Other lives than this one

Moonraker II: The Rise of Cobra

2009-08-11T16:08:00.004-04:00

Just got back from seeing the G.I. Joe movie. It was dumb, as expected, but it was enjoyable and not insulting like the Transformers movie. First the bad.

1) The acting: It was pretty bad. The actors are not helped by the script here. Much of the dialogue falls into the George Lucas level of "You can write it, but you can't say it". A lot of tired cliches.

2) It rips off Moonraker. Climax of Moonraker: Attack space station to prevent missile launch, chase down missiles that do get launched, and destroy them at the last second. Climax of G.I. Joe: Replace "space station" with undersea lair. There was even the big fight outside the undersea lair just like there was outside the space station in Moonraker.

3) It rips off Firefox: Change "Think in Russian" to "Speak in Celtic" when flying the plane

4) It rips off Star Wars Episode IV: There is a trench run. They shoot pursuers from a turret while escaping the enemy base.

5) It rips off Star Wars Episode VI: One team disables the cannon while the other team is in a dogfight getting slaughtered by the cannon. "Stick close to the enemy ships"

6) It rips off Star Wars Episode I: The ninja fight is almost exactly the lightsaber fight from the Phantom Menace; there is a double bladed katana and Ray Park is one of the ninjas. It rips off a whole bunch of other movies too. They were coming at me so fast during the climax that I should have written them down.

7) All Asian people are not the same: There are Japanese people and there are Korean people, they come from different countries. This is fairly minor compared to the movies of yore, at least they are from the same end of the continent. Sadly this is an improvement for Hollywood.

8) Not all buddhists monks are the same. There are different types of buddhist and they are not all found doing kung fu in Tokyo in large numbers. This is a really minor quibble but worth mentioning since I saw it with a Buddhist.

9) How many homeless white kids are there in Tokyo? How many of them are martial arts experts?

10) Their CGI eyes were bigger than their budget stomaches, and it shows.

11) The usual conservation of mass, momentum, and energy problems that are in every movie show up in this movie. Guns that send people flying but don't have equal recoil; fast moving underground drills. There are so many cool things that can be done that are possible, why always do clearly fake stuff? Hollywood, get people who have degrees that are not BAs to check your scripts. It is really easy to do.

12) It is essentially a Thunderball - Moonraker era James Bond film. With everything that entails, good and bad.

13) The usual hack agency that doesn't exist macho crap. How about showing guys working inside the system to defeat terrorists? We actually have a pretty good track record on this, we have intercepted far more through police work than have succeeded in pulling off their attacks.

14) There are hologram projectors everywhere..... everywhere

The good:

1) It is essentially a Thunderball - Moonraker era James Bond film. With everything that entails, good and bad.

2) The bad guys are nano-enhanced and almost invincible. The good guys rely on training, hard work, smarts, and a little bit of natural aptitude to overcome this. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things through hard work. I can get behind that. There are no special, mutant demigods here.

3) The bad guys find democracy to be chaotic, with too many levels of power division to be effective. The good guys support democracy, and for the most part work within the system to win. They do choose to misinterpret one order on purpose to accomplish their goal, but frankly interpretation is part of democracy. When the good guys step outside the bounds of society they get arrested. One isn't even allowed to return to his home country again. There are consequences for their actions.

4) The good guys screw up. They don't get falsely blamed for screwing up, they actually blow it. This made the movie seem more real to me.

5) The characters came from somewhere. There are a bunch of Lost style flashbacks. They come from a cliched place that you can see coming a mile away, but they do come from somewhere. This is a plus in modern blockbusters. Actual it played out pretty neat. It was too predictable though. Go for broke on this in the sequel.

6) There are very few racial stereotypes in this movie. People from different countries and of different colors are every bit as skilled as white Americans. This almost never happens in movies. There was the usual Hollywood, all Asians are the same crap, but at least it didn't Chun Li on us. It was certainly no Transformers: The Revenge of David Duke.

7) It was well paced. It was much better paced than Transformers or Wolverine.

8) They picked the right amount of characters. There was actual meat here. It was McDonalds but it was there.

9) It actually had something to do with the license. This is a pretty low priority for me. I prefer a good movie to one that is accurate to the source material. Here we got a decent accurate one. But when you make something that has nothing to do with the license, and is worse than it, like Transformers, it really sticks out.

10) The suits were used sparingly

11) Wayons was used correctly. This could have been a disaster (D&D). He was at worst groan inducing and often, funny.

12) My favorite Doctor

13) The finale is stitched together bits of a bunch of other movies, as mentioned above, but they picked good stuff to rip off. I would have preferred an original climax, but at least they picked some of the best moments in action movie history to rip off. Some of them, like the Moonraker parts, actually work better in this movie. Moonraker was terrible.

All in all I think they did a passable job here. They chose to go with something that was fairly accurate to source material that is pretty hard to work with. The movie was fun. It was dumb fun, and you have seen all of it before, but it was fun. It has actually been a long time since the last cool Raid on the Secret Base ending. It is executed well here.

In my ranking of dippy action movies I put this well above Missing in Action, above almost all of the Moore era Bonds and slightly ahead of Independence Day. I would say it is right at the level of the later Connery Bonds (Not "Never Say Never"!) which it is obviously trying to emulate. In a way the climax of this movie is kind of James Bond base raids greatest hits. Thunderball is not bad company to be in.

I hope they stick to the format for the next one. Oddly, no one else is doing this anymore so it has a niche. Hopefully they will come up with their own stuff though. I've seen it before, and I'll see it again for the sequel.

C+

What the heck is happening in this RPG picture? The Legend of Weathertop

2009-07-02T14:15:00.003-04:00

This is it, the first RPG product I ever encountered. I bought it at the school book fair. This was a gamebook, one of those books that combined dice rolling with Choose Your Own Adventure style numbered entries. If I remember correctly it was a hex crawl followed by a dungeon crawl. You had to find the entrance to a cave and find the scepter at the bottom. I remember playing it until it literally fell apart. At the time Dungeons and Dragons was not allowed in my house so my friend Corey and I took the rules from gamebooks and made up our own adventures for them. This series of books was especially interesting because while it had its own rule system it also had stats compatible with ICE's MERP. We had never heard of MERP andhad no idea where to find it. In fact I would not encounter a rulebook for it until I went to the Orc's Nest in London several years later.

Even though we never played it MERP would be the wedge that opened up D&D for us. We did find some sourcebooks for MERP in bookstores. These detailed different locations in Middle Earth. Tolkien was very much encouraged by my mom, and we eventually wore her down because some of this books had stats to make them compatible with D&D. Obviously D&D could not be evil, it went along with Tolkien.

Looking back it is funny that gamebooks are pretty much gone. I actually went looking for some for my nephew the other day and they don't seem to carry anything like them in the stores. Back then they were actually a better approximation of RPGs than the computer RPGs. In fact many of the computer games used a similar numbered entry system. Although I am sure that this was for copy protection and memory management reasons.

So that is what was going on when I encuntered the picture. What do you think is going on IN the picture? I'll post mine later, I want to hear yours. I have been looking at this thing for 24 years, I have had a lot of time to come up with stuff.

D&D and Anime

2009-07-02T13:18:00.001-04:00

One of the most common arguments I have seen against 4th Edition D&D is that it has abandoned “pulp style” for “anime style”. Usually this charge is leveled by members of the “old school” community that seem to feel that only books listed in Appendix N can ever influence D&D. I find this charge to be ridiculous. Anime is the modern day pulp. This is quite literally true in the printed form of the style, manga.

Manga tend to be printed on cheap paper in digest sized books. Manga stories are a goofy mish mash of styles with little to no regard for scientific or historical accuracy. This was at the very heart of most pulp adventures in the early part of the last century. Manga stories, especially the fantasy ones, are often violent and tinged with sexuality. Violence tinged with sexuality is the very basis for Conan and his mighty thews. Many people express a love for the baroque, florid writing style of the pulps (time has worn away all the crappy, hack jobs). The best of manga has fantastic, expressive art. Manga, like pulp before it, is the low budget, accessible fantasy of its day. Anime is similar to the old sword and sorcery films in the same way.

Manga is the pulp of today. Having D&D inspired by manga and anime is not some grand betrayal, it is a proud tradition. This is the fantasy of today's high school kids. You cannot expect them to be constrained by seventy to one hundred year old “literary” conventions. Many of those stories have been out of print, or at least not very accessible, for years. Kids today don't know about them. In fact it would be hard for them to know about them. Why should they? They were the low budget escapism of another era, not Charles Dickens.

It is important for D&D to be grounded in the fantasy of the time. In the 1970s it was the pulp adventures dating back to the 30s. During the late '80s and through the '90s it was vast fantasy epics. These were in many ways inspired by the D&D campaigns their creators had grown up with. If fact I would go as far as to say that by the time TSR fell D&D was in danger of sinking into a closed, creativity feedback loop. Fantasy was based on the D&D model which was based on the fantasy it was based on. The introduction of the manga and anime styles is a much needed breath of fresh air.

Kids today are doing exactly what you did. They are living out adventures in a fantasy world inspired by the media they consume. And they seem to be having a good time doing it. D&D is a tool, not a religion.

Word Game: Angry and Sharp

2009-07-02T12:56:00.001-04:00

Angry will not be put in the same category as “apple”. Starting with the same letter is not enough to qualify a word for the same category. The qualification must be based on a variety of factors including the part of speech and the composition of the word as noted in Joe's argument. However, whether a word fits in a category will not be decided by a mechanical scoring process where pros must outnumber cons. The number of pros and cons can be persuasive though.

The next word is “Sharp”. Should "sharp" be in the same category as "apple"?

Battlefield Heroes

2009-06-26T01:15:00.003-04:00

So I decided to try out Battlefield Heroes. Usually these kinds of games are not up my alley but a few friends were trying it out so I gave it a shot. The opening video is amusing and I like the graphics style. I make a character and run through the tutorial. I have played BF: 1942, BF: VN and Warhawk so there is nothing new here. If anything the plane controls better.

After the tutorial I hit Play Now ready for battle. It can't find a server that fits my preferences and skill level. OK, I go to options and make sure my preferences are not restrictive. I can only find one preference and choose Both. I try to play again, same result. I keep trying for about half an hour before I go to the forums. Turns out that different characters might have a better chance of getting in. I make a character on the Nazi side and still can't get in. What makes all of this more annoying is that you have to keep hitting Play Now, there is no waiting list. Finally after an hour and fifteen minutes I get into a game. Turns out everyone can kill me in one shot, the reverse is not true. This is the level matching that took over an hour? I don't get time to experiment much because I get kicked off the server by something called Punkbuster(22).

I go to the forums and search for Punkbuster(22), there is an endless list of threads with titles like "Punkbuster kicked me off". It is evidently some kind of anti-cheating system. Their clever anti-cheating system caught me not being able to one-shot everyone and took care of it. Obviously, I was up to no good.

There is some kind of suggestion about emailing a different company and.... screw it. You made it clear, I am not wanted here.

Battlefield Heroes = FAIL

Surfing with the Alien: 6/25/09

2009-06-25T14:04:00.001-04:00

Came across this today at Game Set Watch, a steampunk PS3.

There is an interesting post over on Kill Ten Rats comparing the MMO grind to rats running in a maze. The author points out that MMO devs do everything possible to make us spend as much time in the maze as possible. They want us to enjoy the maze, we only want the cheese at the end. There are suggestions about putting more puzzles in the maze to make it better. My suggestion would be to get rid of the cheese. I play MMOs to explore the world, talk to people and have cool adventures with them. My fondest memories are from dangerous forays into EQ or FFXI where the only goal was to see the next zone. I am constantly frustrated by the fact that I have to collect a bunch of cheese to go to a new place. Eventually I get tired of cheese and quit. Get rid of the cheese! If you want people to explore, make it interesting to explore and have plenty of cool social things for them to do.

Disturbing news from EA. There has been a “restructuring” involving Mythic and BioWare. It is not clear exactly what has happened but EA has a long history of buying good gaming companies and destroying them. I am thinking specifically of Bullfrog and Westwood here, and many more.

Jeff's Gameblog outlines something shockingly close to my brainstorming process for a new campaign. Although I prefer a more complex rule set like GURPS because it is easier to convert real world units into play mechanics. Also I like the normal distribution of die rolls so that my players decisions carry more weight than luck.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (spoilers)

2009-06-25T01:27:00.002-04:00

I just got back from the new Transformers movie and I don't have a lot of good things to say about it.

First, the movie is way too long. I wouldn't mind, except that it is all filler. There are so many weapon porn shots of U.S. military hardware getting ready to go to battle that it feels like an Air Force commercial. The problem is, in almost every case these weapons are only there to get blown up. So there is a lot of time spent on planes, tanks, and troops that won't be able to really hurt the bad guys. This was wasted time, it adds a lot of time to the movie too.

My second problem is directly related to the first. For the most part the humans are useless. Even when they do manage to call in an airstrike or barrage on the enemies that is effective, another enemy just picks up where they left off and they aren't able to stop that one. At most the humans are a delaying force. Even more distressing is that the more human the human force the less effective it is. Ground troops exist only to call in men inside machines (granted this is the way many modern conflicts are fought, but realism clearly has no place in this movie). The more machine-like the force the better it is. This was not as true in the first movie where humans, even armed only with a tow truck could contribute in a meaningful way. The main character exists only to activate elite fighting machines so they can save the day. In fact, it evidently is his destiny to activate elites (according to a bunch of dead ghost elites). He is kind of a human Bat-signal or something. Other than that he runs away.

My third problem follows the second, I hate elites, destiny, and prophecies (warning: long pet rant ahead). Every day billions of people get up, go to work, and make civilization exist. Ordinary people have solved every single problem solved in human history. Human courage and ingenuity is remarkable. Humans working in groups are even more remarkable. Humans working in large groups are almost unstoppable. Regular humans, working hard, and working together walked on the moon. They did this when your cell phone probably had more computational power than they had access to. There were no super humans in the invasion of Normandy. No demi-gods carved out our interstate highway system. Aliens did not build the pyramids, god kings did not erect the Great Wall of China. Why can't humans do these things in sci fi and fantasy?

This obsession with elites swooping down and saving us poor defenseless humans bothers me. Why do our escapist fantasies revolve around the idea that we don't have to do any of the work? It wasn't always this way. Conan was a normal human and he laid the smackdown on many a minor god, wizard, and thing that should not be. Even in Lord of the Rings, which has many problems with elites, the true heroes are average people (well hobbits). Frodo and Co. had no special powers, they take the skills and teamwork they have learned and kick the evil wizard out of town when they get home. Captain Kirk was a regular man, one with some obvious character flaws.

Now every science fiction or fantasy movie focuses on some kind of superhuman. Mutants, superheroes, and Jedi are not like Olympic athletes. They did not gain their power by having slightly more talent in an area and exploiting it with years of hard work. They are born/made SPECIAL. You cannot attain their power through work and ingenuity.

Throw in destiny/prophecy and pretty much nobody has to do anything. “Don't worry about it, a few of us get used for cannon fodder till Superman wakes up and everything will be OK. Some old guys told me it would happen”

Then we have the stupid stereotypes, and this movie is chock full of them. The robots represent a host of racial, ethnic, and even mental handicap stereotypes. Let's just say that there is no excuse for the two mini cars in 2009. The fact that they only mentally challenged Autobots were the environmentally friendly cars says enough on its own. Not only do most of the robots fill a stereotype that doesn't even make sense for a robot, they have no characterization beyond the stereotype. When Optimus Prime dies I am sure I was supposed to feel sad, but why should I? Because I had a toy of him when I was eight? This movie game me no reason to, I don't even know anything about him.

And it is not just their personalities that are cookie cutter. I understand why they went from the classic look to the more “realistic” look for the robots. The problem is, they all look the same when there are explosions and shaky-cam. And there is always explosions and shaky-cam. The fights hardly make sense because of the way they are filmed. Rapid cuts, smoke and a shaking camera make the action very hard to figure out. Sometimes I didn't even know if something good or bad had happened.

Speaking of not making any sense, here is the plan. We need to do is take out this robots in as small an area and with as little collateral damage as possible. What we are going to do is first send in our weakest units and let them get shot up for a while. Then we will send in some stronger units who will not be able to contain the situation and will engage in a city destroying chase. Finally we will airdrop the guy who can squash them like bugs. This is the first scene of the movie. It doesn't get any better. Marines run across a whole desert in 15 seconds.

Then we get to Megan Fox. Now, there is no denying that Megan is an attractive young woman. While she is hardly a great actress, she is a better actress than she gets credit for. In the first movie she is by far the strongest human character. In this one she is the only one who can take on a robot one-on-one and win. Not just win, but capture it for later use. You know, a human doing something smart. The problem is, she is useless in the second half of the movie. She just gets led by the hand by a man character as she runs for safety. When push comes to shove and someone has to dump the magic dust in Robo-Elite to wake him up, her boyfriend gets blown up. I was hoping she would grab the sock of dust and get it to Optimus herself. That would have been consistent with her tow truck driving character from the first movie, or working to get her deadbeat dad back on his feet. But no, she wakes up her useless man-child with her love so he can save the day. Actually he doesn't save the day, he just turns on the steel messiah to do the work for him.

