Greeting Theta Gang boys and girls,
I hope you're well and not bankrupt after last week. I'm just now recovering mentally myself. I saw a few WSB converts and some newbies asking for tips, so here you go. V2 of my Options guide. I hope it helps.
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I spent a huge amount of time learning about options and tried to distill my knowledge down into a helpful guide. This should especially be useful for newbies and growing options traders.
While I feel I’m a successful trader, I'm not a guru and my advice is not meant to be gospel, but this will hopefully be a good starting point, teach you a lot, and make you a better trader. I plan to keep typing up more info from my notebook, expanding this guide, and posting it every couple months.
Any feedback or additions are appreciated
Per requests, I added details of good and bad trades I made. Some painful lessons learned are now included. I also tried to organize this better as it got longer.
Here's what I tell options beginners:
I would strongly recommend buying a beginner's options book and read it cover to cover. That helped me a lot.
I like this beginner book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GWSXX8U/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_OxNDFb2GK9YW7
Helpful websites:

• Tasty Trade (TT) and Ally Invest have helpful articles and videos.
  • https://www.tastytrade.com/tt
  • https://www.youtube.com/c/tastytrade1/featured
• Ally training:
  • What is options trading? https://www.ally.com/do-it-right/investing/trading-options-for-beginners/?CP=EM2012111
  • Top 10 options mistakes: https://www.ally.com/do-it-right/investing/top-10-option-trading-mistakes/?CP=EM2012111
• 3 common option mistakes: https://us.etrade.com/knowledge/library/options/common-mistakes-options-traders-make
• Common options strategies: https://www.optionsbro.com/basic-options-strategies/
• Investopedia has tons of great investing info for stocks and options: https://www.investopedia.com/
• Kamikaze Cash Theta Gang Videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOweupE79XXiBaeH_xBpkUcYUsrAaKQen
• 20 rules of professional traders: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/active-trading/022715/20-rules-followed-professional-traders.asp

Don't trade until you understand:

• You can lose your entire contract value when buying.
• You can lose a lot of money when selling "naked", theoretically unlimited.
• How option expiration works.
• Theta (decay) and how it works. This is imperative since it's attrition when buying and a payout when selling. https://www.optionseducation.org/advancedconcepts/theta
• DTE: Days till expiration/expiry
• Options positions with respect to price:
  • ITM: In the money; strike is below stock value. Signif
  • ATM: At the money; strike is just at or above the stock value, often very highly traded. Can be very effective with moderate - long term expiry.
  • NTM: Near the money; strike is above the stock value, but fairly close. Slightly unofficial term.
  • OTM: Out of the money; price is at least a few strikes from the current stock price. I would say 10-30% over stock price.
  • Very OTM: Not a real definition, this is essentially a lottery ticket. Cheap, but almost certain to expire worthless unless there is explosive movement.
• Understand delta in general and how delta changes with ITM and OTM options.
• Understand all the greeks at a high level, as you get better understand them well. The greeks: https://www.optionsplaybook.com/options-introduction/option-greeks/
• IV, IV crush, and how IV affects pricing. In general, you want to sell when IV is high and buy when the IV is low. Increasing IV is good for held calls/puts. IV drop or crush is generally good for sellers.
• Selling options can be quite beneficial. Once you have a good general understanding, lookup thetagang . Kamikaze Cash has good youtube videos on most theta strategies (linked above). I personally believe selling options (especially cash secured) is much safer and can consistently make you profits. Θ Gang 4 life.
• FOMO and how to avoid chasing a dangerous trend. DO NOT CHASE FROM FOMO!
• What intrinsic and extrinsic value are. Know how they are affected by being exercised/assigned and how theta affects them.
• Understand that some of WSB recommendations are straight up high-risk gambling and factor in the information accordingly. Be careful with Meme stocks and the survivorship bias on YOLO plays. However, I love the sub and think it’s hilarious. It has a lot of valuable information / DD if you are comfortable with the “colorful” language. It’s also great if you like rocket ship emojis.

Basics / Mechanics

• Understand the 4 "main" option types. Buying or selling a call and buying or selling a put. Spreads and more complex multi-legged option strategies are based off these in some way (see below)
• You can sell calls with 100 shares of stock or if you own an underlying longer term option; see LEAPS and PMCCs later. Selling calls naked is incredibly risky and often requires Level 4 (very advanced) permissions and usually a lot of capital. I will literally never sell calls naked since I don't want to ruin my life and end up living in a dumpster eating saltine crackers.
• Puts can be sold/written cash covered (cash secured), which means you have the cash in your account to buy 100 shares. Your broker will put this money on hold until the trade is closed. Puts can be sold "naked" using Margin and Level 3 (with most brokers). Your broker will hold a percentage of cost of 100 shares (often 30-40%, 100% on meme stocks) allowing you to sell more puts. This increases your available capital/power as well as increasing risk.

General Tips and Ideas:

• Don't EVER leave (short) spreads open on expiration day, close them. (more details below)
• Start off trading very small. Slowly build up over weeks / months. You need to get accustomed to a fifty dollar swing a day, then a few hundred, then a few thousand. You need to ensure you don't get emotional (see below). I started trading options with 5k, then 25k, 50k, and later over 100k. I added my own funds over time and used my gains to build my account. Don’t go all in immediately, that’s dangerous and unwise.
• Especially as you build up the amount of money you have invested, keep it diversified among several stocks.
  • Don't go all in on one thing, ever. Be able to take a hit from one stock and not mortally wound your portfolio.
  • A company may be doing great, then there's a major product issue out of nowhere. If you are overexposed in one stock this can really hurt you.
  • I had to roll options I sold that were about to expire completely worthless because FDX's CEO changed and the stock took a hard dip.
• Don't trade emotionally. If you realize you are emotionally trading for vengeance, you should probably exit the trade and cool off for several days with that stock. Same if you get caught up in a wave of hysteria.
• Have a plan for every trade, ideally with entries / exits that are specific values, ranges, or a set condition. This helps remove emotions. This is super important for strong movements and high volatility (see later).
• Use an options profit calculator from your broker or an online one before entering a "new" trade, especially a complex multi legged trade: https://www.optionsprofitcalculator.com/
• “Rolling” an option: Closing your existing option and opening a similar one at different strike and/or expiration.
  • Rolling a call “Up” would be selling a call you own and buying a cheaper call at a higher strike.
  • Rolling a put “Down and out” closes your original one and buying or selling one at a lower strike at a longer expiry.
  • Better broker interfaces have a literal “Roll” button. I know E-trade does. You can manually do it by selecting relevant contract legs.
• If you have a losing trade, re-evaluate it. If your initial assumption is definitely incorrect, close it. Don't stay in losing trades forever and lose the entire value of the option over stubbornness. If you re-evaluate and you think your assumption was right, hold, potentially consider adding another cheaper option (or buy another call / put). Rolling out sold options can help here.
• Don't try to day trade, especially with options. It's statistically unlikely to be profitable. Day-trading with options introduces extra liquidity risks and is dangerous, especially with spreads.
• Try not to over-trade, you'll likely mis-time the market over time. When I get emotional I over trade, then lose additional money on wash sales. If you scale your entries into positions it should help alleviate your desire to exit positions when they turn badly against you. Whenever I buy calls I do it at larger increments after W almost made me loss my hair; luckily it eventually came back.
• NEVER enter a position on a stock you have no idea about, especially when you read about it online or heard about it from some rando.
• At market open options contracts are often volatile and inflated. Buying during this time can be more expensive. Options are usually cheaper mid-day, I read somewhere 2-3PM is cheapest. I’ve had success around 12-1PM EST after prices settle.
• Try wheeling on cheaper stocks once you get all fundamentals down.
• When selling puts if you are very bullish consider "doubling down"; note this is higher risk. Use the credit from your put sale to buy shares or a cheap call. This can be roughly inversed with puts, except I wouldn't ever recommend shorting shares.
• Learn from your mistakes. You can’t go back in time and beating yourself up (to a point) is useless. Make a physical &/or mental note of it so you don’t do it again. If you don’t learn from it, then beat yourself up so you won’t do it again.
• If you have friends that like to trade, I find it helpful to discuss strategies and planned plays. I talk openly with my close friends about my current holdings and planned trades, it helps keep me accountable. If I get a wide-eyed look, I might be doing something excessively risky or stupid. I’ve over-leveraged myself in calls twice and I knew I shouldn’t have done it both times. When I tell my friends what I did and I’m embarrassed, it exemplifies the face that I shouldn’t have done it in the first place. You will also get ideas for new strategies or plays from them. It’s good to stay versatile and use multiple strategies when appropriate. Beware of group think/echo chambers.
• I recommend NEVER telling someone what to buy/sell and when. I’ll tell people MY plays or what I like and why, but I will not encourage them to emulate what I do. Depending on the audience, I’ll tell them my exact positions along with my exit and entrance strategy. With closer friends I’ll offer my thoughts on their trades (if asked). If my friend is doing something really risky (one of my friends does some scary stuff) I may ask them if they want my advice, and provide it, especially if they overlooked a risk/event. I will not encourage someone to execute/enter a trade since it has a high potential for hurt feelings or animosity all around.
• Don’t fall in love with a stock. Just because something made you money before and you have high confidence in it doesn’t mean it will keep performing. I joke that FDX betrayed me when it started dipping and losing me money. I was over-confident of its bounce-back and sold too many puts too quickly. I’m in several losing trades because of it. However, I will keep good stocks in my rostetracking list or try different strategies or re-enter trades when they change their behavior.
• As you start to both buy and sell options and get more experience in general, you'll start seeing the two sides to every trade. You will likely start adjusting your strategies or trying new trades out because of this. Things will likely click one day. Most/all the greeks and options concepts will become almost second nature. For me this was when I could build an Iron Condor from scratch, which was a watershed moment involving a good understanding of many strategies.
• Understand Liquidity and volume.
  • Trading in low volume, low open interest contracts results in wide bid/ask spreads and difficulty having your contracts filled. Look at all the data for a contract, not just the strike and price.
  • Monthly Expiration dates typically have better liquidity.
  • Multi-legged trades (Common examples are 2-legged vertical spreads or 4-legged iron condors) have more difficulty being filled, especially on bad brokers like Robin Hood. Having very liquid options for all legs is extremely helpful in obtaining timely and well-priced fills, which maximize your potential profits.
• Time in market vs timing the market:
  • It is extremely difficult to time the market perfectly. If you wait for the perfect opportunity forever, history has proven you will miss out on gains. Keeping all your money out of the market has proven to be ineffective. Now if there is something serious happening with a stock/the market (like say a new pandemic), don’t go all in. I recommend entering incrementally at dips. If the stock has huge upside potential it may never go down, so it might make sense to partially enter at the current price.
  • IMIO selling puts is a great strategy to get into a stock you like, or at least make money off it. I think buying stock in lots of 100 is usually for suckers. Selling an ATM or ITM put (assuming the math works out) on a stock you were going to buy and hold is ALMOST free money.
  • I recommend keeping some cash available regardless. If you have a very large account or expect a downturn, hedging with indexes like QQQ, SPY, or VIX or calls/puts may be wise.
• Every trade can't be a winner. You will take some losses, you must get used to it. I don’t like having a realized loss of 1K or more on any trade. However, this will happen, especially with larger accounts.
  • As long as you win more often and beat the S&P that year I consider it okay. I’m kind of aggressive, so I consider 20%+ annually good. 30%+ annually is great. 40%+ and I’m dancing. After trading options I am almost baffled by my old belief that 5% annual returns (mostly from dividend ETFs) was “good”. That’s nothing to me now since I’m willing to take risks. Note: While lots of people danced in 2020, realize that’s an insane Bull Run year and is atypical.
  • Adhere to your own risk tolerance and never over-extend yourself, especially with margin use. Don’t make huge gambles leaving you uncomfortable. Only gamble with money you are willing to lose.
  • My personal strategy is to make safer gains for the year and then enter slightly riskier strategies using those gains. I can be slightly-moderately more aggressive and compound my gains. For me I often sell puts to make money, then when I see a big opportunity I’ll sell a put and buy an OTM or moderately ITM call.
• Understand it’s not safe to try and get rich overnight. However, once you hit big “steps” things may start to snowball. You can enter more positions and take more risks if you choose to.
  • For me this when I hit 50k, then 100k. I was able to balance low and moderate risk positions to more significantly grow my account. I’ll even do a high risk thing now and again because my gains can absorb it (assuming I have them).
  • I can’t wait to get to 250K, then 500K. I know it’ll take quite a long time, but I am confident I’ll eventually be able to have 500K and (hopefully) 1M in my non-401k trading account with gains and additions from my job. I can only imagine how “dangerous” I will be with that kind of capital.
• If you missed "the next big thing" like AAPL, TSLA, or the time machine I’m building in my basement. Don't get upset, learn from it. Adapt and become a better trader for next time.
  • Figure out why a company was so promising, before they mooned. Determine how you would have traded differently in hindsight. Apply those lessons to the next company you believe has long term growth prospects.
  • For me that's putting in 1-2.5k towards shares and/or buying LEAPS on it. Depending on my bullishness I may buy “cheap”, fairly far OTM calls. The far OTM options are sort of lottery tickets. If I'm right the (relatively) low cost will have explosive profits; if I'm wrong, they didn't cost that much so it's a calculated loss I’m willing to accept. For more serious bets I’ll buy ITM LEAPS to run PMCCs on. I also like to buy 1-2K in my 401k for very long-term plays.
• The stock market hates uncertainty, it seems to crave the status quo. A shakeup can potential tank a stock, even if it's nothing. With shares you can wait it out, but this can be problematic for options. If you see volatile/uncertain times ahead (politics, disease, manufacturing, earnings, etc.), you might want to reduce your overall portfolio risks or hedge.

