2 hours ago
Angry Robot BooksQuick sketch I did as a concept.
This is a quick sketch I did as a concept for equipment for a friends game. This is a Klik mini probe in a prelaunch state. Untold is the game, and my intention for the sketch is just to capture some ideas for later modeling in Lightwave, or to just pass it on for use as needed. The Klik are clockwork creatures so the device could use some more gears and steampunkish elements on the final.
Mythic Design – Adventure Art Review
I pop twitter up on my iPhone periodically or on the PC if I am taking a break from something. I follow various game personalties and companies and saw a tweet from Mythic Design offering up a free copy of Adventure Art Issue #1 to the first few folks to respond, the only catch being those who won be willing to provide a short honest review. What follows is that review.
Adventure Art #1 is offered both as a print and a PDF, I am reviewing the PDF version and think for this type of produce, while it is nice there is a print version available, really works best as a PDF as you are granted permission to reproduce the art for personal use. The product is a collection of twelve character sketches with a bonus action sketch thrown in. It has a table of contents of sorts consisting of a very short intro for each character as well as the credits for the concept and art. Very handy way to make sure the creators get credit while keeping the utility of the character sketches clean. The quality of the art is above average to very good.
Other than being just fun to look through, for me, the best use for this around the game table would be a tool to spark ideas for a game master looking for help with NPC’s for his game. Players would gain the benefit of having a picture to place with the description the GM throws at them. Always nice to have a face to associate with in a game. All in all $6 for a PDF of printable clean character art is not too bad. Mythic Design has two issues out so far, give one of them a try.
Local Game Stores
I live in the Huntsville Alabama area, population around 170,000 and a VERY high concentration of technical careers. All in all it is a pretty darned good place to live. Crime is low, it is close to several very large cities and has easy access to major interstates. Culturally it is a little thin. Not much in the way of concerts or diverse arts, but still a good place to live.
One of my favorite past times is heading out to book/game stores. I might be in the mood for a comic or two, maybe a good used or hard to find paperback or hang out for a while at a game store looking over the shelves. Of the three goals there, comics, games and used books, the only thing Huntsville has a good option for really is used books. As for comics and games the selection for my needs are pitiful.
The local game stores are limited to big chains which all carry the same thing and what used to be a very good store which has faded to barely passable. They now carry pretty much what the chain stores carry with a few extra bits and pieces tossed in for good measure. They do have a decent room for the running RPG’s and I suppose miniatures but I really don’t have the time to drive 45 minutes across town to try to play. They will do a good job of special ordering things for you, but honestly I can do that for myself and often much cheaper than they can. Plus it comes to my house, not an hour round trip away. I do still go there once a month to look around pick up a couple of things they get for me regularly, so I have not completly written them off. I have simpathy for their plight. It is just a lot of effort on my part to go there and it makes me slightly sad a tthe state of an old hobby.
Recently there was a ray of hope. A new store was opening up on my side of town. One which promissed games and comics. They claimed they would host games and wanted to be a friendly place to hang. Wow did they fall flat on their face. I imagine getting a store like this running must be tought to do on a shoe string budget. Their location is a new strip mall so the rent is probably a killer. A store like this really needs location to make it I think. Word of mouth just ain’t what it used to be unless it is bad word of mouth.
So the first time I went into the store I gave them the benefit of the doubt when selection was sparce and no one was playing anything. I did not see any comics that caught my fancy and had no intention of picking up any games or miniatures. They are supposed to be big into miniature gamming so I would have expected them to have some, they had a smaller selection than the other place that has not put anything new on the shelves in 5 years. The 2nd time I went in I picked up 4 comics and tried but failed to find a graphic novel I wanted. Gaming supplies were still non-existant. Placed my comics on the counter and had two options for payment, a debit card and a $50. The dude behind the counter looked like a deer in the headlights when he saw me pull out the card. THEY DID NOT TAKE DEBIT/CREDIT. How can you run a business that does not take credit cards? To make matters worse I probably screwed him up royally with the $50 bill. It nearly cleared him out of change. I offered to go hit the atm for something smaller but he would nto let me do it for fear I would not return to grab my $12 worth of paper.
I expect the next time I go back ( it has been over 2 months since the last trip ) the place will be closed, but how can I feel bad for them, they failed on every aspect. Heck their back issues of their comics were in boxes on the floor. Pretty damn hard to browse for anything hunched over on the freakin floor. Oh and did I mention next to no game supplies at all? Can’t sell what you don’t have.
The Sandbox
Photo of Jesse Williams and Lois Markle in The Sandbox © Jaisen Crockett/Art Meets Commerce.
In todays computer games, one of the popular genres is the Sandbox. The hallmark of this type of game is nonlinear gameplay and it can be incredibly fun. In my opinion, these games got their popular start in home RPG games like Dungeons and Dragons. DnD campaigns in and of them selves are not by nature sandbox affairs, but with the right setup and agreement of the players and DM they can go this route. I’ve recently found an excellent series of posts describing an example of this type of game. It reminded me of a similar game our group played in back at the height of playing. John ran the campaign and the players were myself, Mike, Rick, Dave, his brothers, with a couple of other folks making small cameo appearances if I remember correctly. The details are fuzzy, but the fun we had was not.
