and experiencing DOS and Amiga era graphics or even Apple ][ and the like, I just wasn't finding myself genuinely engaged so beyond a few short-lived attempts at forcing myself to get over my negative attitude and hypercritical disposition (no doubt I'm my own worst enemy) I really haven't played very much over this period. Every time I would open up my GOG or Steam libraries though, I would see Grimoire in the list and think to myself how I really ought to get on it in a serious way, but was constantly holding off because I didn't want my poor mood and miserable attitude to ruin a game that I anticipated to be the only experience comparable to Wizardry 7 available, possibly ever, while so much time had elapsed since I'd had the mechanics and complexities of Wizardry at hand that I felt the need to put it off until I felt "ready" to take on what I assumed was going to be a laborious task of reading through the minutiae of a manual and getting to grips with an overwhelming system.

Recently however, I finally determined for myself that I was just going to try it, and to build my party without the foreknowledge of min-maxing attributes and to approach the game as an open adventure, just like I would have as a child. My OCD tends to plague my enjoyment of open world and choice-heavy RPGs because I struggle to resist the urge to look up the outcome of every decision that arises, to make sure that I'm exploring the environments "in order" so that I don't miss out on important NPCs or items, and so I forced myself to adopt a state of mind whereby I just ignore those impulses to the best of my ability. And so far I have been, and am enjoying this game immensely.

However I wanted to post here because I'm not simply enjoying the game, I am entirely enthralled with it as a whole, and have not felt this way about a game in a very, very long time. It is everything I'd hoped for and so much more. The graphics in their way are gorgeous and recall childhood reveries that I cherish, just simply looking at the environments while moving through them fills my imagination with visions and elicits a sense of wonder and curiosity that games of recent years simply do not recreate. Grimoire is a remarkable game in many ways, and easily one of the best I've played all around, I am inclined to include it in my own personal pantheon right up there along with Wizardry 6 and 7 and the other masterpieces. It is reminiscent in a sense of awesome gaming experiences of the past like the Eye of the Beholder series, Lands of Lore, Anvil of Dawn, Dungeon Master, FRUA, World of Xeen, all those kinds of classic dungeon crawlers, but the turn-based combat system in this case is a much more preferable design and really facilitates the addictive nature of the combat encounters, which I never find myself irritated by. Watching each characters skills and abilities grow little by little through use makes each encounter a welcome interruption of the exploration, and although I love breaking out the graph paper or Grid Cartographer the automap and quest journal are critical tools that I greatly appreciate, because it enables me to load the game up on my laptop disconnected from my widescreen monitor and kick back in bed comfortably to play it with just the laptops touchpad and keys. I cannot wait to have more time to explore the game thoroughly and experience everything it has to offer, and reading the manual is in itself entertaining and interesting. So, thank you very much Cleve for producing a game the likes of which may never be seen again, a true successor to my favorite Wizardry which is also one of my all-time favorite games. It is a marvel of congruency in which the numerous visual and mechanical elements compound each other to deliver an intangible experience that is far greater than the sum of its parts. I've posted in some other threads in your hosted subforum about my excitement for whatever you intend to release next, and now even more eagerly await any news on future titles. Your game has reinvigorated my tempered enthusiasm for what has otherwise been among my greatest passions and for this I simply cannot express my gratitude adequately.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Thanks for comparing Grimoire to the classics, much appreciated. Please put a review up on the Steam site, Grimoire is still barely 1 point below positive rating and it wouldn't take much to push it back up again.

 

[Baxander]

I apologize in advance for my verbosity. I haven't posted here since August last year, so almost a full year ago. During that time I would occasionally load up Grimoire and mess around in the Library, and a few times (three) I actually managed to start the game and wander around a bit, getting through a dozen or so encounters and exploring the forest and one of the dungeons. My intention was to fully immerse myself in this game and commit to completing it because of how much I adore Wizardry 7 and the work of D.W. Bradley, but for a number of reasons I would only play for one session and then too much time would pass to where when I managed to regain the desire to try playing it again I'd have to start over, my enthusiasm a recurrent cycle of ephemera.

Truth be told my relationship with gaming over the past year and more has been very strained despite my efforts, a consequence of several factors (mainly severe depression and addiction recovery, I've been clean from heroin since 2014 but still struggle with the association I'd made habitual of necessitating chemical ardor for my two strongest interests, gaming and reading history) and as such I've only superficially played any games throughout the duration of this extended phase of dysphoria. Elden Ring is the only game in well over a year that has managed to captivate me, and I basically played it inside and out within a month of release to the point where I'll need quite a lengthy break before I'll be able to pick it up again. Souls games, while I sincerely love each of them, aren't my favorite kinds of RPGs but the so-called 'renaissance' wave of RPGs hasn't produced any games that are even remotely comparable to their predecessors for me, and so for a long time I've mainly been content to replay games from the past and to explore the many that I missed for systems I never owned, like the Atari ST or Amiga.

I have installed instances of Morrowind, Stalker: Anomaly, Fallout: New Vegas, and Fallout 4 backed up and preset to run through MO2 with hundreds of mods, a process for each game that was built up over many years as the respective mod communities grew, and yet I barely touch them anymore because I most certainly burned myself out and unfortunately all of my regular "old reliables" (such as the first two Fallout games, Daggerfall, Planescape: Torment, Arcanum, Wizardry 6 and 7, Darklands, Might & Magic 3 through 8, non-Enhanced Editions of Baldur's Gate and its sequel, the usual suspects) are similarly too familiar, memorized too thoroughly and for too long I've been unable to fall back on them. So then there is my licensed copy of LaunchBox, which I have on my gaming laptop and on my phone, which has a library of over 23,000 games for consoles, computers and handhelds ranging from Commodore 64 through to PlayStation 3 (for Demon Souls), some of which are (near)complete sets such as for the Amiga, Atari Jaguar, Super Nintendo, MSX and MSX2, and then the two biggest sets are a recent MAME set and a "light" install of ExoDOS with just under 800 DOS games actually installed. This setup is a literal dream come true from back in my childhood when I used to daydream and try to envision what gaming would be like in the future, back when the original Nintendo was a fairly recent thing, and no doubt I have had fun reading the forums here, or the CRPG book, discovering all kinds of fascinating games I'd never even heard of and being able to access them at a moments notice through ExoDOS or from GOG, &c.