Profit Retention / Loss Mitigation

• If selling options, it is a viable strategy to close early after a large gain with many DTE left until expiry. See TT videos / strategies on this.
• Don't hold options through earnings unless you literally want to gamble. I like playing on earnings run ups, but that can be risky.
• If you hold options through earnings, IV crush will happen immediately afterwards, devaluing the option. However, if the option is profitable enough, IV crush won’t matter, which will still make money for a call buyer. A sold put sufficiently far OTM will benefit from IV crush, even if the stock dips after slightly bad or lukewarm earnings.
• Don't throw good money after bad. Don't gamble on a recovery if your assumption appears to be wrong or the market is flat out tanking. If you are wrong and still believe in the company, wait twice as long as your original plan (wait for your 2nd entry point vs 1st) before adding to your position.
• Consider using stop losses to lock-in profits on rides up or sometimes use them to prevent losses. Note, stops can be easily triggered in volatile options. Now when I'm up a lot on calls (especially around earnings or large momentum run-ups) I always set stop losses. I have been burned too many times. In December 2020 I didn't set a SL on several thousand dollars of FDX calls I was already up on and I "lost" ~$5K of unrealized gains. If you're up big, don't get too greedy.
• A possible strategy if a stock is on a tear and you have multiple options open: Close some positions (I prefer to do this incrementally if the stock has momentum), but leave 1+ open in case the stock goes into outer space/the floor. Next, set a stop loss with a little buffer below its current movement / range so it doesn't get hit unless the stock falls hard. Finally, watch the stock closely and if it keeps rising, keep moving the stop loss up in little bits incrementally. This will let you keep more profits on a hot streak, but give some protection and secure more gains. It will also help eliminate FOMO if a stock exceeds your expectations.
• Have rules when to roll out, down & out, or up & out. I like TT’s roll at break even or at 1x loss and to always roll for a credit (or for me a very minor cost). Obviously these rules need some monitoring. Know your stocks, the news, and technicals so you don’t jump the gun.
  • If you roll early for a credit and you’re right, it’s not the end of the world. You’ll just need to hold longer, which will obviously tie up capital. Sometimes it’s better to tie up some money (especially if you aren’t paying interest) than eating a huge loss.
  • Rolling too late can be worse though. I currently have a very underwater FDX put I sold that is over 2x loss, rolling it does almost nothing unless you want to pay a debit or extend it extremely far out.
• On huge options gains, I strongly you recommend taking profits by rolling up/down or incrementally sell your contracts at several different prices (this is why having multiple contracts is nice).
  • Rolling up involves selling your initial call, then using a fraction of your proceeds to buy a cheaper, further OTM call with the same expiry; puts are inverse this. When rolling up I like to ensure the new option’s cost is 15-40% of my realized gains. I’ll buy a more or less expensive new optoin based on my convication to the stock and predicted movements. You can also roll up and out to get a further expiry and strike.
  • This is monumentally important if you are playing with incredibly high rising stocks or during a short squeeze.
  • Sad story time: I completely screwed up when I forgot to roll up, twice, during the GME gamma/short squeeze. I didn’t take my own advice; I didn’t have a real exit or transition plan and I got emotional. It all happened so fast and I was at work; the insanity of the run up and subsequent gamma squeeze caught me off guard. I should’ve clocked out and thought through the situation for 15-30 minutes to form an impromptu plan, then executed trade(s). My moderate risk tolerance coupled with my desire to take profits took over. When the stock partially cratered after a run up, I sold to retain gains. In the heat of the moment I thought the squeeze was squoze and it was going to plummet into the ground and I wasn’t being rational.
    • On 1x 4K call I would’ve made an additional 15-25K if I rolled up to a cheaper contract with some of my profits.
    • I know I missed out on significantly more with a 2nd call I had. Depending when I rolled it, it would likely have been an additional 25-50k in profits.
  • I talked about learning from your mistakes above. This mistake is branded into my brain due to the massive gains I missed out on by not rolling up. I’m furious with myself as I write this 1 week after the GME gamma squeeze, I’m a planner and I didn’t plan. If anything I own is significantly up ever again, I’m rolling up (or at least setting a stop loss). If necessary, I’ll roll up a trade multiple times to keep extracting profits.
  • Learn from my mistake so you don’t miss out on gains too. I strongly recommend rolling up when you are up big on a call / roll down when you are up big on a put. This enables you to take profits, stay in the game, and keep extracting more gains.
• If you trade a lot of options, talk to your broker about a discount. I was getting the standard $.50/contract with E-Trade, but I traded over 300 contracts a quarter and was able to get the fee reduced by over $.10 by just asking. I am now doing more spreads and condors, so once my volume gets very high, I’ll ask again.
• If you have a broker that isn’t great and you want to switch, leverage your current trading fees to the new broker. Tell them you’ll move over $### thousand if they beat your current options trading fee per contract.

Trade Planning & Position Management Tips

• As you gain experience, start monitoring what kind of Delta, OTM, DTE, etc. you are most profitable with. Use it in your future trades. You'll often see the tasty trade 30-45DTE .3 Delta strategy for selling.
• Before entering a trade, look at rough technicals like resistances and supports to consider your relevant strikes as well as entry/exit points. Look at upcoming earnings & dividend dates as well as stock/market news.
• Consider staggering strikes and expirations for safety and diversity; it’s nice to avoid assignment on 3 puts at once because you used the same strike for all 3.
• Incrementally enter positions on large rises/falls. One of my favor strategies is to buy dips after over reactions. By doing this slowly in large price "steps" it helps combat FOMO and helps you avoid getting slaughtered.
  • This will also help you avoid "chasing a falling knife". It also ties into having a plan.
  • I set alerts at several predetermined prices and I REALLY try not to enter new trades unless I hit my preset points. It makes me less emotional and usually more effective.
• Don't buy far expiration options with poor liquidity for shorter term plays. I bought 1x GME 1-year+ LEAPS call before the 2021 short squeeze. That was stupid, I should've bought 2-3x 60-120 day calls to have better liquidity. I also paper-handed it and missed out on my lambo.
• If selling options, consider rolling (for a credit) to avoid assignment when it makes sense / meets your plan. Rolling closer to expiration can be a valid strategy to get theta on your side. On the flip side, if the stock moons or plummets it could've been better to roll before it got crazy deep ITM. See rolling “rules” above.
• Covered Calls:
  • If a stock has a large movement range, I think it can be worthwhile to wait to open a CC after the last one is closed/expires. I have been more successful waiting for another opportunity vs. opening one immediately on the Monday after the second the last one expires.
  • Consider selling covered calls at all time highs/peaks. If you sell a CC and the stock dips significantly, and you think it’s temporary, you can buy to close your CC for a quick profit, then reopen it later.
  • If you own Meme stocks, selling covered calls runs the risk of missing out on large gains. On these stocks I typically only sell them further OTM than I normally would or not at all. If I do sell CC on a Meme stock I try to ensure I have 25-100 other shares that won’t be called away.

