For reasons I assure you are entirely devoted to leveling, I spent the last three weeks running around Oblivion in a bra and panties. After a long period of game burn-out, I decided to take Garnett Lee's advice and finish a damn game. I needed to prove to myself that I could do it in order to justify upgrading my PC so I could play Bioshock, Overlord, Tomb Raider: Anniversary, and maybe even Hellgate. Or maybe just get a 360 instead.
I came up with short list of games to complete:
- Elder Scrolls: Oblivion
- Okami
- Fatal Frame II
Not a bad list, I thought. All three are titles I liked when I first started playing them over a year ago. And despite my pet peeves (Oblivion's leveling system, Okami/Fatal Frame's frustratingly dated save game and dialogue mechanics), I figured I could plow through each by the middle of October if I ignored Gametap and Steam for awhile. Which would permit me just enough time to get a HDTV and a Xbox before Mass Market Effect comes out.
Okay, so maybe it's too early to hate on Mass Effect, or even Fallout 3. But with all the bitching among the "hardcore" in the gaming media about "casual" games, I think I'm allowed to be skeptical. The most highly regarded CRPGs in recent years were created with the Xbox in mind. And after Knights of the Old Republic and Oblivion, I can't help but think the "C" in CRPG now stands for "casual." (Though I prefer the term "softcore.")
I was doing pretty well in Oblivion until today. I was on my third character, I had a set of goals I wanted to complete before I finished the main quest, and had downloaded enough mods to make the game less stupid. But then I looked up the wandering monster list, and I deleted Oblivion off my hard drive for the last time.
Ignoring animals and discounting minor variations on the same creatures, that's, what, 20 monsters or so? I'm at level 30, and there's nothing left to look forward except ripping out Xivilai hearts and extracting Deadroth teeth? Fuck Oblivion. There hasn't been a more accurately named fantasy territory since Desolace.
Oblivion got fairly good reviews when it came out, and rightly so. Although the map is huge and you're free to level up your character as you see fit, the game is best if finished in a few weeks. If you find yourself trying to complete every quest, max out your stats, or explore every dungeon, you'll quickly discover there isn't much variety in the world. All caverns are pretty much the same, as are all dungeons, ruins, castles, and that's 15 times true for the planes of Oblivion.
I'm off to try my patience with Okami.
"If you don't like it, you don't have to buy it."
When Dungeons and Dragons was upgraded to Third Edition, other argument about its value to the customer was eventually ended by that statement. You don't like what they're doing? Keep your old books, and play your old games. You can live without the future, and the future can survive without you.
The same argument returned during the great cash-grab that was Dungeons and Dragons Edition Three-Point-Five. Fourth Edition has been announced, and some people have taken offense to the fact that they're expected to replace all of their thirty dollar books after a mere five years of service.
But they don't have to join in, of course.
For fun, go to your local gaming store, and look at its role-playing section. The section is probably smaller now than it used to be, with spaces that formerly had first rate fanfiction now featuring box after box of miniatures instead. Now, examine how many of the books are part of Dungeons and Dragon's Edition 3.5.. Try to figure out how much those books must have cost the store.
In less than a year, fourth edition will come out and all of that merchandise will become nearly unsellable. This includes the new merchandise just added to their shelves, such as the Monstrous Manual V. And of course, this goes double for the near mint copy of The Complete Psionics Handbook for Second Edition that seems to linger in half of the game stores across the country. They stand as the least loved members of a bygone age, one where not buying the latest new thing just meant that you missed out on a box of ideas, instead of a new mathmatical formula that is required for the next five years.
Because 3.5 wasn't enough. There's now a fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons. And (I don't think this is a joke) there's a trailer.
I have to give them some credit. Although I think that new editions/supplements are everything that's wrong about tabletop RPGs, the trailer does suggest that 4.0 addresses the primary drawback of third edition: DM loading times. But both math and rules-lawyering are an integral part of the game, and I don't understand why they would get rid of either. Unless DMs are expected to run modules on their laptops now, as the video hints at.