The closest thing to a group experience like this in computers today is the MMORPG, but these fall short to varrying degrees because they are not true sandbox enviroments. Things you do in the world have no lasting impact. There are often world changing events but they only provide a passing illusion of impact. They are really just a hugely shared linear experience as they are often tied to game updates shared by all worlds tied to expansions. They are quite fun, but fleeting.
Sandbox games offer the player a sense of real impact, but in the case of the crop we have now, nothing is shared. Oblivion, Fallout, Grand Theft Auto, etc all offer rich worlds to explore but you do it solo. Maybe someday someoen will figure out how to offer the experience of a sandbox with room for more than one.
Perpetuating a spontanious meme
Posting this because the blog I saw it on posted it because they found it randomly and was a mused.
Bioshock
So all I’ve played of this game so far is the demo. It was beautiful, however I just have not finished enough of the games I already own for the xBox to pony up for another one right now. One thing that can not be denied is the artistry of the game. Not sure how long this will be available on their site, but you can download a PDF of the art book for the game here on their site.
WTF! A game getting dumped on because it is good.
This has got to be the dumbest thing I have ever seen. The guy calls himself the “Game Anthropologist” So you know he already doesn’t get it. But another clue is he is trying to analyze a games community a mere two weeks after launch. But here are a couple of snippets from the article.
If you try WAR alone, it’ll feel lonelier than some other MMOs. For starters, grouping requires less communication, which enhances play time but lessens bonding or memory of other players. I’ve not yet added a single person to my friends list because it simply doesn’t enter into my mind.
Because WAR gives you multiple paths to level your characters, there’s no urgency to find someone you can rely on for a specific task—if a task is difficult, it is not an opportunity you regret skipping. Continuing to explore or saying “you know, I’d rather do something else instead, I don’t want to wait around” give the journey a different flavor.
He goes on later bemoan the lack of long waits for boat rides or flights from point a to point b. He pretty much complains about the lack of many things most gamers with brains have hated for 15 years in MMO’s. Pretty much what he seems to imply are negatives, most will find positives. In fact the commentors all took the review as a good one.
Today I find myself in a minor state of dread
You might think it is related to the economy. Nahh, that is gonna suck and suck hard. I really scratch my head about that through out the day and then move on. It is seriously screwed up, our government is giving it to us up the poop shoot, and short of staging an all out revolt there is not much we can do about it.
No my minor state of dread today revolves around just how many damn good games there are coming out and I really do not have the time to play them. Just a few on the near horizon. xBox360: Fable 2, Rock Band 2 (all ready out), Fallout 3, Dead Space, Lego Batman, maybe even Viva Pinata 2, and more I am trying not to pay attention to.
Thankfully I can try them out at least on Gamefly (eventually since the new titles are always in high demand) and make sure they pass muster.
Pathfinder 13 review .. sort of.
Paizo Publishing is a small company that publishes DnD adventures, a sort of journal/adventure anthology (called Pathfinder) and soon to release a revised ruleset for DnD 3.5 to keep that ball rolling in the wake of the debacle that was the 4th ed release and blunder with the new GSL. Wizards really screwed the pooch and what seems to be a good game with 4th ed. (Never mind they forgot to do any real play testing apparently) But enough of the recent history lesson.
The intention of this post, and hopefully 5 more in the future is to review the latest adventure path Paizo is publishing Second Darkness. Paizo started doing adventure paths back when they were publishing Dragon Magazine for Wizards until that plug was pulled to put Dungeon and Dragon magazines online. This is the 3rd 6 installment adventure path under the Pathfinder moniker, and I think they did 3 longer ones in Dungeon. You would think they would have it down by now, however this first installment, while based on a good idea fails on several points that make necessary for any DM to do some serious mods to keep it from completely feeling like a railroad to the players.
MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD
The adventure (Shadow in the Sky) hinges on HUGE assumptions, that leave the DM screwed if the players do not allow themselves to be pushed and prodded in the right direction. Assumption: The players are going to all want to hang out in a gambling house, get involved when bandits/thugs show up and then take a job offered to them to continue working in the club. After they take or a coerced/convinced to follow along, the subsequent scenes assume your players are slightly shady and willing to be conviently gullable. To top that off, there is a giant mysterious cloud hovering over the city the adventure starts in, everyone in town is talking about it and the adventure as a whole essentially ignores it.
Most players I have DM’d for in the past have always assumed when a huge weird thing is presented to them they are going to becurious and funnel their attention toward that. The minute you try to move them away from that, they will feel the prod and lose interest in the sessions. The rest of the booklet is dedicated to support material. This is up to the expected Paizo standards. However this review is only concerned with the actuall adventure.
Overall this path has potential, the first adventure falls far short unfortunately.
Arrogance and Ignorance II
I was going to follow up with details on my previous post, start picking apart the “new ideas” and Orwellian new speak of 4th ed. Then I realized I was being arrogant in thinking folks had not already realized this. Suffice it to say WoTC bungled badly on many levels with 4E. I truly hope a hero rises in their ranks to pull them out of the bog (the DC of which scales Oblivion like) as time moves forward.