-Advanced Beginner-
Spreads

• Spreads (with 2 legs) are neat because they manipulate how delta and theta act. It caps your gains and losses, but you can profit with less stock movement. Try several spreads on a P/L calculator to see for yourself.
• Spreads usually require margin trading.
• Spreads allow you to define max losses (assuming you close before expiration day) and use less capital.
  • Experienced traders will open many spreads at identical/similar strikes to heavily profit off movement. Spreads can make you/lose you a lot of money if you are right.
  • For example. I could make a $200 premium off a $500 risk trade, max loss would be $300. This is much more effective capital utilization than a naked or cash secured put, however it does not have the same downside protection or “wheel” potential as a sold put. Higher risk, higher reward.
• Vertical Debit spreads: I think of these like mini calls/puts. I personally don’t use them unless calls are outrageously expensive or the break even is absurdly high, but there’s nothing wrong with them. A call debit spread will lower your breakeven and overall cost vs just a call. You can do clever things like making a positive theta call spread if you’re creative. I like doing this since I hate losing money to theta.
• Vertical Credit spreads:
  • Very good theta strategy to define downside/upside risks.
  • A put credit spread is bullish and allows you to bet on upward movement with less capital and defined losses.
  • A call credit spread is a bearish strategy that allows you to bet on downward movement. These are very cool since they allow you to sell calls without selling naked calls, which can ruin you financially. I see selling these as better than buying puts since it’s so much easier to be profitable; to be redundant, Θ rocks.
  • https://www.schwab.com/resource-centeinsights/content/reducing-risk-with-credit-spread-options-strategy-0
• I repeat this on purpose: Don't EVER leave short spreads open on expiration day, close them. If you don't close, they better be VERY far from the strike on a non-volatile stock. In after hours a stock can jump/dip below your strike and be exercised without the other leg to protect you. This can lead to massive, life ruining losses. This is not an exaggeration, google this and be scared. It happened to a fair number of people with TSLA. Video explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtVFj9nRRDo&t=315s
• Short Straddle:

Trading Mechanics, Taxes, Market Manipulation

• Learn about wash sale rules. They suck and are very easy to activate with options. This will eliminate your ability to write off losses. Over trading can easily cause wash sales. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/washsalerule.asp
• Short attacks:
  • Learn to recognize these sketchy attacks by hedges/firms. They manipulate the market, it’s been documented countless times. A common one is rapid short selling, which pushes the price down.
  • Short Ladder attacks:
    • https://www.google.com/amp/s/seekingalpha.com/amp/instablog/11442671-gerald-klein/3096735-anatomy-of-a-short-attack
    • Some people say short ladder attacks don't exist. I've seen some very strange stock nosedives off low volume, so I tend to think they do.
  • If you plan well enough and the market doesn’t give up on the stock you may be able to use it as a great opportunity to buy the dip.
• Cramer explains how he intentionally manipulated the market when he ran a hedge fund years ago. Multiple links to the video are below since this video gets pulled often, Cramer / The street never wanted this to go public.
  • Reuters article: https://www.reuters.com/article/cramer-interview-idUKN2036292620070320
  • httpss://youtu.be/r07Gg92YjOI
  • https://youtu.be/VMuEis3byY4
  • https://youtu.be/JEzsfPmh894
  • https://youtu.be/QFfjX8dW-QQ
  • Due to this video I don’t fully trust Cramer. His show can give you stock ideas to buy (or inverse), but you never know where his true loyalties lie.
• Plan for taxes if you are up big. You may need to over withhold or contribute to taxes quarterly depending on your situation. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc306

-Intermediate / Advanced Strategies (work in progress)-
You’ll notice many of these strategies inverse one another.
Options Strategy Finder
This website is great for learning about new strategies, you’ll see many links to it below.
https://www.theoptionsguide.com/option-trading-strategies.aspx
Short Strangle / Straddle

• Both of these strategies profit from little price movement. I recommend using a P/L calculator to determine BE, profit, etc.
• A straddle sells (or buys) two options at the same expiry and strike.
• A strangle sells (or buys) two options at same expiry with different strikes.
• Both these strategies involved selling a Call and a Put for a credit. Straddle uses ATM legs, strangle uses OTM legs.
• Limited max profits and unlimited risk. Due to the unlimited risk, I am not a fan. However, many people like these a lot.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/short-strangle.aspx
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/short-straddle.aspx

Iron Condor and Iron Butterflies

• These strategies profit from neutral or mostly neutral stock movement. They receive a credit to open and benefit from theta decay. If your stock is range bound, these may be a good choice.
• These are both 4 "legged" trades, so you will have 4 trading fees to enter or exit the trade. A lower cost or zero cost broker shines here. However, “bad” free brokers will give you poor fills, which may not be worth the discount.
• Condors and butterflies have "wings" which are your purchased puts and calls. The wider the wing the higher the max profit/risk. The condor body can be riskier and skinny with a narrow high profit range or wider for a much greater chance of success with lower payout.
• An iron condor is built by combining a put credit spread and a call credit spread with the same expiry.
• An iron condor can be thought of as a modified short strangle with limited risk, and therefore a bit less profit. I prefer defined limited risk.
• The butterfly is similar except instead of a plateau it has a sharp peak. My personal mental note is that a condor looks more like a strangle with wings, while a butterfly looks like a straddle with wings.
• Pay attention to earnings dates when you open these, I have forgotten to check before and it led to bad trades.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/iron-condor.aspx
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/iron-butterfly.aspx

Long Condor (Debit Call Condor)

• The debit version of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to stay inside your defined range. This strategy profits from neutral or mostly neutral stock movement. I’ve never tried this, Iron Condors make more sense to me.
• Limited risk / limited reward.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/condor.aspx

Short Condor (Credit Call Condor)

• Inverse of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to go OUTSIDE your defined range. These are useful when you expect significant price movement. Credit to open.
• Limited risk / limited reward.
• Can be harder to set up. I want to try these, haven’t yet.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/short-condor.aspx

Reverse Iron Condor

• Inverse of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to go OUTSIDE your defined range. These are useful when you expect significant price movement. Debit to open.
• Limited risk / limited reward.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/reverse-iron-condor.aspx

LEAPs

• LEAP Options are options that are long term with many DTE, often over a year until expiration. LEAP calls are great for long term growth plays (downtrends with LEAP puts) or simply when you really like a company and can't afford 100 shares. LEAPs (or any "longer term" option) enables you to sell a PMCC or PMCP (below)

PMCC / PMCP

• PMCC or PMCP are poor man's covered call (or poor man's covered puts). They are diagonal options often used with purchased LEAPs. You sell a shorter DTE call/put with a further OTM strike than your purchased call/put. For PMCC/PMCPs it is often recommended to recoup your extrinsic value as soon as possible, some recommend with your first call CC or put sale, to ensure you are positive if the option is assigned early. These have a lot of moving parts and strategies. If you buy a barely ITM call/put and sell a nearby strike call/put you run the risk of the purchased option getting "blown by" on large stock movement and ending up with a very negative losing trade. Keeping your purchased LEAP deeper ITM should protect you. Check your initial PMCC using an options calculation to make sure you don't screw up.
• I'm currently tinkering with these myself. So far I like .7-.9 delta call LEAPS with 30-45 DTE calls on my CC. The goal is to hold the LEAP long term, potentially until expiration, and constantly sell calls/puts on it that expire worthless. Typically the call/put is rolled up and out or down and out if it's going to be assigned, unless you don't want your LEAP anymore.
• Some people look at these many sold CC or puts as profits, I look at them as lowering my cost basis until it's zero (or even negative). I have a page in my notebook I write each CC on my NIO LEAP (I Meme stock sometimes). I find it satisfying to slowly see the cost of the original option disappear. When I originally wrote this I had ~2 years left on it and it's 9-10% paid for; that doesn't even count the actual gains the LEAP has.
• TT states this is considered an IV play, which I partially agree with. You want to buy these during low IV times since an IV drop will hurt your LEAP value. I look at them more as a way to sell calls/puts on a high IV company with a lot of price movement and potential upside/downside.

Advanced Orders

• Guide to several order types: https://us.etrade.com/knowledge/events/webinars/order-types-from-basic-to-advanced-07162019
• One Triggers Other (OTO):
  • Good brokers will allow you to set these up, some will require a desktop to do it. This lets you link one action to another. In programming think of it like an if-then. You’ll tie a buy/sell to another buy/sell
  • Setting trailing stops on options is very chaotic since their price movement can be drastic due to volatility. I prefer to set my trailing stop to a stock.
  • What I like to do is set a trailing stop on a stock (or just link it to a stock price drop) and have it sell 1 share I own. Then it immediately executes a market order to sell my call. I’ve had good luck doing this with incredibly volatile plays were stop losses aren’t effective. I’ll often have an order saved and ready saved for when a strong run up starts. When my price alerts start blowing up my phone, I’ll immediately hit execute to turn it on.

​
Disclaimer:
I’m not a financial adviser, I'm actually an engineer. I’m not telling you to invest in a specific stock/option or even use a specific strategy. I’ve outlined and more extensively elaborated on what I personally like. You should test several strategies and find what works best for you.
I'm just a guy who trades (mainly options) part-time for financial gain and fun. I don't claim to be some investing savant.

Quick Disclaimer: Alignment, like all rules, is an optional rule (and greatly diminished in importance from previous versions). If you don't want to use it, don't-- this post is irrelevant to you. I am not here to argue that you should use alignment. Likewise, this is only one of many valid interpretations of Alignment in D&D: How I view alignment, and how to make it more of an actual game mechanic rather than some abstract concept to be debated.
Quicker Disclaimer: This is going to be a long post. I hope you enjoy.

"Alignment is Stupid"

I've heard this before from people on the internet, and people I know personally. Usually it comes from a place of frustration, for one or more of the following reasons: 1. "It limits my character!" 2. Not really understanding what constitutes being Good/Evil/Neutral/Lawful/Chaotic. 3. Arguments popping up (either at the table or post-session) about what a particular act would be considered.
Honestly? This is D&D's fault. They just assume everyone knows that saving Puppies is Good, and kicking them is Evil. But what happens when kicking 1 puppy will save another? Better yet, how many people mistake chaotic for random? There's no clear rules for what makes an act, or a creature, one way or another...
Until now. See where this post is heading?

Let's make it un-stupid.

The two axes system of Good vs Evil, Lawful vs Chaotic is actually pretty useful, and that's how we'll begin-- by breaking down each axis.

Tucker and Dale Vs Evil (Morality of Intent)

Suppose Tucker and Dale are walking into a bar, when they see a damsel in distress. Tucker thinks to himself, "I must save her, it's the right thing to do!" Dale thinks "if I save her, maybe she'll give me a reward!" They both proceed to do exactly the same thing-- working together to save the Damsel.
So who here was Good-er? Sure, Tucker's motives were more pure, but they did the same thing. What if Dale had wanted to save her so that he could later kill her himself? Is saving her then an Evil act?
This is why, if there is going to be an alignment system in D&D, it will have to be one that is based on metrics that are visible to the players (after all, we rarely narrate our character's thoughts out loud), and metrics that are objective. This will help address point's 1 & 2 in the "Alignment is Stupid" section.

Defining Good & Evil (Consequentialism)

Consequentialism judges the morality of an action based on it's outcome. Below, I've made a nifty chart. Or at least I think it's nifty, but I suppose that's subjective. The advantage to such a moral system is that we can define good and evil so clearly that there's hardly room for debate. Did your action harm more people than it did help? Did you hurt someone to benefit yourself?
Similarly, most people would agree with the examples listed as cleanly fitting in the Good / Neutral / Evil categories, which is good because if we can't agree on the easy ones, we'll never figure out the more complicated examples!

Alignment	Metrics	Examples
Good	Benefited a Good, Neutral, or 'Innocent'; endangered oneself or sacrificed to benefit others; Prevented an evil act. Harmed an Evil creature.	Risking one's life to save a stranger. Killing an Evil creature to prevent it from harming innocents. Giving up your quest reward to feed an orphan.
Neutral	Caused little to no harm, and roughly equal benefit as harm; Choosing to preserve the self and immediate allies over the benefit of strangers.	Making a fair barter with a merchant. Taking inaction in someone else's quarrel. Saving your friends from a fire and fleeing while others are still in danger. Taking money off a corpse.
Evil	Harmed more Good, Neutral, or Innocent creatures than it benefited, especially when done to only benefit oneself, one's allies, or another Evil creature; preventing a good act; Benefiting Evil Creatures.	Sacrificing an innocent to make a deal with a devil. Killing for the pleasure of it. Stealing a powerful artifact from a Good or Neutral creature, simply because you wanted the power.

