Call and Response: WOFF! Dispatch January 2024
Added 2024-01-11 06:11:20 +0000 UTCHappy new year, melon farmers!! The purpose of this post is to call for your questions and prompts for WOFF! Dispatch. Please respond by Monday Nov 20th, by leaving a comment on this post.We're looking for two kinds of things:
-Suggestions for our long-form discussion prompt.
-Q&A about the shows, behind the scenes details, and miscellaneous (including off-the-wall and off-topic questions). Ask us about games or other media, life in general... You name it.
One caveat we've given in the past: If the question is too personal or gross, we may dance around it and not give a direct answer.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Comments
I just read about an organism called Pando. It is an Aspen tree in Utah that covers 106 acres of land and manifests as a small forest of 47,000 different trees, which are actually just stems from one root organism, the titular Plando. What other real life things are scary as fuck Lovecraftian nightmares?
Chapel Collins
2024-01-19 21:47:39 +0000 UTCNew year, new me - Kole, pick a new hairstyle for Gary, and Gary vice versa.
Drew on arrival
2024-01-19 05:43:03 +0000 UTCVIVA PATREON (sorry, listening to old Dispatches, lately). A big thing in TTRPGs is "Accepting the Premise." You're in for a bad time if your GM has pitched, prepped and chosen a system for a dungeon crawl but the game stalls in the inn because the players are trying to befriend the stray cat and setup a magical TNR program in Baldur's Gate. Have you ever struggled with Premise Acceptance in a video game? I chaffed hard against Mass Effect's huge cop vibes and the "bad cop"/"less bad cop" choices but I had a friend who hated every minute of Dragon Age Inquisition (and played it to completion!) because he had to be... an Inquisitor.
Abrahm Simons
2024-01-18 12:11:45 +0000 UTCPossible topic idea, maybe? Healing in games! Its important and heavily affects a lot of parts of games, from pick-up-economy and "immersion" to enemy and encounter design. What are your favorite systems? Auto-regeneration like call of duty, sort-of-immersive use of rare items (think Pathologic, Kingdom Come Deliverance), the strategic and stress inducing beauty of the estus flask, inhaling 30 cheese wheels in a pause menu? I've become interested in this topic since becoming thoroughly soulsbornekiroring-pilled through watching hbomberguys infamous Dark-Souls-2-essay, in which he spend a lot of time about talking about the importance of healing (his take that life gems rule is correct btw, even though "bloodbornes healing system is the best" is criminally wrong obviously). Are there any games, which particularly impressed you with their healing system? Thanks a lot for all your magnificent podcasts! Best wishes from Hamburg, Germany.
Marius Magaard
2024-01-18 10:53:49 +0000 UTCIn a previous dispatch, it was mentioned that there was a magic the gathering video game whose tutorial would be a great way to get introduced to the mechanics and gameplay of the actual card game. My friends want to play mtg with me and I have never played. Do you remember which magic video game that was? I would love to try it out by myself to see if it’s even something i’m interested in.
joseph
2024-01-18 00:07:37 +0000 UTCCould you perhaps give some book tips? I remember you talking about good coffee table books but I was binge listening and don't remember what episode it was 🤷
p300
2024-01-17 19:54:32 +0000 UTCI really would love to see The Terror on Unfilmable, too, for whatever that's worth.
Andrew (andyk250) Koch
2024-01-17 19:22:45 +0000 UTCPlease help me understand roguelikes/lites! They kind of seem like something I would like since I enjoy chasing my next high score in games where that's a thing (like a lot of classic arcade games), but the loop of rogue games sort of elicits hints of nihilism in me. I'm not sure if that's a dichotomy or if I just need to find the right starting place in the genre. I recall either/both of you not being particularly interested in scores in video games, which is generally how I feel if it's just uninspired tacked on nonsense. Does the rogue genre overlap in some ways with games where scores are a motivating factor of gameplay or am I kind of misunderstanding what's good about them? Got some good recommendations to start with? I recently built myself an arcade machine and thought these kinds of games might be a good fit for it.
Samurai Snail
2024-01-17 15:04:08 +0000 UTCBy how much does your cat have to grow in size before you are genuinely afraid for your life?
Naveen Sivakumar
2024-01-15 16:50:13 +0000 UTCoops also can you add abject suffering noms to the patreon store?
Videogames dot Afghanistan
2024-01-15 03:35:03 +0000 UTCSo I recently played Patrick's Parabox, and it's so much better than I even thought it would be, but as it is in the very controversial genre of "Sokoban-like" it's hard to recommend (even if those weren't poison). Can you think of any games you find amazing that will probably never get that much widespread appreciation due to being in an oft disliked genre?
