RDR a few more pictures

A few more self portrait style pictures. Mostly to show outfits that I'd tinkered with, but also for a few other reasons; I like the weird pagan ritual thing that I found recently; I don't know how I missed it for as long as I had (it's not that pagan ritual that Arthur draws in his journal, nor is it anywhere close to it geographically. Nor is it as graphic or obvious.)

I've also picked up two Nacogdoches saddles, and have really noticed a difference. I was adamant for quite some time that I wanted to use the role saddles with the role horses, but the difference in stamina drain and speed and acceleration is so noticeable that I can't not use it anymore, I think. A real shame, because I had five very expensive saddles, which I now will probably rarely if ever use. And they mostly all looked great too.  Like I said, so far I have two Nacogdoches saddles, fully kitted out, including with lanterns. The saddle itself is over $500, the lantern is $350, and the saddle bag and stirrup upgrades are somewhere between $100-150 each. A fully kitted out Nacogdoches saddle is over $1,000; more than the horse, even, even if you get one of the most expensive ones.

I also, after not using my Kladrubar much, have really felt like he was super slow using him recently. I just put the second Nacogdoches saddle on him, and I'll run him around for a while, but I'm not sure that I love that horse as much as I thought. He's great when you want to get into gunfights or if you run into a cougar or wolves, but given that I spend most of my time on horseback just crossing space on the map, I've come to really appreciate the Criollo, which had been my least favorite of my horses. I now think that if I were to rank my horses as most likely to use to least, I'd put the Criollo and Norfolk near the top, the Breton next, and the Turkoman and Kladrubar near the bottom. Sigh.  So now I'll probably want a Missouri Foxtrotter even more than I did before, because it's much more likely to be a top tier horse even in my own personal stable, having almost identical stats to the Criollo, but a significantly different look.

My dog is named Robin Hood, and my horses, in order that I got them, are Little John, Will Scarlet, Alan-a-Dale, Friar Tuck and Guy of Gisborne. I'm running out of Robin Hood related names that are meaningful enough to use. King Richard and Prince John are about all that's left; and I'm almost at the point that I'd rather get a mare and name her Maid Marian anyway than use those. But given that I can see myself getting at least two more horses in the relatively short term; the Missouri Foxtrotter and whatever the new role horse will be (I presume that there will be one, and I hope it's significantly different than what we have. A noticeably shaggy little horse of some sort would be cool) and maybe still a white Arabian, that'll use up my stock of names. Not to mention most of my available stable stall spots, even if I buy up all of them that are available.

The only downside with the Nacogdoches saddle is that the single colored Collector's saddle bag doesn't match them very well, and they do have improved saddle bags that specifically are designed to match the various colors of this saddle. While mostly this isn't a big deal, it means that the max number of outfits I can carry on my horse is now five instead of seven. Because I leave one space blank on my horse, to make room for the inevitable "custom outfits" that it creates when my hat falls off or my bandanna glitches away, that means that I can have one cold outfit, one hot outfit, my basic outfit, and only one other. So, I'm spending a bit more time making outfits that I actually want to wear, because I can't quite as easily swap between them if after a while I think I look silly.

Anyway, on to the pictures. A few feature horses, mostly my Criollo, Will Scarlet. In keeping with his name, I tried to give him a reddish mane and tale. I also exclusively use the "mohawk" style mane, because in cinematic mode, it doesn't wave behind the horse's head like a weird, stiff flag. Same thing as the longer tails on my coats; the animation for them just doesn't look right, so I prefer not to use them and look silly. After all, when running across the map for long distances, I have to look at it quite a bit.

The weird pagan ritual site. It was also the location of one of the treasure maps, as you can see by the chest at its foot.

I prefer camp in the Heartlands, although Great Plains would probably be more convenient, being significantly closer to my moonshine shack in Tall Trees. We'll see what the new role brings and where the best place to set up ends up being, but I like the Heartlands prairie for aesthetic reasons as well. Here I am with an outfit I tried out using the weathered blue Hartman jacket. Which, I believe, is the same "design" as the scout jacket from single player, which I also really liked, although most of the colors are completely different.

In the Great Plains with my basic outfit. I'm actually showing off my new reddish beard, which I "grew" as part of a daily challenge, which asked me to change my appearance at the barbers. I'll probably keep it for some time; maybe even until that challenge comes up again in the rotation. And my Criollo and my first Nacogdoches saddle are in the background. I don't like all of the colors, but I'll probably end up with at least three or four of these saddles before I'm done. I have two now.

Another outfit that's not too different; it uses a different hat, vest and shirt (and probably a few other minor things like gloves, bandana and gunbelt, etc.) but which especially uses the tan cordury version of the Hartman jacket. I really need to find another jacket that I like as much as this one, but I'm unlikely to, I admit. With a similar jacket and the same chaps and boots, it looks very similar to my basic outfit. 

A different take on the blue weathered jacket outfit. And my horse, again, up near the foot of Window Rock where I like to fish. I think Madame Nazar was there when I took this picture, which explains what I was doing there too.

Another Hartman jacket outfit using a different variety. It's surprisingly not very warm, even though it really looks like it should be, so not having a vest means I need to try extra hard to make it warm enough to qualify as appropriate for average temps. In this case, part of what I did was put these big furry warm chaps on.

The same outfit, out in Tall Trees where I'd just spawned after starting the game in West Elizabeth free roam after having to switch servers because of a glitch with my moonshine shack (luckily, I was very close to it, at Bear Claw camp.) Without crossing my arms, I was trying to show off my sweet green patterned shirt, but the shadow makes it difficult to make out anyway. Oh, well.

Another outfit and another spot in the Heartlands, this time near Emerald Ranch. Bad weather looming ahead. It rains quite a lot in this game, one of many clues that points to a spring time setting. 

A hot weather outfit made entirely of black leather. Black leather hat, vest, shirt, pants, boots, gloves, sunbelt, and half chaps. In real life I doubt I'd ever wear so much black leather. 

