Last week we did not have a show because half of AggroChat was at Pax West and no one really wanted to listen to Grace and I trying to do a show by ourselves.  Tonight however we have the entire gang back with a bounty of games to talk about from Pax West 2018. This is a really long list and we managed to get through all of them in our normal allotted time.  Be warned as we go further into the bowels of this list, the discussion points get considerably more brief. There were twenty eight games that I was able to catch… there might have been more and they may not be in the same order…  but we gave it an attempt to track it all.

• Kodra is Famous Now
• Pax West Show Run Down
• • Artifact
  • Dauntless
  • Starlink
  • Untitled Goose Game
  • Never Give Up
  • Risk of Rain 2
  • Get in the car, Loser
  • Necrosphere
  • Exception
  • Gris
  • Dragon Marked for Death
  • Spin Rhythm
  • Star Renegades
  • Soundfall
  • Summoner's Fate
  • Indivisible
  • Decoherence
  • Evergate
  • Party Golf/Party Crashers
  • Children of Morta
  • Pathfinder: Kingmaker
  • Necrobarista
  • Russian Subway Dogs
  • Element Space
  • Zombie Rollerz
  • Dusk: Arena of Shadows
  • Gizmos
  • Felix the Reaper

Tonight we have the full group and end up talking mostly about World of Warcraft and the Battle For Azeroth expansion so far.  If you listened last week... Tam became interested enough in the expansion that he renewed his account which lead to a whole sequence of events happening.  One of which resulted in him finding out he had a hopelessly broken character. We talk about that event and the absolutely primo customer service he received as a result of it.  We talk about the lack of players in War mode and how Blizzard apparently is planning on throwing more incentives towards playing in that fashion. We talk about our experiences in dungeons so far and how some seem way harder than others.  We talk about the release of the Queen Azshara cinematic and what that maybe means for the future. We talk about how we are seeing some of the best storytelling in WoW's history through this expansion. Tam presents an impassioned defense of playing "boring" humans in fantasy games, which leads to a discussion more about world building than anything else.  Finally Kodra talks a bit about his new career in Glitchless Speedrunning primarily through VVVVVV, which turns into a discussion about speedrunning and the glitchless variant in particular.

Topics Discussed:

• World of Warcraft
• • How Tam Got His Groove Back
  • Battle for Azeroth Expansion
  • War Mode - Please Be Content
  • Dungeon Experiences
  • Queen Azshara Cinematic
• Why Humans Are Great
• The Letter F Six Times
• • VVVVVV
  • Glitchless Speedrunning

This evening we talk about a bunch of stuff but first Ashgar sings for us and makes me lose my shit…  so working as intended. Grace and Bel talk about their experiences in Battle For Azeroth so far and how it turned out not to be as factiony as we expected.  We also sorta convince Tam to give the story a shot even though we know he will bounce off it eventually. Bel talks about his recent journey into Mastodon and how it seems like a throwback to the early days of the internet.  Tam also has joined in this process and talks about how the experience so far has been better for him than Twitter was. Tam also talks about his experiences with the game Detroit and so far how it seems to be less pretentious than the average David Cage fare.  Finally we talk about some comfort gaming and enjoyable mechanical loops like Warframe, Destiny and Dead Cells.

Topics Discussed

• Battle For Azeroth
• • Convincing Tam to Play
  • Better Story
  • Shockingly Minimal Faction Nonsense
• Mastodon
• • The New Not-Twitter
  • More like a BBS or Old IRC
  • Strength of Small Communities
  • Totally not another Ello
• Detroit
• • Interesting story
  • Less Pretentious Cage
• Comfort Gaming
• • Warframe
  • Enjoyable Mechanical Loops
  • Destiny
  • Dead Cells

Tonight Belghast completely crashes and has to reboot, during the intro.  Additionally Kodra also crashes at some point during the LARP conversation and we sorta have to move on while he comes back online.  It is one of those shows. You have been warned. We talk about GenCon and the convention going experience. We talk a bit about Steambirds Alliance and what a bullet-hell-perma-death-steampunk-bird-mmo is like.  If you have enough dashes you can connect any genres! We talk about Monster Hunter World on the PC and how it isn’t quite the dumpster fire that the internet reports it to be. We talk about questing in 4X games and why everyone but Bel seems to think this is an awesome.  Then we sorta break down into a lengthy diatribe about Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder and which versions were good at what. It's a Show!

Topics Discussed

• Kodra visits GenCon
• • Convention Experiences
  • Here we Go A Larping
• Steambirds Alliance
• • Ashgar Needs This Game
  • Spryfox Is Awesome
  • Realm of the Mad God
• Monster Hunter World PC
• • Mostly Fine
• Quests in 4X Games
• • Bel Thinks it sounds miserable
  • Everyone else loves them
• Starfinder Thoughts
• • Pathfinder 2.0 Thoughts
  • Devolving into a discussion about D&D Generations
  • 3.5 Thoughts
  • 4e Thoughts
  • Open Gaming License was Awesome
  • Bel says some stuff about Palladium Games
• The Public Nature of D&D
• • Beginning with 3rd Edition to Now
  • Critical Role
  • Talking D&D on Talk Shows

As part of the 2018 Blaugust Reborn Initiative the blogger Chestnut from Gamer Girl Confessions (gamergirlconfessions.com) has challenged us to create some mini podcasts.  There is a sequence of questions that we were asked to answer, and in my case I sorta gave some pretty big combo answers for most of them.  You can find the full length of questions as part of this blog post (https://gamergirlconfessions.com/2018/07/30/imposter-syndrome-and-your-blog/).  Essentially Belghast talks about how he got his start with Tales of the Aggronaut and some general advice to new bloggers.

