Wargame Dork

A One Year Wargame Dork Retrospective, or "My Life With the Friendship Cult"

2012-01-30T06:34:00.000-05:00

This space coming soon once I have time to write it up properly. Until then, enjoy this picture that sort of sums up part of this post far better than mere words:

Dear Princess Celestia/Gary Gygax/Optimus Prime/Hypothetical Therapist I Can't Afford Because I Buy Dumb Things Like Third Party Transformer "Homages", and Cupcakes With Cartoon Pony Heads on Them: I need a life.

Now THIS is why Indies Gaming owns!

2012-01-26T23:55:00.000-05:00

http://imgur.com/r/gaming/JgKda

An upcoming Dungeon Master/Eye of the Beholder styled first person RPG (I am kind of hoping its turn based but who knows?) called Legend of Grimrock got an interface question from someone with a disability who still loves these sorts of games.

Instead of ignoring him or just giving some BS excuse why something simple couldn't be done the developer PUT IT IN THE GAME. Probably was a sub 1 hour project for art and coding, maybe 4 at the highest possible. (I am not a coder but it seems like it would be something super simple considering a game made in 1987 on a 7mhz 512K Atari ST had it in there..)

This is what I like seeing game developers doing. Not ignoring their customers or giving them excuses but doing things the customer wants. To be sure you can't please everyone always but if its something simple that will help your audience and give them what they might like? Why not do it?

Now if we can just get Steve Jackson Games to figure this one out instead of any time any one who ISN'T a Munchkin customer (who probably don't post to Internet boards anyhow..) complaining about or asking for something getting their PR guy posting HOW IT IS.

Sometimes you have to go an extra few inches and you will get MILES out of your customers.

Since Everyone Else is Doing it: My Thoughts on D&D 5th

2012-01-12T03:59:00.000-05:00

Umm.. its too goddanged early to tell? We know nothing about mechanics, what sacred cows stay, which ones leave, which ones come back. All we know is that its coming, probably 12-24 months out (a reasonable timeframe from 4th's release) and they will involve the community in sculpting the rules.

Good on them? Good on them.

Will it satisfy everyone? Doubtful. Different people want different things out of D&D and its IMPOSSIBLE to make everyone happy. Some of the old schoolers have mostly spent the last 5 years or so shoving every stupid, moronic, unbalanced, inelegant, and unfun rule Gary Gygax came up with right up their asses and making them holy and sacred when in general more people tended to think most of them were stupid.

Hell, most of us thought most of them were stupid well before WOTC or even 2nd edition got started.

Heck, just look at classic 80s computer RPGs. Most of them were blatant D&D ripoffs and most of them threw out much of the stupid, or as much as they could get away with.

Of course the old schoolers won't accept this to the point they rage on 2nd edition AD&D which is 1st edition with most of the major complaints eased back to a more sane, reasonable level with the stuff few people really used turned into OPTIONS, usually in a nice boxout in case you wanted to use it

Then 3rd fixed most of what people hated in Gygaxian D&D while putting in their own levels of stupidity and overdesigning it.

Then 4th tried to fix the core of D&D and turned it into something that didn't feel like the previous 30+ years of D&D did while being fun on a different level.

But it was so different the Old School and the 3.x fans alike could only agree they disliked it, with the fans of it mostly screaming GROOOOGNNAAAAARRDDDS! IT IS WE WHO ARE THE FUNHAVERS YOUR GAME WAS NEVER FUN EVER EVER EVER!! and thus turning the D&D discussion universe into a morass of divided opinions, brandwhoring, and outright silliness.

Can 5th bring these people back into the fold?

Doubtful. It will probably sell well and at least be a sales shot in the arm for the D&D division but even if they take the time to listen to everyone there is no way they can please all.

When even the old schoolers can't agree which edition they like or what was good and bad, what chance does WOTC which has corporate influence to deal with and a bottom line of profit to keep up?

But... WOTC is trying. They aren't speaking from On High as they did with 4th which sent many people away and gave Paizo an opening to become the 2nd place RPG company. They want to make something people can use and buy product for if they wish, possibly not overloading a new player, but still providing a way to get steady sales on new product for years,.

So ultimately I am optimistic for both the online RPG community and D&D but right now it is entirely too soon to tell. Maybe we will know more in 6 months or so...

[Toyniverse Plot] A Toyniverse/Let's Experience Atari Computer Holiday Comic Extravasucksa Part 4!

2012-01-08T04:48:00.000-05:00

My storyline has gotten large and out of control. It continues. Imma try to finish this specific storyline in 1 more installment but it might take 2 depending on how large it gets.

The one thing with doing these is I keep finding things in my house that need cleaning. My camera has better vision than I do. After this installment I got out the Magic Erasers and went to town. I've even gone out and bought more. So if nothing else doing comics helps me find dirty things in my house that annoy me to the point I just HAVE to clean it.

What This Toyniverse Secret Santa Unboxing is From, a Quick Guide

2012-01-04T20:55:00.000-05:00

For the tiny amount of my readership that might actually care.

See there is this adorably fun show I started watching thanks to both Something Awful (see sometimes they can be more than just obnoxiously smug, making you want to punch them in the groin even when right like a Internet Forum version of Bill Maher!) and some of the other nerd places I visit about the net who had said positive things.

SA decided it wasn't cool to like it and basically ran all discussion of it (outside of smug hate) off the forums even though over a course of 2 weeks it made the site over 700 dollars in new avatars and the like. We all moved offsite with a massive 90+ members on an IRC channel in the SLOW hours and a very nice forum where we formed possibly one of the few fan communities of anything that didn't devolve into creepy porn/quasi porn shipping and "Original Character" nonsense as most of the online fandom of anything seems insistent of becoming.

(Seriously. Anything you love? There is probably a fan community devoted to making porn of it. No matter how innocent and pure. Or even sane. People write porn of the UK Top Gear hosts. While Top Gear is an amazingly funny show and has my favorite bigoted middle aged man on it ever, it is a show with 3 generally ugly middle aged men who love cars and abusing one another. The Internet is a VERY stupid place where people seem devoted to idiotic ideas becoming truth that only exist in their diseased head, like a worldwide version of Rush Limbaugh, except who really want to see Optimus Prime and Megatron do the Horizontal Bop instead of destroying all intelligent political discussion in a country.)

This community is full of wonderful, nice, and fun people who are crazy in the Howling Mad Murdock way and not the Buffalo Bill sort of way. So one fellow decided to organize a Secret Santa thing with wish lists and he did all the hard work of matching people up and giving emails with the addresses and keeping track of who was going to who and locations based on willingness to ship overseas and whatnot.

It was quite fun even if my gifter sort of only half read my list. (He insisted on trying to fix it but its really the thought that counts and the magazine made 2 unplayable games playable so yay there. It shows how much I suck that it was pretty much the ONLY gift I got this year, as both my parents are deceased, one friend failed to get anything out on time, and my sister bought me dinner.)

But we end this little background info nobody cares about with a picture (from the person I was chosen to gift to and is on their hosting so if in a couple months the picture is not there they took it down) showing what cool stuff I sent, which was a mixture of goodies I bought because it seemed fun, sealed extras of things I had in the house, and from the wishlist itself.

Plus its my way of potentially creating a new hobby gamer since the giftee mentioned needing a charger to play an RPG on the PSP. (Which sadly I forgot to remove the price tag from. DOH!) It might not work, but sometimes nice introductory gaming goodies as part of a gift to someone might help make a new gamer.

You never know!

Am I awesome or what? Car Wars starter books, a mini wargame, some RPG magazines, and dice among other goodies. (Some of the dice and a couple Lego figures are hiding in the coffin. I love those little metal coffins Target has had the last 2 Halloweens. They make great dice and figure transports!) Also note my cool ass tea aged letter done in the form of a Warhammer 40K universe thing.

[Toyniverse Plot] A Toyniverse/Let's Experience Atari Computer Holiday Comic Extravasucksa Part 3!

2011-12-29T01:41:00.000-05:00

This one is all plot no computer or present related stuff in it. But I am keeping the same subject tabs just so I can keep the storyline all collated and stuff.

The comic is taking on a life of its own. But I feel the need to let the story flow naturally as opposed to just speeding along with it. There is another present to show, and this tale will take as long as it needs to. It will probably just move over to the Atari 8 bit stuff eventually as I have plans. But this specific story will go as it needs to.

[Toyniverse Plot] A Toyniverse/Let's Experience Atari Computer Holiday Comic Extravasucksa Part 2!

2011-12-25T07:00:00.000-05:00

This one is 95% informative as opposed to comic book silly toy fun. Its more a part of the Let's Experience Atari bit than it is Toyniverse. If you wanted to see toys behaving badly wait till part 3.

Oh yeah in case it wasn't clear: The pictures of the Atari machines in this installment came from Wikipedia and all looked to be under the Creative Commons License. Because I don't own most of them and the ones I do are either broken, semi broken, under piles of stuff while being semi broken, or yellowed with age.

[Toyniverse Plot] A Toyniverse/Let's Experience Atari Computer Holiday Comic Extravasucksa Part 1!

2011-12-24T06:51:00.000-05:00

Its the holidays. Holidays suck for me. I did a Secret Santa thing on a very nice site full of lovely crazy people. Here is my ridiculous unboxing comic that also ties into my long running Toyniverse Plot comic strip I have on a different site.

[Let's Play] Party Like its 1987! Let's Experience the Atari Computer! Part 4: DOS 2.5 and RAM

2011-12-16T01:30:00.000-05:00

This has been long coming as I have been lazy and playing Fallout New Vegas. However work has been going on behind the scenes.

First up, is the 1050 Floppy Drive and DOS 2.5.

Sadly the place I get my emulated versions of does not have an image of DOS so its screenshots from the monitor. Don't worry its pretty minor.

As we have seen in my intro comic here is our Atari 1050 5 1/4 enhanced density single sided floppy drive that also needs its own power plug. There was a further revision of the 5 1/4 drive family but its much rarer even if its design is more in tune with my XE series computer. You flip the power switch in the lower left hand corner on. The activity light above it comes on and will go out in under 10 seconds.

You turn the drive on BEFORE you turn the computer on. It is important.

We then are going to pop in Atari DOS. In our case the best official option, DOS 2.5. There are later versions and optional 3rd party versions and even drive mod kits you can get. But we are going traditional. As I may have mentioned you can using single or double density disks in the drive and you have to notch each side you want to write to, flipping the diskette over. The seller had already made a backup copy of DOS 2.5 and we will use it, keeping the original from wear and tear.

Once we pop the disk in and it locks, we turn the little lever down and the activity light pops on for a moment, letting us know if the disk is in general ok and ready to be used. Once it turns off, we can then switch on the computer and our disk autoboots if its an Atari formatted disk with an autobooting program of some kind. Like a DOS.sys disk or a game.

As I have a 128K system (hence the name 130xe, its little brother being the 65xe) it sets me up a 64K RAM disk as I boot to speed up operations. Which is handy for programming or making disk procedures a bit snappier. A second disk drive is even more useful though. But one of those will run me a good 50 bucks or so right now. More than I am willing to pay when for about twice that I can have an SD Card solution which loads ultra fast and won't require increasingly old and fragile magnetic disks or put wear and tear on equally old disk drives with motors and ancient belts.

In way less than a minute DOS and the RAM Disk is ready to go and we are at our Basic prompt. Typing the letters above brings us to the DOS menu.

And now we have our DOS prompt with all your options, most of which and the selections afterwards being really simple and self explanatory, with more info in the Drive/DOS book. K and L are for hardcore programming bits. A disk format takes about 2 minutes, and Duplicate Disk sadly shows that all my working floppy disk games have copy protection so I can't make nice working backups and am forced to use my live disks. Which frightens me. But remember this is the 2.5 DOS. In 1984. Its already more advanced than what the Commodore, Apple 2, or MSDOS machines had to work with. Commands in a nice menu system all ready to go.

That's just quality.

My only issue is that instead of showing bytes or kilobytes of disk space it uses sectors. And our enhanced density is 999 a side. Its like Microsoft Points math but 21 years early!

As to other disk games? In general they load pretty quick, from 30 seconds to around 2 or so though some titles have multi loads where one bit loads, reach a menu, something else has to load. But its not so much the Atari's fault. Most of the Atari software only needed 8K till like 82, 16-32K in 83, and 48K for the rest of the system's lifespan. There were games and apps that needed more or less during these timeframes but in general developers always coded for the lowest machine because there were more of said machines sold. Obviously more RAM equals faster loading (once the initial boot was complete anyhow. Kind of.), more complex games, and better looking games.

Officially these are the number of titles using each level of RAM according to Mobygames and the 726 listed titles they have on record, 299 of which have their RAM requirements recorded:

8K : 10
16K : 62
24K : 11
32K : 39
48K : 158
64K : 20

Its a pretty wild array, with 48K being the most popular, and 16K the second most. The Atari machines had a variety of different RAM builds with 2 active machines for each of the 3 lines (well 3 in the final if you count the XEGS which had the same RAM as the 65XE) and some easier to install more than others.

But really if you want to play the most programs a 65XE, 130XE, or a XEGS will cover you with their 64, 128, and 64K of RAM.

The original 800 and 400 had 8K each (400 originally intended to have 4 but RAM came down in price) with the 800 having slots for more RAM and eventually being shipped with 48K by the end of that line's life. The 400s eventually came with 16K options and Atari Service Centers could even bring them up to 48K as well. (Though the 800 with its better keyboard and plug n play memory and monitor outputs was still the more expensive albeit more desirable choice.)

The XL series had 16K for the 600XL, 64K for the 800XL, and 64 for the 1200XL which was quickly phased out due to massive incompatibilities with older software. (The X00s still had some incompatibilities but not as many and a Translator Disk could fix some of them. The XEs have the same issue. I may have run into 2 titles already that aren't listed as incompatible that are. As is I can't buy GORF or Demon Attack until I foot up for an original X00 series machine. I may have found a place to get one cheap though. We will get to that when we can.) What is kind of funny is the 600XL while missing some of the output and port options of the 800XL can actually have MORE RAM than its big brother. A 64K memory expander was made for it that does not work with the 800. So it can reach 80K while the 800XL cannot! (There was a plan for memory packs for it and a box to hold multiple expansions that never came out. Atari was BIG in the early 80s for coming up with cool kit that never made it out of prototype stages.)

We can sort of see why lower RAM amounts were used and even why 64K wasn't that common. When most of your customer base has a lower spec machine you want to go for them so you get the widest possible base of people capable and willing to buy your product.

Heck, even the 810, and 1050 drives weren't all that common for a while, with users, especially those poor European folk settling for cassette drives. (The 410 and 1010 being Atari's drives. Most European computers till the 16 bit era used tapes as defaults and most of the software is available as such. When it even was available on disk the price was usually 50% greater. A 10 Pounds Sterling Commodore 64 game on tape was 15 pounds on disk. Or going by the rough 1 Pound to 1.50 US Dollars we see a 15 dollar tape game or the same game on disk for 22.50, ignoring inflation. Keep in mind floppy drives cost an insane amount, usually 2-3 times the cost of the machine and its easy to see why Europe just dealt with the 10-20 minutes most tape programs took to load and all the hassles tape brought with it.)

