morning fellow morning dweller

how goes our plans to destroy the surface world?

They have been postponed for the time being.

The surface people have introduced me to a chemical they call "caffeine"... this has curbed my urges to crush them... for now

lol

too bad, oh well

next time we will develop this "caffeine" for ourselves

then maybe we can move up the timetable

Haha

I did a lot of walking this weekend too. A friend got me back into Pokémon Go

ah

is it any different than when you were into it before?

I only ask because I had heard there were some changes made to it or something in some kinda patch maybe?

Well, the last time I properly played was probably a few months ago, but that was only for a bout a week or so.

ah ok

it's not exactly my cup of tea, to be fair

But yeah, they've got actually player-player involvement now. You can add friends and trade pokemon

aahhh ok

that must be what it was

Yeah, that was the latest update.

anyway, if I were to pick up another pokemon game I would want one that didn't require me to go to random places just to get one

And yeah, it's not for everyone, and even for those that do enjoy it, there's different levels. Some people take it really seriously, and to others it's just a way to pass the time haha

I would totally be interested in a Pokemon game again,... if I had a device for it and knew where to pick up a copy that didn't cost too much

I could probably buy both online but the prices for that for the new stuff are probably too high

and I would have no idea what the heck most of the Pokemon that are not original 150 even are

@trogdor They went off the rails a little actually.

how so?

Spoink and Vanillite

eh

still doesn't get me like the Chandelier

@trogdor Yeah that too

I saw that one and wondered how many ideas they really had left

@trogdor You're better off, honestly.

lol

I mean, for the Chandelier specfically

where do those live?

because unless the answer is "in people's houses",.... why is it in the place it is in?

and if it is in people's houses,.... why are you stealing it?

I stuck with Pokemon through Generations 2 and 3, but when I finished Gen 4, I was so done.

lol

@Miniman Yup. Whichever on Crystal was. Gave up after that lol

I think I might have played some Gen 2 maybe

@Ben Well that was 2.

I have accepted Some of Gen 3... mainly the starters

to be fair, the ice cream ones are also disturbing

Actually, most of Gen 3 is... acceptable.

what reason does a Pokemon have to evolve to look like something you want to eat?

@trogdor Exactly

@Ben Yeah, there's some cool stuff, and not too much egregiously annoying stuff.

But Gen 4 was just...no.

Yup

it isn't that I hate all the new stuff really, though yes some of them are stupid ideas

I just dropped out for a long time

lol

:45541028 Yup haha

I give up. Getting a oneboxed version of the time to stop meme is just not happening on mobile.

I guess they sorta got stuck releasing new stuff until the end of time for their business model though

I saw a short pardoy of Pokémon, they're looking at the Pokedex, thinking "What next? We've got the Sun and the Moon, Life and Death, all four of the seasons..."

The guy goes "Only one place left... WE GO FOR GOD."

"wait... no we got that one too"

Heh. It always makes me go ??? when people complain about the object Pokemon when in gen 1 you had Pokemon that were pokeballs and living toxic waste. I've played every generation of Pokemon, and honestly, the only real differences are gradual changes to the art style.

Combined with a lack of nostalgia. :P

@Pixie Ah, this is a good point, however you're missing one vital detail. We were kids back then, and cared less haha

Yes, that's where the lack of nostalgia comes in, heh.

I don't object to an object as a pokemon

I object to specific ones that I don't understand the habitat for

or the ones that look like literal food

most of them are probably fine

But, they did have more legitimate explanations for their existence - i.e. compared to what @torgdor is pointing out haha

also true, being a kid made it matter a looooot less

I don't think it's particularly necessary to keep playing them though, because every game essentially is a repeat of the last, with a new minigame gimmick and a few tweaks. I just really like that type of game (though even I didn't buy the latest gen, as I don't have much video gaming energy lately).

@Pixie I have no problem with objects, personally. The recycled ideas and concepts that honestly just seem dumb, combined with the crazy levels of escalation, are what killed it for me.

I mean, there were more legendaries in Gen 4 than in Gen 1 and 2 combined...maybe even 1 and 2 and 3.

That's fair. It doesn't bother me much, but, again, it's just a type of game I enjoy. I've also always been a big fan of Digimon, and frankly, nothing Pokemon does can out-weird Digimon. :P

@Pixie I did really enjoy the ones I have played, and lately I sorta feel like I want to play another one

whether an old one or a newer one doesn't matter

@Pixie This is true. Pokémon Go, for me, is just a bit of fun, and it's a great idea. You see waaay more kids out and about nowadays.

