BTW - dinner tonight: pasta with tomato meat sauce. No seeds though. And the meat is from Italian sausage. Not tomatoes. Which don't have meat.

sounds nice

Copycat

Spaghetti all over my plate

Spaghetti all over my face

Oh, hey, you are online now. What a coinkidink.

Gotta be online for spaghetti

I 1cc'd Hard difficulty of Mystical Chain this morning.

Spaghetti is symbol of my source code.

I got to the end of Stage 4 on one credit on Lunatic, but kinda flopped.

I can get to the end of stage 5 on normal.

That's about it.

But that doesn't matter because stage 2 is the best stage.

Stage 2 is even better on Lunatic.

;_;

Also, the secret chapter is lots of fun.

Stage 4's boss fight is tough.

And the best part of stage 5 is the music.

They did a really good job with their arranges.

Especially Patch's if you ask me.

The music for the whole game is excellent.

Yeah.

ESPECIALLY STAGE TWO

I like how they blended themes.

I liked Patchouli (the game) because it had a very interesting medley of Suguri Stage 6 with Reimu, Marisa, Sakuya, Youmu, and Reisen's theme.

But the quality here is even higher, and it spans the full game too very seamlessly. I wish I could get the soundtrack.

I have the soundtrack in INTERNET FORMAT

I made it myself by opening up the WAVs.

As in, a bunch of youTube/nico videos?

I am a master haxor

Oh

I might be the only one with the themes. You want 'em?

I'd love them. I'll re-encode them as .ogg, too

Unless you actually have it in a non-WAV format.

I think all I kept was the mp3s I made.

mp3 works fine.

You could make them the same way I did if you want another format.

The game's music files are WAVs.

There are two per stage. One is the intro, the rest is the loopy part.

I made my tracks by taking the intro, then two repeats of the loopy part.

That sounds like a good way to do it.

Also I don't have the stage 6 theme because that didn't exist when I made the game.

That'll be fine enough to get the mp3. The ogg encoding only would've been if you could only give me .WAV files.

Stage 6 was added on as a patch after the release.

Let me find the mp3s.

And zip them up

Ah, I see. It's a great stage. I can probably figure out which .BGM file it is if you can use that to extract the music.

Although, just to be clear, Stage 6 is that secret chapter, and not actually a full stage, is it?

It's young Alice

Okay, yes, the secret chapter.

And you get to it only if you have a coupling score high enough.

20+

Yeah

On my Malice run, I actually had 50 Coupling

Back in my day that stage didn't exist.

Yeah, getting coupling isn't that hard.

You just have to not use only one character.

Yep

Fifty megabytes of MP3s.

welbog.homeip.net/~inferno/files/Mystical%20Chain%20GST.zip

If you do a normal run, you're pretty much guaranteed to hit 20+ Coupling if you do nominal switching. It's starting from anywhere later than Chapter 1 that makes it risky.

You have online filespace. I'm jealous.

Also very pleased to not have to use some weird fileshare service.

I have my home server and a dyndns address.

It's not particularly fancy.

You will download from me as fast as my ISP will allow.

Which is not likely to be very fast.

I don't mind. I don't even use a download accelerator.

Okuu is old school.

Downloading is, for the person, essentially a background process. If I can't be arsed to wait for a while to let something complete that I don't even need to monitor, then I'd have mighty issues.

Okuu has a healthy outlook on time management.

Thanks

So

?

If you were in a table-top RPG that had established rival immortals who like to cause destruction (as my M&M campaign has), would you think it cool to have to save the world by navigating some structure that currently has said immortals in it?

Because I think it would be.

Is this leading up to the implementation of a certain fight in your table-top?

And my players will either love it or hate me for it.

Tomorrow's game day for this one, and I've made my maps and I've long since established the immortal characters.

In fact the players have encountered them before in a similar-but-less-epic situation.

Uh huh

Basically the players need to stop an evil machine from destroying the east coast of Pennsylvania.

And they're in the building that houses said machine.

Pennsylvania doesn't have a coast!

Well, east coast of the US.

(Sorry about that)

Like that region.

I don't know a damned thing about your silly country's silly geography.

Well, I'd love if they succeeded since I live on said East Coast.