This is why so much software was available on cartridge, especially from Atari itself. From a collector's standpoint this is pretty awesome though. You could just buy the main machine and grab one of your Atari 2600 controllers, hook it to your TV, and still have plenty of games to play back in the day. And now. Plus given that cartridges are VERY durable and the worst even old ones need is a quick cleaning you have a machine that will be fun out of the box and less worry for the durability of all the moving parts in a floppy drive and the equally if not moreso fragile magnetic floppy disks that can be damaged in dozens of ways.

Hell, I have Amiga and DOS PC 3.5 disks that died merely being stored in my bedroom!

This is another reason I chose the Atari 8 bits over going back to the machine of my youth, the mighty Commodore 64. There was TONS of cartridge games released and no need for worrying about all the PAL and probably incompatible with a US machine anyhow tape games, or hunting down a working 1541/1571 Floppy Drive to run American games. The C64 didn't have nearly the amount of cartridge games. And unlike the C64's Europe only Game System version, the XEGS actually got a strong software release catalog on cartridge for it. (And was actually a full bore computer instead of the stripped down thing Commodore made. And came out in the actual 8 bit era and didn't try competing with the Genesis and SNES.)

The Atari was mainly a US system and was THE gamer's computer from around 1980-1984. Its' games and popularity was usually the winner in Electronic Games magazine reader polls month after month.

Now we have gone through the main hardware I have at the moment (don't worry I have more to get!), we can get into collecting and controllers!

[Let's Play] Party Like its 1987! Let's Experience the Atari Computer! Part 3: Basic and System Self Test

2011-11-30T00:25:00.001-05:00

Just a video this time, taken from the Altirra emulator. I almost did a comic version but here I think the video and the few captions I added do a good enough job. I like the fact the machine has a self test so you can check some basic things out yourself. Provided its working enough to turn on mind you.

Next time a we do DOS 2.5!

[Let's Play] Party Like its 1987! Let's Experience the Atari Computer! Part 2: Video Ouput Solutions

2011-11-19T06:35:00.000-05:00

Well we are back with our second installment, this time with some options for video. As I say in the comic installment, photos were taken of a 13" 80s monitor and a modern 32" HDTV. Results are close to in person but not 100%. But its the best I can do and it is really the only way to show the differences in output.

An emulator certainly wouldn't and I doubt a capture card would either. Plus my modern computers and the Atari are at least 15' away and it would be unfeasible to run cables anyhow.

(Remember this fact as it WILL come up in this project later on. Certain hardware solutions elude me because of this. I simply do not have the workspace to run the Atari next to the PC or the Mac unless I wanted one of my modern computers to go where the Atari is, which then means moving a screen to the floor any time I want to watch TV on a TV. Or play modern consoles. Its easy enough to move the monitor you will soon see but its small and wee. Putting an imac on the floor not so much!)

Another couple options we could have tried:
(As both of these will become increasingly irrelevant over the next few years I am merely mentioning them for completeness sake though I may go back and try them out later for laughs.)

1: Video out through a DVD or VCR. Best Electronics recommends this one. Its adding yet another stupid thing to be powered on and plugged in. I can't be bothered. And my DVD player is my PS3 with all its HDMI goodness.

2: RF or S Video through an SDTV. S Video and an SDTV would probably be ideal but my SDTV with S Video is halfway down a flight of stairs in a hall with no power source. And it weighs a good 100 pounds or so as its a console type and 25". My 19" SDTV only has RF and it is in an awkward place for anything outside of a Gamecube stacked on top of a DVD and a VHS player in some unholy Tower of Hanoi configuration. (Its like the Lament Configuration but with Mario. "I've-a got so much to show you-a! Except for Earthbound! We-a don't talk about that game. Don't worry, we can play "Imagine Babiez!"

And to wash that image out with another one, here is a bit of extra info on our aged and yellowed keyboard:

I am working on a solution to the yellowing too. It just depends on finding a UV Lamp, a lot of Hydrogen Peroxide, and a safe container to use both in. Have you played with toxic liquids today?

[Let's Play] Party Like its 1987! Let's Experience the Atari Computer!

2011-11-12T07:06:00.004-05:00

This is gonna be a multimedia, multiformat thing that goes beyond any mere Let's Play.

ITS A LET'S EXPERIENCE.

A mixture of blog, images in the comic format I am genuinely GOOD (ish) at, and sometimes video from an emulator just to show things at their clearest.

Some games will get played to completion. Others will merely be a couple quick minutes or a few comic pages in coverage. My thoughts on these games and ponderings on both collecting and playing them will happen in a loose review style as unburdened by either nostalgia or modern gaming biases as I can manage. ( I never grew up with this brand of computers so that helps make it fair. I was a Commodore man. Which was the best 8 bit computer to own.)

I am sharing this experience because its fun to talk and interact with folks and create something. I may even learn tricks to improve my video or writing as we delve deeper and deeper. I may end up spending entirely too much money (oh wait already happened). I may end up turning a few of you into retro Atari gamers.

Let's get this going and I hope everyone enjoys my descent into 1980s computers!

A Rant on Communication

2011-10-30T22:05:00.000-04:00

This is something I have wanted to say for a long damned time, and as my posting has been quiet this month it makes sense to use now as the time for saying what needs to be said:

IF YOU DECIDE TO NO LONGER PLAY IN A GAME GROUP OR HAVE NO INTEREST IN A GAME GROUP TELL SOMEONE IN THAT GROUP THIS IS SO.

This also goes with not wanting someone to continue to play in your group.

I get it I mean I do. People are passive aggressive wusses who are too afraid of any form of confrontation ever.

So doing things like just not responding to scheduling emails, or when someone talks to you about a game and you aren't interested you just delete the message and act like the game never happened, or if someone is a complete tool you do the RPGnet approved "Lie and say the game isn't taking place" because that can't ever come back and cause more trouble than your chickens(*& self thinks you are avoiding by rightfully telling someone they are being a douche and you don't want them there any more is what everyone does.

(Its not just gaming. Its why "I'll call you" in dating circles really means "Thanks for the sex but I never intend to talk to you again but I am what I just got out of you last night and can't be honest with you".)

This is enormous jerkfacery of the highest level and its GOT TO BLOODY STOP.

If you are interested in a game but upon hearing more details and it doesn't sound like its your bag its OK to say "Sorry, its not my thing. Good luck and I hope you have fun".

This is both POLITE, and nice. You can in fact think its the worst idea for a game in the history of ever but its not like you have to say that.

Just letting the person know you won't be participating is good enough.

But nobody does that do they? As I mentioned, RPGnet even ENCOURAGES this sort of rude, wussy, passive aggressive handling of things.

Instead all you really do is waste other people's time as they prepare for games they won't be playing in or have people show up for, which is VERY GODDAMNED RUDE. These days it seems like we all have less and less free time.

Your bitch ass deciding to in the middle of the game claim your wive/husband/dog/ect needs you at home and you run out never to be seen again is the height of dickery. Outside of the most mentally unbalanced person, who is gonna care if you say "Sorry I don't think this is working out" and then leave?

Or if you are that afraid of personal confrontation about pretend Elf and Space Marine games, just finish that session, and make a phone call or email the next day saying you will no longer be playing.

IS THIS SORT OF COMMON COURTESY THAT FREAKING HARD?

I've seen so much of it over the years both as a passive and active participant in someone else's inability to be polite. I refuse to engage in it. If I think a game sucks and I am quitting? I almost always let the group know as I leave for the day so they know not to waste any more of their game time on me. The few times I just leave after a game? I STILL make sure someone in the group knows I am not coming back ASAP.

Even if I utterly loathe the game or people I now know to avoid at all costs I still respect them as human beings and show them basic decency.

The game groups where I see this sort of behavior constantly done always end up terrible and its usually a sign to run like hell.

So show respect to your fellow human beings and if you aren't interested in playing or continuing to play a game you have already started interacting with take that whopping 2-5 minutes and make a phone call or send an email saying so.

Heck, if you have enough gusto to (respectfully) say why you are leaving/don't want someone else to play? They may learn from their actions and correct bad behaviors, if not with you, possibly in the future.

But this is me hoping people show common courtesy and respect for each other and that's just silly talk. All you have to do is see cigarette butts and garbage strewn all around, or shopping carts laying about in parking lots as opposed to the minute it would take to put them in their proper places to know we as humanity don't have any courtesy whatsoever.

And that is terrible.

Bad News for 4e D&D and Other Ponderings

2011-10-23T21:04:00.001-04:00

Over at the Something Awful forums there is an over 1300 PAGE thread on their Traditional Games subforum to the normal Games forum called Grognards.txt. In general its a bunch of smug 4th edition D&D fans bashing anyone butthurt over 4th edition. "Nerds angry at nerds angry at D&D" is what I call it.

Yet...

There is a LOT of good game theory and plenty of examples of terrible RPG players in that thread. (And its not the two times I have been uncredited quoted as being a grognard either. I'm on page 1 and in the 1130s. Neither quote is particularly good or bad really. When you read the thread and some of the sheer creepy, horrible, and just plain WRONG things gamers on the net say and talk about their campaigns me at my most anti 4e aint doodly squat. This depresses me greatly. People never disappoint at disappointing..)

Recently there has been the discussion of people saying 4e "ISN'T D&D" and a topic I have probably blogged about before on the lethality of classic D&D and how it sucks. What follows is both a fellow I am quoting, and my own thoughts on both the lethality, and if 4e is D&D or not:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Guilty Spork posted:

The one thing I have really and truly never understood about D&D is why the paradigm of ridiculously fragile PCs lasted more than a month or so. Having wizards who can't be scratched to death by a single housecat somehow equates to having totally consequence-free play like in an MMO that only exists in grognard's minds.

I honestly say this is what really killed RPGs. Not videogames being easier to get into, not MMOs.

It was kids and preteens in the 80s with thoughts of He Man, Conan, Thundarr, and Lion O in their heads. (And maybe a couple of girls with She Ra or Red Sonja)

Then they get to the table and bring their character into battle. Only to die in the first or second fight.

Ok fuck this let's go play Atari 2600 instead. (Even moreso with the creepy sex deviants who have been ruining everything ever. The Internet just gives sickos a group to talk about how they want to see Rainbow Brite having "group relations" with the Carebears or something. Human sexuality is a terrible thing.)

Its not the effort involved. Sure it might be a lot of work but if its your thing, you won't mind the work.

Some people love to fix and repair their own cars. You have nerds spending 100s of hours painting their wargaming minis. People who love sewing.

But when so many cards are stacked against RPGs as is, the sheer lethality of RAW TSR D&D is just a giant turnoff.

And even beyond the creepy players, what about the PVP parties who think backstabbing a fellow player is FUNNY? That sort of crap drove people away from online games like Diablo and Phantasy Star Online in droves. And basically the PVP flag alone is what helped Everquest beat Ultima Online regardless of what a few hardcore say. Even though in nearly every other way UO was tons more fun.

----------------------------

Going back to IT IS ITS NOT D&D: Well, for a load of people 4e isn't D&D as they know it.

If people were happy about it, would this news have ever happened?
http://www.icv2.com/articles/markets/20743.html

D&D has pretty much always been the Number One RPG regardless of quality.

It keeps losing out or at the very least has shed marketshare.

Compare the style of game you played from 74-99 to 3 and 4e. It really feels completely damned different.

(As much as the 3e fans would like to say otherwise, it really is a transitional phase between TSR D&D and 4th. Its sort of a well intentioned mutt that got overdesigned somewhere in the middle. My least favorite version of D&D. 4th Essentials and a house ruled Basic are my go to D&D branded games, with a houseruled Castles & Crusades my preferred D&D game PERIOD, X-Plorers coming in a close second.)

Sure WOTC says what the brand is on, but ask any Godzilla fan what they think of the 98 movie and its creature is called "GINO" (Godzilla in Name Only), Deanzilla, Sh&*zilla, or similarly childish names. The Godzilla owners ended up calling it 'Zilla and having it get completely smacked down by a Godzilla closer to what people love.

Heck, ask horror fans about how they feel on the Friday the 13th, Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Nightmare on Elm Street Remakes. They are almost universally rejected by the fanbase.

Doesn't matter if its good or not. With consumer products its the fanbase that has some control over the property. (Though having seen the Halloween remake I can safely say its only slightly less terrible than Halloween 5 and 6. But only the parts where its not trying to be an actual Halloween remake. If they removed the remake bits it would actually be an interesting look into a child who murders most of his family and his inability to be rehabilitated in a mental institution. Once the remake part properly begins it sucks ass. Lots and lots of ass. Epic Ass Sucking Time is what it becomes. Apparently its sequel is even worse. How you get worse than a movie whose Chud.com review scored it as a "F*&K YOU out of 10" I do not know.)

Change is good, but if you change too much too fast and don't keep enough of what people love it will get creamed unless you find enough of a replacement audience.

Games Workshop was lucky when 3rd edition 40K did a massive shift. Rackham games with the final version of Confrontation was not. WOTC is getting hammered similarly.

(I would say Transformers survives and thrives with constant changes in style and scope because it never really throws away the previous. Hate the idiotic Bay movies? Well IDW makes Generation 1 comics in a modern style and even reprints the old. Are a kid? Transformers Animated and Prime are right up your alley. Heck, they have a line and upcoming show JUST for the 3-6 year old set who probably would cry trying to transform the main line's deluxe class figures. I've bought the Optimus Prime from this line for my cousin's 5 year old for Christmas. Its so adorable I kind of want one for myself.)

And I do find it a shame because there is a LOT to like about 4e once you don't look at it as how you would TSR D&D. And its a load better than 3.x.

But I doubt the improvements of 4th will carry to 5th. Class balance, streamlining, pick up and play, not swetting the spergy details? These will all probably be ignored next edition and its a Cthulhu damned shame.

I'm enjoying the 4th ed campaign I am running, I enjoy Encounters when I get the opportunity to play, and I even have an open invite to a Friday game I will finally get to play in for at least one session soon.

WOTC dropped the ball, and a LOT of it has to do with changing too much too fast, hosing over Paizo during the change, and the suits (WOTC and Hasbro most likely) trying to sell RPGs to make Magic the Gathering profits. Which just can't happen.

And I doubt anyone outside of accountants wanting RPGs to sell on a CCG business model.

[D&D 4e Castlevania Campaign] The Myth Cycle Part 1

2011-10-04T05:37:00.001-04:00

For every fantasy world with magic and divine powers, one ought to have a basic mythic history of the world. Its nice to have a little background for these things. For my Fantasy Earth this is mine:

IN THE BEGINNING:

In the creation of our universe 3 sisters were born of the Primal Father. Locked in battle with the destroyer of the last, the Chaos Bringer, the One, they died. Their deaths recreated the universe and the Primal birthed three children to make the new creation better than the last. Yet the One had his way as well and spawned 4 brothers.

Our universe was truly created as the 3 battled the 4, eventually sending the Son of War, the Son of Death, the Son of Intrigue, and the Son of Decadence into another dimension, their punishment being to power and warm reality.

Upon having a source of power to create and bring forth life to this new universe the first sister, Celes, made countless suns to warm and bring light everywhere.

The second, Terra, made planets of earth, where her sister's suns would help things grow and life to bloom.

The third, Luna, brought moons to track time and to keep forces on planets in check, and to bring night so that there would be periods of rest.

Then, they slept while the worlds came to life, the beating of their hearts and the breaths of their mouths setting a pace to reality.