Of course she isn't totally useless, this is where we get to her tits. Every shot in the last part of the movie is either gun porn, an explosion, or Ms. Fox's boobs bouncing, sweaty, in slow motion in a halter top. They have gutted her fairly strong character from the first movie. If I was her, I would be pissed. And why is it that in order for a woman to be physically tough she also has to be some kind of hoodlum? This is clearly not true in real life.

Another stereotype that bothers me is a political one. In the last movie when GWB was president the Sec. Def. was a kickass guy. Now that Obama is president (and they call him out by name) the Sec. Def is a weenie who is against the military, and the president runs and hides. Seriously, these Republican = gun toting, flag waving badass, Democrat = peace loving, sell out, wimp stereotypes are so old at this point. They in no way reflect the diversity, dedication, and intelligence present in both of our political parties.

Science fiction and fantasy should be about expanding the realm of what humans can do. They have become about limiting what humans can do and basing the problem on those limitations. We are no longer challenged to explore the unknown, or to buckle down and work to overcome adversity in clever ways. We are taught to hope that someone BETTER than us will come along and save the day. I love sci fi, and I love fantasy. While TV has gotten better with these genres, movies have gotten worse. Hollywood, please go read some actual sci fi like Left Hand of Darkness or Allen Steele's Coyote and make a movie that challenges us.

This movie was insulting to me as an American and a person. It applies stereotypes to me (a human), our armed forces (unable to come up with a good plan to fight robots), my countrymen (numerous ethnic and stupid American abroad stereotypes), and humans as a whole (we need to be saved). It also spent a lot of time insulting me, time that it could have shaved by leaving out all the gun porn and well.... actual porn. Wow, looks like I didn't have anything good to say about it.

Word Game

2009-06-24T17:27:00.000-04:00

Question: There is a category of words, we will call it Category #1. Right now Category #1 contains only one word: Apple. Should “Angry” be in the same category as “Apple”?

How it works: Write a short response telling me if you think “Angry” should be allowed in Category #1 after a few days I will make a decision based on the responses and either admit it into the category or not. I will give my reasons for allowing it or not allowing it. You can draw your arguments from anywhere: the structure of the word, the type of word, usage, definition, number of letters, language it came from, famous appearances, anything. But, anything you present as fact you need to provide a link for.

When I make my decision I will also put forward another word, you can then make arguments about that word using all the same sources and my reason for allowing or not allowing any other words we have covered, The longer we play, the more words we will have covered, and the more complicated and interesting the game will get.

Another Life #2

2009-06-23T23:38:00.000-04:00

I decided to roll up a Labyrinth Lord character for today. Labyrinth Lord is a D&D Basic/Expert clone, and as someone who came into RPGs with D&D Basic I think it is very well done. I rolled the character the only way a read D&D Basic player does 3d6 straight down the line.

Str:13
Dex: 9
Con: 15
Int: 15
Wis: 17
Cha: 10

Wow, can't ask for much better rolls than that. Why can't I roll those stats when it counts for something? I decide to go with cleric because it turns out in LL they get a spell at first level (awesome!) and my Wis qualifies me for +10% XP. Let's face it, the less monsters you have to face before you get to level 4 the better. Time to roll HP. One. Crap. Well my Con bonus gets me one extra, so I have 2.

HP: 2

Wow, why couldn't one of those good rolls have been for Dex? This isn't actually as bad as it seems. Let's face it, almost everyone has a good chance at getting one-shotted at level one anyway. Two or three more HP would have been nice, but I still would have always been in danger. I just need to make sure I am as hard to hit as possible.

3d6x10 = 70 gp

Gah! So much for loading up on armor. Looks like studded leather and a shield. Throw in a mace, a holy symbol and the usual adventurer's assortment of backpacks, torches, iron spikes etc.

I'll take lawful as an alignment. Traditionally I did not name or make back story for Basic D&D characters until at least level 2. They are just too fragile. This one especially. Your 2 hp and AC of 5 mean that you will be waiting at least 1565 XP before we know more about you.

Since I am by myself I think that memorizing Cure Light Wounds would be overly optimistic. The chances of me ever getting to cast it are very small. Protection From Evil seems like a much better choice. It will make my saves and AC better.

Another Life #1: Cpt. Duke Gerald Hamilton

2009-06-23T02:04:00.002-04:00

Classic Traveller
Duke Cpt. Gerald Hamilton, Navy Deceased

Personal ID Number: 645F8F

Born to a wealthy noble family on heavy world Yu-Shar, Gerald always knew he would follow the family tradition of the eldest male serving in the Navy. Straight out of school he accepted a commission and trained for the medical corps. He also rated well with the auto pistol.

During his second term he joined the Search and Rescue division where he piloted a small ship to rescue and care for Navy personal who were forced to abandon ship. He distinguished himself in several harrowing battles against pirates and was promoted to lieutenant. He was asked to join the Navy fencing team.

During his third term his work on a computer program that made coordinating rescue operations easier got him a promotion to Lt. Commander.

His fourth term saw him promoted to Commander after plotting a tricky course through an asteroid field. His squad of ships arrived at the scene of the battle to commence rescue operations even though others thought them cut off. They made over a hundred sorties through the asteroid field, day and night. Often he got back to the MedStar and switched ships so that he would not loose time due to servicing. Thousands were saved. He was presented with the Silver Sword of Valor and tasked with designing a new generation of rescue carrier.

In his fifth term Hamilton served as chief engineer for the new class of rescue carrier. During this time age began to take its toll and he was told he would have to retire at the end of the term due to his declining health. He was promoted to Captain and allowed to take the new ship out for its short maiden tour. The launching ceremony was grand, he was raised to Duke and given a lifetime membership by the Traveller's Aid Society. Two days out of dock the Excelsior received a distress call from a 600 liner that was on fire. Cpt. Hamilton personally went aboard to supervise the evacuation. With 80% of the passengers evacuated the fire reached the compressed oxygen tanks and the liner was vaporized in under a second. Cpt. Hamilton was lost with the ship. Thanks to the new design the Excelsior was able to survive the blast.

Surfing with the Alien: 6/22/09 Bargle

2009-06-23T01:34:00.000-04:00

This thread on Pen and Paper Games got me thinking about my most hated RPG villains. I am hardly ever the player. This has pretty much been true throughout my entire gaming career. Whatever group I am in, I am probably the GM. My limited experience as a player doesn't leave me with a large rogue's gallery to pull from. In fact the only villain that really sticks out was an evil magic user that gut shotted my cleric with a magic missile and ran off. I pursued him back to his run down castle lair but I was paralyzed and, presumably, eaten by a carrion crawler. The elf in the party ran away.

After the cowardly, pointy eared archer returned to town he recruited new companions. After a brief discussion in the bar they decided never to go near that place again. In my new form, a dwarf, I would spend the next few months aiding the Duchy in securing its wild interior. I was offered a free trip to a tropical island and was told I could take a few of my friends along. It turned out to be a wild, feral place and all of my friends were eaten. When I returned to the Duchy I found out that my foe had resurfaced, Bargle was back!

Bargle had gone to work with the Black Eagle Barony, Duke Stephan's number one enemy. I sprang into action at once. Bargle must pay! I developed a clever plan. My new companions and I would sneak into Bargle's tower strong arm our way through the guards and dismember him for what he did to my previous character's solo adventure cleric. Sadly the plan was not clever, nor were we sneaky, nor were our arms so strong; in fact, we were the ones who were dismembered. We were captured, taken to the dungeon and Bargle personally sliced us to bits. I was not going to let a little thing like this stop me.

Enter the champion Granger, his warrior friend Viper, his spell slinging elf companion Firebird, the weird albino lizard dude Jocelyn that came from nowhere, and their faithful, and slightly tipsy cleric, Father Thaddius. A group forged to hunt Bargle. A team birth from the primordial soup of Bargle must die! Never before had any.... Is that a copy of second edition? Wait, I can play a ranger instead of just putting the letter G in front of the word “ranger” and making that my name. This is as rockin' as Appetite for Destruction!

I lost track of Bargle. I didn't see him in the Forgotten Realms, everybody was just a drow there anywhere. He never attacked us as we plied the space lanes with our crew of kender fighter pilots and bad ass hippo space marines. He never threw his hat into the ring during the War of the Lance. Dark Sun was not really the kind of place a yellow belly like that would hang out. When we passed through Mystara again there was a whole big world to explore, and frankly, I forgot to look for him. Things got a little weird after that, we went on a long strange trip. By the time we got back from Sigil we found that everything had changed, nothing was the same anymore, we could visit all the old worlds again in a whole new way.

So Bargle faded from memory. Oh sure there were rumors. He had burned and filleted a whole county of halflings. He was caught in a torrid affair with Warduke from the cartoon show. He had written Skills and Powers, and other evil things like that. But there was nothing concrete, and eventually I stopped thinking about him. And then, as the lights were going off on an era I saw his name again. There it was, Dungeon 150, the reason I had started down this path in the first place, Kill Bargle!

So at GenCon this year we are going to string the bastard up and chop him into little bits. I am not sure what form this adventure will take yet, it won't be the Dungeon module but I may draw from it. By rights it should be run with the Mentzer/Rules Cyclopedia rules, but those are out of print and the .pdfs I bought for the box sets won't print right. I will either use Labyrinth Lord or Savage Worlds to run the game. LL is really close rules wise, and Savage Worlds is just plain fun to play. Either way Bargle will die this August.
I didn't really do much net-surfing today. I was busy studying and I went to the gym. I also walked from the Collingswood PATCO station all the way to the game shop Natural 20 in Westmont. Turns out it isn't open on Mondays. Woops. I did get a bit of work done on the alien races for GURPS Traveller.

Not much else to report. I miss Mythos.

Dungeons and Thermo Part 1

2009-06-23T00:39:00.000-04:00

The fighter strains as he jams the iron pry bar between the seams of the heavy stone door. Veins stand out on his arms, his neck bulges, slowly the giant door opens. A chill wind escapes into the desert night and whips the rogue's feathered hair. The Great Byxarg's final resting place is open to plunder at last. The cleric hands the fighter the torch and he leads the way into the tomb. Somewhere in the darkness there is a low growl. “What do you think it is?” whispers the....

“Think it is! I don't care what it is, what the hell has it been eating for the last 2,000 years?”
“Well I am sure it snacks on animals passing through and....”

“Passing through! We just opened a door and cold air blew out! This place has to be sealed up tight as a drum. There was a positive pressure differential and the air inside was colder!”

“I think he snacks on moss....”

Now, I love a good kick in the door and loot as much as the next guy. And when the adventure starts at the front door and ends at the exit, there is good reason to let a lot of the whys slide. But a lot of the time you are going to want to make sure that your dungeon makes some kind of sense on a conservation of mass and energy level. Also, doing the extra leg work and developing some kind of ecology can make your dungeons more interesting and maybe even allow for emergent situations that can make the whole session a lot cooler.

Living things need energy and they need access to the basic building blocks of their body. Without energy they cannot move, breathe, think etc. Without the basic building blocks of life they cannot grow or heal. We are going to look at energy first. There are many ways that energy can be extracted from the environment for use by living things. On Earth photosynthesis rules supreme. Other sources of energy can be chemical reactions, nuclear reactions, heat, electricity etc. But on Earth most of the energy used by living things enters the system through photosynthesis.

Photosynthesis (simplified) is converting energy from light into a form usable by living things. It is not especially surface area efficient. Energy is measured in calories, a human being needs around 2,000 calories a day to function. In order to extract that much energy from the sun's rays a human would need to have several hundred square feet of photosynthetic surface area. This is why life that gets its energy through photosynthesis tends not to move around a whole heck of a lot (except in Middle Earth). Moving around burns energy, a lot of energy, trees tend not to jog.

So on Earth (as we know it) energy tends to enter the eco-system through mostly stationary life. In our case plants. Of course most dungeons are underground, this is a problem for the whole photosynthesis thing.

For the purposes of this discussion I am going to divide dungeons into three groups: those that see regular traffic from the outside world, those that rarely see traffic from the outside world, and those that are sealed off from the outside world. The last will be the toughest, and the most interesting. We are going to look at possible energy sources in your dungeon, life that can extract that energy, and how that energy moves its way up the food chain to the types of critters we like to kill.

More Stuff

2009-06-20T22:47:00.006-04:00

So, inspired by perusing old school gaming blogs I pulled out my Classic Traveller books and rolled up some characters. No idea what I will do with them, probably nothing, but it was fun. I might make a ship for them and a couple of star systems.

Speaking of Traveller, I need to polish up my GURPS Traveller adventures before I head back to SC for my group there. They will be playing the crew of the first FTL exploration of the near Sol systems. Actually they won't be playing the crew. Each player will represent one of the special interest groups that helped pay for the mission. They will have to influence the captain to deal with each planet/system/alien they encounter in a way that is beneficial to their group. These guys like to argue.

I got started on the Angel DVDs and practicing guitar again (I am horribly out of shape there).

I read through the Savage Worlds Necessary Evil book. It is an interesting concept, and I appreciate the low level of detail they give with their plot points. The ending is far too heavy handed and forced. If I run it I will not be using the first plot point or the last two or three. There is no group I play with that would not string me up for that level of railroading. I skipped the plot point stuff in the other Savage World products I own. I may have to go back and take a look now at Solomon Kane and Slipstream.

Looking at the days ahead I have a bunch of reading to do about patents. I want to work my way through this New World of Darkness stuff and Hunter: The Vigil. I need to get my games for GenCon ready. I have a bunch of books to read. Finally, I am itching to crack open those Basic D&D boxes and do something with them. I could have a hard time finding an outlet for that though.

Some Free Time Again

2009-06-20T21:51:00.008-04:00

Finally have some free time again. The school year is over, exams are over, the journal competition is over, and I am settled in to my study habit for the patent bar.

The first thing I did was... nothing at all. I spent all my free time for two weeks just laying around watching all 7 seasons of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer on DVD. I was that drained of ambition.

Next I started reading. I started with Gary Gygax's The Anubus Murders republished through the Planet Stories line. This takes place in Gygax's Hyboreanesque world that I think may have been attached to his Lejendary Adventures game. I call the world Hyboreanesque because it contains a similar mishmash of real world cultural analogs from different time periods all existing in the same world at the same time. It is a world designed for fun not for realism. I have no problem with this. The book itself is frankly subpar. Novel writing was not Gary's strong point and he is far from Howard when it comes to writing sword and sorcery stories. But it is still fun.

Next I moved on to the second book in the Planet Stories line, City of the Beast by Michael Moorcock. While this is better than the Gygax book it is still a by the numbers John Carter of Mars rip off. But, this kind of thing is what Planet Stories exists for and it is a fun read for the 2 hours or so it takes to get through it.

Next I started The Black God's Kiss by C.L. Moore, also in the Planet Stories line. I am two stories into it and her writing style gives me a headache. There are whole pages with hardly any verbs and due to the fact that the hero is always going to hell by herself there is almost no dialogue. There is way too much description, and way too little action for a sword and sorcery style book.

I started working my way through all the blogs have not been keeping up with. I am not going to be able to read all the entries I have missed since last August but I can at least go back a few weeks in the commonly updated ones. I am glad to see that West Karana is still going. Reading back a few weeks Tipa has me excited about Aion and Free Realms even though the last thing I can do right now is go anywhere near an MMO. OK, so I downloaded Free Realms.

I also discovered Grognardia, and I really enjoy it. This surprises me, I have very little use for the stuck up OD&D movement as a whole. It is full of old bitter men who want everything to be the same as it was in 1975. They throw hissy fits if you use the word evolution with respect to gaming, troll forums about 4th edition (a game most of them have never played), and make gross generalizations about generations of gamers that have come after their's (just like I am doing to them right now).

The funny thing is, I enjoy that old school style of play. I am too young to be nostalgic for the Moldvay/Cook rules but I am just the right age to have come up through the Mentzer box sets (which I am sure they will tell you ruined the hobby given the chance). I appreciate a rules light game that leaves a lot up to the DM, almost always run sandbox games, and rarely use published campaign settings. When I do use published settings they are a suggestion only, the associated canon is meaningless to me. That said, I also enjoy the stuff that has come after. I also recognize that gaming has to evolve and come up with new things or it will no longer be commercially viable. Plus, I am an explorer, I like to try new things.

Despite that, I really enjoy Grognardia. First, it is a well written blog. He is aware of the prejudices of the old school gaming movement and tends to state them clearly so that his posts are not just rants about "whippersnappers ruining the lawn". Second, he spends most of his time discussing useful and/or interesting information for GMs. The good thing about gaming is that while old school gamers may be unwilling (or unable) to use the newer innovations, good ideas from the old school front are useful for newer styles of gaming. And he presents a lot of good ideas. The signal to noise ration is very high on the blog. A lot of good information, a little bit of ultra conservative, fundementalist, jihad ranting. In fact I liked the blog so much that bought his sci fi RPG, Thousand Suns. I have only made a quick pass through it but it looks right up my alley.

One of the reasons I was so tough on the old school movement (it was a little over the top) was so that this next statement would carry the proper weight. I think that James Maliszewski writes the most thought provoking, entertaining, and intelligent table top gaming blog on the internet. I don't always agree with him but I always leave thinking about the subject in a new way. Gaming is lucky to have him.

