Grimoire Thread

[luj1]

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...

Grimoire cured my OCD

not even kidding

previously I couldnt even make a character due to excessive metagaming

 

[The_Mask]

Grimoire cured my OCD

Are you saying you're shilling for Grimoire?

 

[luj1]

This is where I get a lot of drive to create really good computer games

yeah

pain fuels creativity

 

[luj1]

The_Mask hey peasant

dark souls thread (cretin summit) is that way >>>>>>

ur welcome

 

[The_Mask]

The_Mask hey peasant

dark souls thread (cretin summit) is that way >>>>>>

ur welcome

I'm going remember this: you're shilling for a game.

 

[unseeingeye]

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.

You're absolutely right, and this is a part of how I feel about it. It just isn't the only way I feel about it.

It is a mixed range of emotions when I reflect on the memory, but I hold both antipathy and sympathy toward the individual and do not consider such opposing emotions to be incompatible. Yes, I could have been killed and this evidently wasn't a major concern of theirs and this angered me, but I wasn't killed and instead got out of the car to see an obscene amount of blood mixed with hair and what I assume were teeth or fragments of bone where the glass was broken by their head. There was blood on my shoulder and a huge streak of it on the body of the car. That image and the imagery of the impact replayed in my head in the aftermath and I can still see it in my minds eye though it is somewhat hazy now. I'm not a war hardened soldier or anything, I was practically a kid when it happened and outside of fistfights and the occasional injury I'd never seen something that violent in real life.

Ultimately they were somebody's child (both parents were there for my arraignment, the CO holding me while my hands and feet were cuffed aggressively grabbed my jaw and forced my head back to look directly at the judge when I tried to get a glimpse of them), and practically the same age as I was at the time. I had to stand there in silence as they cried and condemned me, unaware as they were in the moment that I didn't hit their child with my car but that they intentionally hit me, it was by far the most disgraceful, embarrassing and uncomfortable moment in public I'd ever experienced, and I was only permitted to speak once and that was to acknowledge in a single word whether or not I understood my circumstances.

In general I'm ambivalent about suicide. It is not my business what anyone else does with their own life. Now when somebody decides to kill themselves and forces another person, stranger or familiar, to unwittingly participate, and that person is me, it does become my business and I was initially incensed. It was totally unfair and I felt singled out for unjust treatment at the hands of a cruel fate. But in reality it was just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whether or not they were too weak to live is not a judgement I feel qualified to make, because I don't know the details of what was going on that drove them to that act. It is likely, sure but it it not a certainty and I can only assess my own reactions to suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. For me it is the kind of event that occurs removed from reason and sense, a happening of nature that just was, without qualification. This is why I have apparently conflicting sentiments. It was both selfish and criminal, yet it was also tragic. Between anger and compassion is where I am.

 

[unseeingeye]

Grimoire cured my OCD

not even kidding

previously I couldnt even make a character due to excessive metagaming

This was also how I had to approach the game in order to begin. My OCD is pretty intense and prevents me from actually enjoying many of my passions, CRPGs being one of the most significantly impacted by it. Every time I would go to try Grimoire I would think to myself how I'd yet to finish reading the manual, or that I have to read all of the posts online across various websites and forums by players who have mastered the game so that I don't make a single error in my party composition and the expectations of multi-classing. So I said fuck it after having read a decent portion of the manual, like at least half, and started rolling characters making sure that only the basics were covered (melee, arcane and divine magic, and thievery) while allowing myself to generate characters based on what interested me, as opposed to what combination of race and class would get the greatest bonuses. I also only rerolled to where my party averages between 35 and 40 bonus points. And then I just jumped in and started testing everything like I would have done in my youth, and haven't had that much fun playing a video game in a very long time.

 

[Morblot]

Can't speak for V3 or whatever the current version is, but at least the initial release version didn't require any sort of powergaming. I'm sure my winning party was in many ways suboptimal -- I didn't even multiclass once!