When the 3 awoke, they found countless planets bringing forth life. It was then they brought forth their own children to help watch and protect them.

It was then that the 4 made their move...

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 24: Bend it Like Bauer.

2011-09-29T06:41:00.000-04:00

Today I finish this project on time, on schedule with only a single week where I failed to keep it (not counting the hurricane week, which I caught up with, getting both installments out ASAP).

It is complete. Yay me. Boo game designers for slacking it.

My D&D 4e Castlevania Campaign Notes Part 1: House Rules

2011-09-23T06:35:00.001-04:00

This is just going to be a series of writings based on both whatever dumb house rules I come up with (and possibly reports of how terrible they were in active play), and the history/cosmology of my campaign setting.

It looks like I am starting it up Tuesday, thanks to a bit of luck, and me being entirely too aggressive via the internet in roping people in. If you can't get people to play the most popular RPG in the world (even if its taken a serious marketshare blow from Pathfinder) what can you get folks to play?

Probably nothing unless you have a large and openminded group of friends.

So here we go!

House Rules:

Healing Surges: Normal Healing Surges(HS) can NOT be used. Once per day as a Standard Action a PC may immediately recover ALL HP, have all negative status effects cancelled, and gain Defense and Resistance bonuses equal to their Level x 2. Regular HSes may only be used through powers and abilities.

I kind of like more of an old school thing as opposed to having everyone rest up to max constantly.

Action Points: Gone. However once per character level (and you can keep collecting them if you don't use them) you may spend a "Hero Point" to change the value of any die roll made by you or that affects you. Any roll at all.

Don't like Action Points and keeping track of them is a tad odd. I do however like the idea of a "Get out of doom free" thing. Honestly I would say all PCs ought to save this for things like their final death save or if they find themselves in a position where if they fail a roll they are dead.

Death: For saving against Death a 19-20 takes you into safety instead of just a 20.

A little less brutality here. Its kind of tough but fair, and this helps a bit. I could go with "Add your CON bonus to the roll" but that makes death all but impossible outside of TPKs and the like.

Enemies: Enemies do NOT have Healing Surges or Action Points. Also to speed gameplay and compensate for reduced PC self healing average monster HP will be reduced by a good 25-33 percent. I am lazy so it will be me eyeballing it. If things are really too hard or easy I can modify on the fly and who will know? BWAHAHA.

Minor PC nerfing ought to have minor monster nerfing too. Plus, as I said, speeds up the game. Do you want to do math for 600 HP monsters all the time? No. 400 is sillier but not AS silly.

Dead PCs: If a player's PC dies their replacement starts with half the xp of their previous one provided they play either the same race or the same class as their fallen character. (Could be a comrade from back in Wizard school or a relative. Be creative here!) Their starting gold is whatever level the new PC is times 150.
This CAN be used to buy their choice in magic items from the Essentials books or possibly Adventurer's Vault 1 and 2. If a new PC only has the XP to be Level 1, they just start as a Level 1.

Adventure Cards: If you build a deck, I get to draw one of your cards before play each session and may use it for the enemies. Or I may use the card to cancel a card you play. So your 8 card deck becomes 7. Hope I don't take your favorite!

Game Table: Open table for anyone who isn't rude or disruptive. First 6 players play (announcing playing ahead of time locks your slot in, though if you don't show up at least 30 minutes after play has begun it becomes someone else's slot), next person in line becomes the DM's assistant and helps move monsters and stuff. The DM's Assistant gets 3/4ths the XP the rest of the PCs get and 1/4th the treasure. It is assumed all the regulars and semiregulars are present each session but only so many can be handled by one DM. So people are there but not really.

This makes it a far less restrictive game. People don't have to be there every session if they can't make it, and it doesn't OH NO GAME IS RUINED every time one or two people don't show up. If you can only play 1 out of every 4 times well that's fine. Sure your XP gain is gonna suck and you might not want to play a front line fighter, but you can still show up and get some monster bashing in. I seriously doubt I will have a 7+ player group ever much less constantly but I have given some thought just in case I do.

Campaign Restrictions:

Essentials ONLY classes and races. Standard arrays from those rulesbooks. If you really want to play some race not in it, do "Counts As". You might be following the rules of an Elf or a Halfling, but you can say you are a Drow or a Gnome. Good enough for government work!

While not restricted, it is HIGHLY recommended nobody play Dragonborn or Tiefling as the former are very rare in this setting, and the latter are generally despised.

Good and Unaligned alignments please.

Level 1 to start.

Essentials is what I have and what I like. If there is that much outcry for non Essentials stuff I will probably just allow the PHB classes that are the same core as the Essentials, albeit with different builds. So: Assassin, Fighter, Wizard, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Cleric, Druid, and Warlock. Thanks to the D&D Character Builder online and my books it shouldn't be a big issue, but if it is I could easily see myself meeting folks halfway at least.

Character Level Cap: The Cap for this campaign is Level 15. From Level 1-10 XP costs are as usual.
The chart for level 11-15 is as such:
11: 50,000
12: 80,000
13: 120,000
14: 170,000
15: 230,000

I want to have a campaign with a semi set length, and I really don't want to go far beyond the Level 1-10 tier. If there is enough outcry for me to continue the campaign past my end point I could do it, or I could either let someone else DM the next part as they choose to, or we could start a new game or new campaign. But I want a campaign with less insane levels of power, and with a SET SATISFYING ENDING. Even reaching level 10 should take a good 9-12 months given the schedule I am setting.

Schedule: 2 games per month on roughly a biweekly basis. Long as we manage 2 games per month we are GOLDEN. Due to my schedule and player desire we may have 2 games back to back then it could be 4 dead weeks before we play again. I will do my best to make it every other week however.

If scheduling and player desire is so strong we play more than 2 I have no issue, but I generally want a schedule everyone can keep without being too intrusive. Free time to spend with friends and family outside of playing imaginary Elf Braunsteins (go look it up kids!) is ALWAYS a good thing. And hell, holidays and the like always make stuff a bear.

--------------------------------------------

Well this is what I have so far. Hopefully everyone will enjoy it and the house rules will work smoothly. If not I can always fall back to RULES AS WRITTEN, or even what the players wish.

Sure I might be the DM, and I have been quite beloved due to my loving tortures and terrors I put Players and their Characters through, but its EVERYONE'S GAME, not just the DM. Gotta make it as fun for as many people as humanly possible.

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 23: Final Floor, Final Bore

2011-09-21T06:00:00.000-04:00

Yeah I know this was supposed to be the last installment but its just too big of one so I am splitting it up into 2-3 parts. Depends on how much effort I want to spend on my final thoughts on the game really.

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 22: Penultimate Dungeon of Penultimateness

2011-09-13T06:37:00.000-04:00

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 21: Duke Stefan Needs His Pimp Cup

2011-09-10T06:18:00.000-04:00

Installment 20 might have been a day late due to Hurricane Irene, but 21 is up on time.

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 20: The Tomb of King Cut n Paste

2011-09-04T07:24:00.000-04:00

Its a day late but days without power really cut into the time one has to work on these things. I'm LUCKY in that it was only 65 hours or so spread over 4 days. Some people lost power last Sunday and it won't be back till Wednesday of this week!

No promises but if I can, I will try to have this week's update up by Saturday but I am not gonna hold myself to it as I need to both play, MAP, and then comic it up. Only 3 game updates left I think, so I will say I will be finished before October.

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 19: Look out for Manbearpig up in the trees!

2011-08-20T20:25:00.000-04:00

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 18: Iron Ring Around the Rufus

2011-08-17T04:43:00.000-04:00

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 17: Do the Duke.

2011-08-07T19:43:00.000-04:00

Funny thing about my once a calendar week update schedule. Sometimes it can lead to back to back updates around a day apart. Course this also means I have 13 more days before I have to have the next one done.

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 16: Only Twinked PCs Can Break This Spell, Munched as Sin to Offer Themselves, to Nosferatu!!

2011-08-06T06:09:00.000-04:00

I promise an update once each calendar week. A little under 18 hours under the wire this week.

16 updates. Roughly 1 a week most weeks. Wow. This is one long project. But as someone on Something Awful said: "You play it so we don't have to".

And then I take roughly 20 minutes a page to turn my play into a comic format for you, the people.

Connecticon 2011 VLog Part 6: Day 2 Evening. FIREWORKS

2011-08-03T00:19:00.000-04:00

Fireworks! Huzzah!

Connecticon 2011 VLog Part 5: Day Two Afternoon

2011-08-02T21:50:00.000-04:00

This one is kind of short. Mostly just the big cosplay event thing line. Next one will be a fireworks show.

Connecticon 2011 VLog Part 4: Day Two Midafternoon

2011-08-01T06:58:00.000-04:00

Here is more con footage. Midafternoon stuff here.

Not the most exciting of updates, but anything over 8 minutes or so at 720p takes AGES to upload and hope there is no wifi or other internet related connection fart. So we get this amount. Like I said though, Saturday is the biggest day. So I have the most footage.

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 15: More Dungeon, More Trash Mob

2011-07-28T04:48:00.000-04:00

Connecticon 2011 VLog Part 3: Day Two Morning

2011-07-22T06:53:00.000-04:00

More mayhem. Youtube was being a pain so it took quite some time to get the bloody thing uploaded.

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 14: White Dragon, Brown Textures

2011-07-20T04:59:00.000-04:00

Connecticon 2011 VLog Part 2: Day One

2011-07-19T05:53:00.003-04:00

Here is part 2, the actual stuff I did Friday. I didn't actually record as much today as I did the next two days but that's ok. Was faster to quasi edit. I pretty much leave all my flubs in.

Next time we start on Saturday! Where the magic happens.

Connecticon 2011 Vlog Part 1: Preparation, Travel, and Hotel.

2011-07-16T05:48:00.000-04:00

Yes. My other new project to go along with my Let's Play.

You will get THE convention experience from this. All with my damned awful voice which gets more incoherent as the days go by and my sleep cycle is borked even more. (13 broken hours over 3 days. I'm still sort of recovering a week later!)

Cosplayers and such show up next time. Though not many sexy ones. I felt creepy even wanting to cover them, and I didn't feel like bothering them either.

Though Anime News Network had one of those up: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/daily-cosplay/2011-07-12/gurren-lagann-yoko-ritona .

I think I remember passing her once. Or one of the other Yoko players. It takes a lot of guts to want to traipse around dressed like THAT.

(Though she does a great job at pulling it off.)

If you ever wondered what going to a con was like you will learn. But Connecticon is a general nerd con, though it seems to have a heavy anime influence. So the type of mayhem a more corporate one like San Diego Comic Con or a really huge focused one like Gen Con or Origins has won't really be seen here.

Connecticon is big enough to have lots of stuff going on but small enough to fit into one large convention center (primarily taking place on 2 floors of it, plus bits in the hotel itself) so its not really too hard to get around in or get lost. Course having been there 6 years now (05, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11) I kind of have my feel for the lay of the land.

Stay tuned for more of it. I will try adding in snarky captions for when I do amazingly dumb things in retrospect, though the dumbest thing was actually deciding to blog it video style with a Flip camera in 720p. Hey. It was 65 bucks with a Staples coupon and it does 2 hours of video that fits in a pocket.

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 13: FAQs! AAAHHH!! Heroes of the Universe

2011-07-14T06:25:00.000-04:00

Shorter update this time, but this is a good breaking point. Between this, Connecticon, and the 100 or so minutes of footage I have to edit into something coherent from said con I have a couple of projects to get to. And keeping to my once a week schedule is something I take serious. Only missed one week so far, and we got a big installment that time.

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 12: Our Dungeons, Ourselves

2011-07-06T04:40:00.000-04:00

Ok this dungeon is massive and I have been busy with work. And I am going to Connecticon this weekend so I have been getting that set up. And I have the first session of an AD&D 2nd edition game to go to Thursday. And my birthday and a friend's birthday have happened. And as a casino employee holidays like the 4th of July mean extra work. My time has been short.

But... I channeled my inner dork to bring you the first part of this huge dungeon of pain. A place so annoying you would beg for the second Transformers movie instead of enduring it since the horror ends quicker.

Let us begin. Suffering builds character, right?

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 11: Opening a Locked Door and Stuff

2011-06-18T07:04:00.000-04:00

This update is 6 pages. If I had done this all as one update it would have been ridiculously huge. This is why I am glad I broke it up. And it means we get out updates faster.

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 10: We Belong to the Undercity, We Belong to the Something Something

2011-06-15T04:45:00.000-04:00

This update was taking so long and got so massive I had to find a spot to end it otherwise this one might not have gotten out till Thursday if not next week sometime.

And a potential improvement on picture size. Its a touch bigger but not too much. Might be perfect and save me about 15 minutes an update. Let me know what y'all think.

Now its time to get my Splatterhouse on and hopefully I can pop out another update Thursday night/Friday morning. If not next week. I'd like to get to the next dungeon myself.

More Let's Play is Coming.

2011-06-13T23:48:00.002-04:00

But this newest update is friggin HUGE so its taking some time. Plus I am sort of looking over new goodies and distractions:

The PS3 game "Splatterhouse" is taking up a bit of my time. Its a 3d brawler with Quick Time Events (Think Dragon's Lair/Space Ace type PRESS X AND LEFT NOW sort of gameplay) for boss/"Splatter Kills", and 2d with 3d graphics gameplay sections. 2 College students go to the mansion of Professor West who has nefarious things in mind, capturing Jennifer, and leaving her boyfriend Rick to die. Yet an ancient mask makes a deal to save Rick. All he has to do is put the Terror Mask on and power will be his..)

And considering this is his girlfriend I can completely understand our hero Rick willing to put his very soul on the line to save her, even if the Terror Mask takes great glee in reading his mind and egging his dark side to take control, killing and slaughtering monsters in massively horrific and bloody ways..

While playing the game in story and survival modes you find picture fragments, many of which I am unable to show on my blog as they are very R rated. This one even comes close to being too risque. I had to play one Survival mode arena like 3-4 times to get all the fragments for this one. But when you complete it, you get more information on Rick & Jennifer's relationship so its possibly the first time in my 3 decades of videogame playing where I am actively trying to unlock everything even fanservice pictures. Just so I can know more about them.

You also unlock journal entries of the Bad Doctor, excellently voiced over in case you can't read the cursive script. It even makes him a bit of a sympathetic villain, describing what turned him into the vile killer that he is.

You also unlock 3 of the 4 previous Splatterhouse games! The arcade original which had a port on the Turbografx and one of my favorite videogames of all time and the reason I bought this disk, and the 2 Genesis sequels. (This game is basically a remake of the first, but far more graphic.)

The emulation seems pretty good. If its got a filter on the graphics I can't seriously tell. I think it does but its done in a way to not be blatant. It doesn't look like the games have Vaseline smeared all over the screen. Its not widescreen so there are black bars to the left and right sides. But the picture takes up most of the screen so you shouldn't notice it. This is from Splatterhouse 3 which turned the side scrolling platform gameplay of 1 and 2 into a TIMED Double Dragon/Final Fight/TMNT styled brawler with multiple cutscenes and endings based on your performance.