Also, after Gen 2 it became impossible (for all intents and purposes) to "catch 'em all".

That really annoys me.

It's actually much easier?

With online trading and online legendary distribution.

but either way I would either have to illegally pirate it, buy a new device and cartridge or wtv is used for it now,... or find a really old one that might even be more expensive?

@Miniman You can't get all of them in the game. The only way to do that is to do mass-trades

Although online has been shut off for all the DS games, as with any DS game.

@Ben well for me,... I would personally prefer not to have to do any trading if I actually wanted every pokemon

I remember in the Old Days before I had a link cable, I'd have to have my friends put Pokemon we wanted to trade into Pokemon Stadium and then transfer it out... it was a pain.

the only time I interacted with other people was to maybe fight them, to test my lineup/ to pass the time

@trogdor Exactly

@Pixie wow that,.... yeah

that sounds tedious

Yeah, I don't have a Switch yet, and I'm not sure I will anytime soon. I'm also not super into what I've seen of Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee. I mean, it doesn't look bad either, but it's pretty much "Go on a console + gen 1 nostalgia." The latter I like, the former less. :P

lol

@Pixie Breath of the Wild

I don't mean to say I think Gen 1 is better at all

@Ben Heh. I'm not a big Zelda fan. BotW did look fun, though.

but I will say it is the only one I could reliably name any pokemon from

BotW looked pretty cool,... except specifically for the weapon breakage

I didn't exactly like that idea

Yeah, I understand. I could probably name all of the first two gens if I thought long enough, and a good chunk of gen 3, but after that it gets dicey.

@trogdor Gen 1 was the foundation. It was a good idea, solid, and well rounded. Then they built on it. Problem is, a foundation can only support so much

@Ben I do agree that they could probably have slowed down a little on making new pokemon, at some point they really are going to be out of good ideas

but as is I couldn't comment on all the ideas they have had, just some really weird specific ones I have seen

@trogdor Honestly BotW is one of the few occasions where they built outside the box. And it paid off. Yeah, there's a few things that make it a little clunky, but all in all, it is a great game, because it has that "Open world discovery" type feel to it. You go on your quest to do x, and get distracted by other things... it really is an enjoyable game.

having weapons that all break is literally my only complaint with it

it otherwise looks pretty neat

And yeah, like @Miniman was saying earlier, they really went off the deep end with the whole "gods" thing in Pokémon. "Oh, you're a god? Ok... I'll have to pop down the shop to grab a few more Ultraballs. BRB"

I get that they wanted you to use different weapons,.... but they could have handled that differently

@Ben See, for me, I tried BotW, and it just seemed like a bunch of small annoyances piled up into a really annoying game. It's really killed the Switch for me - that was the big draw. Although when Octopath Traveler comes out I might change my mind.

also, the other side of things is that Switch had a bunch of behind the scenes issues

like how they didn't make nearly enough at first for all the people who ordered them, or how the only game anyone cared about for it WAS BotW

I saw no reason to get remotely excited for it for any of those reasons

Kirby is what generally determines when I buy a new Nintendo console, but I still haven't picked up a Switch... and I skipped the WiiU, too. I guess I've become a bit of a PC gamer. I'd miss Kirby, except that I have a million other Kirby games.

I can spend my video game money on like, probably at least 10 good games instead of one good one I didn't like the weapon system for and it's really expensive console

PC for life right now

I don't make enough to buy new consoles when they come out

along with new games

(especially, again,.... if they only currently have one really good looking game coming out with them)

Yeah, there just aren't enough appealing games to make any console a must-have. Plus I already have way too much in my PC backlog.

@Miniman The weapon durability and the cooking were some... what else was there?>

Yeah. I completely forgot to check my cart out during the Steam summer sale, but it was just kind of like, "Aww, I couldn't buy 20 more games I won't have time to play. What will I do? Just play the 50 other games I haven't played yet? Preposterous."

@Ben see, the ingredient gathering and the cooking and stuff? I would have loved all that

I would have spent hours upon hours just ingrediant gathering, chopping wood, picking plants off the ground, hunting monsters, yadda yadda

the weapons though

I just know my weapons repeatedly breaking in battle would have annoyed the heck out of me

@Ben Honestly, I'm just sick of the games industry trying to shove open world down my throat. Giant landscapes dotted with small camps of enemies are just not interesting to me, let alone MMO-style "collect 100 Xs in this area".