The black leather on a rainy day at Braithwaite Manor. Shortly after this I deleted the outfit and tried out a different look. 

Another average temperature outfit with a new jacket.  I do need some hats that match my tan and brown leather since I wear that so much. 

It wasn't cold, obviously, but this is a cold water outfit with a new color of the sheepskin coat, one of my favorites. I've probably got one more variant color of that that I'd like. Let's see if we get any new limited time clothing options tomorrow first, though. 

My replacement hot weather outfit. The black version of this jacket was rhe first cosmetic piece of clothing I picked up, but I haven't used it or this brown one much since. Unfortunately, it has a short "butt tail" of sorts, and looks a bit stupid from behind, which is how I, as the player, see it most of the time. If the back were the same length as the front, it would look a lot better.

Signs

Just a few more pictures from my Rockstar social club feed. When I was still dabbling in the post-game stuff with John, and taking pictures, I decided at one point to run around taking pictures of signs that showed state borders or city limits. I didn't capture all of them, but I did do quite a few. Some of them are just pictures of the signs, but some of them are "selfies" with my version of John standing next to the sign.

Since they're self explanatory, I don't think I'll offer any commentary.

RDR sales

As an aside, I deleted many of those outfits already. There's a HUGE sale on clothing this week (and Red Dead's week always starts on Tuesday). I've been picking up stuff like crazy, and running my money out. And then I spent many more hours than I'd honestly have liked chasing around all of the three most valuable lost jewelry collections and the coins collection this evening after it reset at 8 PM. I wasn't completely uninterrupted, and I did get a few extra things too like the creek plums and some vanilla flowers, etc. so I can keep making wild creek moonshine. I went from having no money; like 77¢ and my camp disappeared because I couldn't afford the maintenance of it to suddenly having over $1,600 once I got to Madame Nazar. (Where does she come up with the cash to fund me, I wonder? Not to mention all of the other players that I always run into when at Madame Nazar's.)

Of course, I've now spent most of that too. The most expensive thing I got was a pair of semi-automatic pistols, because they were 40 or 50% off. I got several gun belts at a major discount, but the matching off-hand holsters were not on sale, so I spent a fair bit there too. And I think I've bought all of the clothing that I could possibly want until some new stuff gets released, or goes on discount. I even broke my own rule and went below 100 gold bars to fund some of the discounted stuff that I wanted. I probably should have just been patient; I have until next week to buy all this stuff before the discount goes away. But I had time today, and I may not later in the week, so I bought it now, and I'm down at 95 and some change gold bars. Not to worry; I usually get between 3-4 gold bars a day doing daily challenges. If I just do a few fast and easy ones, I could get as low as about 2, but other days I easily get 4-5. It all depends on what the challenges are, and how much time I'm willing to dedicate to them. In general, I'm certainly going to slow down significantly after peaking today in terms of how many hours I spend on the game.

Because it was after midnight, my son was begging me to get off the PS4 and make room for him, and it was dark in game anyway, I didn't really have a good chance to redo outfits. Because I have so many new clothes, I was really looking forward to coming up with something new, but I only made a quick new cold and new hot (blue) outfit, so I have the bare minimum on my horse, and then I logged off after giving it a moment to "save." I'm not even sure that I like these new outfits; like I said, I couldn't even see them really. Sometime in the near future, I'll redo them if I don't, and create some more alternates so I can go back and forth while out and about. Not only did I not have time to do that, but I certainly didn't have time to sell the moonshine that had been sitting there waiting for me, which is good because I'm back down to $30 or so after the huge splurge I just had.

But I hadn't had a any pistols the entire time I've been playing; only revolvers, so it was nice to get some really quite pricey pistols that I enjoyed a lot in single player, get two of them even, at about half price, and load up on clothes for my cowboy fashionista. Clothes horse, maybe, is the better expression to use for him.

I also haven't used my Turkoman horse much since maxing him out. For whatever reason, I switched fairly early back to my Kladrubar, but he seemed really slow to me after running with some other horses. I also used the Norfolk roadster a bit, but I ended up doing the four hour collector marathon with the Criollo, which seems appropriate, given that that's the collector horse. In the past, I haven't loved that horse, but today it was my favorite. I'm kinda starting to think that rather than getting two more top tier horses--a white Arabian and the champagne dapple Missouri Foxtrotter, that I'd do better getting rid of the idea that I've locked certain saddles with certain horses, get a couple of different Nacogdoches saddle color schemes, and use them more often, assuming that they really are as good as everyone says and that they do really increase the speed and acceleration like everyone says. That's certainly a cheaper option than doing that plus getting two more stable stalls and two more really expensive horses, and then having to go through the painfully long horse bonding procedure with them before they're really "usable" the way that I'm used to. There can be time to eventually get them later. If I decide that I even still want to.

I'm determined to spend a minimal amount of time, relatively speaking, on the game tomorrow. I'll do a few daily challenges, and a moonshine run for the cash, and go back to the shack and start another batch of moonshine so I can do it later. (Actually probably in the reverse order. There's a chance that when I finish with the daily challenges, I'll be able to sell a second batch right away.) If the challenges aren't very good, I might even do a bounty hunt or two, because they pay in gold as well as cash (although a relatively small amount of the latter, it's the only role that actually gives you gold. But even then, the daily challenges are usually more lucrative.)

And then I'll get on the PC and maybe write a bit. I did start up a DH5 story, but I wasn't liking the way my intro was turning out, so I'll probably scrap it and start again. I'm mostly just noodling; I don't have a plan. But I've learned that with this enforced shut-in and even mandatory paid vacation that I'm on this week, if I don't do something other than play the game, I'll just end up playing the game. And I'd rather add something at least a bit more productive to the rotation of things that I'm doing rather than play 6-8 hours or so. Not non-stop, at least, but today I might have even logged more hours than that, and I kinda feel like while I accomplished some things in game, those obviously aren't real things that I've accomplished. I'm going to peak with the game and dramatically and quickly lose interest if I spend too much time on it, and the only mitigating factor is the upcoming update, new role, and new outlaw pass that we're all expecting.