Yet nothing really grabbed me, despite how much I enjoy the discovery of games and experiencing DOS and Amiga era graphics or even Apple ][ and the like, I just wasn't finding myself genuinely engaged so beyond a few short-lived attempts at forcing myself to get over my negative attitude and hypercritical disposition (no doubt I'm my own worst enemy) I really haven't played very much over this period. Every time I would open up my GOG or Steam libraries though, I would see Grimoire in the list and think to myself how I really ought to get on it in a serious way, but was constantly holding off because I didn't want my poor mood and miserable attitude to ruin a game that I anticipated to be the only experience comparable to Wizardry 7 available, possibly ever, while so much time had elapsed since I'd had the mechanics and complexities of Wizardry at hand that I felt the need to put it off until I felt "ready" to take on what I assumed was going to be a laborious task of reading through the minutiae of a manual and getting to grips with an overwhelming system.

Recently however, I finally determined for myself that I was just going to try it, and to build my party without the foreknowledge of min-maxing attributes and to approach the game as an open adventure, just like I would have as a child. My OCD tends to plague my enjoyment of open world and choice-heavy RPGs because I struggle to resist the urge to look up the outcome of every decision that arises, to make sure that I'm exploring the environments "in order" so that I don't miss out on important NPCs or items, and so I forced myself to adopt a state of mind whereby I just ignore those impulses to the best of my ability. And so far I have been, and am enjoying this game immensely.

However I wanted to post here because I'm not simply enjoying the game, I am entirely enthralled with it as a whole, and have not felt this way about a game in a very, very long time. It is everything I'd hoped for and so much more. The graphics in their way are gorgeous and recall childhood reveries that I cherish, just simply looking at the environments while moving through them fills my imagination with visions and elicits a sense of wonder and curiosity that games of recent years simply do not recreate. Grimoire is a remarkable game in many ways, and easily one of the best I've played all around, I am inclined to include it in my own personal pantheon right up there along with Wizardry 6 and 7 and the other masterpieces. It is reminiscent in a sense of awesome gaming experiences of the past like the Eye of the Beholder series, Lands of Lore, Anvil of Dawn, Dungeon Master, FRUA, World of Xeen, all those kinds of classic dungeon crawlers, but the turn-based combat system in this case is a much more preferable design and really facilitates the addictive nature of the combat encounters, which I never find myself irritated by. Watching each characters skills and abilities grow little by little through use makes each encounter a welcome interruption of the exploration, and although I love breaking out the graph paper or Grid Cartographer the automap and quest journal are critical tools that I greatly appreciate, because it enables me to load the game up on my laptop disconnected from my widescreen monitor and kick back in bed comfortably to play it with just the laptops touchpad and keys. I cannot wait to have more time to explore the game thoroughly and experience everything it has to offer, and reading the manual is in itself entertaining and interesting. So, thank you very much Cleve for producing a game the likes of which may never be seen again, a true successor to my favorite Wizardry which is also one of my all-time favorite games. It is a marvel of congruency in which the numerous visual and mechanical elements compound each other to deliver an intangible experience that is far greater than the sum of its parts. I've posted in some other threads in your hosted subforum about my excitement for whatever you intend to release next, and now even more eagerly await any news on future titles. Your game has reinvigorated my tempered enthusiasm for what has otherwise been among my greatest passions and for this I simply cannot express my gratitude adequately.

Drugs kill.
My friend is dead because of drugs.
The only fucking DRUG you need is Grimoire. Play the shit out of it and feel that same euphoria that needle gave you, brother.
Cleve is the dealer, and the Briarpatch Woods is the juice.

 

[Fowyr]

I'm late to chime in, but still.

I'm pretty sure that lost hour or ten playing without Internet when was moving around the country.
unseeingeye
Grimoire: So good, that it cures opioid-induced anhedonia!

 

[unseeingeye]

Drugs kill.
My friend is dead because of drugs.
The only fucking DRUG you need is Grimoire. Play the shit out of it and feel that same euphoria that needle gave you, brother.
Cleve is the dealer, and the Briarpatch Woods is the juice.

Indeed, they do. Heroin addiction has taken the life of most of my friends, including my cousin who has been my lifelong best friend from our infancy right up until he died at 32 years old. Four people I considered my best friends that weren't family related to me also died, over a period of about 16 years; my first friend to die from it overdosed when we were 16, by which age I'd already developed a problem. Another died a few years later, a guy I'd known since we were 6 years old, it was in fact his father who brought home a copy of Zelda: A Link to the Past for Super Nintendo that in its own way led me to RPGs, and just last year his fucking sister died although it was non-drug related but probably more than any other her loss was one I felt immensely, overwhelmed by the utter indifference of Nature. Not to mention she was so funny and cool and stunningly gorgeous, with long curly blonde hair, huge bright blue eyes, &c. Then there are the dozen or so people I was friendly with but not ultra close with, and several other people I'd become friendly with in recovery at a methadone clinic who later relapsed and died (one of them had lost his left arm but had been clean for years, was doing fantastic for someone in sober recovery, but something distressed him and hit himself and dropped dead on the spot).