Speaking of cooking, ah, good, Little Dragons Cafe is releasing for the PS4. That might have tempted me if it had been Switch only.

it is unfortunate how similar to each other many open world games are

@trogdor I don't remember if it was the PS4 or the Xbone that had the same issue... after the console war, one pr bpth pf them only had like, one game that anyone cared about... which really killed the craze

Plus, forcing me to use consumables in order to even explore an area...ew.

@Ben it seems like a recurring issue for consoles

@Miniman True.

Consumables are for saving for a rainy day and never using because it's never rainy enough to make me.

Dark Souls 4 life.

@Miniman like resistance to ambient elemental damage and lighting in perpetual darkness and stuff?

Lol

@Miniman yeah, this is fair

@trogdor Yep.

Oh, speaking of - Apparently Shadows Die Twice does not have a levelling system.

My dad insisted on buying me a PS4 for Christmas one year. I pretty much only use it for KoF and Digimon games. But KoF came out on Steam after... (oh well, I would have had to have the limited edition artbook anyway, because I love KoF far too much).

lol

fighting games, the games that don't make you collect stuff,..... mostly

I suppose some of them still might make you unlock characters

Even then, it's usually only a few.

Of course, DLC is more common than unlocking these days. :P

yeah

Honestly, that's probably what it really comes down to for me. I don't like consumables, and BotW is a game where as many things as possible are consumables.

@Pixie ugh,.... I forgot that

(Except bombs, which went the other way for some reason.)

@Miniman I,... have half your mindset and half the opposite honestly,....

I'm not upset about the amount of DLC characters for KoF, though, because the roster was ridiculously big to begin with (as any KoF game should be). I was like "Yes, please, let me buy Whip. Thank you so much."

Not coincidentally, I tried to kill everything in BotW using bombs.

@Miniman seeing as bombs are really really necessary to get to certain areas in most Zelda games,... I wish they had been like they are in BotW from the start

@Pixie hey if it works

I was lucky enough to pick up Skullgirls when all the characters were out

so I didn't need to buy new DLC just to get like, Beowulf or Big Band or Eliza or whoever

which I probably would have done,.... but yeah didn't need to

I think the base roster is around 50 characters or so? Something like that. Ah, yeah, same here for Skullgirls.

the roster is small though

Yeah, I ended up buying them, but with the reduced price I paid for early access I may well have ended up spending less.

I do sort of wish every once in a while that that last Push they did for more characters had produced some more

@Miniman It's a legitimate strategy

Actually, because of Humble bundles, I have inadvertently come into possession of 3 copies of Skullgirls with DLC.

I cannot find friends to give them to because they already own it. :v

@Pixie What a strange and wonderful world we live in where this is not an unusual problem.

technically I had to buy the voice acted Story mode later, because I really wanted that.

I'm slowly obtaining every fighting game on Steam that goes on sale, because the same ones always do.

The one thing I'm bummed about forgetting to buy is Birth By Night, sigh.

Er. Under Night In Birth.

I went out and bought an MSI laptop (sub-par Alienware - for those who don't know) because I occasionally play video games on it.

So far I've played Diablo 3, and Minecraft

@Pixie are you sure it isn't Birth Night Bye?

:P

@trogdor I wouldn't be surprised if that were a title. :v

it would be a strange one but not the weirdest in existence

Not really related, but I feel like sharing it - I started playing Nioh last night.

@Miniman I have heard good things about it. My only issue is that I'm very hard to convince - I have somehow developed a very high degree of "Judge a book by its cover"

@Miniman do you like it?

@Ben I'm enjoying it so far. Only issue is that combat seems...maybe overly complicated.

Hrm.

You've got 3 different stances, light and heavy attacks in each, 2 different weapons equipped...and the game rewards switching it up continually in every category.

oh jeez

I wouldn't like that then

Plus constantly hitting spacebar on a certain rhythm.

it's one thing if I can practice combos or something

it's another if I have to also juggle all that stuff

@Miniman wtf?

Maybe it'll feel natural with some practice, but right now I'm like...whoa.

God of War kinda overdid it too... there's a lot less in comparison, but there's 3 different weapons to use, and all have 2 "stances" which is handled by timing your attacks... at least this can all be bypassed if you don't want to use it

There's also a rage mode, but that seems simple enough as long as I can remember to press e + right click.