 

[mondblut]

Can't speak for V3 or whatever the current version is, but at least the initial release version didn't require any sort of powergaming. I'm sure my winning party was in many ways suboptimal -- I didn't even multiclass once!

You don't powergame because it is "required". You powergame because it is FUN.

 

[Atlet]

This is not your therapy session, nor a blogdex thread. This is a gameplay one. Chill out with your pressured speech cause you are on a mania phase and talk about the game. If you want to vent about how things are so sad and unfair, create a new thread to cry about it.

 

[mastroego]

This is not your therapy session, nor a blogdex thread. This is a gameplay one.

This is the codex, we're all on therapy here.
Feel free to share your troubles when you're ready.

EDIT: bad spelling

 

[unseeingeye]

This is not your therapy session, nor a blogdex thread. This is a gameplay one. Chill out with your pressured speech cause you are on a mania phase and talk about the game. If you want to vent about how things are so sad and unfair, create a new thread to cry about it.

I actually don't experience mania, I sometimes wish I would. Anyway, considering that the guy who made the game doesn't seem to mind discussing other issues several thousands of posts in, I don't think it is a problem. Also I never once stated how I thought any-thing was unfair; in fact I shared how I felt that way at a certain point, and have since moved on. But thanks for pretending not to read my posts, I'll return the favor and pretend to feel offended.

 

[Morblot]

You don't powergame because it is "required". You powergame because it is FUN.

Never claimed otherwise

Just don't let obsessing over every detail in advance keep you from actually playing the game is what I guess I'm trying to say. After all the game really is good.

 

[Darth Canoli]

It was both selfish and criminal, yet it was also tragic. Between anger and compassion is where I am.

If you ask me, compassion toward total assholes strangers is useless and also one of the plagues of our society.

You should check the Darwin awards website to cure you from that and have a good laugh.

 

[Krivol]

Cleveland Mark Blakemore - I see you are giving therapy here! I sometimes feel like I should start touching myself in a weird way, what should I do? It started when my Farie Necromancer with 1HP died during a random fight with firebug!

 

[luj1]

Can't speak for V3 or whatever the current version is, but at least the initial release version didn't require any sort of powergaming. I'm sure my winning party was in many ways suboptimal -- I didn't even multiclass once!

You don't powergame because it is "required". You powergame because it is FUN.

It saps the fun tho

 

[unseeingeye]

If you ask me, compassion toward total assholes strangers is useless and also one of the plagues of our society.

You should check the Darwin awards website to cure you from that and have a good laugh.

Unfortunately you cannot have a society without some degree of compassion, it doesn't work that way.

Compassion does not necessitate delusional acts of self-sacrifice nor does it negate any other considerations or perspectives, as I said I hold the exact same view on the matter as that for which you offered a correction, yet I also retain a sentiment of solicitude for the suffering of the same individual, indeed for all individuals. These are not incompatible emotional reactions to the circumstances of any being or phenomenon. My misanthropy runs deep but I do not hate our species because I feel alienated, mistreated, undesired, or vengeful but because I see immense potential not only wasted but worse, an overall attitude of outright hostility to it. We are by and large stupid, exceedingly so to a point of near retardation, and all of us alive at this moment had the misfortune to be born during a phase of civilization collapse, during which event noble features such as intelligence, spiritual awareness, high art, personal valor and integrity all have been historically subjected to violence and extreme loathing. A perspective derived from Darwinian biology is myopic in this regard because it doesn't take into account other factors.

I think a problem with compassion is the word itself and the absence of a more specialized, spiritual alternative. It exists in several Eastern languages and features prominently in Buddhist literature, where that word frequently translated into English as compassion has a much deeper meaning that transcends notions of individual separateness, likewise a common greeting in India which is almost as if a person talks 'through' the other person and is acknowledging a shared soul, or anima mundi. In the West we tend to attribute compassion to Christian non-reactionary attitudes of forgiveness, which many have written of as a plague or even rampant mental illness responsible for our own self-destruction and invasion by foreigners. This is a limited and as such mistaken view that fails to consider a broader perspective.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

You should check the Darwin awards website to cure you

This is not your therapy session, nor a blogdex thread. This is a gameplay one. Chill out with your pressured speech cause you are on a mania phase and talk about the game. If you want to vent about how things are so sad and unfair, create a new thread to cry about it.