The short of it though, is that Wizards has updated the game every 3 or 4 years, requiring players to pick up new PHBs and tempting DMs with an innumerable amount of ancillary materials of limited shelf life.
It's been 30 years. Why isn't the game just done?
Details on D4 can be found here, at this suspiciously corporate sounding blog, good old EN World, and on any number of horrible abuses of YouTube. Spread it!
I don't have the stomach for this sort of bullshit, but what I did read before my eyes glazed over suggests D&D is now officially on rails. Also, there are more monsters to fight! (Assuming you buy the Monstrous Manual again.)
I'll let Mr. Bile or TomFoolery pick this apart. I need a nap.
For no raison, I am posting 10 songs that make me happy and one bonus track.
Baby Got Back (as made beautiful by Jonathan Coulton)
Thank God I'm Pretty (Emilie Autumn)
Enjoy Yourself (Lee Press-On and the Nails)
I Hate Your Blog (MC Frontalot)
Hard Rock Hallelujah (Lordi)
On the Outside (Oingo Boingo)
The Sexy Data Tango (Voltaire)
Stand Up (Stromkern)
The Waffle Song (from Mystery Science Theater 3000)
Welcome Back (The Phenomenauts)
BONUS: Coming Out For Christmas (Voltaire)
I'm sure more lyrics and samples are available somewhere for the enterprising browser.
Greetings, citizens! This guest blog is brought to you by your friend The Computer! Comments are mandatory!
For those of you living under the rubble of ROK complex for the past 20 year cycles, Paranoia is a tabletop Rocket Propelled Grenade, or RPG, that takes place in the exciting world of Alpha Complex. Alpha Complex is inhabited by the genetic progeny of the sole survivors of the commie mutant invasion of [DATE CLASSIFIED], who all work together to make Alpha Complex a cleaner, happier, and less treasonous place to survive within! Don't worry, sub-ROK complex citizens, Troubleshooters will be arriving to rescue your DNA soon!
To The Computer's mind, the Paranoia RPG, specifically in its most recent incarnation, has the most brilliant game mechanic this side of Panty Explosion. Other, less fun RPGs give lip service to a Golden Rule: The GM is always right. Yet in practice these less fun RPGs often descend into arcane rules arguments, as both players and the GM battle over the modifiers that affect monk skills while upside down in a black hole. Paranoia bypasses this hurdle entirely, as players are forbidden from knowing the rules. Knowledge of the rules requires Ultraviolet clearance. Players suspected of understanding the rules are subject to punishments that range from character death to worse.
What's worse than a dead clone, citizen?
Players who argue about rules are obviously unhappy. Therefore, their characters are unhappy. The Computer doesn't like it when citizens of Alpha Complex are unhappy. In order to improve their attitude, The Computer might ask a citizen to visit the nearest karaoke booth and perform a song on this week's Top Happy Playlist. Obviously, failure to keep your rock meter out of the red means you're a commie mutant traitor.
And since this is Paranoia, the GM might not give any notice about what songs are on the list, or that this is likely to happen in next Sunday's session, anywhere other than his blog.
This has been The Computer. Thank you, Canned Food and Weakpuns! Remember, comments are mandatory!
My name is Narraptor and I am a level addict. I have a myriad of vices, but in terms of hours logged and opportunities for social interaction wasted, I've spent more time sitting in front of a computer screen playing with myself than sitting in front of computer playing with myself.
The last 20 years are lost in a haze of disposable party members and experience points, 50+ hour orgies of monsters dying that invariably ended in hasty anti-climaxes, abrupt conclusions always leaving me craving that next fix. I can't remember exactly how it started, but my sponsor Wikipedia helped me piece together a likely progression of events.
Although I was first exposed to leveling in Telengard, given the randomness of the encounters and the lack of a quicksave, the concept that there were character levels and attribute improvements waiting beyond level one never connected until years later. I vaguely recall that my interest in the Advanced Heroquest board game, a curiosity eagerly encouraged by overly-permissive family members and elementary school enablers, lead me to my first epiphany that characters could improve as a result of their exploits, as opposed to just bumping their heads on platforms, robots, light fixtures, or falling down holes. But it was probably my impulse purchase of the D&D Basic Box set that started my addiction.