I don't mean to derail the thread but yes absolutely drugs like that can and will kill you, and there is nothing I regret more than my teenage recklessness leading me into a profound addiction which I'll struggle with for the rest of my life. It is exceedingly difficult to feel significant happiness for me anymore, I look at people who don't have addiction problems and the way in which a video game, or a movie, or a walk outdoors can make them smile, and feel intense envy for that pure, innocent goodness. I'd been dealing with severe depression and a horrific home life since I was a child and drugs were my only way of immediately escaping it, but there was an incident right when I turned 20 years old that sent my life spiraling well out of control, I lost everything and spent time in prison on a bullshit conviction that I naively took a plea bargain for, and my desire to live responsibly went right the fuck out the window. Mercifully my son was born less than a year earlier, and a few years after meeting my current girlfriend my daughter was born, and it was for them that I removed myself from my circumstances, sought help and finally after over 10 years of trying, got out of that life. Friends continued to die, a few got sober and are doing well, most disappeared once I got clean, but I lived and continue to live with my children's future in mind, and its kept me going since 2014.

My myriad psychological issues compound my negative associations and make enjoying my own passions difficult, but I'm certain I'm not alone in this regard and that people who regularly experience depression are familiar with that sort of undesired disengagement and sapped enthusiasm. I've been reading from my copy of Richard Burton's 17th century masterpiece Anatomy of Melancholy, along with a reissued copy of Saturn and Melancholy, a sort of Warburg-esque study of Renaissance medicine, art and natural philosophy and the influence of the stars on the four humors as understood prior to the Paracelsians, and it fascinates me to see how this psychological condition has been explained throughout Western history. Reading and gaming are my two main jams and normally I can rely on one or the other to rebound from the abyss but sometimes both are spent of their soothing balm to the enflamed soul, but Grimoire has genuinely engaged me and reminded me of what actual, not artificial drug-induced happiness feels like. The family-friendly tone of the game radiates positivity and emphasizes my awareness of my own joy. I noticed in the manual the mention of how the inclusion of magic is not an endorsement of the occult and it recalled to mind even the atmosphere of the over-culture back in the 90s and what I can remember of the 80s. I actually have a fairly extensive knowledge of Western occultism or 'esotericism' as its known in academia these days, along with demonism and the like - I'm no practitioner or anything, it is just an obscure interest of mine similar to and related with my interest in alchemy, and so that part of the manual definitely stood out for me.

Anyway my apologies again for rambling, my posts are almost always too long. But thank you very much for the sentiment and your encouragement.

 

[unseeingeye]

Thanks for comparing Grimoire to the classics, much appreciated. Please put a review up on the Steam site, Grimoire is still barely 1 point below positive rating and it wouldn't take much to push it back up again.

Thank you for reading my length post, Cleve. It is awesome to be able to express my gratitude in a forum that you frequent and know that you read it, I just think its so cool. I most certainly will put a review recommendation up on Steam, it is the least I could do. I've actually never left a review on Steam before! I share my account with my family so perhaps my girlfriend or children have, but for me it will be a first. Speaking of, I was playing Grimoire late at night recently and my daughter was sitting next to me watching me play on the laptop as I started a new party, and she loved the presentation and art style; we were laughing together saying how the gargoyles look like our dog and she loved Little Rosy, we couldn't get over just how many key words she responded to. Such an awesome game Cleve, there is just nothing like it and I can ONLY compare it to those classics because your game is, as far as I'm aware, the only game that truly compares in every regard. There are a few other relatively recent games that capture some of the magic, like Legend of Amberland, or Swords and Sorcery - Underworld, maybe a few others and they are all very cool, but Grimoire is the only one that makes me feel like Wizardry 7 does, and to me that game is the pinnacle of RPGs.

Edit - Don't you need to have played a game on Steam for a few hours before you're able to leave a recommendation? If so I'll switch over to Steam version because I'd only been playing on GOG, that way I'll be able to access the recommendation option. I was going to start over yet again anyway, because the more I play the more I understand how everything functions and where I can fix some poor party composition errors.

 

[unseeingeye]

Grimoire: So good, that it cures opioid-induced anhedonia!

It certainly helps, no doubt about it. I've experienced anhedonia persistently for almost a decade now, hoping desperately that it was a temporary phase, a symptom of post-withdrawal that would diminish with time. My God, how naive was I! Instead it became drastically worse, peaking for me about 5 years into recovery, the midst of which coincided with the first lockdowns in 2020. It finally relented to some degree but I feel as if I've done so much damage to my neurology that I may never recover in this capacity. Granted there are several other contributing issues, dysthymia being the greatest causal factor, but luckily I've the disposition to maintain and function without recourse to SSRIs and the like. It is a terrible way to live but the knowledge of the blame resting solely on me lessens the burden somewhat, and as it has let off somewhat this past year and I begin to be able to find enjoyment in something like Grimoire things have gotten significantly better for me upstairs. I feel very sorry for people for whom there is no outlet or relief, I cannot imagine the suffering.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

I disagree completely with all the ruling paradigms of our time propagated by television and media and the cacaphony of noise.

Feeling depressed in the modern world makes sense for anybody who is even mildly sane. It is to be expected. I hate to sound like gay Brad Pitt in FIGHT CLUB but if you're not hurting nowadays it is probably because you are an NPC with no soul. It would be natural to suffer from severe depression. You can probably plot IQ side-by-side with sadness quotients and find they track almost perfectly. Depression can hardly be consigned to genes or even hardship. It is mostly the recognition that this place you are in is not good and you would like to be someplace where you could be happy and be doing completely different things than what you are forced to do.