I don't know you. More importantly, I don't want to. You probably have a court order mandating you keep at least 300 meters away from schools or any place children may congregate. You only came to this thread and commented because something has once again triggered a homosexual panic in you and you are have to try to reassert how little you care but of course just the fact you're here paints you as the gayest man who has ever posted in a Grimoire thread. You have nothing to add but are still so desperate for somebody anywhere to even read one post by you that you are reduced to just interrupting other threads with completely random disparaging comments. Your death will be unbelievably painful and likely on a weekend when all the good doctors are not on shift and have taken the night off. Even the nurses will comment on what a whiny bitch you were before you kicked the bucket. The hospital orderlies will realize that your corpse is so freakishly misshapen they will claim to have lost you in transit to the morgue but in reality will sell you on the black market of mutu charms in piecemeal portions for profits.

This guy unseeing eye is more on topic than any previous person writing in this thread. On the other hand you're utterly off-topic. This is the Grimoire forum and it might therefore be somewhat cerebral for a man who thinks professional wrestling is a real sport and believes that he wins at bingo on Saturday nights when in fact they now refuse to sell him a card at all and he has to sit there calling off hits on his imaginary bingo grid while the other patrons see how far they can slide away from him.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Interrupting threads with random disparaging comments is an art only a few of us are able to master.

a man who thinks professional wrestling is a real sport

It is a real sport.
Rhythmic gymnastic is an Olympic sport, professional wrestling is a mix of this and regular wrestling.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Cleveland Mark Blakemore - I see you are giving therapy here! I sometimes feel like I should start touching myself in a weird way, what should I do? It started when my Farie Necromancer with 1HP died during a random fight with firebug!

You can only get better if you indulge those feelings and act on them. I recommend you stand outside a preschool and start touching yourself. Pick one close by that has a police station within a few blocks of it. Act out fully and profit. Post again to the forum when you are in prison getting sold for a pack of cigarettes and I will respond to your query about character creation and 1 HP faerie ninjas.

 

[unseeingeye]

I remain in awe of Cleve's capacity to destroy people with text - no wonder the writing in Grimoire is so excellent.

I realized at some point in my very early twenties that I evidently had some natural ability for writing, and spent a few years practicing by writing poems and short stories that today I'd light on fire for shame, but they were vital to take me through the struggle of discovering that state of mind a master writer will automatically lapse into (your Dostoevskys who towards the end simply dictated his prose to be written down for him, or for instance Pynchon, Joyce or Gaddis) and lesser writers catch glimpses of in various ways. It would feel almost like deja vu or deep meditative trance, where the words come forth without effort and a distinct sensation of having been a vessel is apparent. I wish I'd been less of a self-destructive mess back then, because eventually I became entirely unresponsive to the power of language and musicality of prose and basically gave it up. I could still recognize it of course, I just wasn't moved by it, and slowly but surely without practice my capabilities weakened. Under the persistent anesthetizing of my chemical diet even my views on art itself changed for the negative. I began to consider all art no matter how profound as ultimately of no value, even high art as indistinguishable from the banal ephemera the masses consume as entertainment because to me the goings on of the mundane terrestrial realm were of zero consequence relative to the spiritual. An effective delusion, for a while to be sure. I don't mean to imply that I blame drugs for my stupidity, this was a genuine phase of personal philosophy in development, but the deadening effect of opiates contributed to the desensitizing I was undergoing. Personality as a malleable fragmented construct that is subject to sudden definitions by social determinants is obviously altered by drug use, but the animating spirit I believe is only interfered with, not altered.