Anyway, that's what I've done today. Ugh. That and running a few errands with my wife earlier.

RDR2 pictures

I finally got off my duff, created a Rockstar Social Club account, and downloaded some of the pictures I've taken in game to my computer. Actually, I mostly took pictures months ago when I was pretty much done with single player, but still dabbling in challenges and exploration and stuff with John Marston. Then, after my big months long hiatus and coming back to online, I hadn't really taken any pictures, so I took a bunch just recently.  First, some long-range views; one of the main reasons I love hiking in real life, and one of the main reasons why this game, when I'm stuck literally in the house in an midwestern suburb during the winter, scratches an itch for me. Kinda a surrogate, I guess.

A crossroads in the desert of New Austin

Wide view of much of New Austin from the top of the mesa, looking out into the desert valley.

Less dramatic, but beautiful in it's own way; Great Plains, the region where John ends up settling, and where I spend a fair bit of time in the Online mode.

A view into Nuevo Paraiso across the river. This area was part of the game in the first one, but is sadly not available for exploration in this one (although in return, we got a HUGE new area added. Even without this, the de facto area of the game is almost three times what the firsts' was.)

Next, a small handful of my John pictures. Without caption; they just are, mostly. The first one was a somewhat tongue in cheek attempt to create an Indiana Jones looking outfit. And by bizarre coincidence, he's smoking in both pictures.

I like John's build, although Arthur's is even better. Sadly, none of the build choices available in online really look quite as athletic. But we do our best. Here's my Online character in a variety of outfits and locations.

If you pay attention to that kind of thing, you'll notice that many of my outfits use the Hartman jacket. I've found that I really like that jacket, and I have every single color variation available, and use them often. My character, as I mentioned, looks a little round-shouldered without a jacket, so I like wearing them if I can. This one is light enough (although it doesn't look like it) that most of my outfits default to being appropriate for hot weather unless I pair it with some other, warmer accessories; warmer hats, warmer vests, gauntlets, gloves, chaps, etc. Even then, sometimes it's hard to get it into average territory, and I can only get them appropriate for cold by pairing them usually with a vest that's guaranteed to make the outfit cold weather appropriate. Most of these outfits are average temperature, but some of them are hot.

I also prefer shorter jackets without tails or other really long accessories. I find that the animation for them works very poorly when you're riding your horse, especially in cinematic mode, which I often use to just grind out long distance chugs without having to pay all that much attention because the AI steers your horse. Although I do use and like a few longer coats, I find that even more I like coats that don't hang down lower than the characters hips. There's plenty of them that do this, but most of them are quite warm. The Hartman coat is one I can use in milder and even hotter temperatures.

Because of the vest and hat, I call this my Everyday Gator outfit

Here's another view of it. These two pictures are at the lake in Aurora Basin in Tall Trees. I'd just done a bootlegger delivery to the shack in the first area. It was pouring down rain when I started, but when I finished, it was bright and sunny; perfect picture taking weather.

Experimenting with trying to capture some motion while changing poses in front of my Tall Trees moonshine shack. This outfit I call my Everyday Blue (because of the jacket) and it uses one of the Collector outfit hats.

One of my hot weather outfits. I thought the ivory color scheme worked; made it feel like a boater outfit or something.

Blue again up near Window Rock. This is one of my two favorite fishing spots too, although now that I've maxed out my health ring and usually have better ways of making money than fishing, I mostly only do this for various daily challenges. It's a bit of a shame, though. I do kinda enjoy fishing in game. (More than I do in real life, actually. Probably because they bite much more often.)

Another of my more unusual average temperature outfits, with a very short jacket and a hat that looks almost like a sombrero. I also was experimenting with setting up my camp in Cumberland Forest, because I felt like I didn't utilize or explore that area as much as I'd like. I didn't really love having my camp there, though, so back to the Heartlands I go. I'd really love to set up in Calumet Ravine. I know it's far away from everything, but I'd deal with it for the pleasure of waking up every time I logged in to Calumet Ravine.

I'm not quite sure what I was thinking with this outfit, and a ruined campsite near Plainview. I often experiment with a handful of outfits that are unusual, that I wear around for a little bit and then decide I don't really like them so I delete them and replace them with something else. This was one such; an attempt to use some of the Pittman outfit elements that I got from the Outlaw Pass 2.

An earlier version of the Ivory outfit out near Plainview. You may notice that the hat is not quite the right color; it's a light colored Calgary hat from the top level bounty hunter outfit. The ivory colored Kennedy hat that I went out and got looked much better.

Two views of my most default outfit, the Everyday Original. No hat, so I wouldn't lose it in fights, a weathered brown jacket and chaps, and a furry vest, it's still average temperature rated. Also showing is one of my five horses; a dark bay Turkoman.

I've already showed all of these outfits, but here they are again where maybe you can see them a bit better, and with in the case of all but the last one, a more intriguing scenic vista in the background.

And finally, the Black Mask; my character's alter ego. Maybe I should have put the bandanna up over my face for the pictures, but in reality, I don't do that when I'm playing very often, so probably won't for the pictures. As you can see, the balloonist goggles do a credible job of standing in for a Lone Ranger style eye mask.

The default average temperature version. The holsters and gloves and bandannas all have minor red highlights, as you can see, because it's hard to get just plain black everywhere.  Actually, that's not really true. I just have used the role gunbelts and holsters rather than the non-role ones, and they all have highlights of various colors on them.

The cold weather version using the black leather version of the winter shotgun coat, one of the few long coats that usually looks pretty good. In fact, the entire set-up just looks really bulky altogether. I also am using a different hat that has slightly smaller gold decorations on the hatband, and a lower profile compared to the previous, "regular" version. All three of the hats used in these variants come from bounty hunter outfits.