@Miniman It's really hard to do "Rage" wrong.

I rage. I punch the guy.

Repeat

@Ben Sorry, rage mode in the sense of an ability that you can only use occasionally that makes you more powerful for a short period of time. Often referred to as "super saiyan".

@Miniman Yes, as it is often used in the same way in many other games. You often have to build up your "rage meter" by dealing and receiving damage

Mini, do you mean that in most games with an occasional resource, you have trouble remembering you have it and using it at times when it's of the most benefit?

@BESW That was me in my last few games of Savage Worlds

I have a lot of trouble with the tactical use of cooldowns and procs.

I did end up using it, finally... It went amazingly well... and then horribly haha. He managed to stay conscious for 2 extra wounds (once you exceed 3 wounds, your character falls unconscious), even before he lost complete control and went berserk.

Then he failed the vigor check and fell unconscious half way through the fight

@BESW my problem is remembering what all my character can do

esp with magic items and stuff

consumables are a huge bugbear for me

@BESW Sadly not. I meant that I was actually struggling to remember in the thick of a fight which two buttons I needed to press.

I don't do well in games where I need to remember and use consumables in the heat of the moment.

@Miniman This is also a thing.

I think this is a common thing. remembering that you have a common ability vs that one off thing is always a challenge.

It's either you always forget you have it, or it's a toss up to try and figure out if you should use it now, or later when a better opportunity comes up

@Ben I meant to say, btw - I told you, a touch of Zelda :P

@Miniman All the best parts of my favourite games haha

@Ben I'm really excited.

We determined it was on all consoles, didn't we?

@BESW @Miniman usually I know when to use consumables, but I hoard them anyway

@Ben That's what they're saying, yeah.

Ok good

Er, not Switch.

I end up using stuff on final boss fights or not at all

@Miniman Well, yeah.

@trogdor Well, I generally see "I need to use consumables here" as "I need to play better".

The dark souls remake is a complete bust too, btw. It's just a higher framerate and resolution, which means better particle effects, and that's it

@Ben Remaster, not remake. Hence what you said.

@Miniman same actually

Or otherwise "there is a place later I need this"

@Ben I'll admit I hoped for more, but I wasn't surprised.

That second one happened for me in Halo a lot

@Miniman Yes. My b

@Miniman I liked the current question where the moonblade is given at level seven but the DM had the thieves guild steel their bag of holding. Your "not an answer" is step one, but I think that one may need to hash out ideas at a forum

@trogdor You mean "I'll come back and grab this when I need it more "?

@KorvinStarmast Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there.

@Miniman no, "I'll carry this and melee stuff to death"

I used a lot of stealth and AI exploits

@trogdor Ah, right. I personally see ammo hoarding as kind of a different issue.

Ah fair enough

It's kinda the same thing to me

Cause with rockets and snipers that ammo is really limited

At least in the first game

Unless you're talking about when you're carrying a rocket launcher you have no real intention of using, in which case I'm right there with you.

Oops...sniped.

Rockets and snipers

It was really bad on stages where they gave you both

@trogdor That one stealth mission where it starts out with the night vision sniper rifle, and then you check your secondary weapon and it's a rocket launcher...

See, I think that's one thing playing on higher difficulty really helps with.

I would murder an elite with stealth first if I could so I could shoot and melee with one of thier plasma rifles and then pick my sniper back up to carry it to the next area

@Miniman it was on legendary

I played too much

I started dueling elites by sidestepping them and back hitting them eventually

@trogdor Oh, wow. Then my hat is off to you, because I couldn't afford to save anything for later on Legendary.

And I beat hunters to death in melee

That one isn't too hard once you figure it out though

@trogdor I did that... once... for a bet

While drunk

Lol

Nope,..... I was just doing that every time I saw them

@trogdor As far as I'm concerned, the only ways to kill elites on legendary are vehicles, sniper rifle, rocket launcher, and plasma grenades. Mostly just plasma grenades.

They were too easy to kill other ways

Plasma pistol + pistol in a pinch.

@Miniman I loved plasma grenades

I still counted elite kills with plasma nades

Or from stealth

But I was disappointed if I had to shoot them

Which admittedly was still happening

Oh, and needler I guess. The needler is weird because it's either perfectly effective or completely useless, depending on the environment.

Especially if you started a fight with no stealth option

@Miniman yeahhh

Love hate needler

@trogdor I was disappointed if I had to shoot them too, because they're really hard to kill that way :P

@trogdor Halo 2. Nuff said

Halo 2 was a strange game. I'm still not sure what I think of it.