JRPGs

2009-02-27T02:53:00.004-05:00

There are different views on which game was the first JRPG. Some will tell you that it was The Black Onyx, but that was developed by a Dutch guy living in Japan at the time. Others will tell you that Falcom's (makers of Ys) Dragon Slayer series started it all. One thing that is for certain is that for the average JRPG player it almost certainly started with Dragon Quest. One thing all of these games had in common was their desire to copy either Wizardry or Ultima. Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior here) is very, very similar to Ultima but more linear. Phantasie Star is even more similar to Ultima, even copying the 3D view dungeons and the sci fi elements. The JRPG owes a lot to Wizardry and Ultima, even though they have largely shunned the non-linear elements from the Ultima series JRPGs are still presented in a very similar style even today.

Two systems stand out as high water marks for the JRPG in America, the SNES and the PS2. Final Fantasy II and III (IV and VI) opened the floodgates here for the JRPG. The PS2 hosted an unbelievable amount of RPG games, in fact they still are being released for the system two years into the next gen cycle. The PS2 hosted some new takes on the genre like the MMO inspired Final Fantasy XII, some old school style greatness like Dragon Quest VIII, and some just plain fun takes on the genre like Rogue Galaxy.

It is the current generation cycle that concerns me. The JRPG is not doing well on the anchor consoles. The PS3 is basically devoid of any worth mentioning, the XBOX only fairs a little bit better with Blue Dragon and Star Ocean (neither got rave reviews), and the Wii is practically RPG free. In fact the ega Genesis compilation probably has as many RPGs in it as you can get outside of the compilation on the XBOX or PS3. To be fair the 32 bit generation suffered from crap (Beyond the Beyond) to decent (Wild Arms) RPGs until the release of Final Fantasy 7. Final Fantasy 7 may not have aged well but it was good at the time and the RPGs that followed were significantly better than those that came before. We have not seen the release of a Final Fantasy yet this generation which could be part of the hold up for good JRPGs. It is possible that the other companies are holding out to see what direction Square goes in, where Square goes the American audience for JRPGs follows, and let's face it none of the consoles are setting the world on fire in Japan.

Well none of the next gen consoles are anyway. The handhelds are a different story. Both the PSP and the DS have a healthy amount of JRPGs. In fact you could say that the DS is the current home of the JRPG. However many of these are retro in style if not actually retro in fact. Just in the last few months the DS has seen the release of Dragon Quest IV and Dragon Quest V. Dragon Quest VI is coming soon. A Ys compilation released this week. Retro Game Challenge has a Dragon Quest II inspired game in its collection.

This has been steady throughout the life of the DS, and the retro fever goes even further back than Dragon Quest. It goes all the way to Wizardry and even a step further. The two Etrian Odyssey games are Wizardry/Might and Magic/Bard's Tale clones. The Dark Spire and Class of Heroes are on their way and are both Wizardry type games. But in a step even further back on the RPG evolutionary change the DS is crammed with roguelikes. There are the Unemployed Ninja games, the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, the Chocobo Dungeon games and even a re-release of Shiren the Wanderer. All of these games are enjoyable. I love roguelikes so I am not complaining, and I have been lapping up the Wizardry clones. The Etrian Odyssey mapping system is great. I am also looking forward to the old school Dragon Quest style 7th Dragon that is on the way.

But old school love aside, I am a bit concerned, there isn't a lot of forward motion here. There have been some hints. The Japanese seem to be embracing a new type of RPG with some mixed results. They have started to mix RTS with RPG. So far we have seen a Mana game (not good), FFXII Revenant Wings (OK) and Blue Dragon Plus come out in this style. On the PSP Final Fantasy Crisis Core and Dissidia seem to show some willingness to expand the format. But the fact is that no one has brought out the big guns yet, these have all been spin off games.

Are the makers of JRPGs struggling with the sudden shift to portable consoles in the Japanese market? Do they feel that things got stale and are searching for a new way to push the envelope? The handhelds are a safer place to try out the weird stuff because the install base is high and the games are cheaper to make. They seem to be going all the way back to the roots of the genre to see if there was another path they could have taken from the beginning (obviously there was Western RPGs developed along totally different lines). It is going to be interesting to see what happens next.

Hopefully we won't have to wait too long. The first shot will be fired on the DS. Dragon Quest IX will be the first numbered entry in a big series released since the move to next gen. The follow up will be Final Fantasy XIII and then finally Dragon Quest X on the Wii. Traditionally Dragon Quest has been the conservative series and Final Fantasy has been the envelope pusher. Most JRPGs will tend to fall between the two somewhere. Hopefully we will see entries from Wild Arms, Suikoden, Grandia, and if we are really lucky a real Phantasy Star game (don't hold your breath) on the next gen consoles. It is going to be interesting to see what happens. Will there be first person dungeon crawlers on the PS3? The last step based crawler on a console I can think of was Shining in the Darkness on the Genesis. Will the Wii be the home to a host of Roguelikes? Will the action RPG elements we saw in FFXII and Rogue Galaxy take over in the JRPG genre? Is small party RTS the future of JRPGs? Will we see a return to random battles and turn based combat?

Hopefully we will actually get some games soon so we can find out....

Anyway, I actually have some time to play again. Over the next few weeks I'll be hunkering down with my DS, the Sega Genesis Collection for PS3, the Ultima Collection, and some old gems on Game Tap.

Law School

2008-11-16T20:12:00.002-05:00

Hello,
Don't know if anyone is still out there but I am back (loosely speaking). It turns out that law school is a fairly insane time drain, that is why I have not posted at all. I had to totally abandon gaming period pretty much since my last post. That's right, no gaming at all. I have not rolled a single die or even picked up a controller. FFIV is like half finished for the DS and Dragon Quest IV is sitting still in the shrink wrap.

I just finished up my semester paper (memo for those of you in the know) so I am hoping I have enough time to game a bit and write some entries. Looks like I might have a chance to be a player in a tabletop RPG again. I hardly ever get to sit on that side of the table so I should have some interesting stuff to say about that.

KOTOR MMO

2008-07-21T11:33:00.000-04:00

BAM

EQ blog

2008-07-16T09:54:00.003-04:00

From the EQ Blog
I am working on the details right now for the Beta rollout. Last year we had a longer Beta period and I believe it helped nail down some of the nasty bugs that would have made it though in the 6 month dev cycles. We plan to do a similar Beta cycle this expansion as well.
Once we are getting a little closer to the Beta date I will send out instructions for those of you that would like to participate. Just a reminder… we absolutely love working with players and guilds that can commit to a schedule. We tend to give those players/ guilds more detailed interaction with the Dev Team and in most cases real-time game balancing. If you think that you might be interested or you would like your guild to be considered, please make sure you follow the Beta instructions when they roll out next month.

It seems like SOE has actually been adapting over the last year or so. First the changes to EQ2 to make it a much, much better game; then the move away from fire and forget EQ1 expansions. I wonder what they can do with Vanguard over time?

Playstation 2

2008-07-16T08:35:00.004-04:00

My two favorite consoles of all time are the Super Nintendo and the Playstation 2. According to Sony's E3 presentation the Playstation 2 has sold 1.5 million units 2008 calendar year. For comparison Playstation 3 sold 1.8 million units. This is astounding considering its age and the fact that we have moved on to the next generation. No wonder this generation has seemed so lackluster game wise, the last one isn't over yet.

It also looks like PS2 is getting 130 games this year. Now obviously a lot of those will involve Spongebob but it is till impressive.

Nintendo DS

2008-07-15T14:37:00.005-04:00

Unless something drastic was announced at E3 since I checked this morning it looks like the Nintendo DS is going to be THE system again this year as far as I am concerned. We are a few days away from FFIV dropping, and it looks awesome.

Here is some video too.

Add to that the recent release of Shiren the Wanderer (a real roguelike for once), a sequel to Izuna (pretty close to a roguelike), and a sequel to the awesome Etrian Odessey and the year is strong already.

Add to that the fact that starting in September we will be getting a remake of Dragon Quest IV, and the first NA releases of DQs V and VI and the year just keeps getting better. All this is topped off by the looming monster that is DQ9.

I have a PS3 and quite frankly there is not a whole lot for either it or the Xbox 360 that really interests me. There are a few games I have enjoyed but neither of them is really putting any distance out on my PC this time around. I am pretty disappointed in this console generation so far, except for the DS. It is the game machine for gamers, which is ironic since it seems kiddie but all the little kids are off badmouthing each other on Xbox.

Spells are expensive

2008-07-15T07:39:00.002-04:00

Spent an hour or so last night running around getting spells that I haven't bothered to pick up. I easily blew through 150 plat and still didn't have them all. I still have many, many more Circle spells to go. Hopefully tonights run will be as financially successful as last weeks.

I also need to look into what gear I should be wearing, I am wearing my racial armor with PoK add ons. Need to figure out the best way to sort through EQ's massive amount of gear here.

Nostalgia

2008-07-12T00:56:00.002-04:00

Looks like Nostalgia's Friday night group just took down Vox without high level buffs or help, with 10 toons. Excellent work guys. Excellent work.

What I am listening to

2008-07-11T10:49:00.003-04:00

Time to shamelessly plug cool people on the internet again.
I love podcasts, especially podcasts about gaming. Here are the ones I am currently frequenting:

fear the boot: My first podcast love. This is one of the best gaming related podcasts and the have been going strong for over 100 episodes now. They have an excellent cast, in fact they have had several different excellent casts over the last two years. They have a strong and helpful community. Earlier this year the put on a great convention.

The Online Gamer Anthology: This podcast deals with the roots of MMO gaming. They have just wrapped up a two episode series on pen and paper D&D. Technically this is a one host show but he always has plenty of guests like Troy who seems to be on every MMO podcast. He has done classic Everquest, text games, Meridian, you name it.

Backseat Producers: This is run by Tony Mast and is a bunch of guys sitting around talking about movies. A bunch of really funny guys.

Bear Swarm: This is a bunch of guys sitting around talking about gaming. They are funny, and they know their stuff. I was lucky enough to meet some of them at Fear the Con in March and they were great guys.

The Podgecast: This features some former FtB cast members and Joe talking about gaming, movies etc. They just had their first episode and it was a blast.

The Man Cast: This isn't what you think. It is not like the Man Show. They discuss things in a smart witty fashion.

Red Earth Saga: I got to meet Phil at FtC and he is a really nice guy. This is a pretty cool concept where he is developing a sci fi setting and keeping us up to date while discussing the choices he makes.

Retronauts: I love this show. Technically speaking it is not very well done, and the hosts mention this every episode. It rambles, it is wayyy too long, but the hosts are insanely knowledgeable about classic video games and very funny

There are a few others I have just downloaded episodes of to try out like EQ-IQ. I'll let you know how they are.

I am only keeping up with a few blogs right now due to pressures at work:
West Karana
@Play: excellent roguelike blog
Massively
io9

Night in a Scary Tower

2008-07-09T10:13:00.005-04:00

Last night we headed out to the frozen tower in the Iceclad Ocean. Getting inside was a bit of a challenge with a couple of obligatory Fada deaths and one Hakiko death just for good measure. Once inside things turned around. We had steady good pulls from Sela and were basically tearing the place up. We made our way to the camp on the second floor where we took on Zorglim the Dead and spent the rest of the night.

All in all it was a good night. I leveled three times and we had Ebonfang come out to group with us for the first time. Hopefully he will be back for more. I think we are planning on starting on the second floor of the tower next week and going from there.

Exposition through dialogue

2008-06-20T13:13:00.002-04:00

I am getting hits on my site from people who searched for this. Kids, exposition through dialogue is, for the most part, tacky. Don't do it.

FFXI interview

2008-06-20T12:37:00.001-04:00

1UP has a FFXI interview up. My first impression is: Nomad Moogle in Selbina! w00t! If only I still played.

Concerto Gate

2008-06-13T07:33:00.002-04:00

Square has released a new trailer for its upcoming MMO. I have no infor yet other than what is in this trailer, which contains no gameplay information. I loved FFXI, so I am excited about this one.

Funniest MMO Death

2008-06-09T13:17:00.002-04:00

Massively has a blog entry up asking what your funniest MMO death is. Mine goes back to FFXI in the Valkurm Dunes shortly after launch. We were pulling goblins and flies to fight in the oasis out in the middle of the zone. I really had no idea what I was doing, it was OK because neither did anyone else. I was a Taru Warrior with no subclass, I had come to the Dunes after I accidently took a wrong turn on my way back from a Maze Maker party (we used to do those back in the day) and wound up running in terror across the length of Buburimu Peninsula to zone a Gob in Mhaura. While I was there I found the ferry to the Selbina, and hopped aboard for adventure.
The ferry ride was a nightmare. Someone fished up some tentacled horror from the dark depths of the ocean and we all had to cower below deck in the hold. Much to our surprise it came downstairs and OPENED THE DOOR! Luckily it ate a catgirl red mage who panicked and left me alone.
You have to understand that at this point I was a FFXI badass. I had made it all the way to like level 14 and a group of friends and I had partied up in Tahrongi Canyon and brought down one of the awesome Dhalmels, which we though looked a little bit like dragons.
I had spent the last few levels killing worms and running from ghouls in a tunnel, mostly it was running from ghouls. The funny thing is that due to the way the starting zones are set up I had only seen other Taru and Mithra. I had seen like two humans and a Galka. I had not even seen an Elvaan yet. This all changed when I got to the Dunes, the crossroads of FFXI. There were people everywhere. I spent a few levels killing crabs (this is the thing to do in FFXI, they are like Murlocks in numbers) and a group of mine headed to the oasis.
Mobs have different levels of behavior in FFXI. Some aggro under different conditions, some are passive, some LINK. There are a number of Leeches hopping around the oasis happily, they do not aggro. However, it turns out, they do link. They link like a chain factory on speed.
It is actually pretty easy to target the wrong thing in FFXI if you are not paying attention. We were fighting a crab when we picked up a Gob add on our White Mage. As I was the tank I quickly targeted the Gob and 'voked it. Except I pushed over one too many times and 'voked the Leech instead. The results looked like a Muppet lynch mob. I went down fast, but not quite fast enough. You see in FFXI a passive mob will not go on to target the rest of your group if they do not attack it or heal you while you are fighting it. Sadly our White Mage had just enough time to 2HR with Benediction (a massive group heal that hurts the WHM and heals the group). The Red Mage saw our WHM's life drop and started healing him, it was all over in seconds.
One of the coolest things about FFXI was you played with the Japanese players. You could communicate through the autotranslate function and through the emotes. The Japanese players had been playing for quite a while when the game was released in America. This was usually good for us because they were happy to share and help. I am not sure how many Japanese players were running by when I 'voked the Leech but there was an amusing number of /slap emotes thrown my way by people with funny names.

Drinking and driving

2008-06-06T14:42:00.003-04:00

This post on Time.com got me thinking about the legal drinking age and driving drunk. According to the article 32% of all driver fatalities are due to drunk driving. 32%! Evidently this is down from 1984 when 45% were due to drunk driving. These are staggering numbers. But what do they mean?
I could only find readily available data back to 1994 but we can still take a look at it (source). In 2006 38,588 people were killed in accidents. 17,602 people were killed in alcohol related car crashes. In 1994 17,308 were killed in alcohol related car crashes out of 36,254 total fatalities.
How does this stack up with other ways to die? There have been 4092 U.S. deaths in Iraq so far and there were 822 in 2006. In 2006 gang related killings totaled 983 according to the FBI . Roughly 1 million people die of heart related incidents each year in America. 392 people died in 2006 from an unknown robber.
This means your chances of dying in a drunk driving accident are far higher than your chances of being killed in a random home invasion. 44 time higher! Yet we waste a lot of money on burgler alarms and still have no requirement for a device that keeps you from driving drunk.

Indy IV: A scene I would do different

2008-06-05T11:50:00.006-04:00

I saw Indy IV again with my wife this weekend. While watching it I was thinking about the first scene and what would have made me like it more. First when the Russians give the description of the box I would have made sure that they said nothing that could not be the box we saw at the end of Raiders. I would leave out the mummy bit.
Second, I would leave out the floating gunpowder. The compass he asks for would work much better here and not have that "Hey look I have a computer" feel.
I would leave out the scene where they open the box. Let the audience, and Indy think it has the Ark in it. He could even make a "Top men" reference.
I would leave out the rocket sled. It is just too Loony Tunes. This could be replaced with a Raiders style convoy scene with Indy trying to steal the crate back. He could get pushed off the truck in the fake town.
I thought about saying that the bomb shouldn't even happen but I only wanted to change the feel of the scene not too much of the content. Instead I would change the way he survives it. Let's face it, a modern audience realizes there is no way to survive an atomic weapon. But, a '50s audience did not know this. That's why I would have had him Duck and Cover. I would have had him survive it by getting under a desk. Still makes no sense but in the warped '50s Cold War logic it worked.