The hot weather version, without chaps, a lighter jacket and vest, and a different hat. I actually used this quite a bit because it's hot in most of Lemoyne and most of New Austin frequently. On the other hand, I don't use the cold weather variation all that much because I rarely go where it's sufficiently cold. That's one of the reasons I thought the all day snow day we had not too long ago is something that should be repeated regularly. Let us wear our cold weather clothes without having to sit around by ourselves in the West Grizzles without anything much to do!

New RDR pursuits

Well... I've given this some more thought. I'm sitting right now at a little over $500 in my wallet, and a 3-star bootlegger run soon to do, which will give me enough to get the last camp theme that I still lack, the Collector one.  In fact, let me make a list of the things I want to buy, not counting, of course, the new stuff once it's available, and any weekly drip feed items that get added for a limited time to the clothing store that I might want to pick up while it's available. Later, when I've got the time to do this, I'll try and put costs from the game in an update so I know how much money I truly need to earn to get what I want. There's no way (probably, unless the update is significantly delayed) I'll be able to get all of this before the update is out, but I still want to list it anyway, because I still want all of these things.

• Collector camp theme
• The remaining Cripps outfits that I don't already have
• Four new stable stalls (one is extra, for the upcoming horse. I like to have at least one more stall than I do horse as long as I know there are still more horses I will want in the game.)
• A turkoman horse
• a Missouri foxtrotter horse
• A white Arabian, unless there's a great deal on black Arabians, because I hate spending gold. Either that or a second color to one of my favorite existing horses. I'm kinda been a little bit jonesing for the other top tier color kladrubar.
• A panther saddle (the gold cost is killing me, though. This won't be urgent.)
• A Nacogdoches saddle
• A cougar saddle
• Hooded stirrups for both of the saddles (panther saddle has it's own improved stirrups built in)
• A lantern for all three of the saddles
• Improved saddlebags for all three of the saddles (the collector saddle bag is the best I believe, but it doesn't look as good with the Nacogdoches saddle, depending on the color that I get.)
• Lancaster repeater collector variant skin (I don't like the bounty hunter bolt action rifle, so I won't use it. I also don't use the pump action shot gun ever, and I don't even have the sawed off shotgun, so I don't care about the variant appearances much.)
• Two semi-automatic pistols plus functional upgrades. These are my favorite guns from single-player. Of course, I have two Navy revolvers, which I quite like, which aren't in single-player, so this is a lower priority buy.
• At least one color variant of the remaining role outfits that I don't have; maybe more if I can't decide on the colors. I think I'm done with buying bounty hunter outfits, but maybe while they're still on sale I'll have a quick look at the colored variants to see if there any that I really want to have. I also have one color of the first two collector outfits, but only the first two, not the second two, and I don't have any of the moonshiner or trader outfits. To be fair, I don't know how often I'll use any of these role outfits, but I do use my bounty hunter outfit hats quite a bit, at least.
• That weird tall moonshiner hat.
• The bounty hunter eye patch
• A gun belt flask
• I have one of the rings, but I still need the other one.
• Some braided horse tails for at least one or two of the horses
• A few leather pants variants (although they're only three gold, it still kills me to spend gold on pants of all things.)
• I'm still missing a bunch of the pamphlets. Like, 10-15 of them. A lot. I got most of the ones that I have for free as part of the club membership over time. I'll probably wait until after the next outlaw pass is done to see if I still need more or if that covers most of what I don't already have. If these are the last things I get, though, they won't be much use to me, of course. Unless I keep playing far longer than I think I'll play because the roles that they keep adding are worth it.

For the horses, the Arabian or second Kladrubar plus the cougar saddle would probably be the lowest priority to buy of almost all of the items on this list. By the time I get it, I'll have at least six if not seven horses already (I have the four top tier role horses now, but no non-role horses.) The stats for horses and saddles aren't all that they're cracked up to be; once you've maxed out your horse bonding, most of the performance is about the same anyway unless you're literally in a race or drawn-out combat with someone, and even then, the differences aren't usually as big a deal as they're made out to be. I say buy what you want for the look, and go with it. I do like having the role horse with the proper role saddle on it, though--so I've got all four, and presuming that there's a fifth one on the way, I'll get that too.

Of course, some of my order will change. I'll take advantage of weekly sales when they pop up, and other things like that. New clothes and other bonuses will appear that I'll want to get. I imagine that the Collector will be nerfed as an easy source of money, so I'll continue to slow walk the trader role and do moonshine runs as my main source of income. Plus, whatever the new role is and whatever opportunity it provides for money and other stuff. But I imagine that it'll be similar to the Moonshiner in the sense that it will provide a relatively decent source of income, will have some story missions, and will have a bunch of stuff to unlock as you go through the 20 level role progression, including a new type of horse and tack. There's a lot of hints that it will also have a property associated with it, or if not this one, then some other future role.

RDR Online update

Well, I did end up grinding through the five bounty hunter levels, although I mostly did it without doing the generally kind of frustrating Legendary Bounties. Most of those are still out there for when I feel like I want to do them, but now that I've got a maxed out bounty hunter role, and the cash payout for bounties isn't very high... I don't know. Maybe I won't do any more. That's kind of a shame; the bounty hunter is the first role I got, expecting it to be my favorite, and it ended up being by far the last that I finished, and I consider it generally often the most frustrating. Some of the missions are fun to do, but many of them are not. I also don't know how many times I've started a bounty only to have the bounty spawn really close to the edge of the map and he "escaped" long before I had any chance at all to catch up with him. Sometimes I hadn't even had time to leave the town I picked up the bounty in, having just barely gotten on my horse, ridden a couple of hundred virtual yards, and then told the mission failed.