In my miserable marriage in the midst of the worst emotional agony for 25 years, I considered computer games the single best way to cope. They gave me great joy and took me completely out of my troubles when they were as good as games like Wizardry 7 or Lands of Lore. I wanted to emulate them when I discovered it was hard to find any more games like them. I couldn't abandon my children so I couldn't leave my wife. I couldn't leave my wife because she was the mother of my children. I couldn't cheat on her because it would be betraying everyone I loved - except some of them simply didn't love me back. At all. Ever. This is an impossible situation to live with and I had no alternatives. So I frequently sought solace in games.

Before you laugh at how pathetic that sounds, remember I avoided about one million pathological behaviors by getting a dopamine hit from computer games. Of all the balm for pain or boredom or misery there is just nothing better or healthier for you than to lose yourself in the world of a well written computer game. You have only a few options in life and choosing to drink yourself to death or take drugs will take your already unhappy situation and make it much worse. Choosing to be unfaithful to your wife will condemn you to hell and you will be betraying your whole family by doing so.

This is where I get a lot of drive to create really good computer games, mostly for the sensations they evoke ... triumph, fear, joy, curiosity, mystery and ultimate victory. I just wish I evoked it a little more often than once every 25 years. Been trying to assembly line it recently, hope I can get more games out soon.

 

[unseeingeye]

Yes I absolutely agree with you Cleve, and have felt that way for a long time. It is the culture that is mad, increasingly become perverse, and the so-called abreactions ranging from depressive suicide to random acts of violence appear to me to be symptoms of a corrupted, rootless over-culture devoid of sanctioned tradition and of providing the possibility for meaningful occupation within its local communities, that thrives on deception and greed. Millions of people feeling lost, without an immediate sense of purpose and of belonging, has become normalized and the consequences ought to make this readily apparent but the nature of the beast is cannibalistic in this regard so anesthetizing and mimed conformance to predatory social pressures enforce its self maintenance.

Computer games had been my main comfort since early childhood, along with reading. And what has always attracted me to them has been their worlds, their environments. I never cared for the hero's journey, nor was I seriously attracted to the sensation of overcoming a difficult challenge. Although those things appealed to me in a sense, it was the immersion into a different world, a world much better from my perspective than the one we actually all share, and just as I study history and obscure subjects in my real life, I found myself most interested in exploring the lore and history of the worlds in the games I played. For me there is a very 'architectural' approach to gaming, and to this day it remains the manner by which I engage games and I only play those games in which this is possible.

Certainly there is an unhealthy component to gaming, but considering the things that are at risk for the many people with self-destructive and suicidal depression or worse psychological sufferings, the benefits dwarf the potential harms - unfortunately the same can not be said for most drugs. People may make light of it but to my mind there is no doubt that a huge number of people alive today, whether unconsciously or acutely aware of it, have video games to thank for maintaining their sanity and in extreme cases even their very lives. The mass degradation occurring on a worldwide scale to the arts and to western culture in general makes living through this era and what is to come at times practically intolerable if one has any sensitivity to anything going on outside of themselves. Although increasingly rare, a good video game is a blessing, to be able to ease the burden of living among the majority of our species who are barely literate and only technically qualify to the title of human, as otherwise basically hairless apes trained to mimic speech. We are living in an age of cultural collapse, such as has happened dozens of times in the past, and as has been remarked on since Spengler, Evola, Guenon and the like for over a century, and any enriching distraction is of inestimable value. We are inundated with advertising, overwhelmed by an appeal to self-indulgence. Depression is a sane reaction to this state of affairs, I concur wholeheartedly. Reading those books I mentioned earlier, the Renaissance study of Albrecht Durer's famous engraving and Burton's Anatomy, made it apparent to me that our contemporaries who write introductions to Burton or discuss his work critically online and in print are either entirely full of shit, or completely miss the fundamental flaw in the thinking that what the ancients and medievals called melancholia is the precise equivalent to todays manic depression, or bipolar disorder, or any variation on this theme. They are related, but there has been a metamorphosis, the scattered remnants disintegrated.

Klibanzky and Saxl discuss in their work the very difficulty of defining precisely what melancholy actually is; it reminds me of the way in which defining what makes an RPG can be so contentious because of its nebulous and tenuous amalgam of numerous concepts. Melancholy, even poetic despondency, is long gone to this world, the same way honor and chivalry are long gone, and only approximations and imitations remain. Depression is something other-than, it seems to me, a singular isolating self-enveloping resorted to in desperation to shield the soul from existential and spiritual harm. The psychosocial apparatus built up around categorizing, defining and medicating the hundreds, thousands of unsound conditions of mind is itself a monstrously grotesque phenomenon, a cancerous growth of misapplied notions and critically uninformed perspectives capable only of endless misdiagnoses and flawed prescriptive prognostications. An insane asylum run by the insane in order to maintain general insanity, in other words. A lumbering blind beast, of severed connection to spirit, shambling and writhing randomly toward a point in space and time it can only infer via its haired viscera, a putrid mass of eyes, ears, mouths all gaping and probing, ingesting and devouring to satiate the desire of parasites it believes to be its own - this is my image of the people of North America and those of the misfortunate nations that either imitate it willingly or are forced into compliance. The anima mundi is darkened by this creeping shade.

For some good news however, I've since purchased Grimoire again for Steam. I thought I had it there but evidently only owned it through GOG, so I bought a Steam copy yesterday and will be starting over this coming weekend, so once I put some time in and the option to leave a recommendation becomes available I will be leaving mine, to include details of what about it most fascinates me. Gimoire is to me almost a miracle manifest, the very idea that a successor to Wizardry 7 could even exist is so improbable and the very antithesis of todays gaming industry and larger community. My very first post on these forums, after having anonymously browsed it for years going back to a time in my life during which I don't even recognize myself, expressed my awe at this very thing, how it was to me on par with there somehow being a brand new Dark Sun game made in the same old engine or another Infinity engine game made elsewhere in the Forgotten Realms, and I still feel this way.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

By the way, don't talk about this subject to a doctor or a shrink no matter what.