Succeeded in stopping the machine, that is. Not the machine succeeding in destruction.

And also in this building is a pair of invincible rivals who like nothing more than to kill each other over and over again.

So instead of a typical battle wherein the players fight the bad guys, the bad guys are fighting each other and the players are racing around in a maze.

Oohho, so it's not exactly a 1v1vP, but the 1v1 is actually more of a stage hazard?

They have to find the device and shut it down properly before it gets destroyed as collateral (which would be an improper shutdown and might have consequences)

Yeah

You got it bang on

That's actually both cooler and much easier to run than a 1v1vP

It's Stage 2 of Mystical Chain, sorta

(The difficulty in running the 1v1vP is making it realistic enough for the 1v1 to be completely non-caring about the party's actions)

I like the way you've set it up. It sounds like it can be a lot of fun.

The problem I feel I'm going to face is not accidentally one-shotting one of my players.

The immortals are statted out significantly higher level than my players.

Like twice as high.

You do the dramatic fudge much?

The players literally cannot do a thing about them.

Not familiar with that term.

The "dramatic fudge" is basically when you fudge rolls in the name of a good experience.

Oh, definitely.

For example, when I run my D&D games, I like to run anything from a -5 to a +5 dramatic penalty/bonus to rolls in order to make things work out and have fun.

I generally just call that "cheating".

It is, but since we're DMs, our word is law~

And I will often tell the players that I'm cheating.

I've made these two immortals, and as far as I can figure this is the best way to have them tell the players their story.

Unlike Kaguya and Mokou, upon which they are obviously based, they spend 100% of their time fighting.

They go around the world fighting each other, destroying all kinds of shit in the process.

Hah

So the only way to tell their story is to have the players listen to their taunts.

How likely is it for the party to get completely obliterated, exactly?

(I mean any individual character moreso than the full party)

The enemies are powerful enough to one-shot any single character.

And one of the pair is powerful enough to one-shot the entire team.

I won't let it come to that.

All attacks of such power, and is this for any kind of hit or only direct hits?

The way I have them balanced, one is a glass cannon and the other is a laser-precise attacker.

The glass cannon needs to be powerful because it's impossible to harm the other otherwise.

So, one of them will kill with any kind of hit, while the laser-precise attacker can do nothing but direct hits.

The glass cannon is the one that deals the majority of the collateral damage.

Well, they have other attacks, too. These are the ones they use against each other.

When people try to interfere with them they have other methods of dealing with them.

Ah, I see

I had to make one of them immune to stuff like artillery and other powerful conventional weapons.

Otherwise they would be too easy to subdue and wouldn't have any justification for their constant battles.

Of course. It wouldn't be a fun rivalry if the army actually could do something about it

Exactly.

But that means the glass cannon needs to be basically as powerful as a nuke.

Tomorrow is going to be so much fun

Good luck! I hope to hear good news about how it goes. I'd love to hear more details on the characters, too. I love character design, both doing it and reading about it

I think the survivability of the players basically lies on how much ability they have to react to the cross-fire

The characters, eh?

The two immortals

Well I have some stuff online for my players but I keep backstories and stuff a secret from them.

Their names are Gemella and Didimus.

I love backstory, too, but high power characters are equally defined by what kind of power they wield.

Both are words that mean "twin" in Latin and Greek, respectively.

Interesting

Okay, that's weird

Chat is banishing my messages randomly. There was something before that "I love backstory, too" line

Now it looks like I'm being randomly dismissive

Originally the two were very similar to Kaguya and Mokou.

With Didimus being like Kaguya and Gemella similar to Mokou.

At this point that's no longer true.

Ahha

The only similarities are superficial: Gemella has long, white hair and red eyes, and uses fire attacks sometimes.

There are no other similarities.

One of my players drew the characters, let me show you.

Ooh, that'll be cool to see.

Intriguing

Gemella has a very strong tendency to close in on Didimus while she is helplessly regrowing her body and ripping at her with her hands.

Bloodstain on that dress there?

I made it so that they regenerate their clothing.

As it tends to get blown up a lot.

Quite frankly, always a helpful ability to have

So anyway, Didimus is immune to fortitude-saving attacks of all kinds.