Even when that didn't happen, the fact that you can see your enemies on the minimap but that bounties only flash in and out (mostly out) meant that runners were always frustrating. By the time I realized that they'd run, especially if I was in the middle of a battle royale with their cohorts, I had a big and hard ride ahead of me to chase them down. The reinforced lasso also didn't always work as advertised; I had bounties manage to wriggle their way out of it many times and need to be rechased, when the whole point of the reinforced lasso was that they couldn't do it. Certainly it was better than the regular lasso, but it wasn't always foolproof.

The moonshiner, on the other hand, was the role that I was reluctant to dive into for some reason, but now it's the one that I probably put the most effort into. The fact that I can easily make two or three moonshine wagon runs with strong, flavored moonshine for nearly $250 every hour or so means that it's an easy avenue for cash. Not as much cash as a full trader wagon, or a coin plus lost jewelry run to the collector, but one that is considerably less time intensive; rather than running all over the map constantly grinding, you can start Marcel making up a batch, go do something else, and then come back in about 45 minutes to an hour, or next time you log in, or whatever, make a quick 5 minute wagon run, and be $250 bucks the richer ($200 net, because I don't spend the time reducing mash cost anymore. It's too much trouble and not worth it.)  This is nice, because while I'm never flush with cash, I do have a decent steady stream of it. I often do this around daily challenges, so I have a decent steady stream of gold bar fragments too; usually I get a net $400-600 from the moonshiner, and 3-5 gold bars from daily challenges, depending on how many are relatively easily and quickly done. I tend to spend that nearly as quickly as I get it, but that's because I can; and when I want to save up for a bigger purchase, like a new expensive camp theme (I have one left) or horse, or the moonshine bar, etc., I usually do it after I've found time to do a trader run or coin run. I still do about one of those a week too, which is a bigger chunk of cash in one go. With an average ambient cash level of a couple hundred bucks, I can take that $545-625 additional money, hold back spending a couple of moonshiner runs, and have a good $1,000 or nearly so at my disposal.

On the other hand, I'm also not sure what I'm doing other than earning money for it's own sake to buy on cosmetic things. I've maxed out all four roles. I've just hit level 100, I think (maybe I'm still 99, but if so, not for long), so there isn't anything to "unlock" for me to do anymore; just money to be made and spent on cosmetic updates. And even then, I'm starting to feel like the new shiny feeling of buying something new is wearing off. I've only got a handful of Cripps outfits left to buy, only one more camp theme, and one additional camp upgrade (the weapons locker, which I've held off on because I'm not sure that I understand exactly what the benefit of having one is other than to keep your weapon wheel trimmed down. Considering that I use the same weapons pretty much all of the time anyway and have them in my default load-out, it doesn't seem particularly important.

What else do I even want to buy that's available right now? I'm not exactly swimming in clothes options, but I do have quite a few, and only relatively rarely come across something now that I really, really want to buy. Although when I do, it's often pretty pricey. So, there's some of that, plus the role outfits to buy (although other than for the hats, I don't know what I'll do with these. I really dislike that the role outfits aren't capable of being broken down to their constituent parts like most other outfits in the game and all of the outfits in single player.)  Like I said, I do have the Collector camp theme to buy, but I doubt I'll use it much. When I bought Traveling Opulence, I had it on for one session of about an hour, and then changed back to the Bounty Hunter, which I think is by far the best looking theme, and now that I have it, I doubt I'll ever change except to meet a daily challenge, or occasionally just for a bit of variety. It hardly matters, as in game you don't really hang around camp like you would in real life anyway.

I've got the four role top tier horses now, although the Breton still needs to be fully broken in, i.e. horse bonding maximum. That'll no doubt happen relatively soon, though--it doesn't take much other than riding around on it to hit a new level of horse bonding every other day or so. I'm already halfway to three, so I've only got a level and a half left to do. My stable is maxed out, though. I'll probably want to spend a decent chunk of money getting a spare stall free so I'm ready for the next role horse when it comes out. I'm also thinking of getting a non-role but really good horse, like the white or black Arabian or a Missouri Foxtrotter, along with a Nacogdoches saddle. And fully upgraded stirrups, collector saddlebag, and a lamp. All told, that's a good $3,000 or so investment on its own for a good horse, including stable stall, and fully kitted out saddle.

But mostly, I'm waiting for the update to come, with it's new role(s?) and new outlaw pass. Honestly, that's another reason that I was reluctant to finish all of the roles; it felt nice to have something to come back to besides just grinding money to spend on cosmetic things like new clothes and upgraded camps and horses, etc.

As cringy as it kinda sounds, this is my blog, so what the heck--let me tell you a bit about my character. Sure, this isn't a true role-playing game, with a real characterization options available, but I've kinda evolved into a kind of sort of characterization for my guy after all. I named him Joshua--not very original, but what the heck; it actually sounds like a period appropriate name too, when Bible names that have fallen out of fashion were more common (besides, that name has really come back into style in recent years anyway.) Although he has my same first name, I never intended him to be an idealized Mary Sue gamer-insertion character, and I didn't make him to look like me, necessarily. I originally gave him the athletic build, but curiously found it often too skinny looking, so I switched to average (none of the character build options really look like the good, big and athletic Arthur Morgan build, who's tall, very broad-shouldered, etc. I kind of like the leaner, underweight Arthur option, but ideal weight Arthur looks good too. In Online, it seems like you either look a little fat or a little skinny. My guy isn't skinny exactly, but he's a bit too round and weak shouldered.

He also looks young, although that's mostly just to smooth out the face without all kinds of "features" on it, and he's a sandy blond. I was blond as a kid, but I'm a darker brown now, that's gone quite salt and pepper, making it look lighter. There isn't even an option for that color, but again; I picked blond and very clear eyes, not brown and hazel eyed like I am in real life.