Indy IV (Spoilers)

2008-05-23T10:09:00.005-04:00

I have a feeling this is going to get me in trouble. I saw the new Jurrasic Park movie last night and was enjoying it, until I realized that it was an Indiana Jones movie. I hadn't fully formed my opinion by the time I left the theater but as I mulled it over the movie began to come apart. Regardless of whether it is an Indiana Jones movie, the movie still has to stand on its own as a movie. The bad:

Extra Characters: There are just too damn many people wandering around here. Ray Winstone's character is completely useless and adds nothing to the movie that couldn't have been done better with a more dynamic villain. John Hurt's character takes the place of Indy's brain. Karen Allen seems to exist only for horrid exposition through dialogue. All of these people just clutter up the film. Indy is at his best working off one sidekick, whether it is his dad, Short Round, Salah, or Marion. In previous films they were always careful to remove one character from the action as they introduced another. Even in Last Crusade's tank chase scene there are really only two characters actually doing something Indy and Henry even though Salah and Marcus are present. Indy and Mutt are fun, and I thought the movie was at its best when it is just the two of them together early on.
Fan Service: There is just too much of this. I will not list it all but the wedding was completely uncalled for. One little thing I liked: I believe that the town he was discussing in class was Skara Brae of Ultima/Bard's Tale fame. If I heard him correctly.
Cheesy CGI: Please, don't do this anymore. The action scenes lack the weight of the original movies because of the CGI. Everything just feels overlit and floaty. Whether you should do something is at least as important as whether you can. Monkey scene=bad.
Action Sequences: These lack the realism of the original movies, obviously plenty of physically impossible situations exist in the first three films but Indy's actual movements were always realistic. This is not Harrison Ford's fault. I have to say that he still is very convincing in a fist fight as Indiana Jones. The problem here is in the direction and the CGI.
Horrible Exposition Through Dialogue: This is like Rule #1 of writing: You don't do it. It is done constantly throughout the movie, especially in the soulless exchanges between Marion and Indy. Their romance just suddenly flares up in minutes after he abandons her with a child! John Hurt's character exists only for exposition through dialogue and to serve as the Prima Strategy Guide that Indy reads to get through the movie.
Superhuman Indy: What made Indiana Jones cooler than Luke Skywalker? He had no super powers. Well he does now. They have turned Indy into a cartoon character, he was always tough but now he is a rubber man, a cartoon. The thing with the atomic bomb and the fridge was not cool, it was silly. There is a difference.
Bulletproof: The bad guys cannot hit anything.

The movie was at its best when it stuck to the things that made the others great:

The Motorcycle Chase: This scene carries the weight of reality present in the earlier films. It also centers on the contributions of only two characters Indy and Mutt. It also has my favorite bit of acting in the whole movie. Mutt does something daring on the bike and gives Indy a cocky look, Indy fires back with the exact same unimpressed facial expression that Henry senior gave him in Last Crusade's bike scene. This works. Many of the other "we are like you and your dad" moments fall flat.
The Warehouse: The fan service was completely uncalled for but the scene itself is one of the better action sequences in the movie. Indy's failed whip swing and "I thought that was closer" line are about as close to the Raiders Indy as you are going to get.
The Plot: I actually liked the overall plot. You have to take it in the spirit it was intended though. The first three Indy movies were send-ups of '40s serials, this one is a send-up of '50s paranoia B movies. Keeping that in mind it works.

This movie owes more to Jurrasic Park and The Mummy than it does to the other Indy movies (which owe alot to North By Northwest). I think it was an error to turn this into a Disneyland ride were the action sequences are strung together willy nilly. Sadly there is plenty of plot there but they never seem to connect it to the action sequences in any meaningful way. Cate Blanchett's character is the weakest of the Indy villains because she is never developed in any way. The characters, other than Indy and Mutt, are really weak and their relationships seem to exist based on what the fans wanted to see rather than any logical train of thought. At the end of the day if you replaced Harrison Ford with Brenden Frasier this would have been the weakest of the Mummy movies (I am not counting The Scorpion King here).

Overall C-

PoK Armor

2008-05-22T10:07:00.002-04:00

Back in EQ1 land I got started on my PoK armor quests.

The first piece from Butcherblock went down easy, took about half an hour at the Chessboard to get it done.

The second piece (North Ro) took me all day. I had every kill, and item drop within the first 30 minutes except the Dune Tarantulas. It took me another 4 hours logged playtime to get them to spawn, with a lot of offline waiting in between. What is it with this game and giant spiders anyway? On the plus side I got to see the sand giants again and that makes me think of Fansy the Famous. And that makes me happy.

Age of Conan

2008-05-22T09:20:00.003-04:00

I started Age of Conan with the guild from Fear the Boot on Tuesday night. Here are my first impressions:
Wow that is a lot of install/update time
OK, that's over with let's play the... not so fast! It never put an icon on my desktop. Ok there are a bunch to choose from here let's choose Age of Conan. A console comes up and nothing happens. OK, let's try patcher. I get an error message in which some of the characters are Chinese and none of them are Phoenician letters. No idea what that means. OK lets try the other patcher icon. It works!
Woops! spoke to soon. I can't see anything there is just sound. Ctrl-Alt-Del time, end process. Error message in Chinese again. And now I have only local network access not internet. This takes an hour and a half to resolve with Microsoft.
Looking at the AoC tech help forums I see that the game doesn't exactly work with ATI x series video cards. Pssssh! Who uses those anyway? Turns out you have to edit an .ini file to get the game to work. Sloppy, really sloppy guys. The x800 256 meg is a perfectly common card, how did you not know you would run into this? It's ATI for Christ's sake! What exactly did you do during Beta?
OK, it is up and running but it looks like crap. I spend a little while adjusting the settings and finally get it looking pretty good other than the shadows which look like Legos.
I make a character and immediatly exit back out to character creation to make an alt to reserve my names. Wait I didn't go back to character creation, I went all the way out of the game! I still haven't figured out how to get back to character select, if this is even possible.
Let's load up again. And I get the Chinese error. More time on the tech forums, turns out I have to delete some .ini files EVERY TIME I WANT TO START THE GAME! Who is running this show, Brad McQuaid?
So I get it back up and running again and finally start playing. First things first, the UI is crap. I prefer EQ1s UI to this. How do I add people to my friends list? Second I have to zone to enter a building. Let's talk about the games where I don't have to do this: EQ1, EQ2, WoW, EQOA, FFXI, UO... there is no excuse for this. There is no excuse when Turbine pulls it and none when you do either Funcom. It's lame. There isn't even anything inside the building and I have to zone.
The combat system is a bit of a let down. Yes, it is fun but once you adjust to the three attack buttons it is the same fun you have been having since you downloaded a fancy MUD client with buttons. It is hardly the promised revolution. Maybe it is better in PvP.
The enemy AI is, as expected, totally useless. We are talking DAoC Catacombs level stupid here. Guys just standing around with PULL ME signs. Oh well I guess PvP is supposed to be the focus, but still.
The world is a lot of fun, the character models are impressive and the quests are certainly more inspired than anyone else's other than LotRO and FFXI. The combat system is at least slightly more active than average. It is hard to tell how dynamic it is until I get into PvP since the mob AI is on the level of The Girls Next Door.
The game has a lot of potential and once I got playing it I had fun with the missions. The problem is, this was a shit launch guys. I know that it is way better than your last MMO launch but that was a long time ago. You are in a post LotRO launch world now. I wasn't too fond of LotRO but it worked when I put it in. I paid $49.99 for a box with the client in it, you need to support the video cards that you know you are going to run into on launch day. You need to not have to edit .ini files and delete files to get it to run. This is not acceptabe for something that came in a box. I had more trouble getting this to run than I did Vanguard...in Beta. Now, once I got it running it runs better than VG did but that is hardly something to be proud of. This is sloppy, careless work that quite frankly you should be ashamed of. It FUBAR'd my network settings, not acceptable.
The game is fun, there is a lot of potential and some good content here. I give it a 5/10 due to technical incompetence.

Unrest

2008-05-22T09:08:00.002-04:00

Been sick so it took me a bit to get this up. I am writing this at work so screenshots will follow.

Ran around and collected two more pieces of my newbie armor before the Unrest run (these spiders almost never pop).

Got to Unrest at level 20 and made it to 23 (just shy of 24). I did not have a banner night, personally. At first it was just me and Sela (Tipa) and I got completely stun locked and dead on the first pull. Then I got stuck in the pool outside the mansion and had to be towed out with autofollow.

Once we got inside things went pretty smoothly and I got a gem to boost my stats off of one of Bjoern's dopplegangers.

Sadly Fada got creamed while we were in a hard to get to spot which put him out for most of the rest of the night. He went down fast, I started to cast Heal when he was at 84% and he was dead by the time it was done.

I used Lesser Succor for the first time. I had to memorize it while we were dying and kept getting hit. Sela (or someone) grabbed the mob that was hitting me long enough for me to get it off and as the screen faded I saw she was at 2% HP. I'll be shooting for 1% next time.

After that we regrouped with Fada and pulled from the lower level for the rest of the night.

Sometime early in the night I picked up a decent Belt that either Fada or I could use without realizing it while looting. I tried to get him to roll on it later but I am not sure he ever saw the message. I attached my gem to it but Fada if you want you are welcome to roll on it next Tuesday. Fair is fair.

After we finished up I managed to get my last piece of newbie armor and my scimitar!

Nostalgia the Guild does Paludal

2008-05-14T00:41:00.013-04:00

Tonight our Tuesday progression group did Paldual Caverns. We managed to get from 15 to 20 with only one death.
Here you can see us resting up between battles Fada and Soaridor were mages, Sela is our guild leader's (Tipa) fearless halfling Paladin. I am Hakiko the Halfling druid and Tesser the Beasmaster rounded out our crew. We were killing quick and Sela was able to overpull all night, which made it more fun and kept us on our toes.

Sadly Fada got wacked when he got seperated from the group and jumped by some usavory types. Here he is in non-corpse version. We were able to get his corpse back to him and start pulling bandits for the rest of the night. Fada was dishing out some serious damage.

Sela was looking impressive in her shiny armor and pulled a constant stream of mobs all night long. She manages to walk tht fine line between too many mobs and a thrilling line of combat, always staying on top of mana.

Tesser was pulling triple duty, off tanking, off healing, and dishing out the pain with her tiger pet. She was on top of adds and kept her eye on the health bars ready to jump in if I got overwhelmed.

Soaridor showed real attention the many aspects of the mage job, grabbing the occaisonal mob that aggro'd me and doing a good job walking the hate line. I very rarely saw him draw aggro despite being very active, this is a good way to keep the healer happy.

As for me, I was just trying to keep up with these guys and not get anyone killed. I am pretty happy with my performance tonight. I had no runners get loose and only one death. I am getting more comforatable with my party role and finding that healing in EQ is a lot like healing in FFXI. Keep your eyes on the bars, check the scene every couple of secods, and get in a good, low aggro rythm with your heals. I still have a lot to learn especially about picking out what loot will sell. Eveyone else looted several plat worth of stuff over the course of he night. I was encumbered with an paltry 5 gold worth of junk.

Next week...Unrest.

I couldn't have said it better myself

2008-05-09T10:06:00.003-04:00

Ironically this is like the devil preaching to the choir here. I am pretty sure that most of America (and certainly large chunks of my age group) not only agree with whay Klein is saying, but have in fact been saying it till they were blue in the face. Now if only he would follow his own advice.

By the way I would love Lincoln/Douglas style debates across the country from Obama/McCain. That is of course assuming there isn't a screwjob at the convention. It only takes one judge to cause Florida v America II, and last time I checked Michelle Obama hadn't appointed any.

Wierd ways that people get to my blog

2008-05-08T11:36:00.002-04:00

Looking at my Traffic Sources there are a few that stand out:

Coming in at number 24 is "rambo burma femininst". Obviously this is from when I reviewed the new Rambo film. I just think it is odd that anyone was searching for Rambo+feminist

"Black Eagle Barony" Obviously this refers to the villains of the D+D Mystara setting. Good to know that people still search for them.

"savage dukes" Obviously this is refering to my writeup on Dr. Luke Meyer's excellent Savage Dukes of Hazard game at Fear the Con. I just wondering what the person searching for that unlikely combination was hoping to get.

"'lawful good' seven samurai" ... I have no idea

Hopefully all of these people found what they were looking for. I am dissapointed that there were no pornographic searches leading to my blog. I will have to try harder to work those in. Perhaps Hot Troll on Catwoman Action....

MMORPG.COM

2008-05-08T11:27:00.003-04:00

There was a time when I was a regular poster on mmorpg.com. I posted several times a day and the site always had some kind of stimulating conversation about virtual worlds. It started to descend into "why did the devs nerf this?" territory and then took the full plunge into cross game flame wars.

I checked it out today to see if they had cleaned it up any and found this as the top post. I admit that I did not read far into the post, I only needed a few "No you FAIL" comments to see how things were going. It is sad that my once favorite message board is now cluttered with this junk. Obviously there were always flame wars and trolls but by the time I left it was completely out of hand.

It is a shame they haven't started some real moderation over there to clean it up. I do wonder if Gameloading is still around. He could get a bit flamey from time to time but was overall a breath of fresh air when it came to Korean game discussion.

Befallen

2008-05-07T11:39:00.003-04:00

The Tuesday Night Progression group for Nostalgia the Guild had its first run last night in Befallen. Overall it was a success. I went from level 10-15 and we only wiped 4 times. We did not have a rogue so every time we died we had to get the key to get back down to our corpses, although later on Tipa brought out her higher level cleric to go grab the corpses. I know that this sort of game play is supposed to be dated and hated but honestly it is just plain more fun when there is a little bit of danger involved.

I may have caused some of our early deaths due to my n00bness on druid and my overall out of shape situation in EQ. Little things like not running past living necros when you are invisible to undead, and remembering to root the last mob. Fortunately I did remember how to heal correctly and did not embarrass myself by running around like a chicken with my head cut off when I drew aggro.

Next week we go to the moon and Paludal Caverns, a zone I have never been to before so I am looking forward to it.

Giant Spider Meet Your Doom

2008-05-01T21:51:00.002-04:00

After being out of down in a hotel I couldn't get a good connection in, I managed to get some EQ in tonight. Found and killed two Giant Wood Spiders and got the drops I needed to make my Moss Toe Tunic. These spiders are a pain in the ass with their slow spawning.

Return to EQ

2008-04-29T08:57:00.004-04:00

I made my return to Everquest this week when I joined Tipa's Nostalgia the Guild. So far I am having a blast with my halfling druid Hakiko on Luclin. I got through the tutorial with some help from some of my new guild mates. This was the first time I ever did the new tutorial all the way through and it ends in a pretty impressive bang.
This is a pretty cool mob to down at level 10 for EQ.

After leaving the tutorial I started work on my Newbie Armor quests and got the Moss Toe Cap, Gloves, and Bracers finished. I am finding the drop rate to be much higher on these quests than it has been in the past when I did them. I got all of the rat furs in about half an hour, all of the Large Wood Spider parts in three kills and I am getting a steady supply of Spiderling Silks. The only problem I seem to be having is with the Giant Wood Spiders, the one time I killed one I got three of the drops I needed. The problem is I cannot seem to find one again. There only seems to be one in the whole zone, and it does not seem to spawn often. I have been messing around to see if there is a placeholder I have to kill to spawn it, but haven't had much luck.

I also grabbed my Warg reward from the expansion. This thing is great! It seems to increase my mana regen and is a lot of fun just to ride around on.

WAR

2008-03-28T15:25:00.002-04:00

I have had a hard time reading up on the Warhammer MMO. For some reason none of the press releases, preview articles, or sneak peeks have been able to hold my attention so far. The writing always seems cheesy or the subject matter boring. I have not found the videos released so far to be all that enjoyable to watch either. This is odd because I love MMOs and I also love Warhammer. Finally there is an article that I enjoy reading over on IGN. It is a description of the path an Empire army will take to sack a Chaos city. It has me pretty fired up for the game. Here it is.

Cool Gamebook Site

2008-03-28T07:39:00.002-04:00

I found out about the Fighting Fantasy gamebook site while reading GameSetWatch this morning.
You can find the site and register here.
After you register you can check out a cool article on writing gamebooks here.

4th Edition Thoughts

2008-03-17T14:44:00.006-04:00

I am conflicted about the 4th edition of Dungeon and Dragons. I am a long time D&D player, as near as I can figure I have been playing for about 20 years (maybe a little more). During this time I have seen several different versions of the game and I have branched out to many other games. D&D has been a mainstay during this whole period even though at different times other games have been featured front and center.

You won't be reading that I think the whole thing is a sell out and a money grab. It is time for a new edition. It is time in the sense that 3.X is nearing a decade old, and it is time in the sense that the cracks have been showing for a while and are starting to widen.

First edition was a mess, a fun mess, but a mess none the less. There really isn't much more to say about it. The rulebooks were disorganized and chaotic, the modules were all over the place with no real overall sense of theme and setting. This was great for the time, as they were still defining what a fantasy RPG was. In a way D&D was helping to define what generic fantasy was. It brought together many different kinds of fantasy and melded them into a whole. Obviously The Lord of the Rings had a huge impact on D&D but it flows both ways. If the LotR movies had been made in the early 80s they may have looked very different than they do now (and not just because of technology). D&D has had a profound impact on the way we imagine what fantasy objects look like.