So how does the above chart help us?
Suppose you have an assassin, who's on a mission to kill an innocent. You're not his target, and so he poses no threat to you. Even still, he refuses to attack you even after you've attacked him. Normally, this would be really hard to figure out if it's OK to kill the assassin. You could argue that you'd be taking a life, and so you'd be just as bad as the assassin. You could argue that the assassin might have pure motives-- maybe they're being compelled to do this and so they aren't really evil! It's dizzying trying to pinpoint a single 'correct' interpretation...
Unless you use the chart. Killing the assassin would: 1. (+1 Good) Benefit an Innocent 2. (+1 Good) Endanger oneself for the benefit of another 3. (+1 Good) Harm an Evil creature (murder-for-hire is evil in this system) 4. (+1 Good) Prevent an Evil Act
And voila, there it is. A ruler for measuring how 'good' something is. This action is exactly 4 Mr Rogers on the goodness scale. It would be arguably more 'good' if you could avoid harming the creature, until you know that the creature is actually evil. Now, you're also probably preventing way more than 1 death, since an assassin typically doesn't have a single kill on their to-do list, but that doesn't count unless you know that they're going to (say, if you interrogate them), then you could reasonably say the act is even more good.

On Law & Chaos

I've never liked these names or descriptions for this axis. To quote the PHB: Chaotic people "hold their personal freedom above all else", and "act as their conscience directs, with little regard for what others expect." There's a reason why Chaotic Neutral characters being selfish dicks is kind of a meme at this point. The book literally tells them to be a bad team-player.
Meanwhile, Lawful creatures "can be counted on to do the right thing as expected by society", and "act in accordance with law, tradition, or personal codes". That's both infuriatingly limiting if read one way (hence #1 in the "Alignment is Stupid” section) ,and yet not limiting at all if read another because literally everyone acts to their own personal code, all the time. That's just called having a sense of morals.
Clearly, we need better words here. So I choose...

Idealism & Pragmatism

I believe the far better words for this is Idealism (lawfulness) vs Pragmatism (chaos). Are you trying to serve something bigger than yourself, working within a larger system to accomplish your deeds? That's Idealism. You have principles and you stick to them.
Want something done and you don't particularly care how so long as the result is the result? That's pragmatism. You value results over methodology.
The best part of using these words is that you can literally google it or look it up in a dictionary and the meaning will be accurate.

Combining the Axes (Good is what you do, Idealism & Pragmatism is how you do it)

First of all, great job for getting all of this read so far. I really appreciate it, you handsome devil.
Now, under this system, we've agreed that killing the assassin is an act of Good. So let's discuss how an Idealist and a Pragmatist might view this.
Person 1: He's an assassin. Who knows what he's capable of? Perhaps he's casting Message using the Subtle Spell metamagic, telling a guild of assassins where we are! If we take him to the courts they'll hang him-- we might as well save the taxpayer a coin and do him in ourselves.
Person 2: We don't know that he poses us harm-- we should arrest him, and take him to the courts. Yes, he will be hanged for his crimes, and so the result is the same as if we were to kill him ourselves, but it's the right thing to do!
Can you tell which is which? Let's throw in 2 more characters.
Person 3: Killing an assassin is far worse for us! His allies may seek revenge. Better to take him to the courts and let the executioner bear the ire!
Person 4: I believe in a warrior's life, and a warrior's death. If this coward refuses to defend himself, he is forfeiting his right to life! Toss him a dagger and I'll kill him here, lest we give him a dishonorable death of a hanging!
Both an idealist and a pragmatist could argue either way of doing things. See why lawfulness/chaos is hard to pin down? We need....

Another fucking chart.

Alignment	Metrics
Idealistic	Made a task more difficult or increased danger to self & allies in order to complete the task a certain way
Neutral	Abstains from strong opinions on methods; Goes with the Teams Solution
Pragmatic	Made a task less difficult or tries to reduce danger to self and allies while completing the task

Example Answers:

Person 1 & 3 are trying to minimize danger to him/herself and their allies when they consider their actions. This is a very practical, pragmatic way of doing things. As well, Person 1 is talking about saving taxpayer money and not having to haul him to a court-- making the task easier and less expensive all around. Truly, they are pragmatists.
Meanwhile, person 2 is willing to take the gamble and try to escort him to a court in order to have the same outcome (dead assassin). They're justifying that yes, there's a slight chance that he's a danger, but they don't know that, and they're willing to do things the hard way to do it the 'right' way-- very idealist. Person 4 has come to the opposite conclusion (no court for you!) but their reasoning is incredibly similar: they're willing to hand the guy a knife and fight to the death, because that's their ideals, which they would risk endangering themselves for.

TL;DR- An Objective Alignment System for 5e D&D.

UPDATE 1: Have Mercy!

Some redditors have pointed out that harming an Evil creature shouldn't be an act of good, as mercy should be considered Good. In this system, however, ideals such as Mercy would be considered Idealistic, as capturing an evil creature alive is often more difficult, and letting it go might pose more danger to you.

UPDATE 1.5: On "Descriptive vs Prescriptive"

This system does not force you to use it one way or the other-- in fact, I have written it so that it measures the goodness of an act, not says what a good or evil creature will do. Player agency is the most important part of D&D. You decide what you do-- and we'll decide if you're an evil bastard afterwards!

UPDATE 2: Thank you!

There has been a LOT of great discussion on this post-- and I wanted to thank all of you. Those who agree with me: it's always great to hear. But those who disagree with me, you're helping me refine my thoughts on this subject, which is even more valuable to me. And to those who start their posts with "well, as someone who's studied philosophy"-- thank you for the laughs, and maybe keep studying.

UPDATE 3: Well. Shit.

I didn't expect this post to get 900+ upvotes and 9 different awards, you guys are sincerely too kind. I've been trying to think of how I can repay that kindness; to which I offer you free D&D content!
Here is my homebrew book, Pip Fizzlebang's Ode to Eccentricism. I have a player currently playing the deceptive "Way of the Monkey King" Monk subclass and loving it. Its about making your stick bigger and getting people to hit themselves. I'm most proud of my Hunter class though-- its a complete rework of the Ranger, along with new subclasses. There's also 12 new lore-friendly playable races! For existing characters, there's new warlock invocations, some new feats (and feats converted from 3.5e), and the answer to life, the universe, and everything!
So to all who enjoyed this post enough to get to this part-- enjoy the free content, and thank you again!

“Prophets are seldom appreciated in their time.” Alexandre Amancio’s vision, though panned by the press and broken by bugs, has been dusted off almost a decade later. Like any great vision, his, Travis Stout’s, and Sylvain Bernard’s story takes time to understand.
Assassins Creed: Unity is essentially Elise. It is Arno’s struggle to avoid losing her. It begins when they meet and ends when they part. Why does Elise mean everything? Why does she have to die? Why is his story of her capable of arousing great emotion?
Arno and Elise are the embodiment of the best parts of the Revolution and French literature. In Amancio’s words, the zeitgeist. Much of France’s great literature was set during the Revolutionary period, in part because its turbulent ideological conflict lent itself naturally to the literary school following the Revolutionary period: Romanticism. Early Romanticists characterized the school as most prominently defined by its capacity to arouse great emotion. Later Romanticists identified the school as defined by the centrality of the choice to pursue values and values as the source of emotion. Romanticist heroes were “larger than life” representations of these values.
Elise and Arno are appealing because they are “larger than life,” they pursue and perfectly represent their values, whatever their errors. They are original, romanticized amalgams of contemporary fictional and historical characters who did. Combined, they resemble Edmond Dantes, the revenge-obsessed protagonist of The Count of Monte Cristo. Like Dantes, Arno is locked in a prison cell for a crime he didn’t commit; there, a fellow prisoner directs him to the resources necessary to obtain his and Elise’s revenge. Like Dantes’, Arno’s sense of humor is sharp and larger than life.
Elise has characteristics of Charlotte Corday, the martyred assassin of Jean-Paul Marat who chose certain death to help bring the Terror to an end. Neither could bear to watch the country tear itself apart. Both were beautiful, auburn-haired nobles born in 1768, who died one July near the climax of the French Revolution. They both wrote letters prior to their deaths, explaining their reasons for embracing them.
Elise is also part Juliet. Her sense of justice and consequent desire for revenge is in some sense a “tragic flaw” she fails to keep in check. Arno is less her Romeo than her Byronic hero. He is burdened not by a fatal flaw but by fate. Byronic heroes are heroes free to choose their character and choices, but not their malevolent fate. His fate is malevolent: the story begins and ends with him losing his highest values. Nonetheless, his character compels him to struggle to minimize the destruction of everyone he holds dear. His fate is to fight for them but futilely watch them become fatalities. His strength and efficacy in the world is ultimately an illusion.
Byronic heroes’ inability to obtain the Good grate on them. As writer Alexandre Amancio noted, Arno’s sense of humor’s underlying purpose is to deflect people and push them away. They are doomed to die if they become too dear. A Byronic existence naturally demotivates the protagonist. Stories featuring Byronic protagonists typically lack plot- because they are fated to futility, there is little incentive for action. Elise, being Arno’s greatest value in the world, is a living refutation of its malevolence. She is his greatest catalyst, as symbolized by her handing him back his watch. Because in the third act, she is his only remaining catalyst, his plot comes to a screeching halt each time she exits. Elise is the antidote to Arno, inspiring us and Arno with her agency and passion. This is essentialized in their love scene. Arno, not the master of his fate, is forced to ask Elise if things can ever go back to the way they were. Elise states they cannot, but, taking his hand, notes the past does not prescribe their future. But Arno’s proscribes hers.
When Arno tells her he loves her, her agency and Arno’s Byronic fate become directly at odds. Though Elise is the master of Elise’s fate, so is Arno’s. This contradiction is narratively untenable. Elise’s efficacy is an illusion to the extent she is tied to Arno. All of her motivations in the final act are germinated by Arno’s fatalistic failures in the first. The unforeseeable consequences of Arno’s mistake curtailed her rise to power, which placed her in the crosshairs of jeopardy. It motivates her to meet it, and in so doing also triggers her tragic flaw. In this way, the contradiction between Elise’s agency and Arno’s malevolent fate resolves.
Arno tells Elise all he has ever wanted was her. Because she is his highest value, she has to die at the height of the climax. The ending frustrates, because it is determined to anguish Arno, with Elise as a means to its end. It devastates, because it portrays two, larger than life, who cannot really live. The climactic visual is the embodiment of Arno’s energetic, but ultimately empty efforts. He is trapped under a pillar of fate, helpless to influence events unfolding just in front of him. Nonetheless, he heaves it aside and sprints with superhuman speed to the climax, but one he is helpless to foreclose. Elise’s final look of shock and realization embodies Arno’s.
Though Arno’s fate is the master of Elise’s through her fatal flaw, so is Elise. She is larger than life to the end. Though her outcome is inevitable, her gamble is her own. She proudly notes in her final letter, “My fate is my own. My choice is my own… Know that I made it gladly.”
Elise’s death is, on a personal level, to some extent Shakespearean. Though Elise is appealing because of her virtues, one of them leads to her downfall. In Shakespeare’s tragedies, good characters act destructively not just because of their weaknesses, but because they are good. In Othello, Iago states, “[s]o will I turn her virtue into pitch, and out of her own goodness make the net that shall enmesh them all.” So does Amancio.
Unity’s epilogue helps resolve a contradiction between the Shakespearean and Romanticist elements in the work. Both Arno and Elise are largely epitomes of virtue. However, Arno never suffers for his virtues, only despite them. Elise suffers because of hers. The distinction between the two is Arno consistently practices the virtue of moderation, “decid[ing] whether the road we walk carries too high a toll.”
Amancio’s concept of moderation is an attempt to have Elise’s fate satisfy both the Shakespearean idea that virtues lead to one’s downfall, and the Romanticist idea that characters do not fail because of their virtue. In this way, it is possible for Elise to die both for her tragic flaw of justice, her virtue, but also her lack of virtue, her lack of moderation of her virtues. For Amancio, moderation is the one virtue that cannot lead to destruction. Practicing it in combination with other virtues in effect prevents tragic flaws, “guard[s] against our obsessions.” In this way, it is possible for Arno to continue on. Though he can never achieve his highest values in the world, he can still take consolation in his impregnable virtue and pursue it: “all that we do, all that we are, begins and ends with ourselves.” He glances at his father’s watch. It ticks fervently on the line, “even as we give our lives…,” as though counting Elise’s final heartbeats, before it closes to an abrupt stop. It is the memorabilia of all he has lost to a malevolent universe. Confidently tucking it back into his pocket, he dives off Notre Dame into it.