Nowadays, they are instructed by the people who puppet them to put your name on a list of "depressed persons." This will come up at some point and they will use it against you to deprive you something they might have trouble taking away from a person whose name is not on that list. It is likely that not long from now, this will be used to give you mandatory medical treatments including you-know-what because it will be implied that once diagnosed with a "condition," you have lost agency and should have things imposed on you by "doctors" who of course "know what is in your best interest." Admitting you are not a robot causes the other robots to mark you as a defective because some days in the course of your robotic automated existence you raise your head and ask just what in the hell you are doing here.

They are now building vast databases of medical records with no regard to privacy in America, Australia the UK and most of the western world. These records help to categorize you as a "patient" who may be resisting coerced medicine because you're "crazy."

Drugs, alcohol and stimulants are all used to attempt to smooth out aberrant tics in robots and to try to squeeze a few more useful years on the assembly line out of them before they have to be scrapped. Don't turn to these poisons for any reason, they're designed to weaken you and drive you further into despair in between short bouts of pleasure. Porn and general perversions are also used as a release valve to keep a robot running for just one more day.

There's no better resort than to turn to escapist fun in computer games, movies, pulp, comic books and other diversions. They are a way to escape a very unpleasant reality for periods of time in which you will probably be enriched in your understanding of the world and mankind when you return. They won't scar you and when people say you're wasting time that was better spent in smoking methamphetamines as they do, you'll notice over the years that your interests tend to fill you out as a person and lend you to broader perspectives and narratives in all regards.

Of course, true connoisseurs know that there is no more rewarding kind of computer game than a truly well-written RPG. When they end you feel you have journeyed very far away and come back in a vastly better mood about everything, including the problems you left behind in the real world.

 

[unseeingeye]

Having gone through the system(s) (both medical and criminal justice) I'm afraid I'm unable to escape that kind of unwanted attention; I have a violent felony record (one that is utter bullshit), misdemeanor drug charges from my youth, a profile from a Methadone clinic, hospital records, state psyche records, the state where I was convicted even has my blood sample for which I had to drive 12 hours to and from once I was out on parole, and probably yet others I don't even recall. And compared with many of the people I used with, I was a lightweight. Some of my old friends now deceased must have had veritable tomes composed on their behalf, and most of them didn't even make it past 35.

Unfortunately for me, the desperation of addiction has led me to encounter situations unfavorable to my sovereignty and privacy, and likewise to divulge precisely the kind of information that you are cautioning people never to share. I've always intuitively understood not to ever share thoughts of suicide regardless of how insignificant the drive, because a verbal acknowledgement of such is all that is required by law for you to be temporarily restrained. Other than my addiction, I've foolishly acknowledged a general depression, but in the moment it just seemed natural as relevant to my addiction. Talking to people in the medical field about psychological troubles, and talking with people in the criminal justice field about absolutely anything at all, are two things I learned not to do the hard way. The main reason I was even convicted is because I said "yes" to one simple, highly deceptive question that I was manipulated into acknowledging in the affirmative during an interrogation with two detectives from the police station. I was terrified, confused, far from home, starving, sleep-deprived from laying on a cold cell floor surrounded by an endless parade of arrested individuals in varying degrees of trouble, and entering into withdrawals, and being so young and naive I consented to the questioning. When you are genuinely innocent, you don't think like a criminal, and here I thought that by showing my compliance and willingness to talk that I would obviate my innocence and the whole thing would be cleared up and I'd be allowed to leave. If only I'd known then how truly awful the police can be..

But we learn from our mistakes, if we have any intelligence whatsoever, and I evidently had to endure being wrung through the prison industrial complex in order to learn quite a few things. In retrospect it has taught me a great deal, from recognizing the moment-to-moment preciousness and volatility of freedom from incarceration, to the acute awareness that mankind is just an animal species and in many respects much lower. I learned to never, ever speak with the police without a self-appointed lawyer present, and to withhold any and every bit of information concerning what will be perceived to be psychologically aberrant ideations or feelings from anybody, and I mean by that everybody unless you are prepared to live with the ramifications of having that trust betrayed. It is in our human nature to lie, and to talk, so you have to assume that every word that you speak or type is going to be repeated regardless of with whom you are sharing. Be it your lifelong best friend, your own parents, your wife or husband and your children, it doesn't matter who because it goes against our nature to keep quiet, otherwise it wouldn't be considered a matter of virtue and honor to refrain from doing so. Everything you say and do ought to be kept within reasonable boundaries of what you personally deem to be acceptable consequences should an unwelcome party become privy to those words and behaviors. It took numerous betrayals of the closest sort before I had it permanently branded in my head to think before speaking. What should be considered common sense is instead regarded as paranoia, and part of the reason why for so many, myself included this is not instinctively our default mode but instead must be learned.

I think you're also correct to say that meaningful computer games and especially CRPGs are among the healthiest hobbies we can have, because they do not have the immediate nor the delayed negative effects that so many other escapist diversions have. As you said, you come away from a well-written game enriched, and I've had video games lead me to discover interests only tangentially related that were of great benefit. In fact the other day I was replaying Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, a game I'd played back when it was new on my now busted PlayStation 4, now I'm playing it on my gaming laptop and since its been over 5 years I'd forgotten the majority of what the game involves, but I was blown away for the second time when on first loading it throws up a quote by Emil Cioran about inhabiting a language instead of a nation. Regardless of what anyone thinks of that game or its creator, that may lead some attentive players who've never heard of him to look into who Cioran is, the way other games have led me to similar intellectual, even spiritual discoveries. Emil Cioran is among the biggest intellectual and artistic influences on me and to find a piece of his work as a relatively obscure and supremely pessimistic writer in a mainstream popular video game blew me away.