Andrew T
2024-01-14 22:45:30 +0000 UTCA decidedly light-hearted (but genuine) lightning-round question: What's Gary's problem with dog dicks? And, indeed, dog water? I can't help notice they've become his go-to insults as of late, in the same cadence that I'm more familiar with people calling things "dog shit". Is there a backstory here? Some kind of regionalism? Just because? Thanks!
Tygre
2024-01-14 21:09:28 +0000 UTCHave either of you watched the AMC series The Terror? It shares some cast with the Chernobyl Series as well as a lot of the atmosphere and dread. I think it would be a great fit for an Unfilmable Episode, though I must admit this is a selfish request as it is a 10 episode series and I am particularly interested in artic exploration and tragedy, so the series and the book it’s based on and the actual historical event the BOOK is based on are all very exciting to me.
MIKEISTKRIEG
2024-01-14 19:50:28 +0000 UTCFeel like you guys haven't talked music in a minute. I'm currently entering my mid life crisis and it's synthesizers. Got some cheap ones, then got more, even some modular stuff, and now I want to learn to play basic piano at the age of 43. Being on a computer all day I'm going for hardware over software, but was curious about each of youz guyz electronic music stuff beyond mario paint.
Videogames dot Afghanistan
2024-01-14 19:39:04 +0000 UTCWake up, Crono! It's breakfast time. What's for breakfast?
Jack Corrigan
2024-01-14 18:48:40 +0000 UTCWhat's an "old-timey" word or phrase you use all the time? I love referring to weed as "Mary Jane", even though no one my age knows what I'm talking about
The Duke of Nebraska
2024-01-14 06:35:02 +0000 UTCApricot here, with a few things for you fine folks :) 1) thank you so much to Gary for your christmas/holiday message. it's not usually a hard time of year for me, but this year it was, and I so appreciated what you took the time and energy to write to us 2) Modridge update? (if Gary would like to share) 3) in some recent episodes y'all have (likely deservedly!) disparaged some of my top karaoke songs ("Black Velvet" and "Memory" from CATS). so my question is, what are some (in your opinion) better songs to sing instead? I'm a woman in my 30s for reference, and I especially like to sing songs with big angry or angsty or thirsty emotions (at karaoke, because it's fun to be dramatic) 😇
AJ
2024-01-13 22:37:55 +0000 UTCQuick story: Over the summer, I took five months off work to go on a long climbing trip. Beforehand, I downloaded every episode of Bonfireside Chat on Spotify and also a bunch of WOFFs you recommended for "episodes as a service". According to Spotify Wrapped, I listened to 8.5 days of Bonfireside Chat in 2023. Nice. Question: You all have talked a lot about how you met on Something Awful, got your start there with WOFF, and met a lot of people like Jeremy through it. What's your relationship with Something Awful nowadays? Do you still talk with people there, are you active in some way? What do you think about it now? I've never been there, but it's cool to see what it gave us today! Lightning Round: Samuel Beckett returns to earth. What video game would you tell him to play while he's waiting for Godot?
Dylan Kilby
2024-01-13 14:48:59 +0000 UTCDid either of you guys have any experience with the Garbage Pail Kids adjacent "gross-out" cards such as "Mars Attack" or "Dinosaurs Attack"? Also, I almost shut off Hereditary after "that" scene, but nothing made me quite as nauseous as the Garbage Pail Kids movie.
Eric
2024-01-13 01:12:09 +0000 UTCWhat's your prefered food or drink of choice while gaming? Is what you eat or drink influenced by what you are playing?
Greg Polander
2024-01-12 15:33:23 +0000 UTCHey guys! I had been staying away from Cyberpunk 2077 because of the bad press from its initial launch, but after the good press from the 2.0 update and the release of its DLC I gave it a shot, and it ended up being one of the best games I played in 2023. Any thoughts on this game? Do you think you two will cover it on WOFF? I think it would be a great game for a WOFF treatment as it dips into a lot of genres (shooter, RPG, Immersive Sim, etc), comes with some controversy, and has (in my opinion) some best in class elements. Thanks!
Tom Works
2024-01-11 23:00:14 +0000 UTCLightning round! What store would you being back? Be as specific as you like. I think i'd bring back Media Play.
Fermented-Sorcerer
2024-01-11 22:41:29 +0000 UTCHowdy! I've been doing trauma therapy and an important exercise is safe space visualization - it helps you feel safe and grounded. A funny thing is that I often imagine certain video game settings like the majestic temples of Ico, the serenity of ruins in Dark Souls, the tranquil landscapes of Shadow of Colossus and the beautiful lakes of Sekiro and Hyper Light Drifter. What do you think are some of the most beautiful video game landscapes and what do you think makes them beautiful? (maybe it's something to do with how they allow those spaces to speak for themselves).