It really helps me if you check the original article & more similar at https://jb-dev.net/ !!!
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In January 2019, Drodo Studio’s Dota Auto Chess mod became insanely popular. Many companies (including household names like Valve, Riot, Ubisoft and Blizzard) rushed to release their own versions.
It seemed like the beginning of something big like MOBA or Battle Royale. But it has been more than a year now and the hype seems to have vanished completely. As quickly as it rose, it went away…
This is the first on a series of articles where we will analyze the autochess genre. Here we will be exploring the genre’s history, its current market situation and its audience. And also, what are the core design issues that autochess suffers and that no one has been able to solve yet.
u/JB: For this article I’m teaming up with my mate Victor Freso, one of my most talented folks at Pixel Noire Games, who helped me review all the games.
We also had feedback of ~300 highly engaged players from the different autochess reddit communities, which participated in an online poll whose results are available here. They’re especially thanked at the end of the article.

A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

This wasn’t the first time that a mod got the spotlight and ended up becoming the foundation of a genre. It happened in several major, industry-defining cases before (some of which are Team Shooters, MOBAs, Battle Royale…). But on some of these cases events unfolded differently. So we identify 3 distinctive eras related to the evolution of the industry:

1st Era (2000s): Assimilation

The company whose original software had been modded (or had a close enough game, like Valve) moved quickly to absorb the successful mods and turn them into even more successful products.
Since at that point creating a major game release was very complex (required an expensive development, publishing deals and an infrastructure to distribute the product), the deal was profitable for both sides. But it meant the dissolution of the identity of the original creator team, which became embedded in the bigger company culture.
Team Fortress (1999) was originally a Quake mod. And Counter-Strike (2000) started out as a fan-made mod on the Half Life engine. Both games (and creators) were quickly absorbed by Valve.
2nd Era (2010s): Integration
By this time, the previous era model still was going on… but the gaming industry had significatively grown a lot and it was also possible for smaller or even new companies to lure the original developers, and use the mod as a proof for commercial success in order to secure funding and develop it as a full title.
The main characteristic of this era is that the original developers were able to keep a bigger share of control and relevance, rather than being integrated as just another gear on a bigger machine, because the companies they joined built their own identity around that key product.
This was the case of Riot Games: They were able to raise enough money for the creation of their company through family and angel investors, and then hire some of the original creators of DOTA, and then created League of Legends.
​
A similar case happened with battle royale, which also started in 2013 as a successful DayZ mod created by the modder nicknamed PlayerUnknown. Later, it was transformed into a full product through the acquisition of the developer by a korean company (which would later be renamed as the PUBG Corporation, again showing how the company grew around the game rather than assimilating it).
Interestingly, this genre already hints what would happen with Auto Chess, since Fortnite wasn’t involved in any way with the original creators. They just copied the concept. Fortnite was a product stuck in a kind of development hell (had been 6 years in the works). As the game was getting close to the release, the developers became impressed by PUBG’s success, so they created a quick Battle Royale spin-off which became insanely popular and eventually ate the rest of the game.

3rd Era (2020s): Fragmentation

In all the cases presented previously, the newborn genre ended up in the release of one or two titles which accumulated most of the business. But this hasn’t been the case here.
In Autochess, the newborn genre has been quickly fragmented into a big list of competitors. Some are standalone games (like DOTA Underlords or Autochess: Origins), but there’s also several service-model games which released their autochess mode as well (like Hearthstone’s Battlegrounds or TeamFight Tactics, which at the end of the day is a side-game mode of League of Legends).
This creates an interesting precedent, which I believe will define future cases where an innovative new game concept appears: The hot idea will be cloned very fast because today the main bottleneck in the industry is having an innovative design that generates player interest and engagement.
By 2020, it’s way easier to create and distribute a game, there are way more developers hungry for a hit than ever before, and a lot of service-model games with short development cycles always looking for something juicy for their next update… so new ideas becoming red oceans fast will be the norm.
For sure, this won’t affect the ability of small developers and modders to innovate, but it will affect their ability to leverage that to become successful on an independant level, before they get cloned.
Dota Auto Chess, was a Dota 2 mod which obtained massive popularity. After a failed acquisition from Valve (owners of Dota), the mod developers (Drodo Studios) went to create the mobile standalone Auto Chess: Origins, while still maintaining the PC version linked to Valve. Meanwhile, Riot, Valve, Ubisoft and many other companies developed and released their own autobattlers at a record time, downgrading the genre creators to just another competitor.
And ultimately, they haven’t fixed the core issues of the original game, which separates it from a true hyper-successful product like MOBA.

MARKET STATUS

Because of the rain of clones, it’s hard to map all the autochess games on the market. It doesn’t help that some of them are available in both PC and Mobile (playable in PC, Mac, Android and iOS), and also they’re exclusive to different PC stores (Dota Underlords is only on Steam, TFT is on Riot’s LoL launcher, and Autochess Origins is only at the Epic Store…).
And if that wasn’t enough, the Auto Chess mod in DOTA2 is still very active and has no signs that it’s going to be dying soon. It’s still being regularly updated, and presumably still profitable: Some months ago they added a battle pass system, with its revenue shared between Valve and Drodo.
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What’s interesting is that none of the contenders has been able to become massively successful in terms of monetization, at least not in terms comparable to even a second or third tier MOBA. And while there are definitively different tiers of following among these titles (led by Riot Games’ TeamFight Tactics), it seems that none of them has been able to gather under its banner a significant amount of players, mobile downloads or Twitch Views…
Sources: AppAnnie (mobile metrics), TwitchMetrics (twitch)
So ultimately, we’re dividing the autochess market into 3 categories: Squires, Would-be Kings and Peasants.

• Squires: Rather than standalone games, these are side-modes of already successful products. Under this category we would list the Battlegrounds mode in Hearthstone, or League of Legends’ TFT, and maybe even the original DOTA Autochess mod. While for sure they’ll have their own dedicated audience that only plays those modes, for most players it’s just a nice and fresh activity integrated within a broader game experience. The squires are the ones that have achieved the biggest success among the autochess genre because they don’t suffer as much backlash from the lack of gameplay depth inherent to the genre, which is harmful for the long term retention: Even if the mode eventually becomes a bit shallow, players have many other things to play, and thus are retained. As a consequence, these games can still monetize significatively by selling renewals of their Battle Passes every new season. Not enough to make them successful on the degree that was expected… but at least it’s something. Other than bringing an additional source of revenue, these modes were useful to their core games: They generated player interest by providing innovative gameplay. Hearthstone’s Battlegrounds was an amazing addition to the CCG genre, and made a lot of people come back to the game to discover the new mode and reengage.

The gameplay of TeamFight Tactics (slow tempo, no team coordination, decreased attention requirement…) makes it a nice relief mode to play between LOL matches, which is its purpose in the foreseeable future. If there ever was an intention to make it a standalone game, it vanished together with the player interest on autochess…

• Would-be Kings: These are the other two top dogs of the category. They were supposed to rule… but that looking at the numbers they don’t really seem to have ever lifted off. Under this category we would list Auto Chess: Origins and DOTA Underlords. The problem is that their standalone approach means that they suffer the most of the design issues of the genre that we’ve presented in the last section of this article (i.e. flat complexity, lack of mastery depth, lack of progression and rotative meta…). That means that they lost a lot of population over time, and therefore their Battle Pass renewal isn’t as effective at generating revenue : (

DOTA Underlords is an extremely polished product in terms of graphics, character design and UX, and yet another proof that Valve devs really know how to do great games. Too bad they aren’t as good at releasing third installments...

• Peasants: Here we would list the myriad of other autochess follower titles that entered the battlefield, each achieving a different degree of success. While some may actually be profitable, what we can be sure about is that none of them has reached any significant numbers or anything close to the reach that brought industry attention.

THE AUDIENCE

We are of the belief that you can’t talk about a game and not talk about who plays it, and that players say more about a game than analyzing all its features and mechanics. So with this in mind we collected answers from ~300 autochess players (check the raw data here). After examining their responses, we’ve identified 3 main player profiles (the comments on each profile are literal):
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• Patricks, gamers looking for a competitive-but-idle experience that doesn’t require full attention and it’s easily reconcilable with their functional adult life.
• Grizzlies, competitive players that struggle with fast paced games that demand a high actions per minute ratio and quick reflexes (like MOBAs or competitive shooters).
• Warmasters, highly competitive players that enjoy more the area of strategy (setting up goals and planning how to achieve them) rather than tactics (skillful execution of actions and micromanagement).

