Portable Terraria, Pathfinder, Herolab

If there's one real life skill I've obtained by playing tabletop RPGs, it's filling out tax forms. I'm not joking. It's something I absolutely hate about pen & paper role-playing games, how you always have to calculate things like armor, attack roles, bonus damage, ability scores and all that sort of thing. This is especially true for games such as Pathfinder, if you're into all the advanced classes and archetypes, extra races, playable monster races (just look at those fucking gnolls up there!♥), ultimate magic & combat rule extensions, yada, yada, yada.

If you play any major pen & paper RPG out there, do yourself a favour and fucking get Hero Lab. Yes, the advanced version costs a bit of money, but it's so damn worth it, I don't know how I ever played anything without Hero Lab. Basically, it does all the math for you, lists all the available feats, traits and bonuses you can pick at level-ups, describes all the races, classes and items for you using the official rulebooks and it creates some fucking sweet character sheets to boot.

Claire doesn't min/max.

The one downside to Hero Lab (in case of Pathfinder) is how it only includes the basic rules and everything included in the beginner's box. If you want any of the advanced races, classes, archetypes, items and what have you, you'll either have to create those entries by hand or spend a little extra to activate each rulebook. We went with all the advanced options for magic, races and classes and paid $9,99 per rulebook, which is fine, considering you can use, read and play absolutely everything Pathfinder entirely for free using the Paizo website.
If you activate the licenses for said rulebooks, you can upgrade and enhance your characters with a few clicks. Bored of your tengu rogue? Maker her a shadowdancer. Not interested in your fighter's armor mastery? Pick the two-weapon-fighter archetype have him learn a whole lot of cool new abilities. Sure, you can read up on all of that stuff, memorize it and try and work out all the changes yourself, but if you're a lazy fuck like me, there's always Hero Lab.

I'd like to get a couple more pretty dice, some gnoll and tengu minifigures, we already have a ton of cardboard cutouts and dungeon tiles, but the actual game cost us nothing. So shelling out some 50 or 100 Dollars to get everything we need seems fair for a fun hobby. I've paid lots more for other P&P game boxes and collector's editions of AAA video games.
In other news, there was this...

I know I'm nearly five years late to the hype, but I never really cared for Minecraft, Terraria or any other "dig, craft, survive, enjoy the worst graphics ever" kind of games. Friends of mine watched stuff like the Minecraft Yogscast pretty much non-stop, but watching that shit put me to sleep. Hurray, you can punch blocks and turn them into stuff and then ugly zombies appear. I'll be over here on Warframe, where stuff looks awesome, thanks.

Datamining! Get it? Anyone? Aw...

Well, here's the thing. It's been an incredibly good month. I had a few extra pennies burning the proverbial hole in my pocket. I looked at the Nintendo eStore, bought awesome shit like Streets of Rage 2 3D, but I could still afford food afterwards, so clearly I wasn't doing it right. And Terraria received amazing reviews, people are fucking crazy about it, it sold 12 million times and fans seemed okay with the 3DS port. And while I wouldn't play ugly shit like that on my PC, it still looked like decent pooping entertainment. So I downloaded it to my handheld console. Fuck.

Day 1
Murdered some trees with an axe. Thank fuck I don't have to punch them. This isn't Minecraft, after all. It's Minecraft in 2D! Dug up some mud, because... look, I don't know. Built a little hut made of wood and mud. Waited for nightfall, fought back the zombies. I knew about this from the tutorial. Fuck you, zombies!

Day 2
Found a bunch of lead and copper. I can craft weapons, armor and basic furniture now. Do I want a lead toilet, a lead bath tub or a lead chain armor?

Day 3
Found a cactus. Cactus swords hit harder than copper swords. Cactus armor works better than lead armor. I have cactus doors and cactus furniture in my home now. Fuck mining ore, this is my world now. I am cactus.

Day 4
There's a huge-ass ocean blocking my progress towards the right edge of the screen. My character doesn't know how to swim and it's too large to just wade through it. Need to investigate further.

Day 5
Dug a massive system of little streams and tunnels near the giant body of water to drain it. I flooded huge parts of the underground section, but most of the ocean is gone now. I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. Water isn't so scary after all. This game is great!

Day 6
Drowned. Fuck this game!

Day 7
My little hut is now an outpost. Cactus city. There's a nurse, some merchants and some generic help text NPC living there now. Where the fuck am I supposed to sleep with these assholes occupying my place?

Day 8
Cactus City was attacked by a giant floating eyeball. It grew teeth and ate my nurse. I killed the eyeball and forged a demon sword out of some weird ore it dropped. Whoa.

Day 9
Grabbed my demon sword, dug a tunnel towards the center of the earth and fought a bunch of creepy jungle monsters. My gear is shit. Jungle monsters kick my ass. Poison kicks my ass. Lava kicks my ass. Oh yeah, there's lava now.

Day 10
Found a strange naked girl near a pool of lava. Game labels her "lost girl", can't target her for attacks or anything. Maybe she's an NPC I'm supposed to resc...AAAAH! OW! YOU BITCH! WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME YOU CUNT!?

Day 11
Secretly installed the game on Claire's 3DS. She'll be so happy and surprised! I'm just gonna sit next to her and encourage her to play some DS games. Surely she'll notice the new game.

Day 12
Claire ignores the giant giftbox-shaped icon on her screen, fires up Tomodachi Life and plays for 2 hours straight. Plays Peekaboo with a baby, buys bear outfits for her characters, feeds pudding to everyone. Then she spends an hour window-shopping in the Nintendo eShop, but doesn't buy anything.

Day 13
Claire finally found Terraria. She thanked me by asking how much money I wasted on this shit. I visit her world and she's a giant cactus. I'm so proud!

Day 14
There is no bronze or lead on Claire's world. She has tin and iron, instead. Where I mine sapphire she gets topaz. Her world is a huge desert full of vultures. There's also a dungeon. We talked to some old guy, then a giant monster named Skeletron appeared and ripped out our intestines. That was the actual onscreen death text.

Day 15
We stayed in bed and played Terraria all day. I gotta find more heart containers and mana star things. Found a goblin who sells rocket boots. I also have claws and boot spikes to help me climb. And a grappling hook. And a glowy amulet and a magic boomerang. Suddenly it's 5pm. We have one more hour until the store closes and I haven't even showered. We didn't eat or do any chores. Went to the toilet once, stayed there and played Terraria till my legs got numb.

The game is okay, I guess.