I'm pretty impressed with the Chessex "Nostalgia" set. It's obviously made of standard dice from their lineup- the colours are not close to their inspiration, and the d20 goes from 1-20- but it manages to include some nice nods to RPG dice history and it's only $5.

I'm kinda coming around to the idea of characters being the single most important part of a game for fan engagement and long-term mindshare

Been trying some demos and shorter games blog.xcvgsystems.com/trying-some-...

Not a full breakdown on why it didn't land for me, but a few thoughts on The Outer Worlds 2 blog.xcvgsystems.com/i-gave-up-on...

I gave up on The Outer Worlds 2. It just didn't click for me, even after eighteen hours and many second chances. Maybe I'll do a piece on this, maybe I won't.

Finished my piece on BG3 Act 3, in record time. Nothing groundbreaking, but a way of looking at it I haven't seen much before. blog.xcvgsystems.com/act-3-nearly... (apologies in advance for the hyperbolic clickbait title)

The Fallout series is really good but it dances on the edge of "too bleak, stopped caring" for me. (also I still haven't fully forgiven it for basically pulling a Happy Ending Override for at least 1/2/NV and possibly the whole series)

Taking down more videos again blog.xcvgsystems.com/march-2026-v...

I want to like The Outer Worlds 2 but to be honest it's kinda been a slog so far. It's just not drawing me into the world or selling me on the characters, and those are at the top of the list of things that get me engaged with a game.

Okay, I'm sure she has a great story and it's not what I expect, but my first thought was "we have Karlach at home"

not perfect but I finally stopped procrastinating on the "2025" concepts from left to right: Sakura, Gina, Lily, Delora

somehow when I wasn't looking both a KCD knockoff for chuds and a KCD knockoff for lesbians were announced out of seemingly nowhere (should be pretty obvious which one I'm more interested in, 1348 Ex Voto, it looks a bit jank but it has Jennifer English in it)

Some thoughts on BG3 just after I finished it (adapted from a reddit post so a bit messy): blog.xcvgsystems.com/i-finally-fi... I'm thinking one more post on it, more from a game design perspective, before I move on.

Finally finished Baldur's Gate 3. I know the ending was divisive, and has been reworked, but what I got was one of the best end runs and endings in any game I've ever played. I think the last one that hit me that hard was Halo 3. What a masterpiece of a game.

probably going to take down a few more of my YouTube videos- I will announce before this happens just like last time

140 dice is somehow both more and less than I expected

so I might have accidentally roped myself into running a tabletop game in the near (ish) future

been watching a ton of d&d dungeon master content for some reason, I've played once and will probably never dm a game

"Baldur's Gate 3 was announced at Stadia Connect" is the "Halo was announced at Macworld" of our time

Once again, it is time for the end of year update www.xcvgsystems.com/2025/12/end-... tl;dr More games than expected, creative rut and possible burnout, a few projects laid to rest and lots of possibilities for 2026

Happy Christmas ♥️

I followed a tutorial blindly and it actually seems to work (?!)

Just in time for Christmas, one of the holiday games of all time (or: there was an attempt to use Twine and this was the result) xcvgsystems.com/static/xmas2...

Almost a year after CommonCore R6.2, here is R6.3 with not much added github.com/XCVG/commonc... Next will probably be R7.0.0 targeting Unity 6.3 LTS (skipping Unity 6.0 entirely)

I did actually start a Christmas project this year, but I kept procrastinating on it and even now that I've started it's just not coming together well. Even odds this one ever sees the light of day.

Don't know whether I want to dive into the "what counts as indie" discourse so I'll just talk about how I'm looking forward to some of the games that were shown off at The Game Awards.

I know it comes with the patient gamer territory but I'm still salty about picking up a BG3 spoiler hours before it would have been revealed to me in the game

I think at some point the Vancouver, BC and Vancouver, WA game dev lists got intermingled and sometimes my feed gets confusing as hell.

okay I gotta say that enamel pin goes hard (and, as one of my friends put it, is "a very canadian joke")

On a whim I looked up if anyone had ever done a BG3-inspired Doom mod (what a weird combination) and the answer is frustratingly "yes, but it's lost media now"

the big AI post blog.xcvgsystems.com/i-have-compl... (technically not a masterpost as it's mostly new rather than collecting existing posts)

Baldur's Gate 3 is not a perfect game, but I haven't been this invested in the story, setting, and characters of a game since the Mass Effect original trilogy. And unless it pulls a Mass Effect 3 (or something amazing comes along), I think it's going to be my personal Game of the Decade.

there was a quote I heard in English class a long time ago that was something like "...he said, and walked out the door. Who was that guy? There is no door." It was supposed to be deeply profound, but I joked at the time it was satirizing bad writing.

drawings from on the airplane (one of them might been on a train)

Finally watched the new Lilo and Stitch. It has its moments, but overall, it's just kind of not as good as the original. The ending wasn't as bad as I'd expected, but also lacked all the layers the original had (and didn't have the chase scene, for some reason).

welp the main twist of Expedition 33 has been randomly spoiled for me... thinking I should pick up The Outer Worlds 2 sooner than later if I want to play it without spoilers

An offhand line in a random fanfic has me thrashing my brain over what instantaneous teleportation even means assuming a relativistic universe. Not even in a "what scenarios would break causality" way but literally "what is the definition of instant"

Happy Halloween! They've upped their costume game this year.

Google is trying to kill open app development on Android. Let's push back. keepandroidopen.org www.change.org/p/stop-googl...

Done the first draft on my AI post, around 3000 words. Hoping to get it out next week. This one's gonna be a doozy...

I was really hoping to do at least a drawing for Halloween this year, but I just don't think I'm going to have the time.

So, uh, is ~~343 Industries~~ Halo Studios just giving up? A UE5 remake of a game that's already had one remaster, without the beloved multiplayer, is... a choice. Not continuing Infinite's abbreviated campaign, or bringing us something brand new?

I installed Windows Me in an emulator for some reason

Somehow all three sticks of RAM in my Windows 98 retro machine went bad

Summary post on CVE-2025-59489 www.xcvgsystems.com/2025/10/upda...

The Excessive Sound Guys and You Have To Make The Game are now patched for CVE-2025-59489 (that concludes the patching adventure, summary post coming soon)

Project D759 (version 1.0.0) and SE7ENGOKU (Story Mode Preliminary Demo, previously 4c01d7 and now 65dadd6) are now patched for CVE-2025-59489

followed a video tutorial and managed to not completely screw it up? (the half-elf ears were not in the video but I couldn't help myself)

Shattered and In The Middle Of The Night are now patched for CVE-2025-59489 (almost there!)

At The Break Of Dawn and A Dream Of Valhalla are now patched for CVE-2025-59489