What these profiles have in common, other than being hardcore gamers and having a big interest in competitive games, is the fact that they enjoy the lack of micromanagement, and the demand of reflexes and dexterity of autochess.
This is quite interesting, considering that the genre foundation is so close to MOBAs, which are extremely demanding on those aspects. Overall it seems that they belong to audiences below the MOBA umbrella which are currently being alienated by the bulk of ‘younger and dexterity focused’ players.
And when it comes to platforms, it seems that even though the barrier between the classic gaming platforms and mobile is progressively disappearing, the genre is still mainly focused on PC: Out of the ~300 players that answered, 50% said that they play exclusively on PC, 25% played primarily on Mobile, and the remaining 25% played in both.
https://preview.redd.it/1frwgvrtapg61.png?width=962&format=png&auto=webp&s=3602c6a760664333236a2fddbc189fbab3ee3fc1
Players said that they enjoy the focus of the game in planification, as opposed to the focus on execution and performance of MOBAs. And when asked about their main points of frustration, they pointed out 2 main topics: 1.- The strong luck factor that has a strong impact on making you win or lose regardless on how well you played. 2.- The fact that the game eventually becomes shallow and repetitive, fueled by the fact updates were unexciting and not rotating the meta.
Surprised by the fact that players mention randomness as a factor of both enjoyment and frustration? Don’t be! Competitive players tend to have a love-and-hate relationship with luck, because they tend to consider that external factors outside of skills (money spent, better draw…) stole their well deserved victory.
And it’s even more frustrating in autochess, because there’s a strong snowball effect: Players that obtain a big advantage early on in the game become hard to catch later on. Which means that a few bad or good draws early on can decide the rest of the match.
There hasn’t been a single feature more criticised in Magic: The Gathering than the randomness of drawing mana. And yet, luck it’s part of what makes MTG stand out compared to other CCGs: For experienced players, it introduces uncertainty and the need to take risks and gamble, like they’d do in poker. And for rookies, it allows beating someone that has better skills and has a better deck, if Lady Luck is on their side. Won’t happen often, but it will feel awesome when it does. Like a friend likes to say: The best feeling in MTG is to draw a mana when you really need it. And the worst? To draw it when you didn’t.
This goes to say that in autochess, perhaps the power of luck needs to be reviewed, but it would be a bad decision to completely remove luck from the equation.
​

DESIGN CHALLENGES

In this awesome DoF article, Giovanni Ducati already pointed out the two main problems that the games in this genre need to solve to achieve real success: Bad long term retention and low monetization.
To these issues we would add a third one, which is bad marketability: Contrary to their big brothers League of Legends and DOTA2, these games haven’t been able to achieve high organic downloads (at least not to be able to generate significant revenue through soft monetization mechanics). What’s even worse is that all these games, their themes and target audience are quite close to RPG and Strategy, which are genres with some of the highest CPIs on the market. So they need top-of-the-class retention and monetization to get a high enough LTV to scale up.
But why do these games fail at keeping players entertained for a long time? And why don’t they monetize enough? Here’s what we think:
​

Flat Complexity & Progression

You have some games out there which have a strong entry barrier due to being quite complicated to grasp. But for those that can deal with the numbers and stats, the depth will keep them entertained for months and years. This is the case in most RPGs and 4X strategy games. And then you have hypercasual games, which are simple and plug and play. So they generate a great early engagement, but are too shallow to keep users hooked for a long time.
As a genre, Autochess games are in the middle ground: they have a high entry barrier, but also lack the complexity to keep players engaged for a long time…
As a general rule, games with long retention tend to follow Bushnell’s Law of being easy to learn and difficult to master. They achieve that by having what we call an unfolding experience: They appear simpler at the beginning (not necessarily easy), but require thousands of hours of practice to master.
An example of this are games that level lock most of the game complexity, so the player understands and masters only a set starter mechanics. And then, progressively unlock new modes and demand more specialized builds and gameplay, repeating the cycle several times to keep the game always interesting while attempting to avoid being overwhelming.
In World of Warcraft, character depth is huge. But this complexity is unfolded progressively, forcing the player to spend time mastering each skill and activity as they level up, before moving further.
Another approach to the same idea are competitive games focused on mechanical ability, dexterity or micromanagement. Like CS:GO or Rocket League. They may unlock all the mechanics from the beginning, but a newbie player will only be able to focus and manage some of them, and then progressively discover and master the rest in an organic way.
Rocket League hides its complexity by matchmaking early players with others of a similar skill. This makes beginner players viable even if they grasp only the basic mechanics. But, as they climb further, they’ll face rivals that take those basic skills for granted and the player will need to master more challenging techniques to keep up.
League of Legends and Overwatch are actually a combination of both: The game first introduces the player to a small selection of heroes which progressively gets expanded, while at the same time having an insane mastery depth that requires a high APM and reflexes, team coordination and thousands of hours of practice.
Contrary to any of those examples, Autochess games throw everything at you from the beginning: Character Skills, Synergies, Unit Upgrade, Gold Management, Items… It’s a lot to swallow. And there’s not even enough time to read what each thing does before the timer runs out. This creates a complex, overwhelming first impression that drives many players out.
But that’s quantity, not depth. Once you’ve gone through that traumatic starting phase, you’ve grasped all the mechanics and you know which team builds are dominating on the meta, it’s just a matter of making it happen by taking the right decisions and adapting to a few key draws.
Eventually, unless luck is really against you, your skills won’t be challenged and you won’t have new mechanics to master. At that point, winning will be based more on the knowledge of the content database and luck rather than your planning and strategic ability. And that’s boring.
So ultimately, these games are hard to grasp for a newbie, but also lack the ability to keep players interested for a very long time since they eventually run out of new features and mechanics to discover and master.

Unexciting Updates, Lack of Collection

On top of that, autochess games seem to have a hard time adding content which reawakens player interest and makes churned ones come back.
The DAU trend that we expect on a long term retention game: A decreasing trend of players until reaching a stagnation stage. At that point, a big update (or new season) is required to attract and reengage users back with new content. This is the model we would see on Fortnite or Hearthstone, but it’s not what we see in most autochesses.
On this topic, perhaps the one that has put the most effort is Riot’s TFT. Each season update, the game releases a new series of heroes, synergies, items and rebalances, as well as a big bunch of cosmetics. This generates a short lived boost on revenue (due primarily to players buying the pass) and downloads, but ultimately nothing that really moves the needle in a relevant way.
‘Why seasonal updates don’t work?‘, you may be asking. Part of the reason is that TFT, as well as every major contender do not include elements of content progression or collection. Instead, they all stick to the roguelike approach of the original mod: Players have access to the same set of units, and build their inventory exclusively during the match.
While at first this seems a good idea, since it keeps the game fair in a similar way to MOBAs, it’s oblivious to the fact that new units do not offer the same amount of gameplay depth as in League of Legends. In LoL, a new unit means weeks or even months of practice until mastering timing, range and usage of the skills, how they interact with every other champion, etc… In comparison, in TFT the new content can be fully explored in just a bunch of matches, both because the new content doesn’t offer that much depth to start with and because it’s available from the moment the player gets the update.
By lacking content progression and collection, autochesses miss the opportunity to create long term objectives after an update, more innovative mechanics and less repetitiveness. As a consequence, they have it really hard to hype players on updates.

Big ‘Snowball Effect’

In game design, the snowball effect refers to the situation where obtaining an advantage or dominance generates further conditions that almost invariably means winning the match. As you can guess, on competitive games this effect can generate a bad experience, especially when the divergence starts early on: The player that obtained the early advantage will keep on increasing the advantage and curbstomp the rest.
For example, this can happen on a Civilization game if a player gets ahead of the rest acquiring key resource territories, and uses them to achieve a greater progress in tech and income at a faster pace than the rest. Or in League of Legends if a team scores a bunch of early kills and levels up, becoming more able at scoring even more kills…
In this match of Age of Empires 2, the red player (Aztecs) managed to decimate the blue player (Turks) military units early on. Since without an army it was impossible for the blue player to secure enough resources to perform a comeback, for the next 2 hours the blue player was in a pointless, hopeless match. Kudos for not abandoning, though!
Autochess games suffer greatly from this effect, due to the following reasons:

• Resources lead to victories, victories lead to resources As you know, in autochess each player builds a team based on successive battles. Better battle performance will grant more gold, which is the resource used to buy units, perform shop rolls, etc… Similar to the cases we’ve already explained, this means that players that achieve early dominance will be able to to obtain more gold, use it to get better units and get more victories and gold, therefore increasing their team power faster than the rest. ‘But players can be lucky or unlucky, generating a factor that compensates for the advantage of having more resources early on‘, you may be considering. Unfortunately, this is a flawed logic, because of 2 main reasons: (1) Having more resources means more adaptability: The dominant players will be able to leverage on them to re-adapt their team, therefore outperforming the rest on a randomness-driven scenario. (2) Resources allow to buy more rolls, which diminishes the deviation generated by each individual roll.


• Luck factor. The previous point goes into maintaining and increasing dominance once it has been achieved early on, but another source of frustration is that luck is a huge factor in achieving early dominance. This means that your strategic skills and smarts can be completely invalidated by a couple of bad rolls at the beginning of the match. And there’s nothing that competitive players hate more than having their match stolen by factors outside the pure clash of abilities.

As an antithesis, Poker also has resource management, and luck factor determines the victory (on a specific round). But unlike Autochess, resources can’t override luck, and early victories don’t affect the later chance of winning.

Excessive Match Length

Compared to PC, on mobile is much harder to keep the player focused for a long period of time on a single session. And having a very long minimum session kind of goes against the premise of being able to play anywhere which is a primary strength of mobile as a gaming platform. This is a problem for autochess games since a single match can last for 30-45 minutes of synchronous, nonstop gameplay.
‘Isn’t the solution just make the match shorter?’, you’re probably wondering. Unfortunately, there are several reasons that make this more challenging to the core design than what it seems:

• Because in autochess the player builds its team from scratch, at the beginning of each match there are several turns to setup team foundations. Removing these early decisions severely decreases the teambuilding possibilities, decreasing overall depth.
  
• Also, each setup phase between clashes requires a minimum time to think and perform the actions. In the last turns of a match, the game can become quite demanding on thinking and input speed.
  
• Matches require a minimum amount of turns to compensate the weight of a single lucky/unlucky roll over the chances to win. Because the possible units for teambuilding appear on random rolls, the less turns there are the more luck factor the game will suffer, and as a consequence the less important the player’s strategic skills will be.
  
• And if there are few turns, there are also less chances for comebacks. Because it means that players will have less setup phases to adapt and catch a player that has obtained an early advantage.
  
• Finally, since the match involves 8 players, it requires a minimum of turns so that they all can fight between each other… Nevertheless, I don’t consider this a critical issue because Dota has been able to change this specific point on the knockout mode without sacrificing too much in terms of depth.
  