On the other hand, once I got the brass spectacles unlocked, I bought a pair and wear them with most of my outfits. I wear glasses in real life, and I like that--it's kinda sorta part of my character's look now, and without glasses (or at least a monocle) he doesn't look right to me anymore. I also started with a rather long pony tail look, but once I unlocked the bounty hunter haircut, I got that and haven't looked back. Even my daughter said that the swept-back fade looks a lot like my actual haircut. Whoops. My not at all Mary Sue idealized version of myself actually does look a little bit like an idealized version of myself in some ways after all as the haircut and glasses evolved. And like I said, even though I know that I'm not blond-blond, I do kind of think of myself as blondish. In fact, it's a long-standing argument I have with my family, where they as little kids would draw my hair with the black crayon, and my wife would say I was much darker than I thought, etc. I told them that because I wear gel most of the time it looks darker, but it's not actually as dark as they think it is. It's probably not really as blond as I think it is either.

My default, average everday look keeps my head bare, both because I don't like how it creates a "custom" outfit when you lose your hat, and bumps something off your horse (I should probably just by default only carry six outfits so I have a spare, and clear it out in the camp or stores whenever I'm in them.) He wears a bulky but surprisingly cool leather jacket, a leather vest, a dark shirt with a bandanna around it, and a pair of leather chaps over his pants, so you can't really see them anyway. He also has a rotating set of outfits that I make up and keep for a while, but eventually replace because I'm never quite as happy with them as I am with the Everyday, and I haven't yet found any hot and cold weather outfits that I love so much that I don't swap them out from time to time.

I've also developed, kind of by accident, but now I'm really running with it and love it, an alter ego for this Joshua, called the Black Mask. (No relation to the Batman villain of the same name, the Victorian anti-hero A. J. Raffles who also went by that name, or the Jet Li character from that mid-90s movie.) Inspired by someone's attempt to create Lone Ranger characters in RDR Online, using the balloonist googles available from the collector as a stand-in for the mask, my Black Mask character was originally an outfit used specifically to do bounty hunter missions, where I kind of flattered myself that he hid his identity and did it as a masked vigilante. He was dressed all in black; a black hat, the mask, a black bandanna, black shirt, black vest, black coat, black pants, black boots and black chaps even. (I realized only recently that I didn't have black spurs, so I've added them just now.) I found that I was doing a lot of bounties in the south and southwest, so I also created a hot weather version of it, using mostly all different elements, but still all black and still using the same mask. Recently, some limited time clothing options came up like a black leather winter coat that looks awesome, and some furry black chaps, so I also created a cold weather version of the outfit. In fact, I wore it all day yesterday while we had the one-off snow all over the map weather and had to wear cold weather clothing everywhere (which was a great idea, because otherwise, I don't really use my cold weather gear very often at all. I know Rockstar often does that around Christmas time for a week or so, but they should have odd days like yesterday interspersed through the year here and there. Maybe one a quarter there's a cold day, and then in December do a full week or even two.)

So now with three Black Mask outfits, I've really embraced the Black Mask alter-ego of my character. Right in time to finish with bounty hunting entirely; so I'm not quite sure what to do with them from now on. I could of course adopt it to criminal enterprises, like my moonshine runs, or whatever, but I dunno. We'll see.

I'll also see if I can't get some kind of screen grabs of my outfits and my character, so I can post them, or even a full-on YouTube video of me doing a mission, or something. But mostly likely, I'll go with screen grabs first. There is a decent photography mode in the game, so I could take pictures of my character and figure out how to export them from the PS4 to the general internet so I can post them, I suppose.

Movies

I'm a sucker for these kinds of things, so here's one that I saw going around social media.

Annotated version, because I like to bloviate.

Favorite Movie: Raiders of the Lost Ark
Movie that makes you remember your childhood: Tron
Favorite Tom Hanks movie: That's strange. I don't really love Tom Hanks. Splash, I guess. Let's go old school. That's the first time I noticed him, anyway.
Movie that makes you cry: Breakthrough
Favorite 80s movie: Ferris Bueller's Day Off--thinking of the category as not just a movie made in the 80s, but one that's definitely about 80s pop culture.
Favorite Comedy: The Naked Gun, I think. That's a tough one for me.
Favorite sports movie: Egh. I don't watch many sports movies, or remember them much if I do. Rudy, maybe, because at least I remember it?
Favorite courtroom movie: I don't watch many of these either. Do they even make many of these? Liar Liar, maybe, just to be different.
Favorite superhero movie: Winter Soldier, although to be fair, it's kinda sorta not a superhero movie but a spy movie in tights.
Favorite horror movie: The Ring
Most overrated movie: Avatar or Titanic. Both James Cameron. That says something, although I'm not sure what.
Most underrated movie: Solo got a bad rap. It's not really terrible, but it got caught in the crossfire of the Last Jedi hate.
Favorite gangster movie: The Untouchables
Movie you can watch over and over: Hatari!
Movie with the best soundtrack: Gladiator. Because I've already got Pride & Prejudice, Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back in other categories, although I actually like those soundtracks better.
Movie you're most embarrassed you love: I don't really get embarrassed by this kind of thing, but I'd say Pride & Prejudice is the most unexpected.
Favorite Christmas movie: A Christmas Story, definitely
Favorite biopic: There's so few of these, that have even a passing relationship to real life so... I dunno. Braveheart?
Favorite war movie: Where Eagles Dare
Favorite musical: Singin' in the Rain
Favorite Disney movie: Sleeping Beauty
Favorite sequel: The Empire Strikes Back
Favorite Sci-Fi movie: Thinking of this as a genuine sci-fi (hard) movie, I'll go with something like... I dunno. I don't love a lot of these types of movies, although I like them. The Martian, maybe?

Why no spy movie category? It's a close one there between some of the newer James Bonds and the newer Mission Impossibles, but I'll go with Casino Royale.

RDR weekly update

70% off of Breton horses! Holy crap; I better hurry and get those last five levels of Bounty Hunter done this week so I can get one of the top tier Breton's while they're that freakin' cheap! 70% off is a freakin' huge deal!

