Like, I always used to plan too long-term, in Spiderweb games (Exile/Avernum) I’d always clear out the first goblin caves and keep going back to pick up every least valuable loot, like the rocks that weren’t even ranged equippable until after Nethergate, to haul back to town and sell and then buy all the skills the pay-trainer offered up to full before I moved on

Which crosses very productively with the thing where I can game out contemporary trends to tell where they’ll eventually end up

Which is maybe part of how it works out that I am now more amazingly well-positioned than I could ever imagine.

Like, in 1999 I was like “anime, happy hardcore, JRPGs, and Daft Punk is the important stuff going on” and with the benefit of hindsight was I wrong?

kontextmaschine:

See it’s called “customer” because you’d be “giving custom” by customarily getting your iron from this one forge or having a standing order with this cheesemaker for X pounds each winter, because you might buy one-off finished or consumer goods from artisans or marketplace traders, but established merchants dealt in bulk staples and intermediary goods

The RPG “item shop” is a backwards projection of a general store concept that dates to the 19th century

(Potion shop actually has earlier precedent)

I do appreciate how in Jeff “Spiderweb Software” Vogel’s Exile/Avernum tactical CRPGs the “general merchant” role was often filled by “quartermaster of an outpost, trading from its stores”, that’s pretty historically plausible

Wonder how Jeff Vogel’s parsing the way it’s only because every future creative with a Mac pirated them that Exile/Avernum are still discussed and “lizardmen use polearms, nekomimi are bow rogues” is part of the fantasy imaginarium now

::realizes that my feelings re: enchanted crystals has a lot to do with my feelings re: Jeff Vogel and the ‘90s::

Thunderbird

SE Foster Rd.

Crystals are one of the least cursive things I can imagine