Like reading, a well-written video game exposes us to new intellectual pursuits, new ideas we'd not before encountered, and new vocabulary to expand our lexicon. But because the reading done in a video game is done in parallel to the player agency of interaction on multiple levels including the narrative, it compounds the impression that new terminology makes on us and reinforces the potential for it to be retained. It is misfortunate that the overwhelming majority of video games are utter garbage that negatively influence the population and exacerbate latent pathologies, but this is the case for every and any artistic medium. The few gems that exist are sound treatment for those seeking refuge from the monstrous grotesquery of modernity.

 

[The_Mask]

Holy crap... seeing Emil Cioran in a discussion with Cleve is like seeing an UFO. I never thought this day would come. Only on the Codex, I guess. Carry on. Carry on.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Having gone through the system(s) (both medical and criminal justice) I'm afraid I'm unable to escape that kind of unwanted attention; I have a violent felony record (one that is utter bullshit), misdemeanor drug charges from my youth, a profile from a Methadone clinic, hospital records, state psyche records, the state where I was convicted even has my blood sample for which I had to drive 12 hours to and from once I was out on parole, and probably yet others I don't even recall. And compared with many of the people I used with, I was a lightweight. Some of my old friends now deceased must have had veritable tomes composed on their behalf, and most of them didn't even make it past 35.

Unfortunately for me, the desperation of addiction has led me to encounter situations unfavorable to my sovereignty and privacy, and likewise to divulge precisely the kind of information that you are cautioning people never to share. I've always intuitively understood not to ever share thoughts of suicide regardless of how insignificant the drive, because a verbal acknowledgement of such is all that is required by law for you to be temporarily restrained. Other than my addiction, I've foolishly acknowledged a general depression, but in the moment it just seemed natural as relevant to my addiction. Talking to people in the medical field about psychological troubles, and talking with people in the criminal justice field about absolutely anything at all, are two things I learned not to do the hard way. The main reason I was even convicted is because I said "yes" to one simple, highly deceptive question that I was manipulated into acknowledging in the affirmative during an interrogation with two detectives from the police station. I was terrified, confused, far from home, starving, sleep-deprived from laying on a cold cell floor surrounded by an endless parade of arrested individuals in varying degrees of trouble, and entering into withdrawals, and being so young and naive I consented to the questioning. When you are genuinely innocent, you don't think like a criminal, and here I thought that by showing my compliance and willingness to talk that I would obviate my innocence and the whole thing would be cleared up and I'd be allowed to leave. If only I'd known then how truly awful the police can be..

But we learn from our mistakes, if we have any intelligence whatsoever, and I evidently had to endure being wrung through the prison industrial complex in order to learn quite a few things. In retrospect it has taught me a great deal, from recognizing the moment-to-moment preciousness and volatility of freedom from incarceration, to the acute awareness that mankind is just an animal species and in many respects much lower. I learned to never, ever speak with the police without a self-appointed lawyer present, and to withhold any and every bit of information concerning what will be perceived to be psychologically aberrant ideations or feelings from anybody, and I mean by that everybody unless you are prepared to live with the ramifications of having that trust betrayed. It is in our human nature to lie, and to talk, so you have to assume that every word that you speak or type is going to be repeated regardless of with whom you are sharing. Be it your lifelong best friend, your own parents, your wife or husband and your children, it doesn't matter who because it goes against our nature to keep quiet, otherwise it wouldn't be considered a matter of virtue and honor to refrain from doing so. Everything you say and do ought to be kept within reasonable boundaries of what you personally deem to be acceptable consequences should an unwelcome party become privy to those words and behaviors. It took numerous betrayals of the closest sort before I had it permanently branded in my head to think before speaking. What should be considered common sense is instead regarded as paranoia, and part of the reason why for so many, myself included this is not instinctively our default mode but instead must be learned.

I think you're also correct to say that meaningful computer games and especially CRPGs are among the healthiest hobbies we can have, because they do not have the immediate nor the delayed negative effects that so many other escapist diversions have. As you said, you come away from a well-written game enriched, and I've had video games lead me to discover interests only tangentially related that were of great benefit. In fact the other day I was replaying Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, a game I'd played back when it was new on my now busted PlayStation 4, now I'm playing it on my gaming laptop and since its been over 5 years I'd forgotten the majority of what the game involves, but I was blown away for the second time when on first loading it throws up a quote by Emil Cioran about inhabiting a language instead of a nation. Regardless of what anyone thinks of that game or its creator, that may lead some attentive players who've never heard of him to look into who Cioran is, the way other games have led me to similar intellectual, even spiritual discoveries. Emil Cioran is among the biggest intellectual and artistic influences on me and to find a piece of his work as a relatively obscure and supremely pessimistic writer in a mainstream popular video game blew me away.

Like reading, a well-written video game exposes us to new intellectual pursuits, new ideas we'd not before encountered, and new vocabulary to expand our lexicon. But because the reading done in a video game is done in parallel to the player agency of interaction on multiple levels including the narrative, it compounds the impression that new terminology makes on us and reinforces the potential for it to be retained. It is misfortunate that the overwhelming majority of video games are utter garbage that negatively influence the population and exacerbate latent pathologies, but this is the case for every and any artistic medium. The few gems that exist are sound treatment for those seeking refuge from the monstrous grotesquery of modernity.

I hope it gets better for you. Goddamn.

 

[unseeingeye]

Holy crap... seeing Emil Cioran in a discussion with Cleve is like seeing an UFO. I never thought this day would come. Only on the Codex, I guess. Carry on. Carry on.