There is still plenty of time to participate in Blaugust this year so check out http://aggronaut.com/2018/07/09/blaugust-reborn/ for more details.

Tonight we have as show that goes way off course, but often times those are some of our better shows because we follow the passion.  Bel talks a bit about Blaugust Reborn and the successes so far. All of the talk about World of Warcraft has lead Tam to go back and play Warcraft 3.  We talk about where all of the story beats come from and where World of Warcraft maybe went south around Cataclysm. We also talk about maybe that there should have been a World of Warcraft 2.  We talk a bit about the new Richard Garfield game Keyforge and how Magic the Gathering is not actually the game he intended to design. Bel talks a bit about the concept of a Destiny Pen and Paper game which leads into a discussion about Modern Tabletop gaming…  and how we need the gaming version of a Country Club.

Topics Discussed:

• Blaugust Reborn
• • 88 Participating Blogs So Far
• Warcraft 3
• • Where the story comes from
  • World of Warcraft
  • Storytelling Issues
  • Things Went South After Cataclysm
  • We Needed World of Warcraft 2
• Keyforge
• • Everyone likes random decks right?
• Magic the Gathering
• • Not the game Garfield actually wanted
  • Magic Shifted Over Time
  • Rebalancing Magic
• Destiny Pen and Paper
• • Fan Built in spite of what Bel thought
• Modern Tabletop Explosion
• Need for Gaming Country Clubs
• • We come up with a business model
  • Someone else make this a thing

Tonight we sit down and talk through our feelings about Battle For Azeroth and its fairly tone deaf ad campaign. We dig into the "It Matters" videos and how it feels fairly irresponsible at a time when our country and world is pulled apart already by some fairly serious points of division. We talk about how playing World of Warcraft should be a thing to bring people together rather than pull them apart. We also talk about the Warbringers video series and how we are afraid it is setting up Jaina, Sylvannas and Azshara to be the next set of raid bosses. Finally we talk briefly about the novel and event that are leading up to this expansion. At the tail end of the show we talk a bit about drafting M19 in Magic Arena and Bel's nonsensical luck at pulling cards.

Topics Discussed

• Battle For Azeroth
  • The "It Matters" Ad Campaign
  • The "Warbringers" video series
  • The "Before the Storm" novelization
  • The "War of the Thorns" quest event
• Magic Arena
  • Drafting M19
  • Nonsensical Pulls
  • Golgari Pride

Tonight we are down a few people... in fact half of them. So you have to deal with the remainder that is left after you take away a Kodra, Thalen and Grace. For those who are caught up with their critical AggroMath skills... you are left with a Bel, a Tam and an Ash. Three individuals who have mostly been playing Elder Scrolls Online and as a result you get to listen to us gush about our most recent experiences... including Bel's Cross-Tamriel murder spree for a creepy dark god. Additionally you get to listen to Ash and Tam talk a bit more about Age of Sigmar and the interesting army choices where we all lose money for Ash not collecting Lizardmen.

Topics Discussed

• Elder Scrolls Online
• Age of Sigmar

Tonight we continue our recent tradition of picking up on topics that we did not quite have time for on the previous episode.  First off we discuss our general feelings about “cheating” and by cheating we are talking about relying on guides, maps, and walkthroughs in additional to other more traditional cheats and mods.  From there Bel talks a bit about his experiences with Orsinium and how playing through all three factions of the original Elder Scrolls Online content is paying off. From there we discuss long games that have a very clear failure state and how generally lousy that feels when it occurs.  Finally we talk a bit about the recent ArenaNet community issues and share some of our feelings about it.

Topics Discussed

• Walkthroughs Guides and Cheats
• • Respecting our Time
  • Enhancing the “Fun Loop”
  • When we would not use them
• Elder Scrolls Online
• • Finishing Orsinium
  • Payoff for finishing all original Content
• Long Games with Failure States
• • Kingdom Death
  • Civilization
  • Battletech
  • Sim/City Builder Games
• ArenaNet Issues
• • Emboldening Bad Actors
  • “Other” on the Internet
  • The Stress of Game Development
  • Bel’s Brain Broke

Tonight we record a normal show... and by normal I mean one that starts off completely derailing Belghast. We have a new way of trying to make sure topics that don't actually make it on a weeks show roll over to the next week... and as a result there are a bunch of topics that have been sitting in limbo for awhile that we dig into.

Topics Discussed

• Evoland 2 Reprised
• Warhammer Age of Sigmar
  • Idoneth Deepkin
  • Stormcast
  • Nighthaunt
  • Games Workshop New Management
• Disappointing Sequels
  • New Gundam Breaker
  • Deus Ex Invisible War
  • Master of Orion 3
  • Mass Effect Andromeda
• Gloomhaven
  • Premium Board Games
  • Kingdom Death
• Elder Scrolls Online
  • Current State of Game