Second edition was in much better shape, but was still pretty rough. The spell descriptions were god awful from a gameplay standpoint. They were often vague and easy to exploit, leading to many arguments at the table. Second edition was in many ways all about the role playing part of the game. There was a lot of feel even to the core rulebooks, and there were boxes and boxes of setting information. It was here that generic fantasy was really codified, it was Dark Ages England, France, and Germany with magical powers and monsters grafted on. It was a lot of fun. Some of the settings were hard to tell apart. Honestly, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, Mystara, and Birthright could have been different continents on the same world. Dark Sun was different and darker and Spelljammer was a great idea ruined by early 90s camp. Planescape and Ravenloft were different and very well done. I have little experience with Council of Wyrms.

By the end of the edition the weak links were obvious. There were too many systems that were too much alike, and many of the ones that were different (Dark Sun) made heavy changes to the rules. The rules were too chaotic and confusing to start with.

Overlapping first and second edition was the D&D Basic Game. This is my favorite edition of D&D. The rules were pretty clear and easy to use. It played quick so that it actually felt like the pulp fantasy adventures that GG had been reading when he made the game. The other editions had drifted towards LotR inspired epic fantasy, which is fun, but it was weighing down the rules and frankly the powers that the characters had in those kinds of books were not very fun powers game wise. The default setting for the Basic D&D game was completely generic fantasy (Mystara in 2nd edition) but it managed to hold to the sword and sorcery feel a bit more. The Grand Duchy of Karameikos was loosly ruled with towns separated by dark dangerous wilderness. The Black Eagle Barony was not some secret cabal of demi-gods it was a harsh baron. As you grew in power you hit on other real world inspired locations and the cool Isle of Dread.

Third edition came with major rule revisions and not always for the best. The rules were much better organized and much better balanced then ever before. However, the game had a board game feel to it that it had never had before, and not just because miniature use increased. The whole style of the game played more to the munchkin set. Combats took a very long time and were often reduced to "I hit, you miss, I miss, you hit" affairs. Every effect was well defined, which was good, and every action that could cause an effect was defined, which was not so good. The first removed some of the ambiguity from the rules that second edition had. The second made it feel like you were playing in a straightjacket. When your turn came up you had a limited number of things you could do, and you picked one. There was very little room for off the cuff actions and improvisation.

Another problem in third edition was that the definition of generic fantasy started to get boring. There were a lot of logic errors in the cosmology and alignment system that started to show and the rigidness of sticking to real world history with magic grafted on was really constraining. Eberron was a bit of a change but not really enough.

My third edition days are over. I had not really been using it for a while. I preferred the two alternate players handbooks put out by Monte Cook (especially Iron Heroes by Mike Mearls). I fiddled around with the Everquest RPG but mostly I just went sci-fi and stuck with GURPS. Recently, at Fear the Con, I played in my first Savage Worlds games. Savage Worlds is a pulp action game that is very faced paced, rules light, but stays out of the way of player improvisation and fun. The whole time I was playing, I was reminded of Basic D&D. When I got home I grabbed the Fantasy Toolkits and quickly converted my upcoming D&D game to Savage Worlds. I'll talk more about the game in an upcoming post, but it went very well.

This brings me to 4th edition and the potential it has. Through their many communications with the fans the designers has claimed that they want to make play faster, more fun, easier on the DM and with more options. If they can pull this off in a way similar to Savage Worlds, they will be in good shape. However, they need to do this without "dumbing down" the game. My biggest fear is that it will become even more board game like than 3rd edition. There have been some things released that have hinted that this might be the case.

On the other hand, there have also been some really exciting things released:

Nothing is sacred: They are shaking up the cosmology, the overly constrained settings, the way magic and player powers work, even the way healing works.
They have put a lot of thought into how they want generic fantasy to be defined by this edition and it looks like guys like Rich Baker have decided to run with the ball. The overall feel could have more in common with the Grand Duchy of Karameikos and Fritz Leiber than with Elminster and the shire. I like the sound of the points of light surrounded by darkness.
Mike Mearls. Iron Heroes was, in many ways, the game third edition should have been. In my opinion he is the best designer of d20 variants out there.
Integration of computer based tool sets from the beginning. This will make the DM's job much easier.

I really like the things they are saying about changing the feel of the setting it is more in line with what I enjoy. I am concerned and excited about the rules changes. If they can streamline the game while opening it up to player creativity I am in. If they make it more Hero Quest like and force you into preset "best" builds for each class... well I already found a system that does D&D better than 3.x.

Rocketship Empires

2008-03-17T14:08:00.003-04:00

OK so I have read all the way through the first three Rocketship Empires books and I am impressed. The core book is awesome, just overflowing with fun gameplay ideas and cool setting. The Gunslinger Betty is one of the most in depth, single subject sourcebooks I have ever read. The whole thing is on one plane and he even gives diagrams and pictures from a real B-25. With this much information players can make meaningful repair decisions instead of just a bland roll. In Fury Triumphant does a good job of laying out the Spanish Civil War in space and really sets things up for the upcoming adventure module.

Even as I finished reading those three the next book, Starship Compendium, dropped. I tell you the man is a machine. I will be reading this one this week.

There is a little bit of strangeness with the setting though. It is obvious that it is meant to be pulp action, fast and loose. However the ships cry out for a high level of fidelity in the rules system. A lot of time has been spent to offer many, many awesome ship options. A rule system like Savage Worlds would be perfect for everything outside of the ships. The problem is that Savage Worlds, and similar systems, does not offer the granularity to distinguish between all the different ship options. Also skill consolidation in these kinds of systems means that you will have blanket repair and piloting rolls, when the setting supports many more choices.

Obviously this is not a deal killer, people who use Savage Worlds probably are not looking for tiny differences in ships so they can just gloss it over. The ship creation setup in the books will make it mesh nicely with GURPS, Hero System etc. The problem is that the out of ship parts of the setting do not go into this level of detail (yet). It is more just an annoyance with the continuity of level of detail than an actual complaint.

There is some spelling and layout ugliness but it is not too bad, and I know from reading the forums that he is working hard to eliminate this from future books. One of my main complaints is organizational. The books read great. As you read through the setting he fills you in on bits and pieces of how things work and then jumps back to the setting. While this is a fun way to read it, it will be hell when I need to find something. Information on related subjects really need to be together. Since the book is systemless I can understand the desire to make it a smooth read, but at least there should be a solid index.

These are nitpicks, as he develops his style more I am sure that all of this will be smoothed out. These books are all very, very good. The setting looks like a blast and I cannot wait to play a game in it.

Which MMO would I unmake

2008-03-13T23:25:00.004-04:00

Tipa posted another one of her great question posts today. This time she asks if we could erase one MMO which one would it be? See her full post here. She wants to unmake Dungeons and Dragons because she feels like it forced stat heavy MMOs on us and killed creativity. I share her frustration with ExelMOs but disagree about why we have them.
Because the players had to roll the dice and the DM had to figure the results himself the numbers had to be upfront in D+D. Players had to know how much damage they did and how many hitpoints they had left.
The same was true of many of the early computer RPGs. To know how many hitpoints they had left because there was no way to represent it graphically. However these days are gone. There is absolutely no reason for this anymore. Computers can give us qualitative clues to our condition instead of quantitative information. Allowing the players to know their exact strength and damage is, first of all, unrealistic and, second, counterproductive. By supplying large amounts of quantitative data to players we signal that numbers are the most important thing. We give players the ability to parse their performance and the performance of others and determine the "best possible path".
I think the main problem with MMOs is that players should not have all this numerical data, they do not need it and it is couter-immersive. They are always going to be numbers games due to the fact that they are computer games and this is the way computers do things. Even if we distill it down to whether or not they have a skill it is still a numbers game either you have a 1 in the skill or a zero. There are really no good ways to do combat in an interesting fashion without the numbers to some extent. But the players don't need to see the numbers. We can leave them guessing. Street Fighter has numerical values for its health and attacks but we are barely aware of them and it is far more immersive for it.
I think the other major problem with MMOs has nothing to do with their roots in D+D but the solution comes straight from D+D. The problem with MMOs isn't that they are like D+D it's how they are unlike D+D. They are like one of the cheap boardgame knockoffs that have cropped up over the years with a limited number of scenarios. MMOs can't make everyone feel like a hero because the designers cannot make enough content for everyone to have their own personal moment of glory. Computer generated content of real quality is still too far off. The answer is to do what made D+D so successful: player generated content.
There are many ways to do this, the obvious one is to allow players to build dungeons and make quests themselves. But other MMOs have been utilizing player generated content without givng content creation tools to the players. Games like EVE and UO managed to harness the actions of the player community with complex systems to continually generate things for the players to do.

So what MMO would I erase? One of my favorites: Everquest Why? It set the standard for putting the numbers up front.

Saw this test on West Karana

2008-03-11T13:14:00.002-04:00

I Am A: Lawful Good Human /Sorcerer (3rd/2nd Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-15

Dexterity-14

Constitution-12

Intelligence-16

Wisdom-13

Charisma-14

Alignment:
Lawful Good A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion. However, lawful good can be a dangerous alignment because it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Primary Class:
Monks are versatile warriors skilled at fighting without weapons or armor. Good-aligned monks serve as protectors of the people, while evil monks make ideal spies and assassins. Though they don't cast spells, monks channel a subtle energy, called ki. This energy allows them to perform amazing feats, such as healing themselves, catching arrows in flight, and dodging blows with lightning speed. Their mundane and ki-based abilities grow with experience, granting them more power over themselves and their environment. Monks suffer unique penalties to their abilities if they wear armor, as doing so violates their rigid oath. A monk wearing armor loses their Wisdom and level based armor class bonuses, their movement speed, and their additional unarmed attacks per round.

Secondary Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

No Videogames

2008-03-11T12:22:00.003-04:00

I have not had a chance to play any video games for quite some time. I have been able to keep up with my tabletop gaming, in fact I have too many projects going at once on that front.

Introduction to Spelljammer 2nd edition game that my players have been requesting. After this weekend at FtC I am seriously considering converting the whole mess over to Savage Worlds. I have a feeling it will work much better. The game has not even started yet and my players are already asking me about ways to exploit the rules regarding various spells in 2nd edition (damn invisible servant). I will be converting an island chain campaign I made but never used over to asteroids and small moons.
My own Star Wars d6 campaign that I will be running on the weekends that Chris cannot make it to our games. This is an alternate universe where Luke Skywalker died on the Death Star in RotJ and Mace Windu lived through his fall and is in hiding. The New Jedi Order, run by Leia, is in a struggle with Jedi Knights trained by Mace Windu over the very meaning of what it means to be a Jedi. The New Jedi Order tends to stick to Yoda style elitism and prophecies while the Windu faction is less strict.
Traveller: A History Phase 3, this section will take place a few years after the launch of the Generation Ship Pometheus. It will cover the adventures of the crew of the Starleaper Two, mankind's first FTL exploration mission. I am planning on having many different political factions on the ship with different agendas, kind of like if the West Wing was set on the original Enterprise. I am planning on somewhere between 5 and 10 missions for this campaign.
I have to get an adventure ready to run for Swords and Steel a rules system by fellow 'booter The Scribbler that I am dying to try out. It is a planetary romance game and I am thinking about doing a take on either Herland or The Seven Samurai. The Seven Samurai is without a doubt the most useful movie to steal from for games. I ran 3 different games ripped off from it in one weekend for the same group and they never realized it.
I am working on several rules conversions for Rocketship Empires, a super cool WWII in space systemless setting. I am looking at GURPS, Savage Worlds, and Classic Traveller for now but will probably do more later. I want to post them so people can play this game that I will be shamelessly plugging at every chance. I already have an idea for how to do an adventure based on The Bridge On The River Kwai when the war gets to that point in the game.
I would love to get a Battlestations game in again soon.

Fear the Con

2008-03-10T11:13:00.003-04:00

OK, I just got back from Fear the Con last night. For those of you who do not know Fear the Con is a gaming convention based around the Fear the Boot podcast. I have done the big cons before but this was my first ever small con (approx 100 people). What follows is random thoughts on my trip. They will be confusing to people who were not there and even more confusing to people who are not on the FtB forums.

W3N4
I had a great time at this event. Highlights were meeting Unknown_Scholar and his wife Elizabeth. Hopefully we can get some Battletech going in the GA/SC area some time. Hanging out with Mike, RobJustice and Duke. Evidently I look like Henry Rollins. Meeting Chris and Tim from Wisconsin. Talking with Christian and Ardent Finder. Meeting Tony the Pimp of the Internet. He got this name because the whole internet seems to know him, this is because he is a really nice guy. Martian_Bob and GrungyDan at the dirty joke session. Meeting Phil, bringer of all things Stargate. Meeting Matt from FtB and talking gaming.

The Con
This was the most fun I have ever had at a con. 12 straight hours of gaming bliss. All of it Savage Worlds and all of it distinct. Tony was bringing around fruit, which was a stroke of genius. I got a chance to sit with Ardent Finder, Christian, and Ghostrunner and talk jobs and computer programming (I have forgotten the other guys name who was sitting there he was a 3D map maker and cool). I was in every game with a guy named Adam (forum name is like El Rav Delux?) and doubled up several times with guys like Omaejel and Mike Flynn (Mad Mike?).

Savage Dukes of Hazard
The premise was that Boss Hogg sells the Duke boys souls to the devil and we have to race to the courthouse to stop them. This was just pure two-fisted joy. I played Daisy and was allowed to use my feminine charms to stun the bad guys, this was GM genius on Luke's part to make sure the wacky character had something to do in combat. The whole thing climaxed with a crazy General Lee jump and a brawl with a giant pig riding devil who could shoot lightning from his heavy metal hands.

Savage Warcraft vs. Sims
This was John's humor game and it was a blast. I played a goblin with a bomb strapped to my back that I could not remove. The premise was that we went through a portal and found ourselves in the game The Sims. We had to scale the Sim Tower and defeat Will Wright. This is how comedy RPGs should be done. The combat was still fun, it was the world itself that was silly. The characters were all interesting (there was a two headed ogre played by two different players).

Danverse
My last game of the day was run by Dan. It was a far more serious game than the other two and was far closer to my preferred play style. Very few shots were fired and there was much intrigue to be had. It was set in a universe of Dan's creation that showed a lot of depth. A perfect was to cap off the night.

Savage Worlds
This was my first time playing in a Savage Worlds game, and all three games used the system. I am, at heart, a crunchy simulationist so I was concerned that this bare-bones system would no hold up with repeated play in different styles. Boy, was I wrong. All three games had a very different feel to them. I was most impressed with Savage World's ability to cover all the possibilities in Dan's game (and of course Dan's ability to pull it off). I don't know that I would use it for most of my games, I prefer the level of skill fidelity offered by GURPS for my less combat centered games. Also I am not sure how you could distinguish between many different types of ships/guns/vehicles with Savage Worlds either. That said, for my more pulp action games this will be my system of choice... I may stop using D+D for fantasy, there I said it, I may never use it again. Also this is the perfect convention gaming system because there is very little room in the rules for argument, they are that clear. I am converted to your cult Luke.

Tony Pimp of the Internet
I got a chance to talk to him a couple of times over the weekend and I cannot stress enough how nice this guy is. Also he seems very charity minded, he was selling a short story collection for charity and then went and donated the left over fruit from the con to charity. I purchased his Toasted Ravioli short story collection and very much enjoyed the story he wrote. Also he has multiple podcasts about movies and loosing weight (Fanboy Smackdown, Tony's Losing It, Scifi Smackdown)

The people who made it possible
This weekend was a great break for me so thank you to all the people who worked to get Fear the Con going. Carla, Stacey, Dan, Luke, Matt, Chad, John, Tony, I know I saw Mike and Omaejel's wife working the desk and others I am not thinking about. Also thanks to the the random drunk guy.

Downsides
Not a lot of these. St Louis airport is a pain in the ass. Our flight attendant forgot her ID so the flight home was delayed for two hours. I have no idea how there is no system in place for this. It took 30 minutes to get a hamburger from the Chilis there too. Sadly Adam is no longer with the podcast so I did not get a chance to meet him, hopefully next time or at GenCon. The only other down side was it wasn't longer, and really that is a pretty good downside to have.

DMing
Next year I will be. This was exactly the type of place I would like to run a game. And the type of people I like to run for.

$500
This is what it cost me, grand total for the trip. It was worth every cent. It has been a long, frustrating couple of months and this was the perfect break, just what I needed. I probably got less total fun from my Xbox than from this con. If you get the chance to go next year...GO!

Gary Gygax

2008-03-04T12:16:00.001-05:00

I cannot confirm this, but it appears that Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons, passed away last night.

Ship designs

2008-02-21T13:43:00.002-05:00

Been working on my ship designs for my pen and paper games. Here

2008-02-15T13:03:00.002-05:00

1up has a feature look at Phantasy Star and a Retronauts episode dedicated to it.

Tabletop gaming update

2008-02-13T10:39:00.003-05:00

Those of you interested in my classic tabletop gaming can find my writeup on my West End Games Star Wars campaign here. I will also be posting updates on my GURPS Traveller campaign design (no spoilers) as it moves into its third phase: Starleaper Two. Since there are only a few people interested in this I will just note updates here not reprint them.

Stargate

2008-02-11T14:47:00.001-05:00

OK, I have really enjoyed Stargate. Thanks again to the guys at Insert Coin Live for recommending it. I really thought it would be something very different. It is right up my alley. It reminds me a lot of the original Star Trek series where science fiction writers used the episodic exploration premise to explore different sci-fi stories every week. While Stargate does have some overplot it is not a soap opera. It is also far less militant than I feared. I worried it would turn out to be "kill everything on the blue planet, next week we conquer the red planet". I am just wrapping up the first season now and will be watching the second for sure. Hopefully it holds up.