And the 30-45 minutes or so Survival mode in action. 20 waves of enemy monsters, a picture to collect in each of the 6 arenas you unlock through the story mode, and even a ranking for completing it. The purple bar is your life, the red your blood meter which charges as you kill things. It can be used to cause super kills, regenerate life, or go into a powered up super mode which even kills lower level bosses fast and without the need for the Quick Time Event kills you normally need to do. At least when the game doesn't bug out. Which it does from time to time sadly. Not often but now and then. Not too bad in story mode which saves you at checkpoints every 5-10 minutes or so, but when you play in Survival for 40 minutes having it bug out REALLY SUCKS. Yes I am a sad dork for wanting all the pictures but.. I need to hear everything about Rick & Jen's relationship. Its just.. half of them are R rated ones. Though my favorite is one with her fully dressed hugging a stuffed mascot dog. Rick is such a dork. A dork with a Mastodon Tee shirt. (The game has music by them and Five Finger Death Punch among other modern metal bands. The kinds some of the local 40K crowd listen to. Who say nothing is music unless it has "Breakdowns" whatever the hell that means...)

In story mode once you complete the first level and if you survive a Survival mode arena you can use your score to buy improved powers for Rick. More life, new combos and attack moves, extended weapons use, ect. In story after level 1 you can hit Select and upgrade at any time, your points constantly upgrading. Sadly Survival only gives you points or allows upgrading AFTER finishing the arena. You probably won't be getting far in any of the arenas without Health, Mask, and Weapons charged way up. Roughly around the 3-5th story mode level. A nice thing though is your points accrue in story even when you die so it does help make things easier. Which is good because I died a LOT on Level 1 till I understood the mechanics and the game introduced me to how to regenerate health.

And my birthday gift to myself. From 3 different hopefully not radioactive (donate to disaster relief charities of your choices folks. Between the stuff going on in Japan, New Zealand & Australia, Mass, and the midwest there are a LOT of communities that could use a helping hand!) places in Japan I got a model kit of Phantasy Star Online's favorite maid/tutorialbot (what is it with Japan and maids anyhow? I guess it beats a schoolgirl outfit at least..) Elenor since I am a total whore for anything Phantasy Star.

And 2 TurboDuo/Pc Engine CDROM games. The 4th or 5th remake of Valis, and the PC Engine version of Valis 4. Both of which are apparently the best versions of these platforming action games where you take a Japanese schoolgirl and kill demons in a fantasy land. I chose the third game (Valis 3 DUH), and Star Control as my birthday game choices when I was 16 waaaay back in the early 90s and it just seemed appropriate to finish up the series collection. Though I do need the superdeformed remake of part 2. (There is also a Japan only cellphone game and thus unobtainable. And sadly a computer game that does what Japan normally does with high school girls and demons in it. Turbografx and Valis fans don't like talking about it. Thankfully it went away quickly as such disgusting garbage should. Way to go Japan. Sicko stuff is why their entertainment industries are taking a pounding on the world stage. Make stuff for creepy perverts and normal people run away screaming.)

Whenever I finish my Order of the Griffon Let's Play I might cover either the model kit or the Valis series as my next project.

You know, provided I quit playing the "Good" but flawed Splatterhouse. If you can find this game for 20 its worth it, though the bugs and minor gameplay irritations might be a factor. But I loved the original on the Turbografx and enjoyed to varying levels the 2 Genesis sequels so I have some nostalgia for the property. Mainstream sites were REALLY hard on it, but fans seemed to enjoy it.

I'm easily distracted AND work has me busier this last year than I have been in close to a decade. But the next LP installment is already 8 pages long and only about 2/3rds done. So work is progressing.

[let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 9: Well We Found the Dungeon Part of this D&D Game..

2011-06-06T04:59:00.002-04:00

This update took forever. Mapping, playing the level, inking the map, then doing up 11 PAGES of information.

And that means my promised update a week schedule is still being held to. Heck, first weekday no less. My schedule is kind of tight. But I have made time, especially since I want to PLAY these sorts of games and not just write about them. But its fun to do and it keeps me focused on completing the bugger. Possibly an update towards the end of the week but no promises.

My AD&D 2nd Edition Character, Let Me Show You Her

2011-06-03T01:57:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Meetup.com I happened to stumble upon a 2nd edition AD&D group being formed. We had a nice meet and greet today and it seems as if we and our schedules should mesh rather well.

(I would link the group but I doubt most of my readers are even in the same state. Hell, many of you aren't even in the same COUNTRY.)

While I tend to prefer GMing, I am certainly not unwilling to play. Sometimes its fun just to be a player. No fuss, no muss, no real prep work, just make a PC, pay attention, don't be a dunderhead.

We did some character generation and my rolls were pretty dire, and even 2 rerolls just made for a meh Bard, which was going to be my first choice. (A Male Human)

But.. we were allowed access to the Complete Book series, and the reduce an attribute by 2 to raise another by 1 deal. So why not bring my 4th ed Essentials character back in a 2nd edition form? A Deep Gnome Thief?

This can be workable.

So here is my newest PC, hopefully who will go on to have lots of fun in a good RPG campaign full of adventure, cool loot, and tons of exp as she shoots sharp pointy things through soft evil squishy things that scream and bleed.

Feel free to use her as an NPC for your own games, or as inspiration for a character.

And here she is, Sneakycheeks! (Big pictures so the text is totally legible. I can read it in smaller sizes but I apparently have good close in eyesight or something. Character picture taken in Neverwinter Nights 2 thanks to Windows Snipping Tool.)

(Character Sheet thanks to AD&D Core Rules CDROM 2.0. May it never be scuffed.)

Background: Sneakycheeks (real name unknown) is mostly in it for the fun. Of course having grown up in the Underdark her idea of fun is killing monsters, and putting a kibosh on any evil plans any sapient race may have, especially the Drow. At an early age she took to sneaking out of town, finding things to hide behind, and putting arrows through things that couldn't see her, then enjoying the chaos it caused. This did put her in hot water with her family and the settlement she lived in as Deep Gnome females are rarely encouraged to leave the safety of a town, much less engage Drow and the various other nefarious denizens of the Underdark alone.

(Not that this ever stopped her any of course. To her it was even more amusing to see the disruption her actions caused at home too, especially when she probably saved the settlement a quarter dozen times or more.)

One day her uncle Jhasti Dhaggerdhiggin (Deep Gnome L 9 Illusionist) was visiting the town with a band of adventurers looking for parts for his Spelljammer, a small Drow craft with the shape of a Spider. When the group had collected what they came to the Underdark for they headed back upworld, not knowing Sneekycheeks (who obviously had earned her nickname by this point) was following close behind.

Upon reaching the surface, a days long trek, the group had no choice but to let her tag along on their planetary and dimension hopping adventures to stop the actions of Galthik the Aurak. Being the flighty, easily distracted type she is, on whichever world the Nentir Vale resides on, she hopped off when the ship had landed for supplies and got involved in that world's Keep on the Borderlands Incident where her mostly self taught skills of archery and thievery helped save the Keep.

(Some would say she got involved as much to help people as she did to embarrass and harass the Knight Rufus Landale. According to her, their differences aren't anything some Oil of Slipperiness can't solve. Unsurprisingly Rufus got himself overly injured in the Borderlands Incident and wasn't around most of the time. He is currently travelling with Axecrash the Dwarf Machinist, and the Hasegawa Sisters Ryoko (Samurai), and Haruhi (Shugenja), much glad Sneakycheeks has gone elsewhere.)

In the final battle of the Borderlands Incident a powerful otherplanar machine attempted to finish off Sneakycheeks and her friends (Elven Cleric, Human Cleric, Half Orc Barbarian, Human Wizard) but was destroyed. Being the stuff of another reality, infused with the powers of the Outer Planes it exploded, sending Sneakycheeks into another planet at a different time. She found her abilities and equipment had been altered by this flux in reality.

Now its a new world with new people to meet, new bad guys to irritate, and more trouble to cause.

And causing trouble is what Sneakycheeks likes best!

Roleplaying Notes: Sneakycheeks is a troublemaker, albeit a well intentioned one. Her jokes on fellow adventurers are mostly harmless, though usually with some intelligent intent behind them. ("Uhh barbarian? Could you take a bath sometimes? I think the Owlbears on the next continent can smell you.") Against evil and selfish foes she takes no prisoners and shows no concept of honorable combat, choosing to hide and shoot from out of sight. She has no problem running from a losing fight, or leaving behind anyone too stupid to know when to fall back. To save a burning orphanage full of small children? Fight till you can't. When outnumbered 2 to 1 and there is a nice line of retreat? MARINES WE ARE LEAVING.

To her, its better to run away and fight again some other time, hopefully with a large army and having set up a massive ambush.

She is fair minded when it comes to things like treasure, magic items, and returning things to their rightful owners, provided the owners earned it through honest work and not murder, slavery, or corruption/greed.

To her its more fun causing irritation and discord in intelligent evil as opposed to outright destruction. Having lived in the Underdark for much of her life, she knows full well most evil will destroy itself.

Sometimes it just needs a shot in the ass to get things started.

Quotes: "If they catch you they will kill you, but first, they gotta catch you. So let's not get caught. That would suck."
"Fair fights are for suckers."
"The only good Drow are the ones killing each other. Which is every Drow. Waitaminute.. I need to rethink this one.."
"But I don't WANT to form a battle line. They can see me. And that means they can hit me. I'm allergic to death. And too cute for it!"
"These monsters? Oh my Uncle Jhasti has fought em. He calls them Godscursed mother$*&*ing oozing sores on an Owlbear's (*& after its just been *(&^$ed in the *(&$&# by a Terrasque with Herpes. Its funny shooting them in the head. They get so bent out of shape!"

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 8: I Was Promised Sailors and all I get is Manbearpig

2011-06-01T06:44:00.000-04:00

This is my last attempt at improving picture size for both clarity and ease of reading. If this isn't good enough its all giant pictures from here on out.

Not just one update this week but TWO, and improved quality on all the previous installments. That's love right there.

My Thoughts on Modern Television in Comic Caption Form

2011-06-01T01:05:00.000-04:00

There is a place that is running a fun little contest to take a picture and caption it.
This has lead to my piece, a simple commentary on so called "Mature Content" entertainment.

When most adult programming is just crude, vulgar, offensive, and generally something only a boobs and gore obsessed 13 year old boy would love, is it any wonder why I mostly play videogames and tabletop games, & watch cartoons?

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 7: Specularum, or Whatever its Called This Week

2011-05-31T06:11:00.002-04:00

The capital city. Which has 3 different names in its story.

How good am I? I not only improve my older pictures (Scroll/click to older ones), but I give you a new update. On a holiday weekend no less.

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 6: Free Stuff in Kelvin

2011-05-27T05:35:00.002-04:00

I'm working 6 days in a row upcoming holiday schedule. Many Bothans died for me to bring you this update. That and my Internet connection has become slow and unreliable. So horribly slow and unreliable. Even switching to an N dual band router from a G hasn't seemed to help. I just get full signal strength is all.

In a bout of total unprofessionalism I forgot to erase the pencil notes on my map too. See when I make my maps I do them in pencil. Then later on I go over them with a pen and ruler to make them look somewhat nicer. Sadly I don't have my ROLLING RULER handy (or my knockoff of it) so its a generic plastic ruler.

I should find that before I start posting the dungeon maps.

But depending on time and desire next week will probably just be a single update, probably Wednesday or Thursday. If its a BETTER KNOW AN ADVENTURER/INSIDE THE ADVENTURER'S STUDIO WITH JAMES LIPTORK thing I will throw in more of my house rule recommendations to make Basic D&D a bit more fun and a bit less whatever Gary Gygax wanted.

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 5: Over the River and Through the Woods

2011-05-25T04:28:00.003-04:00

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 4: Open Air Radlebb Faire

2011-05-20T04:26:00.003-04:00

No D&D houserules today. This update is a massive 11 pages of stuff.

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 3: Worst Keep EVER.

2011-05-16T21:26:00.003-04:00

I meant to upload this Friday morning but Blogger was having difficulties at the time.

Oh well. I am only promising 1-2 updates a week anyhow, so this means I can be all set for the week.
(Though I have done some mapping and prep work for the next few installments. This is the time for me to conquer this game. It has been unfinished for far too long.)

While due to the voting on the Something Awful forums I had to start from the beginning, losing out on 3000 XP worth of XP, I honestly didn't lose too much. And I am using that play for mapping and preview purposes, letting me know what is coming up next. Its actually going to save me around 600-1000 gold pieces, which is pretty huge in game. Some of the best gear costs insane amounts. And this being Basic D&D rules death is all too easy and common an occurrence.

And for a fun bonus section, my personal house rules to make Basic D&D more fun without gutting what makes it what it is. A little from Game A, a little from B and you get something I would love to run or play in. Sure the Old School Groggies would loathe it, as would the D20 and 4th ed kiddies, but every version of D&D ever made has been terrible in some ways and great in others. Its just.. everyone has a different opinion of what is good and what is bad!

Rufus' house rules to make Basic D&D awesome.

For better and more fun starting player characters, roll 2d6+6 6 times for attributes, putting each result where you want.

For starting Hit Points, put your CON score plus 1/2 rounded down maximum rolled HP.

Hit Point dice values are changed to their 2nd edition AD&D counterparts.
(Fighters and Dwarves: 1d10. Clerics 1d8. Halflings, Elves, and Thieves 1d6. Magic Users 1d4.)

(So a CON 10 Elf at first level would have 13 starting HPs. 10 for his CON, plus 3 for his Hit Point dice value. (1d6 max is 6, divided by 2 and rounding down is 3.)

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon Part 2: You Must Gather Your Party Before Venturing Forth

2011-05-11T00:45:00.002-04:00

Due to popular request, comic pages at full size. We now see our party that is clearly made up of choices not done via rolling 3d6 in order...

[Let's Play] Fun in Mystara! Let's play Order of the Griffon!

2011-05-10T04:57:00.002-04:00

That's right. I am redipping my toes into the Let's Play game. Inspired by http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3408705&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1 , this thread by Something Awful forums poster vilkacis, it made me want to finally get through and beat this damned game. So that is what I am gonna do. Even if I have to use FAQs online.

The Schedule: Normally 1-2 updates a week. There will be some user input and choices when possible. I will mostly keep to the comic format. I love using Comic Life Deluxe. And it saves having multiple picture files when 1 can cover 2-4.

[Electronic Games] Things (Nearly) Every Game Should Have Month 1A: Familiarity & Terminology

2011-05-04T01:41:00.000-04:00

This continuation of the previous entry also applies to tabletop gaming.

Remember how in that post I said you get used to doing things a certain way, how it becomes comfortable and second nature?

Well many games like to mess with this, to their own detriment. Hell, even comic books. Try reading a bunch of manga then go back to western styled left to right. Your "chi" is off for a while and you struggle. Honestly for no real reason. (Sure some manga fans care if people are left/right handed and such but ultimately it almost never affects the story at all unless you are the nitpickiest of nitpickers.)

When designers change the wheel there should be a good damned reason for it. Take the Nintendo DS RPG Etrian Odyssey. You have character classes as befits a dungeon crawler game inspired by Wizardry. Do you have Fighters, Rangers, Paladins, Clerics, and Bards? No. These classes almost exactly as they are known and loved by over 20 years of RPG gamers both tabletop and electronic are known as Landsnknects, Survivalists, Protectors, Medics, and Troubadours. (There are other classes in the game which are more original or more hybrid of the classic fantasy RPG classes so I skipped them.)