@Miniman Neeedler spaaaaaaam

Don't get me wrong, I loved dual wielding.

But the changes to shields and health, the weird level design, the cringeworthy bosses...I dunno.

That's horrifying.

@Miniman The fact that they even had "bosses" was cringeworthy enough. The only thing they were missing were actual on-screen health bars. And I'm not sure if that would have actually made it better

@Miniman lol

@Ben They could also have removed the incredibly long invincibility phases. That would have made it better.

Never played 2

Execpt for one extremely breif session of pvp

FPS and Bosses aren't really something that go hand-in-hand

@Ben It can work, though. Just not as "sit through 5 minutes of invincibility for 30 seconds of firing madly".

I just finished Doom 2016, and it had great bosses.

@Miniman True

Including one that gave me a real "oh crap there's another phase" moment.

But yeah, in general the FPS genre struggles with boss design.

Doom looks really good

It was a lot of fun.

Probably not a game I'm going to replay, but I'm glad I played through it once.

I have wanted to play it at least once

If you do play it, ask me about weapon upgrades, cos they range from "completely useless" to "turns one of the weakest weapons in the game into one of the strongest", and there's not a lot of hints to tell you which is which.

@Miniman because it's really hard?

@Miniman Will do

[Jumping to a different subject because this just happened]

A friend sent me this:

Which reminded me of a session of Dark Heresy we played, where this iexact thing happened.

@trogdor No, I liked the difficulty level. (I played on the equivalent of Heroic). More that it was a pretty significant time investment that I don't feel would merit a replay.

ah ok

We were interrogating the barman (after hours, cos we were an Inquisitor Squad - we had a reputation to uphold) and it was going badly (kept failing our Interrogation rolls). It started getting violent, but never went anywhere.

@Ben Oh hey, that reminds me - a friend started running a a DH game, we've done one session so far.

@Miniman Oooooh

@trogdor If I'd played on the equivalent of Legendary, I'm pretty sure I'd not have enjoyed it nearly as much.

fair enough

@Miniman ...room for one more?

@Miniman DH?

@Shalvenay Dark Heresy

@Ben It went pretty well. I made a psyker, so naturally I rolled really well on WS, BS and STR, and really poorly on WP, FEL, and INT.

Warhammer 40k RPG

@Ben Nope, sorry.

@Miniman Haha let me know how that goes

Ah shoot. Ah well

@Miniman to be fair, if I were to pick it up and play on the hardest difficulty the specific things I learned in Halo would probably not translate well

besides aiming and shooting

I doubt Doom encourages handling all that much with stealth

@Ben Well, we fought a demon, and I did all of the damage...with the gun I'd picked up as a "backup weapon".

@Miniman Nice!

and it obviously has an entirely different enemy set

@trogdor Yeah, it's very much focused on "you're the centre of a frenetic brawl, survive by killing things faster than they kill you".

I don't hate that idea, to be fair, but deffinitely a different skill set

@Miniman Sometimes simple is good.

@Ben I definitely wouldn't call it simple.

I assume there is still the on the fly decision of what weapon to use, what enemies to focus fire, and how to dodge attacks

that can look simple, but juggling all those things can be deceptively complicated

@trogdor Plus weapon mods, chainsaw, bfg, glory kills.

plus all that

XD

@Miniman I mean the underlying scope of the game. "Kill them faster than they can kill you". Adding things like stealth or puzzle solving (sometimes "and" instead of "or") real;ly ruins the game

@Ben Ah, yeah.

bropls.com/…

@Ash How old is it?

I only just discovered it today. I love these kinds of stories - just the "outside the box" stories.

It seems that Elf vs. Orc is still at a standstill :(

Ah, I believe I read the first chapter of that a while back but not more. It was good though.

It's frustrating... because Even if someone else picks it up... it'll feel... wrong? I would love to have this as a short story on my shelf

Sidenote, I love that DeviantArt is still using the retro emoticons

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, blacklisted website in body, pattern-matching product name in body, repeated url at end of long post: You must be ready to WANT by user45692 on rpg.SE (@doppelgreener)

@SmokeDetector you must be ready to want smokey, figure that one out

Question (Primarily @Miniman but anyone else that's played DH is welcome to answer)

How do people feel about a Techpriest without the Omnissiah Axe?