They often explore things from a scientific point of view rather than a save the captured blond chick point of view. There is a larger plot involving the rescue of Daniel's wife and a kid named Scar. They do manage to make progress on this every few episodes. They find some clue, or a hint of a way to remove the parasites.

One thing they do that I like is the low number of alien species. They seem to save non-human characters to explore new topics, forgoing the cliched aliens as race/gender metaphor. They actually use humans for this.

Early on there was a little bit of rescue the captured blond female team member but they seemed to get past that quickly. One thing I am surprised by is that there is some nudity. I was not expecting this from a TV show.

Rantings of a Cranky Old Nerd

2008-02-11T12:34:00.001-05:00

One of my friends from grade school has started a video game blog. So far she has done some cool write-ups on the Castlevania series, including untangling the spaghetti that is Castlevania lore.
You can find it here.

Fang and Stargate

2008-02-08T08:40:00.001-05:00

Due to some personal life drama I just have not been all that motivated to really play WoW this week. I did manage to get a couple of hours in with the Fang and I have to say that overall I enjoy it and as my physical memory adapts to it I am sure I will enjoy it more. I managed to watch the pilot and the first episode of Stargate and really enjoyed it. My fears that there was no way to continue it past the movie without corniness were unfounded. It looks like they have left it open for character development and homefront drama. Hopefully it will not become "hey this week we are on the ice planet". If it stays good I may be enjoying it and some Stephen Colbert flavored ice cream for the next few weeks.

Fang Gamepad

2008-02-06T10:58:00.001-05:00

I got a Fang Gamepad the other night and I will be test driving it with WoW tonight. I am pretty excited about it because I have recently changed my play style. I used to play sitting at my desktop but right before the holidays I got a new laptop. Now I play laying on the couch with the laptop sitting on the coffee table.
I bought a trackball because the mouse was unwieldy in this situation, I had been reaching across and using WASD with my left hand but now I can increase my laziness and situate the Fang on my lap next to the trackball.
I will post a double review tomorrow. Part 1 will cover the Fang pad, part 2 will cover the Stargate DVDs I will be watching while I play thanks to the suggestions of the guys at Insert Coin Live

No Street Fighter II for Greenville

2008-02-05T07:46:00.001-05:00

I have been reading everything I can about the upcoming Street Fighter IV. I never got into Street Fighter III in a big way, I was mildly proficient in it. Street Fighter II, however, was the badge of honor for people exactly the right age to have an Ugly Kid Joe T-Shirt. So, I am really looking forward to Street Fighter IV and have been getting itchy to play the original again (original, of course, actually refers to II because no one wants to play Street Fighter I).
For those of us who were better than OK at Street Fighter II there are certain primitive tools that are completely inappropriate for use with the game. In order to really enjoy the game you have to have the proper type of controller. I would begin my quest for an arcade fighting stick for any home console I have (I have all three Playstations, the first Xbox, and the Wii).
First I was able to track down the game with relative ease. I grabbed two different Street Fighter anthologies, one Alpha and one regular, and an overall Capcom Fighting anthology for under $30 total spent. I was encouraged because this was the first store I went to and I got all three. All were PS2 games, so I needed a fighting stick for PS2 or, preferably PS3. I asked the Gamestop employee if they had arcade sticks and he said they did not but I should be able to find them in almost any store selling video games. I set out for the next closest store, Best Buy.

After wandering around Best Buy for 20 minutes (confusingly they keep some console controllers by the PC games in the back) I found someone who would admit to working in the video game section and asked him for arcade stick controllers, like you would use with a fighting game. He had no idea what I was talking about. Finally after a bunch of pantomime a lightbulb went off as he remembered playing a game with one when he was "little". He said they did not have them but he thought that Circuit City had more of that kind of thing.

I could not find any in Circuit City, I also could not find anyone who admitted to working in the video game section. I have no idea what they do when a confused parent comes in wanting to buy "a rewinder for my son's Atari tapes" and mean a Wii (trust me, I have been in Gamestop when this happened). It was off to the slightly better Gamestop at the mall.

I couldn't get anyone's attention at the mall Gamestop, they were all playing Wii. Finally a guy my age, also wandering around, asked me if there was any Guitar Hero with Van Halen's "Right Now" on it (this is how I knew he was my age). He immediately knew what an arcade fighting stick was and pointed me to Toys 'R Us.

My conversation with a Toys 'R Us game expert:

Scene: A Toys 'R Us game section. It is separated from the rest of the store by fortress like security detectors and walls. Ironically, everything in it is locked up in a case. It is inhabited by future airport security workers, obviously serving as training.

Me: Excuse me, I am looking for arcade style controllers for the PS2 or, preferably the PS3.

TSA guy: What do you mean?

Me: You know, a joystick with a bunch of buttons on a board, like you would use to play Street Fighter.

TSA guy: Oh, I never played Street Fighter

Me: Virtual Fighter?

It is important that the TSA guy does not change his facial expression here.

Me: Tekken?

Blank stare from the TSA guy

Me: How about Dead or Alive? It has boobies.

TSA guy: The volleyball game?

Me: Yeah...no. It looks like a joystick with 6 or 8 buttons alongside it. It may also have a picture of a ninja or hot chick on it.

TSA guy: Oh, we have those....over in the Lego section.

Scene: This should all be one shot, the camera should follow the characters to the Lego section. Should be shot in guerrilla "Cloverfield" style.

TSA guy: Yup, here you go.

The TSA guy produces a wall full of these

Fade to black as stabbing SFX from Psycho plays.

This is a sad day my friends. The world is now almost overrun with people who have never quartered up, never sipped on Orange Julius in a Jersey mall waiting to take down the guy who has been cheap shotting everyone with Guile. They haven't had gum stuck to their Converse hightops with GNR written in whiteout on the side. I don't know what they do actually. As near as I can tell they roll around on shoes with wheels in them and call each other "homo" on Halo. You never called someone "homo" while playing Street Fighter II, they could punch you for real. However, I do have hazy memories of people with wheels on their shoes from my early childhood.

Yup, this whole post was just me bitching about not being able to play a 17 year old game without ordering something from the internet. It is also a bad roller disco joke. Now you kids get off my lawn!

A ninth reason to hate The Hero's Journey

2008-02-04T12:26:00.000-05:00

io9 posted eight reasons why the Hero's Journey sucks. While I do not necessarily agree with all their reasons, or even with the statement that it "sucks", I do have my own bone to pick with Campbell. The Hero's Journey is often elitist and undemocratic.

For the most part the Hero's Journey requires there be something special about the hero. They are freaks of nature, or mutants, or most insulting: born and destined to rule. Luke Skywalker is stronger in the force than almost everyone else, Anakin Skywalker has more bugs in his blood than everyone else and is the product of immaculate conception to boot, Jesus is the son of God, Rand is destined by prophecy to be the Dragon Reborn, Taran is destined to be the High King by birth, Gandalf and Aragorn have all kinds of destiny and superhuman wackiness going on. These stories all assert (I am going to argue with myself in a second, stick with me) that there are certain people who are just born better than the rest of us, they are destined to rule us and decide our fate, we do not really get a say in our own future because we cannot compete with them. Comic book superheroes are the best (worst) example.

This is not an original thought or realization on my part, David Brin for example, has written along these same lines. Why do so many of our stories feature these supermen? Why do we construct myths that tell us, contrary to our cultural values, that there is a divine right of kings? Is it really hardwired into us, like Campbell says? If it is how do you explain other writings that appeal to many of the people reading this, like say the U.S. Constitution or Marx? Maybe so many of our stories are still like this because our whole form of storytelling is built up around it. Not because of some internal need but because of the conditions under which man's earliest stories were written. Throughout most of history man was ruled by people who claimed they had the divine right to do so. These were not people claiming to be slightly wiser, or a little bit stronger than the rest of us; these people claimed that they were destined by god, the force of history, or magical comets to rule over everyone else. They were not first amongst equals, they were a race unto themselves. How could they stories from that time have served anything but this notion, especially when those in control were often the only ones who could write things down?

The argument can be made that in fact the stories I listed do not promote rule by elites, you could argue that they in fact attempt to subvert that very idea. Jesus may be God's son but he is raised by a carpenter. Anakin was a former slave. Rand came from a poor farming village. Taran was an assistant pig keeper. The Lord of the Rings wasn't really about Aragorn and Gandolf it was about common hobbits. Luke fought against the rule of elites by disregarding the pontifications of crazy old Yoda time after time. I would argue that all of these are a stretch at best, because at the end of the day all of these characters still possessed either powers, or destiny that the rest of the world did not have. Even the hobbits have the power to resist the ring that humans do not, a regular human could not have gotten the job done.

You can also argue that the values present in the Hero's Journey are embraced by western societies like the U.S. Well over half of this country believes that Jesus is the son of God and the king of man (I am not arguing this fact, just pointing it out). Subscribers to Milton Friedman want to limit the control of democratically elected governments (especially dispersed forms like legislature) putting more power in the hands of private corporations run by economic elites. Many Marxist societies (the U.S.S.R.) have based their government on a small circle of elites competing amongst themselves for the direction of the government.

Blah, blah, blah, what does this have to do with MMOs?

This thought process has infected our games, and may be getting in the way of more fun. We believe that competition to sort out who is elite and who is not is the natural order of things and design our games that way. Games are designed to facilitate competition between everyone. Even when there are cooperative elements (like PvP sides, or guilds) they are always designed to foster the vomit inducing, corporate buzz word coopertition (yep, spell check say "Not a word"). I personally feel that this has gotten even worse as the MMO has "evolved", WoW is all about the e-peen and MMOs are now completely over-parsed to find out who is putting out the highest DPS. ery often the foundations of teamwork are thrown out the window to compete for the top damage spot. Things like the Armory and actually displaying a numerical value for your damage only encourage this.

Is there a viable alternative though? Hasn't competition proven to be superior and the way of the future? How can cooperation be fun?

Cooperation is a viable alternative. I realized this recently while reading Susan Faludi's excellent book Stiffed. In the book she explores how masculinity in America has changed since World War II. She makes some very strong, well supported arguments that humans (men in the book) have a deep need to contribute in a meaningful way to the whole. That men fulfill their feminine side by nurturing society in the form of their country, military unit, or even football team. She also argues that the current competition bent in western society is undermining men's ability to fell fulfilled. They often express this need through things as simple as a high school football team booster club.

That was an example from, well women's studies of all places (I may be placing my far from feminist claim in danger here with my intellectual crush on Miss Faludi). But I can hear the echo of Tipa's comment from my sci-fi post here "All of this high minded stuff is great but how will it be fun?" you are all asking? Cooperation is fun, and cooperative games are often the most fun kind. One of the most fun board games in the last few years is Arkham Horror from Fantasy Flight Games. In this game a whole bunch of players cooperate to defeat an Elder God. We have played this a whole bunch of times and it wasn't until the last time that I even realized there was one paragraph of rules to determine who had done the best over the course of the game. We decided not to use it because it might ruin the game.

Finally the game that the whole idea of an MMORPG is based on is cooperative. In Dungeons and Dragons there is a team effort by the players and the dungeon master to have a good time, and tell a good story. Anyone who has every played in a game where the DM competes with the players can tell you that it sucks.

Sci-Fi MMOs and Star Trek

2008-01-30T12:46:00.000-05:00

There has been a lot of talk about what form the Star Trek MMO might take over the last few weeks. I noticed it as a topic on Elder Game, Ancient Gaming Noob and West Karana at least. I planned to discuss what form I would like to see a Star Trek MMO take and as a set up I wanted to expand on my earlier comments on sci-fi. Well my expanding got quite.....expansive so I'll leave the Star Trek specific discussion for a later post.

I'll be raising some questions about sci-fi and MMOs. I will not be attempting to answer them.

What kind of issues could sci-fi in an MMO be used to address:

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank: The New Deal, the Marshall Plan, and the Keynesian economics they were based on were a product of the tension between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Large corporations and governments were forced to strike a compromise with labor because of the threat of radicalization. Without the Soviet counterweight, laissez-faire capitalism has reigned as envisioned by economists like Milton Friedman. This counter-revolution has been spearheaded by Chicago School insiders in the IMF and the World Bank with their refusal to grant debt relief and new loans unless countries lower perceived trade barriers. Take Star Trek as an example here, what has happened with the end of Klingon-Federation conflict? What social bargains forged in the light of that conflict have been eroded? Who has taken advantage? What is a good metaphor for this kind of situation?
Group Think: Many people are concerned that things like Youtube, wikipedia, and Myspace will lead to group think instead of independently driven opinions. In a future setting the availability of this outlets and the number of people participating in them will have increased exponentially. Did these kinds of sites lead to group think? Was this a good or bad thing? If it was a good thing what were its benefits? If it was bad were controls placed on it? Is there an interesting metaphor for this in science fiction?
Illegal Immigration: We are not the only country dealing with this issue. Right now there are thousands of Palestinians crossing the border into Egypt on TV. What kind of metaphor can a science fiction MMO draw up for this? This could easily tie into the first topic.
Virtual Property: The very idea and nature of MMOs should be up for discussion in a science fiction MMO. Surely things like replicators can be used in a way to look into the issues surrounding ownership of virtual property. Is there a good metaphor for gold selling? Could we have a virtual economy existing inside the virtual economy of an MMO? What would the implications of a capitalist virtual economy existing inside of a socialist real economy be?
Terrorism: What causes people to resort to terrorism? Is it anomie? Do expectations placed on the individual by society exceed their ability to accomplish them by legitimate means? Are they out of reach even by illegitimate means? What does a person do when faced with this? Or are some people just evil, a bad seed? Will it always be impossible to stop people from engaging in terrorism because there is some kind of spiritual or genetic flaw? Is it possible in an MMO to construct economies/situations in which players find themselves resorting to terrorism? Perhaps even suicidal terrorism in an MMO with permanent death? Will other players see them as a hero?

Another question is, can a participatory metaphor even work on an MMO scale? Can a participatory metaphor work well at all? If we cannot have a good meaningful interactive form of metaphor can games ever truly be art?
If we are going to have science fiction MMOs lets actually use them to explore issues the way that good written sci-fi has done. Fantasy works well for fulfilling hero/achievement myths, it is silly to re-skin them with spaceships and say we have something different. Science fiction is not just cool gadgets it is speculative fiction, it is asking "What if...?". It is also a special kind of mirror that allows us to examine our own flaws while pretending to examine our children's.
If you are not going to explore what could be, or reveal what is then pass the broadsword and give me another adolescent male power fantasy. It is OK they are fun...

Rambo

2008-01-28T11:49:00.000-05:00

OK, I had some serious problems with this movie. I am far from a feminist but this movie seriously hurt my single X chromosome. It also hurt my high school English Lit background on many levels.

First, I consider Rambo to be a very interesting character. Especially in David Morrell's book First Blood. Rambo is kind of a modern day Frankenstein, he is a monster that the Army has created out of the pieces of a man. Eventually the Army looses control and his father/creator Col. Trautman must venture to the cold north to destroy him. I think that the story, whether intentional or not, raised some very good questions about the training of soldiers and how to handle their reintroduction into society. I enjoyed the first movie although I hate that they changed the ending so that Trautman did not kill Rambo. I thought there were many interesting things that could be done with the Rambo character. None of them were done in this movie.

There was really no reason for this movie to have any violence at all actually. I really enjoyed the first part of the last Rocky movie and was disappointed when they had him fight. It was a better movie with just Rocky walking around Philly being old. There could have been a good movie here about Rambo coping with getting older and the demons from his past. This is not that movie.

I am going to take the Rambo movie seriously here and I know many people will object to that. People will say that the Rambo films are not meant to be taken seriously, that they are just fun action movies. I completely disagree. Every Rambo film has attempted to make some kind of point about the country we live in and the things we do. The first film raised real questions about military training, and psychological treatment for veterans, questions we still have not found a good answer to. The second movie was an attempt to draw attention to the PoW situation and what our responsibilities were to soldiers left behind. The third, and least subtle, movie was a plea for us to help the Afghani "freedom fighters" (it also raises questions about shooting helicopters down with arrows). The last movie again features a religious group fighting for their lives and freedom in a war torn country. Rambo wants to be taken seriously, and that is what I am going to do.

The script was obviously written by a 12 year old boy in 1956 on his way home from seeing The Searchers. The movie, at its heart, is the stereotypical American captivity narrative that we all learned about in high school English (thank you Mrs. Mortimer). White Christians (trust me they go out of their way to establish this) are kidnapped by dark savages and drug off to the jungle to be....well they never really bother to explain why the raven headed beasts don't just rape and kill them on the spot.

There are a bunch of captured white people but only two are important, the tenderfoot, pacifist doctor and the strong willed but seemingly unskilled blond chick. In the early parts of the film I still had hope for it. The doctor was kind of an useless ass and the girl was the one to convince Rambo to take them upriver when they would not go. I was braced for a Heart of Darkness style trippy boat ride. That's not what I got either. After Rambo drops them off, it quickly turns into a rescue mission.