How does this benefit the game or the player in any way? It doesn't! Its just changing names to change them, making players uncomfortable from the outset, having to do mental work to translate them over to the way they are used to, are comfortable with, are probably happy with. (And has the fun of a really odd word everyone who talks about the game tends to misspell unless they speak whatever European language it came from. I'm not really interested in which one.)

It IS good to teach people new words and to expand one's vocabulary. But there is a difference between doing so and just annoying people for no good reason. The example game above is a generic fantasy setting. The name changes accomplish nothing. Its like instead of using the word CAR we are all familiar with, some game uses HORSELESS COMBUSTION CONVEYANCE. Sure it sounds neat and might even fit the setting (steampunk anyone?), but for us sane folks its just confusing!

White Wolf is a big culprit of this in their tabletop games. Games already packed with tons of terms and jargon even the average nerd is not going to be comfortable with and have to come to grips with, and now they need a thesaurus handy? This word dump overflow is one reason I can't ever run Trinity. Its a whole new setting with tons of new factions and concepts, and the extra White Wolf fancy wording just makes it too much to handle. And I am known for using fancy words nobody else does!

You can also see this with games that get acronym heavy. The Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kits are supposed to be easy simple entry points into one of the world's most needlessly overdetailed and complicated wargames. They throw close to 2 pages of acronyms at you and you better remember them because they won't repeat what they are. This immediately throws the reader off, confusing and disorienting them, possibly losing yourself a player before they even give the game a chance.

You disoriented them from what's familiar.

Heck, mechanics. Final Fantasy 8 is one of the biggest electronic offenders I know of. If you play the game the way nearly every other Console and even PC RPG to that point had played you will all but hate the game and possibly break it, requiring a complete restart of a 40-60 hour game. It looks familiar, but when you play it or have someone explain the mechanics to you, it plays completely foreign to most of the genre, all but punishing you for playing it like every other game. Without ever really EXPLAINING these mechanics to you. (If you haven't played it, its a game that PUNISHES you for gaining levels, connecting enemy power to the main Player Character who is there almost the entire time, and makes drawing magic spells out of monsters something attached to combat power, with higher power spells causing higher stats. Some of the most powerful spells to attach to the PCs require playing an in game CCG which gets ridiculously complex if you allow the house rules every other town try to convince you to accept.)

For tabletop RPGs we of course can just say AD&D. Your Armor Class is better the LOWER it gets? Some things you need to roll HIGH for as the score gets lower like Saving Throws, but other things you want a LOW one for? If you have a +3 to Hit in Close Combat your THAC0 goes DOWN and that's GOOD int his case?

Is it a wonder most early RPGs from other companies like Tunnels & Trolls and Runequest used simple, logical, straightforward math most people would be familiar with?

Disorienting your players with weird mechanics and unfamiliar terms for familiar things is just reducing their enjoyment of your product, and making the job of entertaining your paying customers that much harder.

Sure those guys playing Legend of the Five Rings RPG campaigns for 5-10 years are gonna know what things like Tetsubos and Yari are. They have been immersed in the game and its lore and terminology. Think about people who aren't.

You may want and even NEED to use different mechanics and unfamiliar terms that most of your playerbase has never seen before.

But make sure you do and aren't just switching it around to be a snooty elitist. And for crying out loud, make sure to properly TEACH THEM about it and not just throw them to the wolves.

If you don't? Why mess with things most people already know and are happy using?

[Electronic Games] Things (Nearly) Every Game Should Have Month 1: Control Remapping

2011-04-30T20:02:00.000-04:00

I've been busy and lazy these last few months, and sadly that doesn't seem to be changing any time soon. Though at least I have extra income. Just.. no time to USE any of it.

So here will be a little project to bring my average back to my desired 4 posts a month setup. These will generally be shortish posts, as most don't need that much said about them, but need more than some TOP TEN list.

A list of things I believe every electronic game should have in them. Some of these things probably can relate to tabletop gaming, but in many cases they don't.

Expect some of these posts to get updated with photos and the like as I find the time to do so.

That being said, let's start off with one near and dear to my heart:

CONTROL REMAPPING.

Back in the day, videogame controls were simple. One button on your Atari 2600 stick or paddle, and either the analog positive/negative control of the paddle, or the 8 way control of the joystick.

But then games got more involved. Arcade games started using trackballs or multiple buttons (Defender, Asteroids), or even multiple control types (Tron, Robotron 2084) to allow for ever more complicated yet still intuitive control schemes.

Home systems had issues keeping up, Some Atari 2600 games even threw in bits so you could link 2 joysticks together (provided you used the normal Atari joystick), or came with custom secondary controllers (Star Raiders) to allow for advanced controls on systems nobody thought needed them originally.

Systems like the Intellivision and Colecovision added in extra buttons and the then considered good idea of a numeric keypad right on the controller, usually with a slot to slide a little plastic overlay into, allowing for deeper games.

It worked.. ok. Some experiments like the Atari 5200's analog joystick with pause and start keys failed more due to cost cutting and a little less Q&A testing than it should have had, making them years ahead of their time, but failures at that point. (Also see U Force, the Power Glove.)

Some games started being designed for one gimmick controller. Good for that one game or type of game, but generally space wasting and frivolous in the long run. We still have these today. (Music Band game controllers, Namco's Guncon light guns for the Playstation systems, the Gamecube Bongo Drums, link cables to use portable game systems as both controller and personal screen, the Sega Samba De Amigo controllers, Fishing Controllers, Virtual On dual stick.)

Eventually controllers both console and keyboard started to morph into one decent mostly all in one type capable of playing most game types comfortably enough. This really began taking shape with the Super Nintendo controller. Shaped almost like a dogbone, it had the then default directional pad on one side, Start and Select buttons in the middle, 4 action buttons in a diamond formation on the right, and on the top of the controller a pair of Shoulder buttons a player's pointer fingers could access while their thumbs were working the buttons and D-Pad.

Computers also copied this scheme with the Gravis Gamepad, while having Keyboard and Mouse control for games that really needed it, and the Flight Stick (with or without Throttle controller & foot pedals) being there for the sim game crowd who demanded the proper feel. (Or Steering Wheels for racing types.)

Outside of sometimes adding in extra analog sticks and a second pair of Shoulder buttons usually done in an analog format, the Super Nintendo controller has been pretty much the de facto standard design since.

Look at most USB gamepads for computers. Look at the controllers for both the Playstation 3 and XBox 360. Look at the Classic Game Controller for the Wii (a system designed and sold for a motion control gimmick). They are all pretty much the SNES controller from 1989 with minor tweaks for comfort and analog stick additions.

We have reached a level where our game controllers are mostly similar to an automobile. You can generally get in any car and it pretty much works like any other car in your region. Some have clutches and shifters for manual transmission, but otherwise they are the same. Same basic dashboard layouts, same basic information and control.

But try driving a normal car then switching to one that does things differently, either because it has some new fancy feature, or the designers just felt like it. If you drive standard and are used to a clutch pedal and stick shift, you are NOT going to be comfortable driving one of the modern cars with wheel pedal shifters. Its going to feel WRONG to you. Now in time you will probably get used to it, and you may even PREFER the change. But for quite some time you are going to be uncomfortable with all. Its just going to feel wrong, and your quality of experience and your own ability in driving is going to be severely hampered.

The same can be said for videogames.

Try playing one of the early First Person Shooter titles on PC before WASD movement, mouse aiming/turning/firing was implemented. You aren't going to do well. In fact you are gonna suck and possibly hate the game. You just aren't used to it and it feels wrong. Because so many other games since have gone to a basic standard style of control.

Hell, just put a console FPS player on a PC Mouse Keyboard control and vice versa. They are MISERABLE and terrible. They aren't used to it, and their previous experiences are what they know and are comfortable with. (I've seen this, especially in the N64 days with Goldeneye. I couldn't stand the game's controls. Yet I tried putting my friend on Aliens vs Predator and he could barely move straight, much less aim. He was used to how the N64 did an FPS, I was used to PC WASD Mouse control.)

Same thing with standard video and computer games using the gamepad. If you are used to an action game using one button as primary action, and another as the secondary, games that have this setup being different just won't really ever feel right.

Which is where REMAPPING CONTROLS comes in to play. Don't like the setup of the game? Change it to one you like.

Awesome, right? Let everyone play in the style most comfortable to them. Its not hard to do, games on the god awful 80s UK Sinclair Spectrum computer had key remapping (considering that junkbox didn't even have a built in joystick port, control schemes never really had a default on it). And by the Genesis era, button remapping was all but a standard feature.

Except...

Many games, especially on consoles still don't allow you to do this.

Why?

Laziness? Stupidity? Developers just think everyone wants to play the way they do?

There is no need for this. The 2 biggest offenders of this in the modern day are Konami on almost everything, and most developers for Nintendo portables.

I have trouble even playing Metal Gear Solid 3 on the PS2, or Contra 4 on the Nintendo DS because their controls aren't what I am comfortable with in my action games.

Most of my DS titles tend to be strategy and RPG titles, most made in Japan where their Accept and Cancel buttons are BACKWARDS from Western style. It makes adaptation and comfort in a new game kind of sucky. And sometimes messes me up from when I switch back from a 40 hour JRPG to a Western game. I have to keep doing something that should become second nature in my head instead of on automatic.

Really any potential developer reading this.

Take the hour or so to let your players remap keys and buttons to their taste. In the end it will provide a lot more player happiness and satisfaction.

A Potential Mekton 2 Campaign?

2011-04-15T01:31:00.000-04:00

Some friends are trying to get some sort of active game running someplace. I have been wanting to run a campaign SO DAMNED BAD ITS NOT EVEN FUNNY for like 2 years now.

They may actually indulge me and I can finally run a Mekton 2 game. This is the mad idea I have for a proposal, inspired by the videogame series "Super Robot Wars" which is a strategy RPG series bringing various unconnected giant robot shows into one massive continuity and story.

SUPER ROBOT WARS CR

In the year 2012 paranoia about the end of the Mayan calendar caused an already unstable world political system to explode, with wars breaking out all over the world.

Then what came to be known as The Second Impact happened. A massive alien spacecraft crashed into an Oregon mountain.

Initial findings of this craft, (eventually named the SDF 1 Ark) lead to the realization mankind was not alone in the cosmos. The technologies recovered and retrofitted brought humanity together for a time as more and more people rallied around this knowledge and questioned why this event was called the second.

Many organizations said it was time to leave Mother Earth. Over the next 16 years massive miles long near Earth space colonies were launched, and our first deep space colony expedition was sent to what would be known as the Arus Colony.

Our technologies advanced by leaps and bounds with advanced weapon systems creating 20 foot tall or even larger battle robots called Adamythril Knights becoming more and more common.

But why would such machines be created?

Many hardliners said it was to prepare to fight whatever had created the Ark in the first place. Others said it was due to whatever secret impact happened before this one. Others said it was the harbinger of God's judgement and we needed to be ready.

But in 2028 tensions began to rise as an emergency message from the Arus Colony was received. While garbled, one phrase was clear: "We are under attack from the Drule Empire". The NGG (Nerv Geoid Guard) sent out the Rugger Guard Expedition, onboard containing the prototype Voltron Project machine to investigate and possibly defend Arus.

This caused great political upheavals as the main military force unaffiliated with any one country or space colony was now away from home, leaving Earth barely defended. When the Rugger Guard Expedition failed to report in as scheduled 6 months later one final smaller team was sent in the Ramrod Frontier Defender. It also has not reported in on its 6 month schedule.

This was the final straw, causing 8 of the 12 space colonies to officially defect from Earth, calling themselves the Archduchy of Zeon, under the rule of the powerful Zabi family. They had secretly been developing Adamythryl Knights of their own, deploying them against one of the neutral colonies, killing all of the people on board, and sending the massive colony on a suicide run, crashing it into the NGG headquarters in Switzerland, breaking what little organization and cooperation that still remained amongst the nations of Earth.

If a splinter nation in space of less than 10 million people could both build a massive army and mount such a devastating attack, what good was all the new technology and unity?

The Zabis claimed to be Divine Crusaders, and only an Earth under their control could stop the inevitable alien attack soon to occur. They claim that only under their banner will the Earth survive.

The resultant chaos and disaster caused a number of other organizations to rise up as if this was the sign they were waiting for. In Europe a new force was founded by Anatole Priestly, who claimed to be the first Defender of Man, forming a political bloc to both fight off the Zeon and any outside influence. He revealed the existence of psychic powers in mankind that had been steadily rising since the First Impact and that he had been preparing for this inevitable war for centuries. People call his ever growing army The New European Empire as most in the region fall under his sway.

He said these psychics were Newtypes, and his biogenetic warriors known as Space Marines would defend these heralds until they were ready to lead the Earth. Some European nations opposed joining his empire, though currently only a small nation lead by the Peacecraft family is showing any capacity for holding out against his armies, the prototype Gundam Mobile Knights being their last line of defense.

In Japan the mad scientist Doctor Hell with his monstrous Angels are constantly attacking the NGG's secondary base, the arcology known as Tokyo 3 in his attempt to capture the powerful weapons being developed there. Even the help of the Photon Power Laboratory and its prototype combat knight Mazinger Z is doing little more than holding the mad Doctor and his monstrous creations at bay.

Should he get a hold of the Evangelion and Brave Robot AI machines Earth won't have to worry about the Zeon. He will be a bigger threat than them all.

And now in Oregon our heroes are preparing a new generation of Adamythryl Knights to defend the Earth against the Zeon, Doctor Hell, and this mysterious empire in deep space.

Will the SRX Team come together with their new experimental machines and join forces with what remains of the NGG and stop the chaos on Earth before its too late?

And what of the Ark itself? Rumors abound that its creators did not come from the same region of space as the Drules. Is there yet another race hostile to man out there? And can the NGG even stay together? Many say there are Zeon sleeper agents within helping to keep the NGG from organizing the Earth. It is said that they have even infiltrated a secret Earth colony near Alpha Centauri, overtaking what in some shadowy corridors is known as Project Unicron.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Well, there is my proposal for a campaign. Most of the people I know who might play aren't mecha fans like I am, but I think I have taken enough bits from enough shows to make my own unique spin on the Super Robot Wars formula, putting the players in a place where they can both shine yet still interact with some characters from various other robot cartoons. (Super Robot Wars fans know what the SRX is, though mine will be a unique creation based on number of players and what Mekton 2's creation system allows me to come up with. The actual SRW SRX team and mecha won't be featured.)

This isn't going into massive details but is enough of a springboard to give me a wide array of adventures for the players to inevitably screw up any plans I make as players are gloriously wont to do. Hell I EXPECT IT out of folks.

Some Stuff March Edition

2011-03-17T23:20:00.001-04:00

First off a toy related bit. After years of collecting and months waiting for them to come in, I now have a complete and amazing Transformers Bruticus, made up of all small run collector's oriented toys.

See during the Transformers Energon line they made a couple combiners based off the concepts of the old 80s "Scramble City" concept where there was one big body bit, and 4 interchangable limbs. The Energon toys refined this with poseable figures, no extra parts that didn't store on the figure somehow, and even the combiner could pose about. Sadly these toys only sort of combined with generally terrible hands and feet doing secondary duty as equally poor looking weapons, and each combiner team was really 3 figures, each limb being just 2 different paint schemes.