Plus, a lot of that stuff isn't wonderful, but I'll take more free mash, I'll buy another heavily discounted stable stall to have one in reserve; maybe even two! and I kinda want the free appearance changer. Although I picked the athletic body type, I feel like it's kinda skinny and round-shouldered looking all of the time. I'd like to experiment with the burly look, as long as it doesn't end up being fat.

And if 40% is off any horse, I might pick up a Missouri Foxtrotter or White Arabian. I still don't think I want to spend the gold bars for a Black Arabian, even if it is 40% fewer than normal. 40% off of 46, or whatever exactly the cost is, is still too many; close to thirty gold bars. No thanks.

Some of the limited time clothing looks appealing too. Sadly, I just spend a ton of money, but maybe I can get up early and do coin runs for the next few days and earn some decent cashola so I can buy more stuff before it's gone.

Although I note that the limited time clothing is going to be here for two weeks, not just one.

Marshes and bayous

In part because of Red Dead Online, which I've been playing a lot of the last two months or so (I'm now up to level 95 or 96, and I have maxed out all roles except for the Bounty Hunter, but I'm at level 15 there, so I'll finish that soon too.) I've thought that some bayou and or marshes would be a good addition to the Hill Country. It's certainly a feature of the Texan landscape that I'm kinda sorta borrowing, and wetlands are certainly common in the Old World too. Lord of the Rings had the Dead Marshes and the Midgewater Marshes both, for instance.  Where would I put them? I think the obvious place is that biggish blank spot between the southern edge of the Sabertooth Range and Lake Byewick, south of the Chokewater River, although another good pace would be on the other side of Lake Byewick, west of the Copper Hills and where the south fork of the Chokewater River kind of ends. I like the first option because it puts the orc/goblin settlement next to the swamps, which I think is appropriate, but I like the second option because it makes more geographic sense, and it allows for savage, voodoo, Nightfolk like skraelings to linger in the marshes.

I'll decide which of the two I prefer, and probably actually redraw the map in a hex map application, like I did in the past for Timischburg, at 30x50. (I need to redraw Timischburg, since it's been flipped on it's side and now needs to be a "profile" rather than "landscape" map, which will require some rejiggering of locations as well. But that's not urgent, since I'm obviously focusing more on the Hill Country than Timischburg as the "star area" of the setting right now.)  And, of course, maybe I'll opt for different marshes in both areas.

As an aside, as you can see from that map, if you map it a new window so you can get it full size, there is plenty of marsh or swamp territory in Timischburg. I think the Hill Country needs it too, even if it treads the same territory, because I'm much less likely to use stuff in Timischburg, honestly. I've really kind of migrated my interest more to the Hill Country as a setting, and Timischburg is very definitely "the alternate" setting, not the main setting. The Hill Country needs to be able to do it all on its own without reference to Timischburg, or Normaund, or Trondmark, or Carlovingia or Terassa, or any of the other nations that are just there to be used as points of reference, and their geography and history is never meant to really be explored or detailed. Although Timischburg, at least, did get some geographical and historical detail, a bit, and if anything ever needs to leave the Hill Country, then Timischburg is where I expect it to go.

I think I said that that map was 1 hex = 5 miles, but that may be excessive, and that's probably about right; that makes it 250 miles wide by 150 miles tall, or 37,500 square miles. That's smack dab in between the sizes of Indiana and Kentucky; a bit bigger than Scotland, but somewhat smaller than England, for point of reference. Plenty of room for plenty of adventure. In fact, maybe even a wee bit too big... but I'll opt for leaving myself options to fill in more stuff later if desired. And if not, some empty space of wilderness to travel through is hardly something to be eschewed.

Anyway, speaking of adding new things, here's some Red Dead images of their marshes for point of reference and inspiration as I consider where to put whatever marshes I end up adding in to the map I'm working on.

Waves of settlement

I've spoken before about the mystery of the origin of the Celts. We all know that they existed; heck, there are still some Celtic nations today; the Irish, the Scottish, the Welsh, the Cornish, the Bretons, etc. although compared to the vast hordes of the Celtic nation that the ancient Greek and Roman authors regaled us with, they seem to be the smallest of rump states remaining, using a generous definition of "state." In the British Isles in particular, the really massive turnover of population genetics; i.e., the old people were literally replaced by the new people; either dying in plagues of violence, or something else happened at the arrival of the Bell Beaker culture. The people before the Bell Beaker arrival were EEF type people, and they were the culture responsible for the megalithic construction both in the Isles and the Continent; most famously, they build Stonehenge and other henges. Long before that, the EEF were themselves a significant population replacement over the original WHG population, which has a Paleolithic-Mesolithic origin and were literally the first recorded people in the Isles. When the Bell Beakers had their population turnover, it was the third major wave of migration to the Isles, and both it and the one before that led to massive turnover; the Bell Beaker ancestry makes up 90% of the Britons who remained; the prior people were almost completely wiped out, for one reason or another.

However, although from a genetic perspective it's a little bit harder to see subsequent migrations, we know that they happened and they were significant. The Romans are genetically invisible, but they had a profound effect on the Island. The Saxons are easier to spot, although they did assimilate many Brythonic peoples into themselves rather than flat-out replace them altogether. The arrival of the Scoti and the Vikings are also locally visible, but not as much as one might think given what we know of their impact historically, linguistically and culturally.

And between the Bell Beaker and the Romans were, of course, the arrival of the Celts. Some rather sloppily assume that the Bell Beakers were proto-Celtic, but that's linguistically absurd; from what we know of the oldest known Celtic languages, they were way too similar to have split from each other more recently than about 1300 BC with the advent of the Urnfield culture, and the Bell Beakers arrived a thousand years earlier than the earliest part of that range. (It should be noted that there are some linguists who believe it possible to stretch proto-Celtic back further than that. Chang's family tree split shows that the Celtic and Italic branches split from each other shortly after 2000 BC, although that's a somewhat dubious type of dead reckoning and should be used for only very directional guesstimates. And many linguists don't accept that even 1300 is late enough; suggesting that a recognizable Celtic can't be dated any earlier than 800 BC! This is further mixed up with the possibility of "para-Celtic" languages that were part of the Italo-Celtic branch, but not Italic and not Celtic necessarily, but dead ends when it comes to the development of Celtic proper.)