The world is a profoundly strange place, and getting stranger with every passing moment. A Short History of Decay was my introduction to Cioran, a book I immediately felt attracted to on discovering it upon a friends bookshelf, and later discovering his fondness for Mircea Eliade in his Anathemas and Admirations endeared him to me even more. I went on to read many of his books that have English translations and found in his enthusiasm for Bach's music, to where he held it to signal the only proof of the existence of a creator, a kindred thinker. As an aphorist he is second to none and despite his focus on the vulgarities and absurdities that arose across the two world wars there is yet a timelessness to his views, or rather there are recurrent phases of civilization during which his views are again become germane. I'm not particularly interested in the far-right politics and sympathies for the Iron Guard he held in his youth, nor those of Eliade for that matter, but then I'm not more than superficially interested in politics anyway; for me only the matters of spirit are of significant concern and this is where Cioran is so important, especially so his writings on insomnia.

 

[unseeingeye]

I hope it gets better for you. Goddamn.

Its very kind of you to say, and I sincerely appreciate the sentiment, but my life has gotten remarkably better, even to a point that I am now in a position to where my heart breaks for the misfortunate who either lost or are unable to find the stability and sense of belonging that I've been mercifully gifted. Everything I wrote about is from my past and enough time has elapsed to where I can hardly recognize myself in many of those situations. I've been clean since 2014 and have custody of both my son and my daughter and live with my daughters mother (my son has a different mother, with whom I separated while awaiting my trial) and we have a great family life together. Having been abused physically and psychologically as a hypersensitive child desperate for communication, I feel that I've developed an attitude and an approach to parenting that balances the mercurial space between the role of a father and that of a friend without recourse to even mildly abusive behaviors nor the overcompensation of spoiling, and while my small family has its share of problems we are overall very happy and maintain healthy relationships. The looming specter of relapse forever haunts my skies and almost certainly always will, but after 8 years I find myself able to maintain my sobriety relatively comfortably in the acknowledgement of my responsibilities as a provider and comforter with all of that is expected of me. Other than addiction my felony conviction is the greatest obstacle to my capacity for growth but fortunately I've found ways to circumvent some of the things I'm barred from. Today I see myself as just another person trying to get by and raise my family, no longer the self-destructive misanthrope ever seeking anesthetization, and I look to innocuous activities like gaming or reading to find pleasure, rare as it may be. Coming home to greet my kids and catch my dog who leaps with joy at my presence and later to sit back and play Grimoire or other games I enjoy is an infinitely more fulfilling existence than the one I'd subjected myself to for too much of my life.

EDIT - I apologize for taking the thread off course from the topic, just got caught up in sharing, I suppose it helps to open up about past traumas even if it is to strangers. Thread related material though, I spoke last night for about an hour with my daughter, the same who watched me playing Grimoire and really enjoyed the conversation with Little Rosy, and gave her a summarized (and somewhat sanitized) breakdown of Cleve and Wizardry. She said to tell Cleve that the people who try to insult him online are probably just Robert Sirotek alt accounts.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Insomnia is proven in the lab to contribute to higher native intelligence by nearly doubling up your waking hours with activities that stimulate neuron growth, including reading or writiing when normal people are sound asleep.

It becomes a curse when older, contributing to brain damage and memory loss. So if you could suffer from mild insomnia up until your forties you'd be more likely to benefit from it.

Melatonin can help a lot. I'm waiting for some to kick in now and hoping it knocks me out.

I was playing a bit of Black Crypt earlier today and it became really fun at some point. You almost forget how much fun games used to be if you don't play the classics again regularly. The Amiga blobbers were the pinnacle of the RPGs in their day. The effort that went into the graphics and evoking magical realism made the games on the Amiga really memorable even when the gameplay wasn't that good.

In the Army overseas in the early 80's, the soldiers all responded to boredom and misery by drinking or using drugs. I sensed back then that all their neurochemistry would be forfeit later in life. I knew that many of them were forming habits that would leave their brains almost incapable of enjoying anything a few years down the road. You are really lucky you are still able to rekindle joy and fun in things, especially in your relationship with animals and your family. That too can be retrained if somebody sticks with it. I would think one of the few ways to avoid addiction would be to seek the same reward except find something that produced it without any drugs.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I hope it gets better for you. Goddamn.

Its very kind of you to say, and I sincerely appreciate the sentiment, but my life has gotten remarkably better, even to a point that I am now in a position to where my heart breaks for the misfortunate who either lost or are unable to find the stability and sense of belonging that I've been mercifully gifted. Everything I wrote about is from my past and enough time has elapsed to where I can hardly recognize myself in many of those situations. I've been clean since 2014 and have custody of both my son and my daughter and live with my daughters mother (my son has a different mother, with whom I separated while awaiting my trial) and we have a great family life together. Having been abused physically and psychologically as a hypersensitive child desperate for communication, I feel that I've developed an attitude and an approach to parenting that balances the mercurial space between the role of a father and that of a friend without recourse to even mildly abusive behaviors nor the overcompensation of spoiling, and while my small family has its share of problems we are overall very happy and maintain healthy relationships. The looming specter of relapse forever haunts my skies and almost certainly always will, but after 8 years I find myself able to maintain my sobriety relatively comfortably in the acknowledgement of my responsibilities as a provider and comforter with all of that is expected of me. Other than addiction my felony conviction is the greatest obstacle to my capacity for growth but fortunately I've found ways to circumvent some of the things I'm barred from. Today I see myself as just another person trying to get by and raise my family, no longer the self-destructive misanthrope ever seeking anesthetization, and I look to innocuous activities like gaming or reading to find pleasure, rare as it may be. Coming home to greet my kids and catch my dog who leaps with joy at my presence and later to sit back and play Grimoire or other games I enjoy is an infinitely more fulfilling existence than the one I'd subjected myself to for too much of my life.