From time to time since they got reissued, sometimes with better paint schemes, but still sucky. However the Transformers Collector's Club in a way to not make their 40 dollar a year fee seem completely a waste of money gives you a 8-12 dollar value toy in an exclusive paint scheme every year for free. For 5 years they did their own team using the above combiners, but with a long running story, and each figure having lots of lovely transparent plastic. I subbed for one year, used their discount price for member's store (which basically makes in print toys MSRP, and the previous year's freebie toy 20 bucks instead of non member 40.) to grab the other 2 out, and a few months back stumbled upon the limb I didn't have for 15 bucks.

Now Transformers has some third party companies making accessories if not their own figures out there, some of which blow anything Hasbro (TF's parent company outside of Asia) can do, albeit at a 2-4 times price markup of what an equivalent toy would cost in stores.

They decided to improve one of the combiner teams, the Combaticons who form Bruticus. Not just with parts, but 2 whole replacement figures, being the Space Shuttle Blast Off, and the Jeep Swindle. For 48 dollars a figure. Figures who without all the accessories and being from Hasbro would be 8 bucks.

I still bought them. They are AMAZING renditions of these classic characters with some tweaks. And the accessories. Oh the accessories. Each box with full color instruction booklet has 3 trays worth of moving plastic parts not just for use with the included Transformer, but for the other Combaticons. Guns, missile racks, truck beds, you name it. And all these pieces go on BOTH modes, robot and vehicle.

While waiting for these lovely money sinks I grabbed the main body commander bit.

And now?

BRUTICUS IS REBORN!

Thankfully the grey of the combiner/weapon bits meshes well with the primarily red and blue and grey of the TFCC pieces. And in spite of my less than optimal photo, you can see its big. And amazing. Every weapon has moving parts in it, the main AT rifle going down to a smaller size. The combat knife is an axe for Blast Off. The feet are both truck bed parts with moving wheels AND as you see they have hidden missiles in them, turning this massive death machine into the universe's most bad ass Jester.

Like in hobby gaming its mostly small companies that really provide fans with what they want. You just pay a premium for it.

Next up is a bit of gaming. I got to play some Formula De this week. (I plan on reviewing it eventually.) I not only won, but I was vindicated for something an ex friend insulted me with a number of years ago.

See Formula De is a Formula 1 racing game where you have various dice as your gears, and damage points for things like braking, taking turns too fast, downshifting multiple gears, ect.

In 2-3 lap races you can take a pitstop to take care of such damage, in some cases not really losing any time whatsoever. (Unlike in real racing where you are gonna lose some position even if its just a quick fuel and fly.) In the official rules you can effectively enter at top speed no problem and possibly leave, still head of the pack.

I remember playing the game and this came up. I make a small comment about how that seems unbalanced. My ex friend (and this action is the LEAST of his horribleness) starts YELLING at me for saying it, that I am just whining and don't know what I am talking about and I always do this.

Of course he was always the sort to find any broken advantage in any game ever and you could NEVER EVER EVER remove any unfair advantage he may have discovered.

Going back to playing it with an experienced player I bring up the pit stops being kind of broken and he told me, "Yeah I have houseruled that. You can't go in at 5-6th gear anymore".

I like when I am vindicated. I do have a pretty good eye for broken or unbalanced mechanics.

(Games Workshop on the other hand? Not so much.)

And my final bit of news is that I may actually be in a REAL RPG CAMPAIGN and not the fast food D&D Encounters styled Gamma World game that replaced the D&D Encounters campaign when we all got tired of it. (Though its a different day so I will probably play both.)

And what is it? FASA STAR TREK.

A game I bought on a lark a few years back I might finally get to play. Reading through it and its both impressing and disappointing me at the same time. Its full of fluff and information on the universe, something a different game I am also reading (Robotech Shadow Chronicles) fails at.

Both are based on TV shows, but Trek expects the players to not just know everything about the setting and gives you that information. All Robotech gives you is 100s of pages of equipment porn.

But that seems to be a problem with Palladium in general. When they want to, they can write some compelling background and adventure seeds. Most of the time its just a laundry list of new weapons.

The disappointment in Trek comes from the involved character generation that involves basically tracking your character's entire Starfleet career till they are skilled enough for whatever role the campaign needs them for. The example character is in his late 40s! Its a bit much to have to roll or expect a new player to do.

We will see if its 9 tables of generation works better in practice than on paper though. It still makes more logical sense than Warhammer 40K RPG/1-2nd ed Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

(Involved? 9 Steps? Its an 80s game alright!)

But unlike those games I bought into alongside others who were usually the ones to bring it up in the first place, FASA Trek should at least get played for a bit, while GURPS, Starfleet Battles, Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Star Wars Saga Edition, and Pirates of the (Locale Here), World of Warcraft CCG, and 2 different Star Wars CCGs sit around as reminders why most of my friends are horrible people.

And lets end this selection of stuff with some not just good news but GOOD NEWS.

Ogre Sixth Edition!!! Big Steve Jackson has decided to do a product other than the endless Munchkin rehashes that form the foundation of his company's profits.

(I'll leave out opinions on the man himself, which from most people seem to be entirely negative. In this case I am approving of what he is doing.)

Full color big box game with a reported TWENTY ONE SQUARE FEET OF CARDBOARD. Its gonna be nearly TWELVE POUNDS, containing the rules from both Ogre and the expansions GEV, Shockwave, and some additional things. (I doubt the long unreleased Ogrethulhu rules will be one of them.)

Look at part of the sell sheet showing what it is slated to look like:

Cardstock constructible Ogres! Full color counters that also use the miniatures designs! Map overlays to make for more varied setups!

Its gonna be awesome. Ogre is one of my favorite games and this edition is a must buy.

Though its gonna hurt. About 100 dollars, extremely low print run that might not even make it to stores.

But oh lordy do I so want it!

[AT-43] Cog Army Box Review/Unboxing

2011-03-09T22:46:00.001-05:00

In a brave new digital era for Wargame Dork I have gone video.

Video without Full Spectrum Lighting, but my first video nonetheless. Nearly 20 minutes of review about this 70 dollar box of awesome, and some photos afterwards.

What? I was gonna miss out on using comics? On this blog?

Part 2:

And the picture supplemental:

I've entered a new horrible era of this blog. One where you are all forced to not only see my silly comic reviews, but endure 480p widescreen Youtube videos.

The Tao of Blood Bowl (And Wisdom for Other Such Games)

2011-03-04T00:32:00.001-05:00

Over at Something Awful there is a fine discussion thread for the Blood Bowl computer game, currently in a sadly download only Legendary Edition. (As an owner of the previous retail version I got 33% off the new one which almost mitigates it being virtual. Going from 9 teams to 20 helps a LOT.)

One fellow was lamenting the random chaotic luck inherent to Blood Bowl. Which like many of the Games Workshop campaign system games (BBowl, Necromunda, Mordheim, and Gorkamorka) isn't exactly perfect, and sometimes leads to losing your entire force due to simple bad luck instead of keeping more experienced forces from completely dominating.

This was some of my thoughts on Blood Bowl's random dice madness and dealing with losing or even just simple gaming frustration:

cKnoor posted:

Overall it's pretty clear that this is not a game for you. If you can't enjoy it for all it's "faults" (I put that in quotes as I don't think having different tiered teams = bad gamedesign) then it's just not for you. If you can't remember all the awesome times when you get bad dice, or take that as a challenge to come back and win, then you just shouldn't play.

Well said!

Its pretty much how to play Blood Bowl. Take losses as a learning experience. Heck, you can still gain SPPs even when its a doomed game. For some teams this is when you start just trying to kill the other team for the hell of it.

(Ok Elves. Its 3-0? You keep scoring. Im gonna just foul every goddamned pointy little bitch I can get my Lizardmen's claws on. I no longer need victory. I see little arrogant piles of SPPs. You just stop doing anything and I will stop fouling with my Kroxigor.)

First time I played Elves online (since in Fumbbl most soft teams wouldn't go near any of my team types) I got owned but I LEARNED from it. One online game and it changed my whole basic strategy.

I've even made dumb mistakes and laughed at it. Losses HAPPEN. If you have a fun game playing who cares if you won or lost? You still probably got some SPPs or money and had a match.

Losing dudes? ITS GONNA HAPPEN. Its part of the game's structure. Sure as I have mentioned its supposed to keep every team in check to some degree but mostly hurts newer teams, but learn to deal with it. Don't just spend every GP you earn. You have to learn how to manage your team long term, especially in Blitz mode where everyone will leave in time no matter how good they get.

The early BB team management is getting them where you want them. The long term is KEEPING THEM THERE.

Sure you might have the Orcish Tom Brady one season only for him to be too old or get injured for dozens of games or be made virtually useless. You shrug, fire him or send him to be an Assistant Coach then hire a new Orc to replace him.

Its PART OF THE APPEAL.

Sometimes you are just gonna lose because the RNG loathes you that day. Other times you will embrace the chaos and prove your mettle and win ANYHOW.

I've seen this done in Battletech which is a game that makes BB's dice chaos look like its a Chess game and not a heavily luck driven game. (In that game nearly every hit can take out a unit. But every hit has maybe a 1% chance of doing so. Sometimes you lose 1 of your 4-12 units with their own stat page to a single hit. Other times that same unit takes DOZENS of shots and laughs, making Bruce Willis in Die Hard look like a wet paper bag in comparison.)

Sometimes the dice won't go your way. Boo hoo. Man up and fight through it.

Or it just might not be to your taste and that's cool.

GW can't balance its games. Gamers like all people are in general horrible self absorbed douchebags. Cyanide has about as much programming talent as Troika/Obsidian.

If the game is making you rage its best to either take a break or find a different game.

Like the old joke goes. If it hurts when you do that? DON'T DO THAT.

Some things to think about. Hobby games are supposed to be fun. Most of them aren't perfect, in many cases NOT EVEN CLOSE. But you gotta WANT to have fun or you won't have any. But if the player base is terrible, or the game isn't to your taste, step back. Maybe you need a break from the game or its community.

Or maybe you just need an entirely different game or group ENTIRELY.

It took me many years to learn that, in many cases playing with certain people and groups was making me miserable. I wasn't happy at all. Heck in some cases, people have ruined certain games entirely for me.

(Hero Quest, Jyhad, Lord of the Rings Miniatures, New World of Darkness, and Warmachine for examples in my own sad history.)

It might not even be the games' fault but my memories are completely tainted.

Instead of staying with those games or the people that ruined them, I got the hell out of dodge, in some cases selling it all off on ebay to buy things I can enjoy and have a good memory for.

Sure I might not be gaming anywhere NEAR as much. But in its "Stopped Clocks are Right at Least Twice a Day" way, some folks on RPGnet had a good bit of wisdom: "No gaming beats BAD gaming".

Something to think about. In some cases it just might be the audience, or maybe even the game itself for you and your preferred style of play.

But why make yourself miserable just to play something that is supposed to be fun?

Some More Stuff Now 20% COOLER. (Its hobby games related!)

2011-02-25T20:48:00.000-05:00

Consider this me bringing up some general gaming topics and a few other bits.

I PLEDGE MY SOUL TO THE DARK GODS

Good news or greatest news?

While I have never actually played any of the 40K RPGs I do have 2 of the 3 corebooks and some of the expansions. Like most RPGs nobody in my state particularly is looking for or interested in new games, or new players.

But I sort of love the 40K RPG books for their lovely art design and fluff that isn't the same 4-5 40K storyline topics repeated over and over again. (Horus and the Emperor's final battle above Terra, the Tyranid invasion of Macragge, Ork invasion of Armageddon being the three constantly repeated.)

The game system itself seems to be the Aspergers' version of Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu/Basic Roleplaying, making me just want to convert it all over to to that system instead.

Because I am a HUGE Chaos fan in Warhammer 40K. I may sell off most of my 40K stuff but my Chaos Marines won't be parting with me.

And now an RPG based around playing those damned souls?

COUNT.
ME.
IN.

Oh some would immediately say "Use GURPS", but considering GURPS kind of sucks and now Steve Jackson Games' bread and butter is rehashing mediocre card game "Munchkin" over and over again, GURPS isn't even outputting the sheer mass of interesting sourcebooks they once did.

Yep. Check this out: SJGames' Stakeholder Report . The company is pretty much surviving on Munchkin and Munchkin alone. How such a mediocre game can keep selling with new sets basically being old rules with new funny Kovalic art attached is beyond me.

I'm not a GURPS fan. Its kind of meh of a system and it is unable of handling things without going into absurd levels of detail. (You don't EVEN want to look at the statline of an Ogre Cybertank in GURPS Ogre. You. Do. Not.) But I do love Car Wars and Ogre.

Its sad to see a company pretty much just follow the money while losing everything that kept them going for decades beforehand. You can't blame them of course since a company exists to make money, but one can feel sad.

Hell, I have had 2 seperate people find out I like RPGs then get completely crestfallen when they ask my opinion on GURPS and its not a good one. This has to be KILLING GURPS fans.

On to blog news!

My new computer is running swimmingly even with a budget card installed. I have been happily installing old games to test them out and getting new ones as well. Overall I am generally happy returning to Windows. Luckily I skipped past Vista and got onto Windows 7 merely 8 days before Service Pack 1 was released.

With free virtualization software I can even install Windows XP and 98SE giving me access to most of the games that refuse to run in 7. (Except Star Wars Republic Commando which crashes to desktop in Windows 7 and XP. Good thing I only paid 4 bucks for it.)

Expect an eventual post listing how my hobby games based computer games run on it.

I am also soon to enter the land of Youtube video creation so expect some video based reviews or review supplements. Maybe even a few "How to Play Game X" sort of things. I did a little practice video with Windows Movie Maker and it made a fair little minifilm with a little tweaking. I have a 480p camcorder, a nice big tripod, and a kicky fast computer.

More ways to make terrible things.

And if my continual purging of my game collection continues I can add in even more nifty things to this machine.

Here is Some Stuff.

2011-02-14T22:10:00.003-05:00

First off, the Orc and Goblin Warhammer Fantasy army has to go. New army book is 38 bucks! And I played the previous edition maybe.. 3 times? Hell, the people I got into the previous edition for never even assembled their damned armies, making it a colossal waste of time. So feh. Let's make me some money!

And the full army:

And I have also been playing the quite fun RPG Mass Effect. Here is my Shepard:

Updated with more stuff! Got my bad ass new PC that even with its low end Radeon 5770 card is a tiny god. Ok maybe Name Level PC. I can run this bad boy below at MAXIMUM settings and resolution and its smooth as silk:

Thats the scaled down picture. Transformers War for Cybertron. It is awesome looking. I may not be able to find gamers but I can happily sell my gaming stuff and get things I CAN enjoy.

Specs of a Computer I May Get

2011-01-24T22:19:00.002-05:00

This post possibly wont stay here forever but my big expensive iMac's Hard Drive died and those machines are virtually unrepairable by the average joe.

And new ones are prohibitively expensive. So this machine may end up replacing it:

(Update: Frig it I did it. Waited a day and got an IMPROVED system. Memory upgrade to 1600, went to a higher wattage and quality power supply, went with a P67 motherboard over the H67. P67 gives me the option to overclock while the H67 would give me the on chip graphics. Ill go with the option to bad ass it a bit. Yeah the memory can go faster than I need it to, but that means itll be useful if I decide to keep upgrading the system over the years. Also the hard disk got another 140 gigs I dont need, but its got 64 megs of cache, and has twice the gbs per second. All for 20 bones more than the top option.)