So, I find this kind of stuff fascinating, even though it's difficult to sort out in real life. For DH5 and the Hill Country, of course, I can just always make it up.

So what is the settlement pattern of the Hill Country? Who settled it, in what order, and what happened to them as new waves moved in?

• Skraelings were the first wave of settlers to the area that are known. Refugees from Atlantis before Atlantis even sank, they were rebels, renegades and escaped slaves from that benighted country, but that isn't to suggest that they were any less iniquitous, wicked, or savage. Known to themselves as Wendaks, only a few remain still in very isolated pockets deep in the wildernesses, especially the forests such as the Haunted Forest and the Wolfwood, which they prefer. 
• The kemling Empire of Baal Hamazi passed over the area next, and they built colonies and Marchland baronies. While the kemlings themselves ruled Baal Hamazi, the majority of the people that they brought with them were simply people, the ancestors of the Drylanders as they are known today. The kemling empire only ruled over this territory for a relatively short while; probably less than a full century before it started pulling back and settlements were slowly but surely abandoned, but their ruins dot the territory, giving it a sinister feel, and of course, the Drylanders remained. Kemlings have returned to the Hill Country, but they are usually newer arrivals from the Plateau of Leng where their homeland is rather than lingering Baal Hamazi colonists. The kemlings and drylanders persecuted the skraelings and drove them into the forests from all over parts of the Hill Country, although the spread of plagues through the skraeling population may have made that much easier than it otherwise might have been.
• The jann also extended their empire over the Hill Country, conquering it from the kemlings, and remnants of their epic battles fought in the Boneyard can still be found. That said, they never settled here in large numbers, and mostly only maintained the cities at the edge of the Rudmont Escarpment, which still linger although they are now politically independent city-states, and are not connected with any empire anymore. From here, the jann claimed a territory that was only lightly patrolled by their soldiers, never properly colonized or settled, and was largely depopulated. Bands of proto-Drylanders wandered the territory, left from the battles between the kemlings and the jann, but they built no cities or settlements to speak of, and were not very numerous. Even the skraelings had a rebound of sorts of their population.
• During the reign of the jann over the area, small numbers of even more savage peoples crept into the area, often secretly, and have proven impossible (or perhaps undesirable) to dislodge in the years since. The Wolfwood got its first woses and thurses, which put the skraelings of that forest into decline, and the orcs and goblins of Shurkul settled in small numbers on the shores of Lake Byewick. It's also probable that the cursed established Daikos Colony at this time, although rather than turning southward into the Hill Country, those who moved beyond that colony turned eastward into Timischburg instead, settling there in a number of pockets.
• The jann didn't exactly leave, but as their imperial polity fell apart, those left in the cities of Simashki and Vuukrat and Sinjagat simply turned their faces from the Hill Country and no longer patrolled it or attempted to make anything of it. They were content to maintain their territory along the escarpment spread more to the extreme southwest of the area, in the Indash Salt Sea (which although it shows on the map, is really outside of the Hill Country proper.) The Hill Country had never really rebounded population wise since the great kemling-jann wars of the past, but following the withdrawal of even nominal and token jann claims on the territory, the population fell even further as various tribes of drylanders fought the remaining skraelings, and more to the point, each other. Many peoples were wiped out as coherent ethnic groups during this time, and following long centuries of bloodshed, raiding, and ethnic purges, more plagues swept through the area. 400 years ago, the Hill Country was almost depopulated again, with the exception of small bands of skraeling hunters in the Haunted Forest (and rumored even smaller and fewer bands in the Wolfwood), wandering nomadic pastoralist drylanders across the unwooded territory, and the small settlements of orcs, cursed and growing populations of woses in the Wolfwood. At this point, the Old People came from the north and settled the territory, making it their own, claiming the largely empty lands, and driving out the remnants of the Drylanders; they actually got their name during this time as they were forced out of the karst hills and the wold and into the Boneyard, where they were forced to subsist on drier pasturage than they had. The Old People established numerous homesteads and hill fortresses and were more numerous than any people who had before settled the Hill Country.
• Following another outbreak of plague which tore apart the social order of the Old People in the Hill Country, the final wave of settlers came in, and it is they who now rule the territory. They brought with them a new language, new customs and new social structure, but they were less dissimilar to the Old People than to any other people who had been in the Hill Country before or since. For the most part, the Old People who were left after the plague gradually assimilated into this new population and the people of the Hill Country no longer claim any Old People heritage except in the vaguest sense; even though their genetics do linger in most of the people who live here. There are a few exceptions, and some homesteads and small baronetcies where the Old People language, dress and culture are promoted. Otherwise, the people generally acknowledge the folklore of the Old People, but consider themselves the New People, or Hillmen, who's origins are mostly to the North.
• The Old People are like the Celtic inhabitants of Britain--the Welsh and the Cornish and maybe even the Scottish here and there, and while the Hillmen are, of course, English. While the English today are, of course, Anglo-Saxon in culture, language and tradition, they recognize that there is a Brythonic substrate that contributes to who they are in ways that are more subtle, and of course, the Scottish, the Cornish and the Welsh still consider themselves to be non-English altogether in most respects. The same is true of the Hillmen.

This is a little bit simpler than that of England. I don't really have anything like the Danelaw and Viking settlement, or Cnut the Great's making of the British Isles a portion of his North Sea Empire, nor do I have anything like the Norman conquest. This isn't meant to be England per se, just something that is sufficiently like a combination of Ivanhoe and Robin Hood's England with the settlement of Texas and the rest of the American West that it feels at home culturally to Americans. But I actually think that having these layers of settlement laid out gives me some context with which to be able to work in this territory better.