EDIT - I apologize for taking the thread off course from the topic, just got caught up in sharing, I suppose it helps to open up about past traumas even if it is to strangers. Thread related material though, I spoke last night for about an hour with my daughter, the same who watched me playing Grimoire and really enjoyed the conversation with Little Rosy, and gave her a summarized (and somewhat sanitized) breakdown of Cleve and Wizardry. She said to tell Cleve that the people who try to insult him online are probably just Robert Sirotek alt accounts.

Wow so you did get better. Goddamn.

Spoiler

Good stuff, I hope it lasts for ya.

 

[unseeingeye]

I am extraordinarily lucky, there is just no question about it, and so little of my fortune I feel is deserved which makes me feel ashamed. A lot of exertion of my own will in overcoming certain difficulties are responsible for my escaping that life and rebuilding a new one, but there are so many instances in which I should have followed so many of my friends in dying that somehow I endured through, and matters of alignment absolutely beyond my control determined the outcomes to my consequences. The percentage of heroin addicts who successfully stop and maintain sobriety indefinitely is very low, I don't know the approximation off hand but just in my own immediate experience I intuit how unlikely it is. Despite ongoing depression in bouts of varying intensities from a mundane malaise to abject despair I do manage to encounter positive joy in my family, and nothing makes me happier than being greeted by the celebratory yelping and dancing of our dog each day. I'm not exactly sure where my perseverance comes from because I'm undoubtedly a deeply flawed human being, exceedingly weak to the temptations of the body at times even to a point of cowardice (in this I relate to Saint Augustine and the trials of his youth), yet I understand how precious life is and how incomparable the odds against our existence are to where every life can be said to be miraculous regardless of how many of them are utterly wasted in ignorance and depravity, as mine was for so long. The radical fluctuations of favor in the happenings of fate for me are astonishing, at times like many others I've felt I wish I never had been born, yet today I wouldn't trade my life for that of anyone else.

And I love seeing that you likewise consider the Amiga CRPGs to be the peak of the genre, Cleve. This is exactly how I feel. Although I didn't own one back then I was aware of some of those games and have since been able to enjoy many of them thanks to emulators; in fact I have a "complete" set of Amiga games, something approaching 4,000 of them, setup in an installation of LaunchBox under the FS-UAE emulator that some heroic stranger setup specifically for that interface and shared online, it has the boxart, manuals, screenshots, &c for each game and I feel like I'm 8 years old in one of those dreams where I'm at the computer store filling up a cart with every game on the shelf before waking in dejection every time I load that program and browse the library. Black Crypt is fantastic and I love the Dungeon Master games on Amiga, and the Eye of the Beholder games, there are a decent amount of seriously awesome games like the Ambermoon and Amberstar games, the versions of the Bard's Tale series, Hired Guns, Phantasie I and III, Perihelion, and so forth. Hey, what about that monstrously huge game Fate: Gates of Dawn? It reminds me in some sense of Wizardry VII, actually.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Regarding Cleve's comment above about drinking and drugging in the military, my nephew-in-law was a soldier in the U.S. about 15-20 years ago and told me that he and his band of brothers used to live for the drink. He and his buddies used to buy Mad Dog because it offered the lowest cost-to-highest intoxication level. He eventually got promoted, went over seas to oversee training exercises in the Philippines for his platoon, and promptly got one of his men under him killed. No, they weren't even in a combat situation. Since he doesn't get any veteran's pension of any sort, I'm assuming he was dishonorably discharged. Don't do drugs and drink, kids! At least not in excess.

To be on topic, I bought Cleve's magnum opus on Steam about a year ago, let it update to the latest version, and discovered that if attempted to change the resolution in any way I got serious grief, though I can't remember specifics except that when I downgraded to a lower build the issue went away. Maybe it was my config at the time, but then why did using an earlier version fix the issue? Haven't touched the game since but more because I have to be in the mood for a new old time blobber, however if I do suddenly get the urge, there's no reason to believe Grimoire wouldn't have a good chance to scratch that itch.

 

[unseeingeye]

Regarding Cleve's comment above about drinking and drugging in the military, my nephew-in-law was a soldier in the U.S. about 15-20 years ago and told me that he and his band of brothers used to live for the drink. He and his buddies used to buy Mad Dog because it offered the lowest cost-to-highest intoxication level. He eventually got promoted, went over seas to oversee training exercises in the Philippines for his platoon, and promptly got one of his men under him killed. No, they weren't even in a combat situation. Since he doesn't get any veteran's pension of any sort, I'm assuming he was dishonorably discharged. Don't do drugs and drink, kids! At least not in excess.

Man, I can't imagine how awful it must feel for him to be responsible for a death, even if it were accidental.
In my case that I had so much trouble with, I just happened to be the one who the person (a total stranger) chose to force into delivering their suicide by throwing themselves into my car on a highway, and I don't anticipate that I'll ever get over it fully. Even though I hold absolutely zero responsibility for this persons decision, and despite the immense harm that their self-destructive act caused me both immediately and long-term, I still feel sorry for them for feeling that was the only way out of whatever storm their head was in. Crazy how in a split second your life can be over, or in my case suddenly and unexpectedly turned inside out.

 

[Darth Canoli]

In my case that I had so much trouble with, I just happened to be the one who the person (a total stranger) chose to force into delivering their suicide by throwing themselves into my car on a highway, and I don't anticipate that I'll ever get over it fully.

You're taking it the wrong way.
First, someone wants to kill himself, good, it's just natural selection, he wasn't strong enough to live.
Second, the fucker could have killed you, you shouldn't feel bad about it, except anger maybe, had he been a man, he would have done it alone without involving bystanders.