Why did I do this?

Well for the second time since owning my Intel based iMac, the hard drive died on me. And its the THIRD time I have now lost all my data on the machine. (Though this time I had backups should I choose to fix the big Mac and thus recover everything.) I dearly, dearly love the all in one design and the sheer JOY of OSX but the lack of games access and the massive price of Macs finally took its toll on me. I will probably get it fixed in the spring as my work computer replacing the little G5 machine I am posting this on, but I can't deal with it any more. A new iMac with similar specs to the machines below is like 2500-3000 dollars and its designed so us end users can't fix the smegging things easily.

You want to see how I would have to replace the hard disk in the Mac?
SUCTION CUPS? REALLY?
Yes. Suction cups, torx screws, a little energon, a lot of luck, and a whole lot of fear. My Applecare warranty ended in the summer so I would probably have to pay 200-300 dollars to have this done only to probably have the dang machine do it again to me in a couple years.

With a desktop PC I can pretty much drag and drop components to my heart's content.
Want to go to 8 gigs of RAM? Awesome. 5 minutes of work.
Want to get a faster video card, or go dual card? I can do that too same timeframe.
Multiple hard drives or even dual drive RAID formation? No problem.
Even a faster CPU is pretty cake. Its possibly the ONLY major upgrade I might have a shop do though. Just wait 18 months and put in the latest Core i7 hexcore or even octocore for 200 or so and my machine will be even longer lived.

I was hoping my big iMac would be my main computer till at least 2012 or so. I guess not. Instead it will be the special little noisy guy below. With regular upgrades and some canny pricechecking from newegg I could be running this comfortably till 2014, (the big FOUR OH GOD SO OOOLD) maybe even 2015.

1 x Case	Xion Echo Gaming Case - Blue
1 x Processor	Intel® Core™ i5-2500K Processor (4x 3.30GHz/6MB L3 Cache)
1 x Processor Cooling	Liquid CPU Cooling System [SOCKET-1155 & 1156] - Enermax Silent High Performance Fan Upgrade
1 x Memory	4 GB [2 GB X2] DDR3-1333 Memory Module - Corsair XMS3 Dominator
1 x Video Card	ATI Radeon HD 5770 - 1GB - Single Card
1 x Video Card Brand	Major Brand Powered by ATI or NVIDIA
1 x Free Stuff	[Free Game Voucher] - Star Trek Online - Free with Purchase of Selected Intel Core i5/i7 Processor or SSD
1 x Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-H67MA-UD2H
1 x Power Supply	600 Watt -- Standard
1 x Primary Hard Drive	500 GB HARD DRIVE -- 16M Cache, 7200 RPM, 3.0Gb/s - Single Drive
1 x Optical Drive	24X Dual Format/Double Layer DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive - Blue
1 x Sound Card	3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard
1 x Network Card	Onboard LAN Network (Gb or 10/100)
1 x Operating System	Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium + Office Starter 2010 (Includes basic versions of Word and Excel) - 64-Bit
1 x Keyboard	Thermaltake eSPORTS CHALLENGER PRO Gaming Keyboard - Black
1 x Monitor	22" LCD 1920x1080 -- Sceptre X226W-1920 (21.5" Viewable)
1 x Monitor Cable	15 ft. DVI to DVI Cable (DVI-D Dual Link, resolution up to 2048x1536 )
1 x Speaker System	2.1 Channel Stereo Super Bass Subwoofer Speaker System
1 x Wireless Network Adapter	Zonet ZEW2545 802.11n 130Mbps Wireless USB Adapter
1 x Advanced Build Options	Specialized Advanced Packaging System - Protect your investment during transportation!
1 x Advanced Build Options	Tuniq TX-2 High Performance Thermal Compound - The best interface between your CPU and the heatsinks
1 x Warranty	Standard Warranty Service - Standard 3-Year Limited Warranty + Lifetime Technical Support
1 x Rush Service	Rush Service Fee (not shipping fee) - Deferred Delivery (Ship Out in 15 Business Days) - 5% OFF on systems over $999 (Coupon Code: defer)

Subtotal :	$1,133.35 Shipping 109

1 x Case	Xion Echo Gaming Case - Blue

1 x Processor	Intel® Core™ i5-2500K Processor (4x 3.30GHz/6MB L3 Cache)

1 x Processor Cooling	Liquid CPU Cooling System [SOCKET-1155 & 1156] - Enermax Silent High Performance Fan Upgrade
1 x Memory	4 GB [2 GB X2] DDR3-1600 Memory Module - Corsair or Major Brand
1 x Video Card	ATI Radeon HD 5770 - 1GB - Single Card
1 x Video Card Brand	Major Brand Powered by ATI or NVIDIA
1 x Free Stuff	[Free Game Voucher] - Star Trek Online - Free with Purchase of Selected Intel Core i5/i7 Processor or SSD
1 x Motherboard	[SLI] Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD4
1 x Motherboard USB / SATA Interface	Motherboard default USB / SATA Interface
1 x Power Supply	650 Watt -- Casegears ECO-Element / 80+
1 x Primary Hard Drive	640 GB HARD DRIVE -- 64M Cache, 7200 RPM, 6.0Gb/s - Single Drive

1 x Optical Drive	24X Dual Format/Double Layer DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive - Purple

1 x Sound Card	3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard
1 x Network Card	Onboard LAN Network (Gb or 10/100)
1 x Operating System	Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium + Office Starter 2010 (Includes basic versions of Word and Excel) - 64-Bit
1 x Keyboard	Thermaltake eSPORTS CHALLENGER PRO Gaming Keyboard - Black
1 x Monitor	22" LCD 1920x1080 -- Sceptre X226W-1920 (21.5" Viewable)

1 x Monitor Cable	15 ft. DVI to DVI Cable (DVI-D Dual Link, resolution up to 2048x1536 )
1 x Speaker System	2.1 Channel Stereo Super Bass Subwoofer Speaker System
1 x Wireless Network Adapter	Zonet ZEW2545 802.11n 130Mbps Wireless USB Adapter

1 x Advanced Build Options	Specialized Advanced Packaging System - Protect your investment during transportation!
1 x Advanced Build Options	Tuniq TX-2 High Performance Thermal Compound - The best interface between your CPU and the heatsinks
1 x Warranty	Standard Warranty Service - Standard 3-Year Limited Warranty + Lifetime Technical Support
1 x Rush Service	Rush Service Fee (not shipping fee) - Deferred Delivery (Ship Out in 15 Business Days) - 5% OFF on systems over $999 (Coupon Code: defer)

Subtotal :	$1,221.70
Tax :	$0.00
Ground Shipping :	$44.00

Total : $1,265.70

Gamma World: My Houserules

2011-01-14T01:01:00.001-05:00

Over at Arkham Asylum in Norwich CT there has been a couple rumblings about me doing a demo of the game.

I wouldn't mind doing one at all because I really like the game and how goofy you can run it, or with some tweaks its more of an X Men type game. Or Rifts. Or Fallout. (And for a Fallout game, tell me this isn't THE BEST MUSIC EVER for its late 50-early 60's feel: )

While my actually running the game and what silliness level I would do depends on the potential players and what they want, the following house rules are ones I would probably use no matter what:

1: Origin Rolling: In Gamma World you normally roll for two origins, with a double roll (made nearly impossible with the expansions that add in even more origins) on the chart equaling Enhanced Human as one of them. For my house rules, players may choose one or both origins at a starting XP penalty of 125 each, or 250 for Enhanced Human and you MUST roll for the second origin. Players selecting one of their two origins must choose it FIRST then roll for the second one.

2: Ability Scores: In Gamma World your first origin is your primary and the second is the secondary. (NO WAY!) Your origins give you an 18 in its' ability, and the secondary a 16. Normally you roll 3d6 in order for the other 4 abilities. BEFORE ROLLING, players may choose to assign the 4 rolls as desired, and instead of 3d6 roll 1d8 and add 8. (Meaning instead of a spread of 3-18 you have a spread of 9-16 and choose what to put where.)

3: Alpha Mutations: Normally you draw a single card and deal with it. But normally your Alpha Mutation changes every time there is an Alpha Flux or an Extended Rest. This is a little too random for me so here is what we will do: At creation the player draws THREE cards from the deck and chooses ONE. Outside of an Alpha Flux or other in game effect that would cause a Mutation change this is your PC's power. When something comes up that would make you draw (Extended Rest changing being removed.), you can instead burn a Healing Surge and keep your power. Draw 3 select 1 also happens for your level 4 and 8 choices. There is NO power draws outside of Flux type events or character generation.

4: Player Mutation and Tech Decks: These are BANNED unless the player chooses at creation to instead of building a 7 card deck, build an 8 card. The DM at start gets to draw and KEEP a card. If you are going to be a degenerate munchkin paying 4 dollars for a package of 8 blind buy cards you must pay the DM for this right. By giving the DM one of them. Tip your friendly neighborhood Dungeon Master. (At DM's discretion other gifts such as booze, candy, toys, or helping them clean up after the game could be accepted as well.)

5: Keeping your Omega Tech even when you shouldn't: Normally an Omega Tech item either degrades or goes Tubby Bye Bye when used. If you REALLY like your new toy you may choose to keep it upon receiving it (aka you make the choice THEN AND THERE, no waiting) you PERMANENTLY sacrifice 1d3 Healing Surges and its yours for the life of the PC. If for some reason you have no Surges left to sacrifice after the roll, (Like your PC has 2 Surges total and you roll a 3 meaning you now have -1 Surges) your PC is now unable to use ANY Omega Tech cards at all. This also means you LOSE all Omega Tech you previously owned instantly. It serves you right for being that greedy with your toys. Outside of permanently sacrificing Healing Surges to keep an Omega Tech card, failing an Omega Charge roll works as normal.

6: Gun ammo: Normally in Gamma World you get ONE shot with any gun or ammo type weapon, and if you use it a second time in an encounter its out of ammo permanently till your PC can somehow find more. This is sort of silly. Instead of a heavy accounting of ammo now you have the PC's level in shots per encounter PERIOD. No overshooting. Whenever the PCs go to any place capable of salvage or to purchase more ammo the DM will tell you how much it will cost (or time wasted, probably spent in Healing Surges for the day) to stock back up on ammo. Whenever a 1 is rolled to hit with an ammo weapon it has run out of ammo for the encounter, AND until the character can find some reloads.

7: BE A MAN: Roll for everything by the book and accept whatever you draw for your Alpha mutation and start with 250 bonus XP. If you choose this bonus you may not expend surges to keep an Alpha, but may sacrifice 1d3 to keep an Omega Tech. You may also never use a player deck of either, and never get to draw 3 take 1 at level 4 and 8 either.

8: D&D Essentials Races for an Origin: These may be chosen and counted as Enhanced Human either in rolling or taking a 250 XP starting penalty for creation. Any abilities of the D&D race that are not applicable to Gamma World are ignored but otherwise the race works as listed.

The above I think makes for a slightly less ridiculously random game with a more stable Gamma World Earth as opposed to one where everything and everyone seems to change what they can do constantly.

3 Snowfalls in a Week Keep Me From D&D Encounters

2011-01-12T21:20:00.000-05:00

Behold.. SNOWMAGEDDON. And my Macross Tomahawk kit painted up in my idea for Steiner Arctic Camo as a Warhammer in Battletech.

I don't even think poor Waspinator's feet touched my car's roof even that deep. Was too cold to worry. A foot or more of snow between midnight and 5pm will do that to ya even when you clean the car off in the middle.

40K Videogame Chart

2011-01-06T03:36:00.000-05:00

Call it a super quick review of all 11 Warhammer 40K electronic games counting expansions as part of their parent title in a handy chart form. It goes alongside my first attempt which I did for my Castlevania blog. This one came out a bit better, and covers that wild & wooly series of games based on our favorite overly priced game with mediocre and easily broken rules.

[Review Corner] Robotech/Mospeada Beta Fighter/Tread Toy

2010-12-21T22:27:00.000-05:00

As gamers we all like toys, let's face facts. If we can make excuses that they are to be used with gaming even better right? Heck, miniatures really are toy soldiers anyhow. They just cost ridiculous amounts. Just like collector's toys.

Such as the one we are about to review!

And there we go! I hope to have at least one more post before 2011 of some kind, but time is friggin tight on the holidays. It took me a week to even do this one! Obviously you really don't need something like this for your Robotech or other mecha games, but its kind of neat if you can find an excuse for one eh? I mean. ITS BIG. But its really a semiposable, EXPENSIVE add on to a really cruddy toy whose only reported good version (which was made at the same factory as this one) is out of print and still might be bad.

But I have been a Robotech fan since the mid 80s and the Mospeada/Invid Invasion segment is my favorite part (even if the usually maligned second part has my favorite character. Though that could be because Dana Sterling was the first girl I had a crush on. No wonder I am so messed up!) with the post holocaust survival/rebels traveling the land fighting the evil oppressors style and theme just being way cool.

Its sort of the reason I love the Ravenloft setting in D&D so much as well. The good guys being in lands controlled by darkness trying to save the people who have already mostly given up is just such a compelling setting.

And hey! Its a giant booster rocket/bomber for a transforming jet fighter that also transforms. Who doesn't like transforming robots?

TERRIBLE PEOPLE.

Random Boosters: Talk about DUMB Daniel!

2010-12-06T23:45:00.002-05:00

Consider this both a minor rant and an explanation about how such blind buy bits are silly.

I have photos for many interesting reviews and unboxings but I have been lazy.

Plus Carlin the Bishop needs to be leveled up because Michele the Elf Sorceress is too fragile for level 10 in Wizardry Tale of the Forsaken Land.

(One run on Level 8 and Carlin goes from 1-10 and can now be promoted to a Bishop. 10 more levels of grinding plus many runs to the spell component store and he will be way better than any silly Elf mage girl. Because he is GEORGE FREAKING CARLIN. Heck he is still 4-5 levels lower than Michele since this pic was taken and he has nearly 80 more HP. And can cast Priest AND Sorcerer spells.)

Now for those of you who don't know, random boosters, or "Blind Buy" packaging is beneficial for the manufacturer and the retailer who doesn't have to worry about multiple SKUs (Store Keeping Units) of product that may or may not sell, and can in fact cause extra sales as customers chase that one magic Rare or Super Rare that the product may have, ending up with multiples of items that probably wouldn't sell that much on their own.

And in some cases its sort of a Christmas package every time you open one of these packs up. The feeling of "What's in this one?" can be silly addictive.

Yet in the end its a screwjob on us, the consumer. Like those Lego and Mega Blocks minifigure packages. I REALLY want the Lego Vampire. But I am NOT gonna take the risk on 4 dollar a pack baggies in the hope of getting him. (A 1 inch tall Lego minifig for 4 bucks? BLOW ME. That's a rip off! Now 2 bucks? I'd buy that action like I am Harold AND Kumar and the bags contain some "green".) Now the Mega Bloks ones are much cheaper at 2.50 a pack. Yet I keep getting the same damned Rare figure, the Pink Hayabusa Halo Samurai dude. And some poor kid is gonna be hoping for one and my dumb luck means he keeps getting some lame Common rated figure. And I am stuck with a bunch of pink samurai in powered armor. Which is only something you want if you are an RPGnet or Scans Daily poster.