Fermented-Sorcerer
2024-01-11 22:40:05 +0000 UTCMe and my partner were talking the other night about the concept of a "perfect" game and whether they exist. To which the answer came within 10 seconds - of course not, you silly toad. Continuing the discussion, though, we altered the definition to "perfect at what they aim to achieve", and further defined it as a "game in which you would not need to add or remove significant sections or mechanics for them to achieve their goals more satisfactory" (we're fun people really, I swear). We found that using this, we could only come up with a handful of games that we couldn't change significantly, as even our absolute favourites had mechanics that we didn't like, sections that we didn't enjoy, or, most commonly, were 10-15% too long. Our shortlist came down to 4 - Hypnospace Outlaw, The Beginner's Guide, What Remains Of Edith Finch, and Disco Elysium. What games, for you, would be those that are "perfect at what they aim to achieve?". Is there a better version of perfect that would create a better thinking exercise and what would fit that? And, hypothetically, if the absolute most perfect game actually could be created, and was released, appealing to everyone with absolute no negative drawbacks, how would that affect the creative world - when the benchmark for perfect has been set, what happens next?
Andrew Parker
2024-01-11 20:46:58 +0000 UTCIn your Unfilmable episode about Saw, I believe you mention a scene where a detective talks to a framed photograph of his partner. Since you two are business partners, this naturally got me wondering about your framed photographs of each other. What do they look like? Where do you keep them? Do you already converse with them, or does that feature only unlock in the wake of some backstory-defining rift or tragedy?
Nina
2024-01-11 20:18:06 +0000 UTCIn games that offer a lot of player choice like BG3 how important is “staying in character” to you? Where do you draw the line between what your avatar would do vs what reaps the best mechanical reward vs what feels right to you as the player?
Ben Sapatka
2024-01-11 17:43:00 +0000 UTCHeya, wine boys/envoys! Maybe a lightning round question, maybe not: you've both expressed how mechanics tend to enrich narrative in games instead of occlude narrative, and that when devs who have focused on traditional storytelling begin to fold in mechanical crunch, you proudly commend them. I was wondering if you feel the same way across other mediums when artists include greater formal complexity in their product? Playing The Bunker in lineage with The Dark Descent, seeing how the larger possibility space of engagement increases horror, gives me similar feelings to reading Gary Panter's or Léa Murawiec's more formally progressive comics after reading any typical instagram gag comic or big two floppy. Hope you're enjoying winter!
Béa(u)
2024-01-11 15:57:08 +0000 UTCA great-value brand Wishmaster appears and offers you one choice, do you want? A. Games to be recognized at large as fine art. B. Tabletop rpg books to be appreciated as literature. C. Film to be taken way less seriously, basically how people treat games, something that is sometimes art and of variable quality, like pretty much all things
Jordan and Maya M.
2024-01-11 15:49:32 +0000 UTCI have a four and seven year old so we naturally listen to a lot of kids’ music. One day we were in the car when Pandora spat out Gloria Estefan’s “Conga” but done by the Chipmunks. My immediate unfiltered reaction was to exclaim “Oh God! It’s the worst thing I ever heard!” Now, of course, they want to hear it all the time and demand Daddy say his hilarious new catch phrase. Just wondering if there are any songs that would cause you to have the same reaction.
Doug Lief
2024-01-11 15:06:43 +0000 UTCWhat's your favourite biome? I feel modern games don't do this as much since they tend to favour realism. But I kind of miss when you would have a desert level, an ice level, an underwater level etc. I think I'm partial to beach settings personally.
Matt DiTomaso
2024-01-11 14:04:58 +0000 UTCYour avatar from Baldur's Gate 3 got freaky fridayed with your avatar from another game. Which game would you want it to be, considering they retain the same personality and control method. (let's avoid crpgs)
Francisco
2024-01-11 10:12:52 +0000 UTCHey guys, big dog here! Saw this question on reddit - are there anything in video games you pay special attention to due to a previous occupation? I work in insurance claims, so I routinely see leaks, fires, break ins etc. So whenever I play games, I'm always looking at the construction and layout of places, just because I do it so regularly. Hope you both had a fabulous Christmas and looking forward to WOFF and all the other podcasts in the new year
Devin Simoncic
2024-01-11 06:53:10 +0000 UTCCongrats on the launch of real litch hours, loving it so far! Finally took the leap & started BG 3 thanks to it, and as a 5e player since 2018, man most of larion's changes would make tabletop way better. Adding more short rest skills helps warlock's spell system gel with a party better, and you can finally set people on fire! (most fire spells would only burn items not being held in standard 5e.) can you think of any other times a licensed video game made changes worth adding to the original?
J. Mattinson
2024-01-11 06:26:39 +0000 UTCArt the Clown emerges from the Terrifier movies and hunts you down. What brutal, contextually ironic way does he kill you?
Holland Hume
2024-01-11 06:26:22 +0000 UTC