I've played one session, as a psyker. I know what a Techpriest is, beyond that I have no idea.

@Miniman Fair enough haha

My character was one. The Omnissiah Axe is kind of like the "staple" weapon for a Techpriest, although most classes don't get it until later levels.

My GM used to feel that a Techpriest needed it. To him it's like a Wizard without his Spellbook

It certainly made my Explorator an interesting case - Explorators are normally more intelligence-based, investigating new weird and wonderful technology. Then when battle comes about, this tiny, frail little guy is whipping around a huge axe

hello all

@Ben Well, it has an availability of Extremely Rare, so I'd feel that a Techpriest without one is normal.

@Miniman Yeah. I think it's probably because the GM came from the Table-top 40K, where it was standard (and the tech-priests were rare)

@ravery Howdy

I'm looking for role-play ideas. Specifically a one-liner to foreshadow a future event without giving it away.

cc @BESW

@Ben The NPC Techpriest statblock also has one, so I guess from the GM's POV it's a thing they have.

@Miniman Yeah. Either way, I really enjoyed playing him. I think he's just a staple of that game now - he's already been reinvented once haha

@ravery Any particular system?

D&D 5e, we're running Hoard of the Dragon Queen

And can you perhaps give an example of what exactly you're looking for?

"this isn't over yet" seems cliche, there is a murder, and an enemy accuses a party member, the issue is dropped because the enemy doesnt want to reviel the contents of his cart, but latter challenges that person to a duel

the party will level between events

so looking for a line that the enemy could say as he walks away, to set the party thinking when they evel

**level

Ahh right.

Hmm

Nothing wrong with a cliche, especially from that particular (somewhat melodramatic) character.

Maybe even just re-wording that phrase. "You've paved the way for things you couldn't even begin to imagine..."

@Ben that is an interesting one. a variation of "I'll be back"

Then of course you have to follow it by some kind of weird event that doesn't allow the party to confirm the death. Like, the room starts to collapse, or the body disappears somehow

Like, the bad guy just rises into the air slightly... they seem to be in pain, as they begin to glow (or perhaps are engulfed in flame)… they say the line, then they just implode

well, the party is in a caravan, the death is confirmed but the murderer is unidentifiable. the enemy is trying to keep their identity and cargo secret. So the encounter ends by merchants suggesting they open their cart to asses what is missng, which the enemy refuses to do and drops the accusation

so, I want to hint that although the enemy walks away, he doesn't drop the matter

"I know you did it. "?

@Miniman - possibly, but was hoping someone remebers an "epic" one-liner from somewhere

"You cannot escape your fate"

@JoelHarmon How come? (also, I think 7th Sea is quite a stretch for "typical" system)

@Patta I think I've seen something along that in answers at least

Tried to search for the question but didn't hit it :<

Yeah, same here. Well, if it does not exist yet, it will, very soon :P

The question clearly needs a dupe to point toward it at very least!

So ask ahead

Asking how to kick a player might have a taste of XY problem though, so expect frame challenges.

Case should be pretty clear in my case: Player applied to our (online) game even though he was below the minimum age I set (below 18, he is 13 or 14, that only became clear after a few sessions, from the first impression we all thought he was around 16) but the group decided we wanted to try it (He was new to Pen&Paper in general, but very interested and enthusiastic)

After 3 or 4 sessions, we had a talk with him about our playstyle differences (he is very "random" in his actions and just tries to do funny, nonsensical things, which does not really fit the rest of the groups style and the tone of the campaign), where we told him we want him to be in this group, if he wants to continue and if he is ok with adapting his style to fit (that style was also advertised for the campaign when I was originally looking for players)

This included a "if you don't want to adapt your playstyle (or can't), we will probably need to part ways" - Worked out for a few sessions, but got worse again over time, and is now where it started again. Should not be any XY Problem there, at least none that I can see :D

Yeah, well... I've only played with strangers a few times so I lack a lot of experience here, but yep, sounds like I'd show them the door too.

Yeah. We tried, and it was ok (It was not a horrible experience or anything), but it just doesn't fit. That's not fair for anyone involved (I as gm find myself giving that player less spotlight, because if I do, it will be a drastic tone change every time)

at 13/14 I imagine you can probably communicate most effectively with him by analogies involving minecraft

I thought it was Fortnite that was all the hype and craze these days? :D

Though, come to think of it, my little cousins (he's ten now) main themes to talk about in the last few years where FIFA and Minecraft, so that might be right :D