Anyway, today I find myself with a much broader perspective on art and cherish the efforts of the artists who share works of genius, being aware to some extent of the painstaking labor and self-sacrifice that is endured throughout the process. I'd always been an avid reader since as far back as my memory can reach but it was while reading the Histories of Herodotus for the first time that my entire worldview began to change, not just on art. Somewhere during the fourth book when describing the origins of the Scythians and the terra incognita of what lies beyond their territories (coincidentally related to Grimoire's setting, now that I think of it) it dawned on me, in a way I cannot describe because it was not a simple cognizance but rather a kind of a visionary awareness that I felt with my stomach as well as my mind, that I was reading the words (though translated and re-translated, scribed and re-scribed) of a man who was alive roughly 2,500 years ago. All of a sudden I felt this intense surge of energy as a flood of visions came before my interior eye through which I had intimations of connecting directly with this man, with his once living and breathing environment, and I was overwhelmed to the point of tears. It was one thing to know how old the book is, but another thing entirely to experience the age of the writing with acute conscious awareness on every level of my being. As a work of history it is of course a matter of infinite interest for various specialists, but as a work of art it is a testament to human genius when realized through a capable recipient. And the marvel that it has existed for millennia, cherished by one civilization after another up to the present moment is a true wonder.

After this I saw art and humanity from a much greater vantage point and understood intimately how precious the act of relaying feelings through art is. From the cave art of our ancient earliest ancestors to the absurd amount of means of conveyance we have access to now there is a longing there to fill a void we feel that defies explanation. When I look at the cave paintings from 14,000 years ago of animals some of them extinct, I see a desire to reach out for communion with a transcendent 'other' present in the lines and contours and colors. Whether they were shamanic in intent or the results of another early cultural practice doesn't matter because to me the essence of wanting to communicate is palpably present. Whomever made those paintings very likely had thoughts of whether or not they are alone, the dawning awareness in early man that there is a vast cosmos utterly beyond comprehension and that he is unable to answer for anyone but himself whether or not there is something else 'out there'. It is why we do anything that isn't directly related to our survival on a primal level, including why we post on these forums, why we maintain friendships, and why when deprived of it we feel rejected and unwanted despite having all of our basic needs met.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I remain in awe of Cleve's capacity to destroy people with text - no wonder the writing in Grimoire is so excellent

I tell thee straight- you don't even know what you don't know.

 

[unseeingeye]

So, for a post pertinent directly to the game itself, I had a question I've been curious about and going back and forth on.

I realize that there likely is no definitive answer here given the open-ended nature of Grimoire, but I was wondering whether it is recommended to start with a full player-created 8 person party, or to start with say 6 of such and leave two spots open for recruiting NPCs encountered in the game? I'm starting over again with my Steam copy in order to play it there and be able to leave a review, and I can't make up my mind on this point. I'd already discovered a few things about party creation that I wasn't aware of before, such as the random hit points generated that are unrelated to the bonus points roll, the fact that a Bard may not necessarily begin the game with a musical instrument, and that I may be better off when rolling a Sage or a Wizard to put my bonus points into skills instead of attributes as I'd been doing so that I can increase their capacity with casting. These are sound discoveries, right? But I am unsure as to whether or not I ought to fill out all 8 spots, mostly because I really love my guys and when I first encountered Little Rosy and realized I could recruit her I was afraid of permanently losing one of them, yet I really like having party members that I recruit while exploring the world.

 

[Gunnar]

The recruited NPCs have high stats but you can’t multiclass them. There is one situation i can think of where you need a high (WIL?) in order to enter a certain dungeon so a recruit is good for that. It’s the only way to get a Jester without a lot of work also. The recruits don’t get quests or too much flavor unfortunately.

 

[Morblot]

FWIW I preferred to go with my own guys instead of recruits. In the little time I played with Little Rosy in the party she was so horribly overpowered that it was mainly a game of her doing all the work and carrying my losers -- who then never really improved at all. But when I played with just my own party they gradually learned and rose to the challenge themselves.

But this was in V1, I don't know if things've changed since.