Soft Approach to Monetization

PC/Console approach to free-to-play is generally soft (i.e. primarily based on cosmetics, avoid pay-to-win…), while mobile tends to be quite hardcore in comparison. The softness of PC monetization is even more core to companies such as Valve and especially Riot Games, to which the “no monetization bs” is part of the brand values. This would be very hard to change without harming their reputation.
Same as in most autochess games, in TeamFight Tactics the players can only pay for different cosmetics and for a Battle Pass. Without the massively huge and engaged audience of League of Legends, this monetization approach isn’t able to generate meaningful revenue.
This is not exclusively because we mobile-first devs are a ruthless wallstreet folk which will use every dirty trick in the book to get a bit extra money… but also because mobile games are locked in competition for paid installs. This requires us to get as much revenue as possible from users, as fast as possible, in order to reinvest into players to keep on growing or avoid withering.
The business model of League of Legends or Fortnite is based on their extreme popularity: They already have massive amounts of highly engaged active users, so their strategy is to keep them playing and have a monetization system that, while doesn’t make as much money from the players as it could do on the short term, generates a decent amount of revenue over a longer period of time.
Games that have this soft f2p approach have it very hard to reach enough ARPPU to make paid users profitable, given the insanely high mobile CPIs. This may not be an issue to big IPs and games that are able to bring many organic players (Fortnite, League of Legends…), but it is a big issue for those that can’t attract such a big number of players due to their organic appeal.
Due to its core characteristics (strategic, number-based, complex…), Autochess is unlikely to be a massive appeal product, and therefore won’t fit into the cosmetics model. It’s a game that will have a smaller audience of highly engaged players, and therefore will require a more aggressive monetization to reach similar results.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The history of the autochess genre serves as an example of the risks of design endogamy: The devsphere rushed to clone Auto Chess, and before a year all the major contenders were in the board. But that speed came at a cost: None of these projects has brought the concept much further than its original conception, and in doing so they haven’t solved any of the core issues.
https://preview.redd.it/iw82bogsbpg61.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=9a197aa1fcb9ace73d6795103d20a4101ce7ddb5
The folks at Riot games developed the TeamFight Tactics in less than 5 months. This allowed them to release while the hype was still at its peak… but it also meant it added just a couple of improvements, and it’s otherwise very similar to the original Auto Chess mod.
After seeing all these projects fail to meet the big expectations that were placed on them, the question is if perhaps the best approach was to avoid rushing, and instead tackle the genre with a title that is not a clone, but rather a more groomed, accessible and innovative successor of the original idea.
In our next article on this series will make an attempt to see how such a game could be, rethinking the spirit and fresh design ideas of autochess to solve the issues mentioned above. (May take a while though, I want to focus on smaller articles for a couple of months…)
Meanwhile, if you want to read more about this genre, we suggest you these awesome articles from the folks at DoF: Why Auto-Chess can’t monetize – and how to fix that and How Riot can turn TFT into a billion dollar game

Special Thanks to…

These articles wouldn’t have been possible with the collaboration of ~300 members of the reddit communities of the different auto chess games who provided us with feedback and data. You folks have been incredible solving all our doubts. One thing that this genre has is some of the most awesome players around.
So big kudos for Brxm1, Erfinder Steve, Xinth, Zofia the Fierce, STRK1911, LontongSinga22, bezacho, hete, NeroVingian, marling2305, NOVA9INE , asidcabeJ, Eidallor, Rhai, Lozarian, bwdm, Toxic, Ruala, Papa Shango, MrMkay, Dread0, L7, kilmerluiz, Amikals, Sworith, Tankull, B., hete, Bour, Denzel, DeCeddy, Diaa, hamoudaxp, Benjamin “ManiaK” Depinois, Katunopolis, DanTheMan, MikelKDAplayer, 0nid, Tobocto, Tiny Rick, phuwin, Alcibiades, triceps, d20diceman, shadebedlam, stinky binky, Tutu, Myuura, suds, Kapo, Hearthstoned, Engagex, Pietrovosky, Daydreamer, Doctor Heckle, Ignis, ShawnE, NastierNate, LeCJ, Nene Thomas, Chris, trinitus_minibus, Nah, Kaubenjunge1337, Mudhutter, Asurakap, Nicky V, shinsplintshurts, bobknows27, Willem (Larry David Official on Steam), Jonathan, Dinomit24, Monstertaco, GangGreen69, Veshral Amadeus Salieri (…lol!), Kuscomem, Cmacu, Pioplu, Dilemily, qulhuae, Ilmo, MarvMind, facu1ty, crayzieap, Saint Expedite, Lobbyse, Lukino , tomes, Blitzy24, Mcmooserton, magicmerl, i4got2putsumpantzon, radicalminusone, Pipoxo, Kharambit, Bricklebrah, Rbagderp, Merforga, Superzuhong, Mo2gon, MoS.Tetu, MeBigBwainy, Zokus, CoyoteSandstorm, Stehnis, Noctis, Fkdn, Ray, Fairs1912, Fairs1912, Krakowski, HolyKrapp, Damadud, Pentium, Mach, Mudak, CaptSteffo, jwsw1990, Omaivapanda, Inquisitor Binks, Jack, yggdranix, GoodLuckM8, Centy, Prabuddha (aka Walla), dtan, Philosokitteh, Doms, ZEDD, Calloween, Synsane, Kaluma, GordonTremeshko , Djouni, DOGE, haveitall, ANIM4SSO, Task Manager, Submersed, BAKE, Viniv, La Tortuga Zorroberto, BixLe, Rafabeen, Blzane, bdlck666, FatCockNinja86, R.U.Sty, Yopsif, blesk, Quaest0r, FanOfTaylor, StaunchDruid, Rushkoski and everyone else that took some minutes to help us out on the article.