Rambo here is the Ethan Edwards/Daniel Boone figure except he has neither Boone's cool hat or Ethan's internal conflict. He has a machete and a bow and arrow (thankfully non-explosive). I am not sure whether I am happy that Rambo is Ethan Edwards lite. On one hand some kind of internal conflict and question raising would have been good. On the other hand the only advancement this movie has over The Searchers is that it does not seriously raise the question of whether a white woman should be killed if she is "spoiled" by not white people (the movie The Searchers only kind of asked this question, but the book it was based on certainly asked it).

The pacifist doctor eventually gets to "redeem" himself by abandoning his core values and brutally braining a man with a rock. The woman, who starts strong, becomes weaker and weaker as the movie goes on. When the Christian missionary doctors are tending to the villagers she is shown to be suitable only for bandage wrapping, and staring at wounded people while the men do the work. Later while tenderfoot doc is crushing a man's head during the final battle blondie is cowering beneath a big strong man covering her ears. She shows none of the strong will she had in the earliest scenes. She does not have to give up her pacifist convictions to be strong. There were plenty of wounded soldiers (all men) they could have been bravely tended too under fire.

Rambo wants to be taken seriously but when you do it all comes undone. The movie harkens back to one of the earliest forms of American literature in which the shame of having the home violated is redeemed by the violent, silent male rescuing the woman from the dark savages. The first movie raised questions and was a stronger movie for it. The second movie raised some questions but also preached a bunch and was weaker. The third movie was all preaching and now is a joke. This movie does not even preach clearly. Are we supposed to embrace another religious group in a third world revolutionary struggle? Or are you just pointing out that the situation in Burma is bad?

There was a lot of missed opportunities for a good movie here. We are dealing again with soldiers coming home with mental scars. Many of whom are middle aged this time around. There was a powerful story about an interesting character that could have been told. Instead we get a movie that is like its main character, an old, empty shell jacked up on steroids.

Interesting characterization and plot is thrown away...but if you are interested there is a 30 minute blood orgy.

Moving

2008-01-28T11:42:00.000-05:00

Well due to some drama I have moved my focus from the Fear the Boot guild on Ursin to the Pig and Whistle Society on Kirin Tor. At first I was worried because this is an alliance side guild so I would have to leave poor Fansy behind at 46. Luckily I found an old 41 human priest Waevan that I could transfer over and pick up right about where I was leaving off with Fansy. I'll be playing with many of the same people too.

Picking up a character that you have not touched in a year or so at level 40+ is a little rough. I found the best thing was to just completely clear all my hot buttons out and go back through my abilities and reorganize. This allowed me to relearn what everything did.

I was concerned at first because I was Holy spec (I had been leveling only in dungeons with the toon) but it seems I can kill pretty well and hardly ever get hit so I guess I'll stick with it.

The new guild seems to be pretty good size (over 300 characters), we'll see how many are active and if I can get groups on a regular basis.

I did get to do the cool quest line that ends in the sea monster attack on Theramore. This was a lot of fun, I suggest anyone in the right level range grab it. It starts with "This Old Lighthouse". I'll post screenshots when I get home.

Managed to get from 0% at 41 to halfway through 43. Good weekend.

Nothing happening

2008-01-22T14:31:00.000-05:00

I haven't really had much chance to play recently, which is why I haven't been blogging. I have been pretty busy at work too so I haven't been keeping up with the MMO blogs like I usually do so I haven't had much to comment on.

I have been playing the EQ pen and paper RPG with my Friday night group. It has been a lot of fun and we have a new player who seems like he will fit in really well with our group.

Personally I have been pretty busy studying for my second round of the LSAT and the Patent Bar Exam.

I have some stuff I want to say about the Star Trek MMO, I know it has been floating around the last week or so as a discussion point. Here is what I had to say about Star Trek in general on the Fear the Boot forums:

Since they are going back to the original I hope they plan to push the boundaries out as far as the original did. This is why I am excited about J.J. Abrams being in charge. The original really pushed the envelope out where women and race were concerned (for the time) and I hope to see that upped here. J. J. is known for pretty strong and competent female characters (Kate, Sidney) and actually using minorities' culture to round out their characters (Sun), so I hope we will see that really pushed.

The Treks since then have just gone with everyone is just a different colored version of the same basic guy, which when compared to a lot of other sci-fi is admirable. It would be nice to see females and minorities be equally as capable but explore the cultural and psychological diversity of character it brings (this has been done on Lost a lot more than on almost any other sci fi).

There is no reason Sulu cannot be a competent helmsman and still be culturally Japanese, that would be far more interesting. Likewise there is no reason that a woman can't kick butt but still maintain her feminine elements. Kaylee on Firefly was an expert mechanic and and still a woman character, Zoe could kill everybody in the room but was not reduced to a big boobed version of Rambo.

Like it or not Firefly presented a cast more diverse personality wise than a Star Trek crew and no one was even an alien. Firefly's humans had more differences than Star Treks aliens do. It was goofy, campy and over the top but it was better characters than we usually get in space.

TOS was great sci fi TV when it came out in the 1960s. It would have been good 1950s written sci-fi by comparison. Frankly the Star Trek series have not really raised the bar when compared to what written sci-fi has done in the meantime. Maybe it has climbed up to the level of mid-1960s written sci-fi.

I hope that by returning to original series they are planning to do this. There were far less forehead variations in TOS but still good crew diversity. He will have to waste less time explaining strange alien cultures and can instead just explore the very interesting ones we already have on board. Plus since J.J. is involved there is a good chance of Greg Grunberg and that makes me happy.

Further in the conversation I expanded on it with this:

I know what Star Trek is currently about, I am saying it is time to bump it up a notch. We don't have to use caricatures for many of those issues anymore. Sci-fi could get away with dealing with issues that other forms of entertainment could not because it could use aliens as stand ins for humans. The problem is, Star Trek is still using aliens as stand ins for issues that the rest of entertainment has long since addressed with real people in realistic settings.

In the 1960s the only way you could have a Russian and an American working together like that was in the far future in space. That is not true anymore, and hasn't been in a long time.

Star Trek needs to have more realistic human behavior. Instead of idealized humans dealing with their race and gender issue through conflicts with aliens we can have humans dealing with those same issues amongst themselves now. It is OK we can talk about race and gender using real humans in TV and movies now.

They can still use the aliens to deal with issues that people would be uncomfortable with presented in a realistic setting. Things like the reasons someone becomes a terrorist for example.

Sci-fi is at its strongest when it uses its ability to abstract difficult issues so people can examine them without real world emotional attachments. Once people become more comfortable discussing those issue they need to be moved into the realistic section of the setting so that the characters can become more 3D and able to tackle tougher issues.

I am not arguing that aliens should not be symbols for our issues in Star Trek. I am arguing that aliens should not be symbols for the same issues they were in the 1960s. Everyone else has moved on and Star Trek has been left behind, and it shows. People are smart they have been looking for something else.

I love Star Trek and want to see it succeed. Star Trek is about the future, always in motion the future is. By holding it slave to 40 years of continuity we hamper its ability to address current issues in a meaningful way. The future is not what it used to be, by claiming it is all Star Trek can express in a meaningful way is denial.

Keith Curtis, frequent FtB poster, all around nice guy, and talented artist pointed out that a Russian and an American worked together on The Man From UNCLE before Star Trek. I'll be hitting on these sci-fi commenting on real life themes through metaphor when I talk about the MMO and how it could be used to comment on MMOs themselves.

Reply to Elder Game's 2D is the state of the art

2008-01-08T12:23:00.000-05:00

Good post on Elder Game

I found the missions in FFXI to be very enjoyable and they told a pretty good story. There was plenty of NPC rivalries and political intrigue to witness. One of the main problems with FFXI was that these were not actually integrated into the gameplay experience. You would grind for a few weeks, be able to do a mission and get part of the story, and then grind another few weeks before you saw another part. Now I do not like the current direction of MMOs (lots of solo questing) and prefer hanging out in a group with down time to chat, but there should be a way to integrate strong FFXI like sories into a good social environment.

One good quest that comes to mind is an early dwarf/gnome quest in WoW. you have to recover a box of ammunition and deliver it to some guys down the road from Ironforge. After you deliver it they go through this long skit where they are doing target practice with lots of lines thrown in from movies. It is a pretty funny quest and I always enjoy doing it.

Elder Game said:

Now take it a tiny step further. Give each town something memorable. What if this town…

Is full of mimes
Is having a feud with the town across the river
Is full of aristocrats who despise common adventurers… but need their help
Has a strictly-enforced dress code
Has a very unusual religious belief
Has just been terribly conned by a snake-oil salesman

One thing that came to mind when I read this was that I would really enjoy a quest line based on the events in The Music Man. If you are not familiar with the movie, a shyster comes to town and convinces the town they need a band for the kids because they are all being turned to evil by the pool hall. They get him to be their band director even though he has no real ability to teach the students to play their instruments. If the player was given a quest line where they slowly uncovered that the town was being duped and even got to choose whether to reveal it or cash in on it that would be a lot of fun. If the text and events were well written the whole chain could be nothing but fed-ex quests and still be a blast.

Movies

2008-01-08T12:00:00.000-05:00

Even though my wife has lived in this country since she was 12, she has seen very few of our movies. While I have managed to get her caught up a bit over the last 5 years (she has seen all the Star Wars movies and even gone to an ECW wrestling event) there are still many basic staples that she has never seen. My family and I started a full on effort with this Christmas to get her up to speed. Over the past few weeks we have watched:

Raiders of the Lost Ark
Steel Magnolias
The Mummy
The Mummy Returns
The Scorpion King
Ghost Busters
Ghost Busters 2
Jurassic Park
Kundun
The Birdcage

She really likes the comedy and action adventure type movies (not to big on the Academy Award winners unless they deal with Asia) so we have the following to look forward to:

The other two Indiana Jones films
The other two Jurassic Park movies (bleh)
Big Trouble in Little China
Uncle Buck
Dirty Dancing (thanks mom, I'll remember this when you least expect it)
The Alien movies

Iowa

2008-01-08T11:47:00.000-05:00

I wanted to post on this earlier but I used up so much time messing around with my computer that I never got around to it.

This will not be a political blog and I have no interest in starting any arguments etc.

In the Iowa primary one of the whitest states in the country went for an African American for the Democratic primary. Although she wound up finishing third, his chief rival leading up to the vote was a woman.

The Republicans in that state gave a resounding "No" to negative campaigning and voted for Mike Huckabee. Some are claiming it is his evangelical beliefs that won the state for him but the second place finisher there was a Mormon so I think there is more to it than that.

It has been a rough few years for America, the long war in Iraq, contested elections, dirty politics and Katrina have worn on our national unity.

I have to say that I have waited my entire life for a day like this, and I had pretty much given up hope on it ever happening in my lifetime (and I am only 29). I never thought it could happen this close in time to everything else that has been going on.

Good work guys.

Fansy Update

2008-01-08T11:26:00.000-05:00

Well this weekend was pretty much a bust but I managed to make up for it some at the end.

Things started to go south Friday night. After my weekly RPG game (Everquest the RPG this week) I went to log in to WoW while the wife and I watched some movies. My brand new laptop (Vista) could find my network but not connect to the internet. Now it had been working fine for the last few weeks and I didn't change anything but it just quit. I wound up working on it for about 12 hours on Saturday on the phone with tech support several times (can't complain about Xotic PC's tech support). We tried just about everything including some pretty serious registry diving before finally we decided I needed to reinstall Vista. What a mess, what a waste of a day. Way to go Microsoft.

When I finally got up and going things improved though. I met a pretty cool guy in Stranglethorn who wanted to head up to the Swamp of Sorrows. We got ganked a couple of times on the way but had a good time doing some quests out by the shore. I really hadn't been planning on going up there, and the drop rate on the croc and crab quests are stupid but I had a good time. It is so rare that you randomly meet someone cool in an MMO and hang out anymore. Reminds me of the good old days.

I finished extra strong on Monday night, I dinged 45 and with the help of my guildmate Tosh I got my Whirlwind Axe.

I managed to get to level 15 on Birgette (EQ2) and work on the Werewolf Lore quest, I also had a chance to talk with some of my guild mates. It was a random invite guild but there seems to be some pretty cool people to talk to in it.

Daigo vs Justin

2008-01-08T11:23:00.001-05:00

Still awesome

10 things I would like to see in a raid centered game

2008-01-04T18:51:00.000-05:00

Eventually someone is going to make a niche raiding game. I am pretty sure there would be a decent audience for one. Here are 10 things that I would like to see in a raid only game.

No Level grind: There is no reason to even have levels. There would be no way to ensure that there would always be enough people in any level range to conduct raids to level with. Since single player and small group tactics bear almost no resemblance to what happens in a raid there in no reason to even have them.
Strong guild support: Competition between guilds will be central to the game whether you plan it to be or not. There should be many ways to measure guilds against each other. Metrics like progression, wipe versus win ration, kill speed, first kills, rare drops etc. can be used so that guild with different play styles have chances to gain points. The merits of speed and skill should both be recognized (the two aren't always in the same place). There should be good, flashy rewards for guild achievement. These can take the form of cooler, bigger guild houses, faster mounts, cool outfits etc. The guild interface should be very moddable. There should be several DKP type systems available from the start as well as the ability to code your own. Everything should be able to be tracked in game.
There needs to be a good way to funnel the new players into raids. When new players log in they should immediately be presented with a very basic raid like event. This could take a form similar to WAR's zone wide quests. Here they would be in a pick-up raid where the whole zone is working towards the same goal. They would not be forced to pick up complicated raid mechanics from the start, instead they would be working on communicating who was going for which goals. This experience should be ratcheted up over time requiring more and more co-ordination between the players. Newbies should also be put into newbie guild upon entering the game. Since their are no levels this whole experience would be skippable if someone already had a guild they were planning on joining with friends.
There should be some kind of switchable job system like in FFXI. No player should have to sit a raid out because they don't have the "right" class. No guild should have to skip raiding one night because not enough of class x showed up.
All advancement should be drop based. Better and new skills can be gained from scrolls. Access to new jobs can be gained from raid quests. Better weapons and armor improve your stats. It is possible there could be a crafting component if there was demand for it and a fun mechanic could be developed. None of the items should be "soulbound". Who cares if people get twinked? You want them raiding with their friends as soon as possible. If a guild wants to help someone out to increase their ranks let them. You might want to eliminate gold too. As long as there are plenty of drops the community can work the economy out themselves. I have a feeling it will be based on the greenback no matter what you do anyway.
There should be collision detection during combat. This eliminates the need for cheesy aggro mechanics and allows for more interesting strategies.
The game needs to launch with good voice support. It needs to have multiple channels that can be filtered and organized.
For the most part the raid zones should be instanced. There should be some sort of persistent world between them. There could be some competitive raids in the persistent world.
There is no reason not to have a strong story that players can effect. There could even be branch points based on what the first guild (or the majority of guilds) does when it gets there. There could be some raids that only a select few ever get to see, like the Sleeper in EQ1. The guilds and players who make a difference should be included in the history.
There should only be one server. It is going to be niche game and most of it will be instanced. Everyone should be living the same story.

My Favorite Blogs and Podcasts

2008-01-04T13:14:00.000-05:00

Here are the gaming related Blogs and Podcasts that I really enjoy:

1) Without a doubt my favorite spot on the web is www.feartheboot.com. They have a great podcast that focuses on pen and paper RPGs, they give really good advice and cover a lot of interesting topics. What really causes the show to gel is the interplay between the hosts, their personalities work well together and the show is fun to listen to even for people who are not into pen and paper gaming. On top of the show they have a great forum community with lots of fun stuff, good ideas, and good advice flying around. The FtB forums are set to my homepage.

2) The second place I hit when I fire up my browser is www.westkarana.com. I first noticed this blog a few weeks back when she had a post about making an offline single player version of Everquest. I started reading her other posts and really enjoyed her gaming stories and the kinds of ideas she presented. It steadily made the way up my must visit list.

3) I also really enjoy a few of the podcasts over at Virgin Worlds. The ones I like the most are Voyages of Vanguard and The Online Gamer's Anthology.

Voyages of Vanguard covers Troy's journeys in the MMO Vanguard. The show is pretty interesting even though I only dabble in Vanguard. He also has a blog.

The Online Gamer's Anthology is a kind of history of gaming podcast. They have done episodes on things like Meridian 59 and Zork. I really have fun listening to this show as it is very well done.

4) I also have a number of blogs on my bookmark list that I make sure I hit every day:
The Elder Game
Kill Ten Rats
MMOG Nation
The Ancient Gaming Noob

5) Another blog site I hit up a few time a day is Game Set Watch.
There are two columns in particular that I really enjoy @Play, which is about roguelikes, and Game Mag Weaseling, which covers the gaming magazines and really got me started reading the British mags (I find them to be much better than the U.S. ones, especially Retro Gamer).

6)I get most of my video game news from www.1up.com.
I stay pretty loyal to this site because for years I enjoyed their excellent OPM publication. I was sad to see it go but there is still plenty to keep my coming to the site. By plenty I mean: Scott Sharkey, Jeremy Parish and James Mielke. All three are involved in the on again off again Retronauts podcast (which I love) and write some pretty funny and interesting stuff. I used to really enjoy Mielke's FFXI blog but have not seen it in a long time.