And this is what happens. In some cases (like the Mega Blocks Halo figures) the AMOUNT of goodies you get almost make up for looking for that one bit you want by sheer value compared to buying the same product if it was open buy. Yet you have other cases such as Magic where the Super Rare equivalents are all but NEEDED for certain decks especially if you play competitively or you buy singles where a SINGLE IN PRINT TRADING CARD THAT COSTS PENNIES TO MAKE GOES FOR 20-100 DOLLARS OR MORE BECAUSE THEY MAGICALLY MADE LESS OF IT.

This is a hose job and a companies' way of telling you, their loyal customers that you can go "hug" yourself.

Now some games sort of have run with this for years like Magic, the collectible miniatures games that all have pretty much bombed out, and so on.

Sadly, its starting to infect RPGs and Boardgames too.

Today we will be investigating this F A S. (Wargame Dork tries to avoid R rated language so you can just guess for yourself what the letters stand for.)

Plus it covers some information on games I plan on reviewing fully later on anyhow.

First off is D&D Gamma World. See in Gamma World they came up with this card based gimmick for mutant powers and "Omega Tech" which is basically Magic Items in a fantasy RPG.

The game comes with 40 card decks of these powers and magic items. In gameplay the players draw from these decks when they find gear or random crazy events happen which change their mutant power for this fight.

(While this is kind of weird it does sort of fit Gamma World's GONZO AS HELL setting and feel, it can be houseruled to be a little less random.)

However, players can build their own custom mini decks with card stacking limits to do more what they want and be less random.

So your players can buy multiple packs of these cards all randomly set out of the 120 available, with the nice foil packaging helping create ever bigger landfills of garbage and getting people to spend more money on RPG products as opposed to just buying a single rulesbook or box set and being done!

HOW WONDERFUL.

And that's what you get. A logo back and a trading card of text.

But what makes this worse?

EACH 8 CARD PACK IS FOUR DOLLARS MSRP. 50 CENTS A PLAIN TEXT TRADING CARD.

They aren't even foil or have pretty pictures on them!

Its a SCAM.

Oh, and online these 4 dollar packs cost 3 bucks. A 16 card pack of Magic the Gathering with foils and super rares and other fanciness? 2.75 from the same store. Yeah. Same company and its not even competitive with the same product type!

And its probably the biggest thing keeping many people from investing in Gamma World. Many folks have said they don't even like the preset 40 card decks in the main box. This just makes things worse. It even means some players can have an edge on the game over others by dropping silly amounts of money.

Thankfully the only place I know who has the boosters so far hasn't seemed to sell a single pack. Sadly, it probably won't teach WOTC anything. And it could possibly kill Gamma World again.

What's sad is the whole card deal could have been dropped for abilities and items in a book with a random roll. But instead its a new dumb way to create landfill clogging foil wrappers and throws off game balance.

A shame. Also I probably wouldn't allow the boosters at all. Unless I was bribed first. If you are silly enough with money to buy booster packs just to be better in an RPG you can buy my coffee for the entire campaign. And I loves me coffee. And its gonna COST you. Lattes from Dunkin's. That's right. The delicious beverage I don't buy because its stupidly expensive and mini mart coffee is usually as tasty is what you would have to do as penance for being both a powergamer and a consumer whore.

Ok. Now let's move swiftly along to the boardgaming section.

I have discovered this neat new boardgame from Columbia Games called Wizard Kings. It is part of their block wargame series where you have painted wooden blocks with unit stickers on one side, making for a neat "Fog of War" thing going on. I got the first edition box with 2 complete armies for 30 dollars. The current edition gives you 8 blocks and rules for every army for 50 MSRP (40 online).

Well in first edition days if you wanted new armies you got this for 12-15 dollars:

See? A nice VHS type clamshell case containing the following goodness:

Your faction's army card with unit quick reference and spells on one side, fluff on the other.

And your COMPLETE army, with a carefully thought out and hopefully well playtested array of all your faction units, and 3 appropriate "Chaos Mercenary" units. 28 pretty wood blocks and stickers. Plus there is room for a few Werebeast Mercenaries, which can be stickered on any of the faction color blocks for either shoring up your faction's weak spots, or possibly turning one faction into a Werebeast only army. (The vagaries of how you assign and balance the Werecreatures per faction is an annoying bit in either edition. 2nd edition only makes this worse, but we will get to that!)

(Yes that weretiger has exposed nipples. On the upside it doesn't have exposed bits described in the "Anita Blake" books. *Shudder*)

So the 1st edition Wizard Kings gave you 28 preassigned blocks for 15 MSRP. A little over 2 dollars a block.

Now in 2nd edition its only 10 bucks for 21 blocks, and they are all compatible with 1st edition and vice versa outside of a few bits from the 2nd edition rules. Roughly the same core price, 2 bucks a block! It also allows for bigger forces for monster games with expansion mapsets.

Cool huh?

NOT SO MUCH.

(One upside in spite of my flash obscuration is better art on the box and stickers. And of course bonus sideboob!)

They keep the same VHS clamshell case, albeit with a generic cover. While with 7 armies this provides nice organized cases for each, as is the wont of random boosters you need way more than that to comfortably cover things:

(We get blocks colored for every faction! And a baggie you can use to hold the contents for one HELL of a party, albeit one illegal in most states and countries.)

See that? You get a whopping TWO random stickers for each of the 7 factions, and 7 stickers you can place on whatever faction you want, possibly breaking the game if you really want your Elves to be super bad asses, or just don't care about any sort of theme whatsoever. Amazons with a giant werecreature army? Whatever you want! DAMN YOU BALANCE AND THEME. DAMN YOU TO HELL YOU GODDAMNED DIRTY BALANCE AND THEME!

Now as we figure each 1st edition faction box contained 25 faction pure units, and the 2nd ed core set has 8 units per faction this means you need at MINIMUM ignoring rarity and the chaos of assortment 9 boosters to have 26 faction pure blocks per faction. Even if you just want to play Orcs and get your WAAGH on or Amazons because scantily clad warrior women make you feel funny like that time you climbed the rope in gym class you have to drop close to a 100 bucks when before it was 15 bucks.

Oh sure it might be around the same price if you want to collect every army or have big massive hordes to supplement things but its really sort of hosing.

And that's the problem with blind purchase products. It damages gameplay balances and punishes the customer, especially one on a budget, giving the people with more money than sense an extreme edge.

Yet in the long run, most people don't have unlimited funds, and losing to the WIN AT ALL COSTS guys just isn't fun, leaving the powergamers to play ever decreasingly small groups as more and more people just give up, and no new players have any desire to even try, eventually killing most games.

Remember, even Magic only survives because of its MASSIVE playerbase and the game variants which tend to bring the "Mr Suitcase" players into check. (Blocks of legal cards, booster drafts, ect.)

How many other collectible games continue to thrive without such restrictions, or even with?

Really not many. After Magic you have what? Yu Gi Oh for the kids, and Heroclix on a weird form of zombie popularity. Most everything else has either died or gone into the FFG "Living Card Game" sort of fixed release expansions.

The sad fact is though, its such a positive short but fast and easy profit setup for retailers and manufacturers that I doubt it will ever go away, even if otherwise promising games can be damaged irreparably by it.

Ok Kids, its Time for a Rant

2010-12-01T23:04:00.005-05:00

Over at one of the RPG forums I frequent one game shop guy was raging out about those Storygames quasi RPGs almost nobody plays or cares about in real life, and about 4th edition. (Which I can't criticize too much as I have sadly done quite a bit of that over the years.)

It has lead into some interesting discussion about gaming in general with one fellow making a rather good comment:

Originally Posted by John Morrow

And when those communities disappear because all of the people have decided it's easier to play World of Warcraft or want to play a game you can't stand, instead? Role-playing is a social hobby that requires other people to play and while you may not have a problem finding or making new players and while there will always be some small number of people who keep the hobby going in some form (just as wargaming never entirely died), it's going to make things more difficult for a lot of people if they can't find people to play with and can't buy game material for the sort of games that they want to play. It's also going to impact people if their group breaks up over it.

HE IS DAMNED RIGHT. And it lead me to my own commentary of which I shall repost here and edit/expand upon to make a nice proper blog post.

What? This blog is supposed to be nothing more than my comic reviews of things?

I know its my gimmick and all but I can write if I want to, leaving my party members behind...

I am getting to the point where I am ready to quit buying gaming stuff and possibly give up on gaming with other people its become so hard to find a group. If it wasn't for a once yearly con and D&D Encounters I am not sure I would have done much of ANYTHING for gaming the last 6 months outside of a couple pickup games that never got a single person to play what we were playing. 

People don't seem interested in finding groups at all. I mean, I even bought into D&D Essentials I was so desperate to get an RPG group going. You know, the latest version of the most popular RPG in existence? The one I have ranted about for most of this blog's lifetime? 

Its all been an utter failure. Nobody on player finders, nobody on forums, nobody through Player's Wanted posters, nobody through store Yahoo groups or Facebook pages. Nobody on IRC. Nobody at work who claims to be a gamer. 

Either people only want to play with a select group (which means as soon as the inevitabilities of real life take over as they did with my old group its OVER), or they only want to play one certain game in one certain style on one certain day and everyone else might as well not even EXIST. (Battletech players in my region are the absolute WORST at this. Though in the mid 90s the Battletech scene in Virginia was just as awful. So its not just typical New England Douchebaggery in effect here!)  

And what happens? Many people are looking for a game but can't find anyone to game with. Maybe their friends aren't gamers. In some cases people won't even MENTION being into nerdy stuff because the nature of their job and the people there would ostracize them and it would negatively impact their career! (There was a thread about this a couple seasons back at Fear the Boot's forum.) Heck, high school kids are EVIL to each other. Do something the majority says is wrong and get found out and your ass will endure a LIVING HELL for it.  So folks can't find a game so why bother buying anything new or even bothering? 

A videogame is always there provided the machine works and the power/internet isn't out as needed.  And we then lose more and more people due to clannish, antisocial, and ONE WAY ONLY douchebags. 

 Now add in those people whose games actually run people away. You know, the guys whose campaigns all have massive amounts of Player vs Player killing, whose characters are lesbian Drow priestesses who eat eyeballs daily as a sacrifice to their god, the powergamers who look down on anyone who talks too much or too loud or whose army isn't painted and constructed to their tournament standard. Or who spent 5000 bucks on the latest Magic set so they crush every other deck by turn 5 or clearly they didn't make it good enough. The guys who yell at anyone whose arm even rests on their 8' 4' table with 4 2" long ships on it total. The guys who run off any kids and teens by saying such vulgar and horrible things. Who if they decide the kids' hygiene isn't good enough they spray them with air freshener. (These are all REAL events I have either seen or been told about. I could easily go on.)  

Why the hell would anyone want to even BOTHER? 

And then if somehow you GET a good group going real life takes folks away or a new edition comes out and fragments everyone with some refusing to play the new version, and others refusing to play the OMG OOOOOLLD version that was perfectly fine until some beancounter said it was time to get a quick cash infusion. 

Its sort of the same kind of reasons many people have stopped trying to find jobs or get into a meaningful romantic relationship. 

You put all your heart and soul into it and get SQUAT ALL BACK for doing so.   If nobody else seems to give a damn why should you?

Why spend money on this stuff, or time to learn the rules when nobody is interested and nobody cares?

Why try to make new friends who have your similar interests when clearly its a waste of bloody time, and a little bit soul crushing to know what you care about nobody else does?

Why bust your hump preparing a great game and cleaning up the house and having a game table all set to go when everyone decides to cancel 30 minutes before gametime? (And that's if they bother to inform you AT ALL?)

And that just leads to the obvious fact buying all this stuff and putting any effort in is STUPID. One would be better off buying a videogame or a DVD or something. Or heck, showing some REAL SMARTS and saving for a rainy day.

Some folks would say I am just angry and should take a break from it all.

I've basically been on a break.  THATS THE BLASTED PROBLEM.

  And look at many of the examples I listed. If you were either a new potential gamer or one who was trying to get a group would you want to put up with any of that nonsense? 

Probably not. Its a lot faster to slap a disk into your game machine of choice and just kill some Radscorpions or Orcs in 5 minutes rather than try to go through all that work and hope someone will actually want to play and not be a freak or jerk. 

Why spend hours reading rules and trying to find someone to fight Napoleon's Wars on a hex map when you can drop 30 bucks and download Commander: Napoleon at War and start playing within minutes and not have to worry about it? 

Why paint dozens of Space Marines and drive to a shop in hopes of getting a game when you can grab Dawn of War 1 or 2 off Steam and watch Orks go splat for the Emperor and not have some asshole poo poo your paint job and army list?

I mean if you were a single female, especially a younger one would you even want to risk dealing with some creepy SOBs when you could just throw Valkyria Chronicles 2 in your PSP and not deal with it? There are tons of women who are into nerd things now and who want to roleplay. But it looks about as safe as cutting yourself and jumping into shark infested waters. Where the sharks are creepy middle aged men and younger ones whose hygiene is only less questionable than the creepy anime they might watch.

Why would any sane person try to deal with it?

This is why gaming which is already niche as hell just gets niche cubed.

Gaming seems to be infested by a pile of freaks and antisocial jerks who just make one question why we should bother.

Thus us sane folks just start giving the Hell up.

Its kind of soul crushing. When I as a DM that has had two seperate groups basically gush over how much they liked my DMing, and who won Best Roleplayer at a LARP with 20 strangers in a game I had never played before can't even find a dang game something is incredibly WRONG.

So this is my challenge dear reader. And I want you to spread this post far and wide. Gaming needs to see this, to know this, to heed this, to think about it even if you think I am full of it. (And I may be.) You see someone doing some bad juju? Link em to this. Give them knowledge and wisdom.

Start trying to welcome new players. Stop being creepy and mean. Stop others from being creepy and mean. Get the word out about games you like. Be willing to try other games. Respectfully change the bad attitudes of the stinky, the creepy, the elitist. Look at Player's Wanted billboards, forums, and websites. Get new players. Encourage the lapsed ones to come back.

BRING THE JOY OF GAMING BACK.

Cuz if we don't pretty soon we won't have gaming at all.

If enough people quit playing they will quit buying. If they quit buying the stores close down, the games companies go out of business and you are left with a pile of books, games, and miniatures that will just join everyone else who gave up on Ebay, leaving a handful of insular little cliques to play till real life intrudes and they break up, never gaming again.

Extend your hand in friendship to others.

And if they choose to spit in it? Let em know why they suck.

What I have been up to instead of this blog.

2010-11-23T00:38:00.000-05:00

Oh I have been gaming, playing the D&D Encounters and ALMOST having a D&D group. (Who bailed on me. I'm quite bitter.)

And I have many good things to review or do unboxing comics of.

But the holidays get wacky and I have been working on what is this site's sister blog.

Blogging Castlevania!

Its a mixture of me playing through as many of the 2D Castlevania games as I can legally get a hold of (right now I am missing 2 of the US released games not counting a pair of digitally download ones), and even covering stuff like the movie and novel classics that inspired the series.

Its also gonna have RPG stats and my Castlevania campaign notes.

Those I will link here as it is gaming content. The normal videogame stuff I will leave to that blog.

I just finished the original game in the series for the blog and I hope any of this site's visitors who love classic 2d platformers will go over and visit!