(Repost because I posted this really late and I was hoping to get some more discussion on the ideas.)
TLDR: Cincinnati seems like an interesting location for a future Fallout game and I break down my reasoning and then give an idea for a story. Maybe Cincinnati, Ohio isn’t as popular as other American cities, but I think it still deserves a shot.
So this post is taking some older ideas in some Reddit posts for a Fallout game and adding some additional ideas for it. I believe that a Fallout game set in and around Cincinnati, Ohio could potentially be a good fit for the Fallout franchise. I’m gonna break down the reasons why I think it could fit the theme/work as a map and then some story ideas for what could work in the area. I’d also like to state that my ideas are based off of information from the Fallout Wiki and Wikipedia. If anything doesn’t add up, I apologize.
MY REASONING FOR CINCINNATI AND WHY IT CAN FIT THE FALLOUT LORE:
-So Cincinnati might not seem like a city as grandiose as somewhere like NYC, Philadelphia, Detroit, New Orleans, etc. To an extent, I totally agree with that sentiment. It’d be really cool to see those cities that were mentioned above as future Fallout locations. However, I believe that those world ideas are also so full of interesting locations that a game trying to capture it all would struggle to get all the significant locations with current technology. Cincinnati is a smaller city that is still rich with culture and history that could be captured more accurately than bigger projects.
-A decent amount of the skyscrapers and more significant places of Cincinnati and the surrounding cities are somewhat older. There is enough buildings in Cincinnati that were built before or close enough to the divergence point that the skyline and city layout could be decently recognizable.
-Cincinnati had a decently sized manufacturing and industrial sector before the IRL Midwest De-Industrialization and Formation of the Rust Belt in the 40s and 50s. Considering that Fallout is themed around the ‘Pax Americana 1950s & Early 60s’ culture, the idea of showing off a Midwest city that continued to boom in those sectors could be an interesting focus for a Fallout game.
-Cincinnati has a large, mostly unused subway system that was never finished. In game, we could see areas of underground activity like the Fallout 3 subway system. The IRL subway eventually had a section that was also reworked to be a nuclear shelter, so a Vault being under the city wouldn’t be far-fetched.
-The Underground Railroad considered Cincinnati to be an important stop along the way, as it was a large destination for runaway slaves. The city was seen as a large region to hide amongst and find work that was just north of the Ohio River, where Slavery was mostly illegal (still not that great for runaways, but better than the South). Any concepts of slaves coming to Cincinnati for newfound freedoms or a system/faction of abolitionists and runaways would make a lot of sense for the themes.
-The Ohio River would be an important location that could go right through the middle of the map. Based off of how irradiated the rivers were in Fallout 3: The Pitt, I think it’d be safe to assume that the Ohio River in Cincinnati would also be unsafe to travel across. This creates something like the Deathclaws north of Goodsprings in Fallout: New Vegas where players can follow a normal path to get to the main city. This also means that it could create fun and challenging ways to get across the river.
-Fallout’s 1950s styled America is still in love with baseball. If you’re looking for a major city with a rich baseball history/culture, Cincinnati’s your place. Cincinnati is the city where the first professional baseball team was created, the Red Stockings. It could be host to a baseball themed faction, a settlement like Diamond City, or maybe even a quest line to reform a pro baseball team.
-The Cincinnati Zoo is a long standing and prestigious zoo that could be an interesting point in this hypothetical game. Since the zoo is home to various creatures that aren’t native to most of America, we could see interesting enemy mobs like mutated gorillas and irradiated hippos.
-IRL Cincinnati is home to major companies like Kroger, Procter&Gamble, and GE Aviation. Fallout companies like Super Duper Mart and Abraxodyne Chemical could be stand-ins for Kroger and P&G. It’d be a cool bit of story building for some of the pre-war companies that have products littering the Fallout wastelands.
-While New Orleans is probably more famous for this point, Cincinnati was also historically home to a developed steamboat industry that made it an important location in the history of American exploration/expansion into the river basins of Midwest America. Fallout 4’s museums based around Massachusetts’ involvement in the American War of Independence show off the cultural significance of the region in American history. Cincinnati could have a museum dedicated to it’s prominent position as a gateway to the west, showing off it’s contributions to expansionist American culture.
-One of the cities in the Cincinnati region is a town south of the Ohio River known as Newport, Kentucky. Historically, before Las Vegas became Sin City, Newport, KY was a huge contender for that role. From the 1920s to the 1950s, Newport was a city filled with criminal bosses and corrupt public officials. Casinos, brothels, and other illegal enterprises made up a good chunk of everyday life for this town. If fans want to recapture the spirit of New Vegas with the focus on moral degradation and a city of ‘Sex, Drugs, and Rock’n’Roll,’ then look no further than Newport.
-Cincinnati was one of the major US cities that had Nike anti-air missile bases around the Greater Cincinnati area. I don’t think it’d be too far of a stretch to assume that after world tensions got worse in the 21st century, that the government would repurpose some of these launch sites into nuclear silos. Maybe we could see another Megaton situation.
-Cincinnati is also home to 3 facilities in the area that were dedicated to nuclear research and enrichment (until these plants were closed due radiation leaking out). These would be some great areas to explore and mess around with nuclear enrichment.
WHEN WOULD THIS TAKE PLACE & WHO WOULD BE INVOLVED:
So I feel like this game could work if it was set between the ending of Fallout 2 and the beginning of Fallout 3. IMO, the ideal starting date would be between 2248 and 2252 due to the ideas I have for the factions that could be used in this game. I don’t have all the details for all the different factions, but I have 4 ideas for 4 major factions. Two new ones and two old ones that could fit the area.
RETURNING FACTIONS:
-The Brotherhood (Chicago Faction) So the Brotherhood of Chicago is an ill defined group that exists only in references. Fallout: Tactics set up a group known as the Midwest Brotherhood, however, Tactics is no longer recognized as a canon game since Bethesda acquired the Fallout series. According to Fallout 3 & 4 though, there is still a group of the Brotherhood that still exists in the Chicago area. Like Tactics, the Chicago group of the Brotherhood arrived in Chicago due to an airship crashing into the area. Beyond this, there isn’t much lore about the Chicago chapter so this is where I’d like to add my ideas. After the crash, feeling disconnected from the rest of the Brotherhood (and their dedicated supplies and supply lines), the Chicago chapter turns more towards the religious aspects of the Brotherhood. Having a lot of connections to the airship that decided their fate, as well as possibly being based out of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, the Chicago Brotherhood turns towards the sky. They begin a process of turning into an Aviation cult, a society that worships and encourages air travel. Like the old Brotherhood, they would hoard technologies, just more focused on air travel and air defenses. Over time, they begin to expand around the Great Lakes region, eventually coming to a manpower crisis. At this point, the Chicago chapter would either loosen it’s recruiting standards to allow in wastelanders who would join due to their acceptance of their new faith system, or the Chicago chapter would create a Spartan styled theocratic dictatorship with the airship survivors acting as foreign rulers over Chicagoans. Either or would have interesting story choices, but I can’t chose which I like more. Anyhow, the Chicago chapter eventually comes across tales of ‘Prophet Wright and Prophet Patterson,’ the founders of flight (and possibly the sky if the chapter is naive/delusional enough). The Chicago Brotherhood learns of a ‘Holy City’ where flight was birthed and worshiped at a ‘Holy Air Base.’ The Chapter would take it’s proudest forces and equipment to claim their perceived Holy Land, the city of Dayton, OH and Wright-Patterson Air Base. Upon arrival, the Chicago chapter realized that the city was already claimed by other forces. Believing that their God (or Gods) was on their side, the Chicago Brotherhood launched an attack for Dayton. Time would pass, and no gains were made by the Brotherhood, revealing a dirty truth that this chapter was not as dominant and guided by God(s) as they thought they were. They also had to accept that an enemy force with Wright-Patterson could challenge their tactical and spiritual hold on the sky. Upon tactical reevaluation, the Chicago chapter noticed that the enemy forces were sending extra soldier South of the battle. The chapter correctly guessed that their enemies were moving to encircle them and stop their Midwestern gains. In response, the Brotherhood would send it’s own forces South to try to counter-encircle the enemy. Both forces, evenly matched and evenly stretching their lines would finally hit the Ohio River. Both sides were stuck countering the influence of the other, eventually both would settle in to starve the other one out around Cincinnati. The Chicago Brotherhood had their work cut out for them, for they would be facing off against.....
-The Enclave After the events of Fallout 2, the Enclave would need to rebuild. Bases of theirs lying in ruins, groups deserting them, Enclave members being hunted down for justice, profit, and fun. The situation looked dire for most. That was until a Mr. John Henry Eden gave orders to regroup and rebuild in the Capitol wasteland. Most Enclave members saw the writing on the wall, and decided that the move East would be better than death. This is where I believe that a certain group of the Enclave would be moving east, eventually stumbling upon Dayton & Wright-Patterson. This group of the Enclave didn’t feel like moving on past this treasure trove would be a smart idea, so the group settled there. Now I was thinking that the leader of this Enclave chapter would eventually get all high and mighty, thus proclaiming that the Dayton Enclave was the true enclave, that their leader was the rightful President, and that Eden and his Capitol Wasteland Enclave was not legitimate. The Dayton Enclave President swore an oath of duty to reunite the Enclave under him, and to invade and conquer the Capitol for their own state. While the older and higher up ranks supported the grand plan, younger officers and cadets had an uneasy feeling over these plans. Some would even go as far to talk about open rebellion and, even possibly, a return to democratic institutions and rules. (I would love to see a quest line where you can influence the Enclave and chose between a status-quo Enclave or a democratic Enclave. However, just because a bad guy says that they’re good now, it does not mean that they will be seen by the people as a good guy now). All of this would have to wait though, as a new enemy has arrived on this Enclave chapter’s borders. In less than an hour after their arrival, the enemy began a siege on the Enclave’s Wright-Patterson base. The Enclave was caught completely off guard, as none of the higher ups believed that ‘No savages of this region could possibly learn how to fly and professionally fight.’ After the initial chaos, the Enclave was able to get their air force up and defending their positions. Amid the siege and dogfights, the Enclave would learn of the name of their ‘new’ enemy: The Brotherhood. The Enclave officers had been both right and wrong. The Brotherhood was not a savage of this region, as they had fought against them in California. They were still in this region though, and they were able to put up an actual fight. Realizing the direness of getting stuck in a constant siege, the Enclave came up with a plan to hopefully solve all their problems. If the Enclave forces could just encircle the Brotherhood forces, then they could possibly cut their supply lines while also conquering lands to keep the Brotherhood from moving any further into Ohio, as well as a start on the Dayton Enclave’s Eastern March to take DC. Their forces moved south, only for the Brotherhood to match their moves to the south. The Enclave tried again, only to meet the same results. This began a race south to try to get under the other army. Evenly they moved along, until both forces hit the Ohio River. While some war-hawks within the Enclave ranks wanted to move into Cincinnati to try to gain the upper hand, the Dayton Chapter President refused, wishing to focus on the Brotherhood and the eventual Eastern March. Unfortunately, the Enclave and the Brotherhood had moved their battlegrounds too close to Cincinnati, and soon, a new force would join the fight.....
NEW FACTIONS:
-The Republic of the Ohio Cincinnati was not spared from the horrors of nuclear hellfire. Being a city with a large amount of manufacturing, commerce, transportation, and nuclear refinement will tend to put you on list for enemy nuclear destruction. As such, Cincinnati has seen better days. It is not 2077 anymore though, and the city has learned to heal. Emerging from vaults long after Nuclear War, but long before the time of this game, a new generation of citizens of Cincinnati began the process of rebuilding. In the beginning, many factions arose, with no central authority. Chaos and violence ruled the scorched streets. Eventually, due to raiders and instability, multiple governing groups formed trade pacts and alliances. These districts would eventually merge due to the economic ties to create the city of Cincinnati once more. While not all districts complied willingly, Cincinnati would continue to grow through a combination of economic ties and small military missions. With trade being such a central idea to the culture of the city, Cincinnati began to work out deals with even more areas that weren’t even part of the Cincinnati Districts. Around this time, the wealth inequality within the city began to grow faster and faster. More individuals were gearing up to meet more locals to enact more trade, of which some profits would go to line the pockets of these traders. Soon, the very well off individuals were producing shipping vessels on the Ohio River. While this meant that Cincinnati could spread it’s wings further, it also meant that more and more land on the river was being gobbled by those who already owned the majority. Nevertheless, the city would continue to work with the ultra rich to expand. By this point, many districts were starting to look worse compared to how they were doing before the city united. Since the city had been set up loosely, it had become a confederation in principle. As such, many districts were on the cusp of declaring their freedom once more. To quell any chance of District independence, the then Mayor of Cincinnati declared the ‘Republic of the Ohio.’ On one side of things, the new government better reflected the new growth on the Ohio River by recognizing new lands as different territories instead of new additions to the city. On the other side, the Republic was formed as a new government level to force territories looking for freedom back into the greater system. While the Districts could still leave the city of Cincinnati, they would still be stuck inside the Republic of the Ohio. The Republic was based off of the government of the pre-war USA, in which succession was illegal and punishable. Not everyone listened, and soon, the poorer districts declared a counter-government to recognize the ‘forgotten man.’ The Republic did not tolerate this, and swept through the districts, taking out any opposition that could be found. It was after this point, very early on in the new republic, that the government tightened the rules until the Republic was only a republic in name. Yes, the freedoms of speech and religion and the right to vote would still exist. But if you did not worship and speak of the Republic in the ‘correct way,’ you might have just found yourself stuck in social shaming and potential revenge. And while you could vote, it mattered not as everyone knew who the ‘winners’ would be. As the Republic embraced a darker side, it began to feel the drawbacks of it’s actions. Social services and protections offered by the state declined more and more, as politicians were more focused on the pay and helping their families. It was very clear that the rich of the republic had it all, while the poor never recovered from the District disassembly and forced reintegration. The Elite cared little though, as the republic grew it’s trading operations further up and down the River. Life was good enough. Or so it seemed until the scouts of the Republic brought news one day. Advanced groups with flying weaponry were moving south, towards the Republic itself. The President of the Ohio makes the call to send all forces to defend the northern walls. Little did they know that they had weakened another front, and a force moving from the South East to meet that weakened border. Known only in the region as a rumor, they are.....
-The Kanawha Coalition Nuclear War came a little bit later for the land of West Virginia, but when it came, it left it’s mark. West Virginia was spared from the worse in 2077, leaving behind a land with great potential. While violence and death was nothing foreign to the WV Wastelanders, it was comparatively tame versus the surrounding states. Eventually, a vault filled with Dwellers opened up. These pioneers would bring about change to the region, leading to more factions showing interest in the region. The population boomed, and it looked as if the region could sustain a form of civilization. Then the bombs came again, and again, and again. The new people of WV were not all as valorous and good-hearted as it seemed they would be. West Virginia was home to a series of active nuclear missile silos. Taking advantage of the chaos that comes with societal formation, certain individuals made their way to these silo sites to bring about new nuclear devastation. So quickly was the flame of law, order, and civilization sniffed out by nuclear destruction. Many would die, possibly even more than the amount of West Virginians killed in the actual war. Many more would just up and leave the lands, hoping to find a better home outside of WV. What was left after the first round of deaths and departures was a network of abandoned communities and other forgotten homesteads. The structures left behind would decay and fall apart, bits flying away along the wind. The locals that stayed were also forced to increase their mineral stripping and scavenging to build better homes, able to stand up to the toxicity of the region. Most of these were in vain, however, as the other survivors of the region were usually the ones still launching the weapons. Many years would pass with this pattern still going the same, only the Earth around them changing. While WV had been polluted even before the war, the leftover junk combined with the constant nuclear war brought the region to a new low. But at it’s lowest, WV would find a solution. Slowly, the psychopathic souls who had fired the weapons became bored of tormenting the region. The nukes were becoming a thing of the past, now the region could focus on the other problems that plagued everyday life. Those issues that had been put to the side were finally in full view. And that view was of a homeland soured by nuclear fires and other pollutants. The people had enough of their rotting home, so they elected to meet and discuss a solution. The meeting brought together a handful of tribes that had somehow survived. Many attending the meeting were no longer human, as the radiation had ghoulified a vast amount of the populace. While most regions struggled with the ostracism of ghouls, many humans within West Virginia had either accepted them or had learnt to tolerate them enough to not cause too much damage. While some grudges still seep into social arrangements, the ghoul-human relations are comparatively better to most other societies. The tribes of ghouls and humans came together to unify, creating a coalition of the West Virginian tribes. The elders of each tribe created a council to organize and direct new objectives for the willing locals. It was decided that the tribes would forgo the technologies that brought about the conditions that they lived in. They would focus their efforts on peace and harmony with the lands that had been ruined, with the eventual goal of creating an ecologically sustainable homeland. In an effort to rebrand the region and connect with a people who focused on the Earth, the coalition would begin to refer to the lands of West Virginia as Kanawha. Consequently, the coalition would eventually come to be known as the Kanawha Coalition. Time would pass and Mother Earth would heal... somewhat. After a long period of partial success, the council would meet and make a drastic choice. No longer would they toil to make a broken land heal, a new, better land would be searched out. The tribes packed up and began a long march towards a new home. A rumored land of a city that continued to kill Mother Earth with no punishments. Now, it was time to punish the wrongdoers and take their lands triumphantly.
WHY SET IT BETWEEN 2248 AND 2252: The main reason I feel like this time period would work is due to the events between FO2&3. According to the DC Brotherhood in 3, the Chicago Brotherhood had gone silent by the time of their eastern journey. It also fits due to the Enclave moving East as well. As such, 2248-52 seems late enough for the Enclave to get out East, while being early enough for the Chicago Brotherhood to disappear by 54/55.
THANK YOU FOR READING THIS, I’M SORRY IF I MISTYPED ANYTHING OR SOMETHING DIDN’T MAKE SENSE.