She cannot be disintegrated, for example.

She also has M&M's equivalent of armor to the point that almost nothing can harm her.

Is that a damage-reduction effect or basically a "none-shall-pass" kind of effect?

None shall pass. If an attack's power is lower than a threshold, she doesn't need to bother rolling a save.

However, she has tiny reflex and will saves.

So she's easily caught in area attacks, which Gemella specializes in.

Didimus also has various disintegration attacks.

She can destroy any inanimate object and is very likely to fine-red-mist anyone stupid enough to get in her way.

As a flavour power, she can regrow whatever she destroys.

So she can destroy a wall, lure Gemella into the hole and put the wall back, on top of Gemella.

Ooh, interesting

Another superficial resemblance to Kaguya: Didimus has the attractive feat, giving her charisma bonuses.

Both of them have full regeneration and resurrection. Both of them do not need to eat, sleep, are immune to poison, don't need to breathe, etc.

Both can fly

And both can locate the other uncannily.

Heh

Gemella is immune to will-saving effects. It is impossible to lie to her.

Didimus taunts her all the time, regardless.

Gemella has a very high reflex save and superhuman speed.

As a last line of defense against Didimus Gemella has a mind attack that works against Didimus's low reflex and fort saves.

s/fort/will/

In terms of personality they're very different.

Didimus never stops smiling. As long as she has the organs required to communicate, she spends all of her breath taunting Gemella.

Gemella does not speak. Whenever Didimus is around she wears a look of utter hatred.

What I haven't told the players is how they behave when they're actually in the middle of killing each other. All I've told them is what security cameras and survivors have described of them.

Ooh

The thing is, Didimus never stops smiling. Ever.

Gemella on the other hand has a blank expression when Didimus isn't nearby. And when Gemella is ripping Didimus to pieces, she smiles. And laughs.

Another thing is what happens when someone tries to subdue them.

If conventional weapons are used on them, Gemella gets taken out.

Didimus proceeds to destroy whatever it is that attacked them with a smile on her face.

If conventional weapons are used on them (like a flashbang or something), Didimus gets taken out.

Gemella turns on their common foe with an expression of anger instead of hatred. As though she's angry that someone would dare interfere with their cat-and-mouse game.

The players are going to learn this in a most direct way.

I think that's pretty much it for those two.

Interesting, interesting.

All they know about them is that they fight.

One time, they met Didimus.

They were in a hotel, and I needed an exit strategy for a villain who was going to return later in the campaign.

He was badly beaten and couldn't really escape, so I needed a way to get the players to flee.

So, suddenly, a charred mass of meat came crashing in through a window.

Was it Didimus?

The players passed a notice check to see that the meat was growing.

Eventually, it sat up and started yelling taunts out the window.

It was at that point the players noticed a bigass fireball heading their way courtesy of Gemella.

Ahhha

So they got away shortly before the building exploded. Meant they didn't see what happened to the villain (which in comics means he got away).

As always

That guy is cool. He's going to be the next big villain.

Was this the first time they learned of the two, or had they heard anything prior?

The very very first scene in the game was about those two.

Ah, so they're... pretty well established.

I needed a simple way to get the story started. That's pretty much why I invented Gemella and Didimus (as a plot device).

The very first scene was a cleanup for one of their fights.

They had to rescue some people from a building in shambles after a fight.

And in so doing found some SECRETS which drove the rest of the plot.

Ahha. Very interesting

They've only actually seen them in person once.

The lack of certain vital informations (due to everything being only the word of survivors and recordings) reminds me of a monster I was planning on for my upcoming campaign. Though, nothing quite the scale of these two, but I thought it would be an interesting trick.

(Do you mind if I do this interjection?)

(interjections are cool by me, Okuu)

In the campaign, there are a set of monsters (I haven't come up with a good name for them yet) which are basically abominations created by chaos twisting the powers of the old gods shortly before devouring said gods. One of these is a vicious megapede type of creature that lives in the eastern country.

It was created from the deity of earth and fertility, so its ability involves poisoning the earth, destroying crops, and otherwise making the land itself unable to support people. It also roams in the large desert that occupies the border to the neighboring country, killing most things which attempt to travel. Especially merchants.