7) I try and keep up with the Dungeons and Dragons podcast. Usually I would not be that interested in a podcast produced by a company that produces the product it is on but I really enjoy Mike Mearle's game design work like Iron Heroes.

Minmei's singing hurts leveling

2008-01-04T09:21:00.000-05:00

I didn't get a whole lot accomplished last night because on Thursdays I watch Robotech with my friends. It turns out that Minmei singing "My Boyfriend is a Pilot" just doesn't get me in the mood for leveling. I try to play while I am watching but I never get much done.

I managed to finish a few quests with Fansy.

I gained a level with Birget my EQ2 Bruiser.

I got to level 7 with Waevan my hardcore Mythos character. I also managed to take down a boss, it was a close call too.

It was a long war, fortunately no one was hurt

2008-01-03T12:37:00.000-05:00

It is hard sometimes to believe that Azeroth has been subjected to savage war after savage war. As I wander the streets of Stormwind I don't see amputees and crippled veterans begging for money, living in hovels. I see school children gaily running through the streets stealing each others' dolls.

Where are the people whose lives were forever changed by these wars. Sure there are some ruined cities and a few quest givers mourn the loss of a son, or husband. There are a few abandoned homes, the body of Mankirk's wife, and a burned out inn but really it looks more like the results of some sporadic raiding not a dimension spanning epic conflict for the very survival of the world.

Where are the camps full of refugees? Where are the mass graves? Where are the wounded veterans, one eyed children, and ravaged battlefields?

Goldshire wouldn't be some fairy tale village nestled in the woods outside the big city it would be a large camp of displaced people hoping to have access to the protection of the city walls. They would be awaiting the next big invasion. It would be overcrowded, food would have to be shipped in. The people would have had no choice but to rape the surrounding land for every ounce of timber or food it could provide. There would be constant tension between the people living in the city and the unfortunates in the rat's warren outside the walls.

The effects of war don't just fade away as soon as the last corpse vanishes from the ground to respawn. A large battle changes the ground it is fought on. A war taxes a country of its wealth and its young.

If you walk around Saigon or even a smaller village in Viet Nam you can make no mistake that the country has been through a war, even though it was 30 years ago. There are wounded people, there are still displaced people, there are even still buildings constructed from U.S. Army Quonset huts. There is practically no sign of this anywhere in WoW. All is a cartoony wonderland.

I am being hard on WoW here only because it is the most visible example. Every MMO is all cause and no effect where almost everything is concerned. However WoW started with the premise that the wars featured in the RTSs had been fought. There is practically no sign that they ever happened.

Predictions part 2

2008-01-03T11:30:00.001-05:00

Age of Conan: Like WAR this one looks good on paper, however it is much more risky in a lot of ways. I am not talking about the mature content here, I am talking about launch quality. Players are not as tolerant of a poor launch as they once were. Vanguard proved that. Vanguard launch, as bad as it was, would have been considered about average a few years ago. There is no way that MMO players will have any tolerance for an Anarchy Online style launch from Funcom. I don't worry about WAR on this one, the makers of DAoC know what they are doing when it comes to launches.
I think if AoC can launch well it will be in good shape to be a decent second tier MMO. The Conan license will be helpful, it is not super popular anymore but I bet a larger number of people in the general public know who Conan is than Thrall. A game centered on PvP game play is needed if for no other reason than to shut up the crybabies from UO.

Lineage II: This is a love it or leave it kind of game. I have to be upfront in saying that I like Lineage II. It has some horrible problems with botters and gold farmers, and frankly it may be too late to fix those. However, for me Lineage II is one of the best implementations of PvP yet. Being an mass axe murderer should have consequences. L2 has continued to put out good content and revise the gameplay to keep up with the changing times. It is a lot like EQ2 in this respect. It did not have the best start but there has been a lot of effort made to improve it, and it shows.

I see L2 continuing to have good, free expansions with engaging PvP goals. It will keep the faithful happy, draw people like me back from time to time, and bring in the odd new player. The main thing I hope to see here are the lessons that will be applied to L3. I hope to hear an announcement of L3 this year, if they go with what they learned it could be the breakthrough Korean MMO for the West.

Final Fantasy XI: Like L2 this one is different things to different people. To some it is a cutesy, Hello Kitty Hell with a soul crushing grind and nap like downtime. To others it is a beautiful, fully realized world where you actually talk with and get to know your party members. I fall into the second category, I am fully aware of her warts but the good outweighs that bad for me in FFXI.

Like L2 I think FFXI will continue to do what it does best, fulfill the initial promise of the game. The strong free updates will continue as well as the less frequent expansion packs. They will continue to build the game outward instead of adding more levels. New jobs and alternate advancement opportunities will continue. There has also been rumors of player made dungeons, if true this would be great.

Mythos: Note to game companies: If you are going to try to sell a game at the same time you start your beta for your free to play game you should make sure that the for pay game is the better game. Flagship really dropped the ball on this one. Even in beta Mythos is twice as fun as Hellgate: London. I expect this to continue as they put out more content. Maybe you should let these guys run your other game too.

Asian Free to Play: While still lagging behind the quality curve these games are improving. The graphics are starting to become acceptable, and there are even some gameplay innovations to be found (Sword of the New World, the games where you can fly etc.). I expect these to continue on their guild centered, castle siege, PvP path for the time being. They will get better at it though. I expect that in the next few years we may see a F2P game that can give L2 a run for its money in terms of quality (not community).

Predictions part 2

2008-01-03T11:30:00.000-05:00

A good day for Time's nerd blog

2008-01-03T08:55:00.001-05:00

Two good posts up on the Time Nerd World blog.

Video game violence police blotter

Playing with his 3 year old

Predictions part 1

2008-01-02T15:18:00.000-05:00

It seems like everyone is making their predictions for 2008 so I guess I will to. So here we go with Part 1:

MMOs

EQ1: Not much will change here with regards to the core game, SOE knows which side its bread is buttered on and there is greasy fat all over the raiders. The next expansion will be mostly aimed at the high end player and quite frankly I cannot disagree with this anymore. Many years ago when I played this game regularly I did not like that so much attention was given to raiding and I still think that it was a mistake to do it. However the outcome of them catering to raiders early on is that raiders make up the backbone of their game and catering to them now only makes sense.

However there could be some really interesting things coming up for those of us who just love the world and want to hang out in it. SOE has been softening on the idea of alternate rule-set servers over the last few months. Many people are holding out hope for a Classic server (I admit this would bring me back for a while..maybe a long while) and I think they might finally get it. It will be interesting to see what other ideas SOE can come up with for server rule sets.

EQ2: I already talked about this one a bit so I'll make this quick. I think EQ2 will continue to become more and more polished, I agree with some other people who have stated that the next expansion will be some kind of PoP type thing, finally I think that before 2008 passes SOE will introduce something really new to the game.

WoW: This will be a turning point for WoW and I have no idea which way it will go. They are staring down the barrel of a difficult choice: Do they cater to the l33t kiddies and continue to focus on high end content like they have for most of the games run? Or, do they take the plunge and follow up on patch 2.3 with even more goodies thrown to the casual players that make up most of their subscriber base?

It is a tough choice. EQ1 went with the raiders and it has paid off, the game is still around and doing pretty well considering its age and the amount MMOs have changed. If you go with the raiders you will alienate the casual base eventually (or at least make it almost impossible to ever get caught up with the rest of the players) and they will leave. The trick is they may leave anyway. Do they have the same attachment to the game as someone who plays for thousands of hours? They might, or they might jump ship to the next good casual friendly MMO. The raiders will stay if you keep them happy, they will still be there buying your Xpacs and pwning your bosses 10 years from now.

I don't think that the expansion pack will be coming out anytime soon, it will probably be towards the end of 2008 (or even 2009, it is Blizzard after all). The problem is I think they will have to make this decision long before the expansion drops. If they string the casuals along for months and months with nothing to do they will jump ship to one of the big MMOs coming in the next year. If you don't keep the raid juice flowing the raiders will leave whole guilds at a time for greener pastures. They will be making this decision in their patches.

I hope they take the plunge, I like what they did with the last patch and I think if they start introducing whole new paths through the game they can hold on to a lot of people through alts alone. I would like to see them make raids more casual friendly too. I think someone is going to get smart and make a MMO where you don't even grind to a level cap, you just start raiding from the get go. In fact I have been planning to write something on this in its own post.

Vanguard: I have never wanted to like a game so much. There are so many great things about it. YOU NEED TO GET IT WORKING PROPERLY! It still has serious performance and bug issues, and it also has a population problem. They have, at best, a few months to clean this up and "relaunch".

Warhammer: This is "The One". If any game is going to take on WoW in the near future this is the only one with much of a chance. If this one can't make a dent we will probably have to wait until Bioware's MMO launches. It has a lot of hype, an experienced team, a strong IP, and on paper it looks pretty good. One of the things that excites me the most is that you will actually be able to block enemy movement with your body. Collision detection can give a shot in the arm to stale MMO combat. I am so excited about the possibilities of collision detection and combat that I will be writing a post on it soon. I think they can do it. I think that Warhammer will draw in a significant number of subscribers and become the second biggest MMO in America.

Next up: AoC, L2, FFXI, the freebies and more...

Highlander

2008-01-02T15:03:00.000-05:00

Fansy has been running through the high 30s low 40s quests in Dustwallow over the holiday weekend. I managed to sew up all the green quests in that zone and moved back to Arathi to tackle the quests that had turned green for that area. I dinged 43 and managed to gather up the seals I need for my 40 weapon quest. I also managed to pass the annoying First Aid quest on the first try (it took me many, many tries on my Alliance priest). The First Aid quest is much easier for the Horde though. In fact I managed to get my camera situated in a good overhead view that made it almost trivial.

I also managed to build back up to 50 gold rather quick by reselling leather on the AH. I was initially nervous when I started doing this but it has turned out to be a really easy and dependable way to make cash.

I am actually surprised at the changes from the 2.3 patch (the ones that brought me back to the game). I expected the patch to just make it easier and quicker to blast through that super boring range from the late 30s to the early 50s, the range that made me swear I would not ever level another toon again. While the patch certainly has made those levels go faster it has done something else too, it has made them fun. In fact I would say that this is the most fun I have ever had playing WoW. Not only are the quests plentiful, well paced, and rewarding but everything just seems tied together story-wise in a way that WoW always seemed to lack to me. I feel like I am out exploring and working in several zones and things interconnect. Before it always felt like you were in zone A in this range and never thought of it once you left for zone B.

I only wish I wasn't on a PvP server. WoW world PvP is without a doubt the most ill conceived PvP system in a long, long time. In fact it is so bad that I will dedicate a future post on just how royally they screwed up when designing it.

Mount up

2007-12-28T23:45:00.000-05:00

My holiday weekend business payed off big time to the tune of 150 gold. Ifigure my initial investment at about 50 gold so it was quite successful. This game me enough to grab my mount, my level 40 skills, upgrade to decent plate, and respec to arms. I did this just to try something different and become familiar with a different play style.

I also noticed that my guild was short on druids so I rolled one as an alt. I am not too into alting in WoW because I am playing two other games on the side. However it will be good to have some other toons to play when they are full up on rest XP.

It looks like I will have a pretty good quest selection to choose from at 40. I have a few level 40 Arathi quests, a bunch of STV quests 40+ and some Marsh quests ranging from 37 on up. I prefer to do green quests when possible (I am lazy) so I should be able to keep myself in greens for a while.

Fansy

2007-12-20T21:43:00.000-05:00

That's right my WoW character is a giant cow man named Fansy. Where does someone come up with a name like Fansy? Well it is a tribute to my favorite event in Everquest. There was this bard and he used to ... Well it is just better if I let him explain it.

Now I don't run around acting like Fansy, that would be annoying in this day. But in the context of EQ1 this was hysterical. I just use the name as a sort of tribute.

At this point Fansy is a 39 War. I have slowed down leveling to raise up mount money for the time being. I have 52 gold in the bank and a large stockpile of Medium and Light Leather that I have been buying up at 90% market value or less. I have pretty much done a 48 hour dump of my inventory to see what I can scoop up during the holiday.

I won't be able to get on during the holiday weekend so I won't be able to take advantage of it properly. I estimate I have between 100 and 150 gold worth of inventory so I need about 30% of it to sell. I have no idea how busy WoW is on holiday weekends like this so I am hoping there is a lot of traffic. If not since I mostly deal in raw materials my deposits are low.

Once I get back I'll switch over to leveling, ding 40, and get my mount.

The Next EQ2 Expansion

2007-12-19T10:56:00.001-05:00

The Ancient Gaming Noob posted his predictions on what the next EQ2 expansion might be. For the most part I agree with him. I think that the next expansion will probably be something in the style of Planes of Power. It might not bear the name Planes of Power, heck it might not even take place on different planes but I think the fundamental idea behind the design will be present in the next EQ2 expansion. You will be expanding your character outwards instead of upwards, you will be gearing up through a progression, you will be following a storyline through a progression. I will even go out on a limb and say that there will be an area introduced that will fundamentally change the way the game is played the way PoK did. I don't think it will change it the same way as PoK (travel is fine already in EQ2) but it will shake things up big time.

Why?

Because it is time. EQ2 had a rocky start, it is really only in the last year that this game has both feet on good solid ground. There was a period of awkward adjustment as the dev team was defining exactly what the game would be (go ahead try and play the game using the original strategy guide). They did a very good job with this and went on to release, in my mind, the two most solid MMO expansions ever done. The last two EQ expansions really improved and cemented the quality of this game.

So now it is time to branch out a bit. They will have to be careful to make sure that they do not change the game that already exists the way SOE did with Star Wars Galaxies or even the combat and class changes made to EQ2 (even though those changes were for the best). They will have to add new stuff that makes the new parts of the game distinct from the old game. WoW did this to a limited extent with Outland in that you had player controlled flying mounts and some different PvP zones.

If they go with a Planes of Power type progression system I think they need to adopt an idea like WoW's Heroic Instances where there is really tough content raid style but for a small group. You should be able to progress through the same story content in solo, small group, and raid mode. It should be challenging in all three modes and should have ability, lore and gear progression. Obviously the gear would be different for each progression but gear optimized for raiding isn't necessarily optimized for soloing anyway. They have done something close to this before with Split Paw and I would like to see that idea built on as a whole expansion.

I have no idea what change they might introduce to really change up the game, but I do know what I want to see. I want player created dungeons. Other games have toyed with this and there are rumors of more, if FFXI can even think of this with its limitations then I am sure that EQ2 can pull it off. This would have to be well thought out, because it would be best if you could get actual gear and XP as awards. They would need to use something like D+D's challenge rating system to ensure that reward was balanced with risk. Give us a decent scripting option too, something on the level of Neverwinter Nights.

I think it is time for MMO devs to let go a bit, and I think that EQ2 could be the game to do it in a big way.

First post

2007-12-19T10:07:00.000-05:00

So what is this all about?

I am going to use this blog to track my advancement in the various MMOs I play. I will also post about MMOs in general, and maybe roundup any interesting stuff out on the web.

I have been playing MMOs for a long time now and I have left a slew of orphaned characters across cyberspace. Here is a short history of my MMO playing career (chronological order may be a bit messy)

UO
Nexon's Dark Ages
Everquest
Dark Age of Camelot
Everquest Online Adventures
Final Fantasy XI
World of Warcraft
Everquest 2
Final Fantasy XI
World of Warcraft
Everquest
Final Fantasy XI
Vanguard
Lord of the Rings Online
World of Warcraft
Everquest
World of Warcraft

Right now I am back concentrating on World of Warcraft again. My main is Fansy I level 39 Tauren Warrior on Ursin (not my highest level character, but pretty much the only one I play). I am in the Fear the Boot guild, a guild based around my favorite pen and paper RPG podcast.

I am also dabbling in EQ, EQ2, and VG at this point but only as distractions. If you are interested my mains on those games are:

EQ: Hakiko, Halfling Druid Combine server (just started)
EQ2: Birget, Dark Elf Bruiser AB (just started)
VG: Gina Gallo, Human Monk Xeth (just started)

As you can see I just rolled this characters and my current WoW toon is not very high level. This is because I have just restarted on MMOs after taking a break due to burn out. It was a good break full of Oblivion, and lots and lots of Calling all Cars.

I do not plan on doing any real raiding anymore. My raiding days are long over at this point. I raided in EQ and (although they don't call it raiding) raided a lot in FFXI. I dabbled a bit in WoW and have never been in a group bigger than 6 in EQ2. The WoW guild I am in is pretty small and casual so there is very little chance of me getting back into raiding there, although the Heroic Instance progression looks cool to me and much more manageable.

What this means is that once I hit cap in these games I will be spending less time in them. That is why I have a few games lined up right now. When I hit cap in WoW I will be switching my focus to either EQ2 or VG (EQ1 is around mainly because I cannot let it go) I will then work towards cap in that game before moving on.

I will not be leveling at uber-hardcore speeds because I have been there, done that and at this point just want to enjoy the ride.

I will try to post most days on what I accomplished in each game the night before and what I am looking forward to accomplishing in the future. These posts may be spread out through the day and may be interrupted by posts on other subjects (always MMO related).

There are people out there who enjoy watching other people play video games. Looking around the internet it seems that there are even more people interested in reading about other people playing video games.