I’m playing Hard West 2

 Some thoughts on the characters:

Gin: Likable in roughly the same way as one of the more tolerable Grand Theft Auto protagonists. His +1 damage bonus after getting a kill is so much more useful than it sounds. His special would probably be useful if I ever remembered it.

Laughing Deer: This feels kinda racist, especially the howls he makes when he uses his special. He arguably has the most interesting arc, though, as he confronts the violent anti-settler movement that once dominated his life. Focused entirely on short-ranged attacks, so I find him hard to use.

Flynn: The token “selfish” character who advocates whatever course of action earns the most money. I feel like she could stand to grow up a bit. Still, she’s the only character who can directly move enemies out of cover.

Bill: An exhausted former villain, looking for a place to die (again.) Has the move speed of a shambling corpse. The best user of the Hand Cannon, with a damage bonus and immunity to the drawback. His special is pretty weak, but it can damage every enemy in sight.

Cla’lish: Two Native American PCs in the same game? You’re spoiling us. Provides a desperately needed contrast to Laughing Deer, but I’m not that into her in her own right. Her weapon bonuses combine very poorly, so you’ll probably want to give her a pistol even though she gets no bonuses with them at all. Her summon is mildly useful as a desperation move when you’re about to be overrun.

Lazarus: They’re really not trying to hide that he’s the narrator from the first game. Tends to advocate the “good” choices to Flynn’s “bad” ones, but I find him narrow-minded sometimes. Says some surprisingly badass stuff in combat. His special has the biggest effect on gameplay, encouraging risky play where you offload all damage onto him and then dump the injuries onto some unfortunate enemy. (Or even keep the injuries, because he heals every time he kills something!)

(no subject)

A mental trap: asserting that human-created meaning exists outside of humans. For instance, wavelengths of light exist, but humans are the ones who categorize some wavelengths as “yellow.” If you talk about yellow as an objective property and philosophize about the true nature of yellow, you’re overprivileging the human perspective.

Also a mental trap: thinking that someone is asserting human-created meaning when they’re not. Someone talks about the wavelengths of light that are commonly considered “yellow,” and you get mad and lecture them about how yellow isn’t real. They weren’t trying to assert yellow as real; they were just trying to talk about the properties of light in a concise and easy to understand way.

Both mental traps constantly snap shut when people talk about sex chromosomes.

Scrapyard Station: Transporters

I blame @predstrogen for inspiring this one.

Transporters are carnivorous cave-dwelling bipeds, slightly shorter than Tinkers on average. They have dull grayish-black exoskeletons that blend into darkness. They have no eyes, navigating by the movement of air or water around them.

Transporters tend to packbond easily, especially if you share food with them. Their society leans towards the group over the individual, pooling limited resources to keep everyone alive.

Transporter exoskeletons are strong, but not as rigid as Builder back armor. There’s a bit of give that allows them to cuddle non-Transporters without feeling like rocks.

There are dangerous predators on the surface, so Transporters usually make do with what they can mine or harvest underground. They farm an immobile creature that’s roughly akin to a fleshy mushroom, supplementing it with whatever small prey they can catch. Their technological development was relatively low before first contact, since they can’t build anything that lets off smoke without a way to vent it. (They did figure out water wheels with underground rivers, though.)

Transporters can swim, but their senses don’t extend as far in water as in air. Thankfully, the creatures in cave rivers are small enough that Transporters hunt them rather than the other way around.

A Transporter can swallow just about anything that can fit in its mouth, with no apparent discomfort or distention. The object or creature can later be regurgitated unharmed if the Transporter so chooses. Living creatures describe darkness, warmth, enclosure, and a sensation as if the body has liquefied. Many find it comfortable.

(Scrappers are already liquid, so they generally don’t get what the fuss is about.)

Being swallowed is an act of trust, since the Transporter could choose to gain nourishment from you instead of releasing you. Gaining nourishment from a sapient is a major taboo, but there are dark myths about Transporters who turned to cannibalism and became deformed monsters with incredible strength. The relevant Tinker myths haven’t survived the conquest of Earth, so Tinkers don’t see the resemblance.

It’s difficult to describe the sensations involved when two sapients are swallowed at once. Subjects talk about a feeling of intermixing, but can’t go into much more detail.

Transporter reproduction requires three parents, one of which swallows and regurgitates the other two.

Being swallowed and regurgitated can help with some medical issues, particularly getting bloody wounds to clot faster or removing internal parasites. It’s not precise enough to selectively remove cancer, though.

Although Transporter society isn’t capitalist, they’ve integrated into the capitalist Coalition well. They’re known for swallowing vast quantities of products and regurgitating them in distant places.

Not even Transporters can swallow Winnowers.

Stewards’ heat powers mess with air flow in ways Transporters find disorienting.