(Impulse purchase, indeed. Games Workshop and Waldenbooks knew what they were doing, with the former's cheap, entry-level plastic minis and the latter's fantasy sections filled with stories about Angst Elves who no one understood but their magical cat familiar and trusty scimitars...and maybe their best friend's girlfriend, who might realize one day that the guy who she goes to with all her problems is really the man for her.)
Might and Magic III, Ultima VI, Eye of the Beholder, and Bane of the Cosmic Forge--I played them all in a two-year period, xp'ing out on weekends and school vacations while listening to the best of the '70s, '80s, and '90s. I was so high on level advancement that Peter Cetera seemed cool, and probably was compared to me. I not only played through several Gold Box games, I played silver box games like Hillsfar. I struggled through the broken Worlds of Ultima, the bugs of Space 1889, and Spelljammer: Pirates of Realmspace just to get a fix.
Of course, with prolonged abuse came greater tolerance. After high school I needed a more potent product, and I found it in Fallout and its sequel, Planescape, and Baldur's Gate II. So many party members! So many opportunities for micro-management! So much leveling! I did dozens of "one more turns", collecting every resource and throwaway magic item and all the gold xp Heroes of Might and Magic II and III had to offer, even when my level cap was met. What started as an addiction became certifiable OCD--Obsessive Completist Disorder. I found myself psychologically incapable of completing a game without clearing every zone of fog of war, calculating maximum experience points and skill bonuses for greater leveling efficiency, and completing every side quest.
Thanks to the crackdown of the Console Enforcement Agency, the hardcore RPG is a thing of the past. Whether imported or grown domestically, the product available is either embarrassingly incomplete or cut with real-time combat. I've tried permutations of the genre, but because of OCD, I can't enjoy them. Leveling is just a $14 a month prelude to actual content in World of Warcraft. The character options in Fire Emblem and Disgaea are so close to infinite that leveling would be rendered meaningless even if the reward wasn't to click through a thousand ellipses. And as much as I've tried to have "fun" playing Oblivion, it's the first game I've ever played where character advancement is punished.
I am Narraptor, and this is my brain on leveling.
Let's talk about Eric, the whiny cavalier who doesn't want to go along with the rest of the party.
According to Mark Evanier, Eric was included at the request of parents' groups. He was there to teach the moral lesson of groupthink. The majority was always right. The minority was always wrong. A dishonest message, but somewhat appropriate when applied to D&D and role-playing games in general. Tabletop role-playing is a group experience, and consensus among the party is necessary to keep the session from getting bogged and the party together.
But there are two ways to interpret Eric. One, he's the player with the incredibly powerful magic item who resents being in the game if he can't control it entirely. But as Mr. Bile pointed out, Eric never gets his own way on the cartoon, thanks to the network mandate. Because of that, Eric reminds me more of a player who has good ideas but can't get the group to go along with them.
For example, on the cartoon the kids' goal is to get home. Early on, they open a magic portal back to Earth, but turn back to rescue the unicorn or something. Eric is the only one who hesitates. The goal of the story is for them to get back home to their families and corndogs. To not go through the portal is to lose. But the rest of the group wants to go save My Little Pony, so he sighs, pulls out his magic shield, and goes back to help.
Given how true this example is to role-playing games, I can't help but feel the subversive message was intentionally written in. The majority is usually wrong, but if you don't do what they say, you can't participate in whatever they're doing. Of course, what they're doing is probably stupid, so you should think carefully about whether you want to participate or not.
Eric isn't the bastard that kills the game, he's the player who wants to do something different. Maybe he wants to go out to the movies. Maybe he wanted to play Call of C'thulhu instead. Maybe he likes playing Dungeons & Dragons, but would prefer to play it smarter, dumber, or faster.
If you've ever played an RPG, you've been Eric. Either that or Bobby, the passive player who's too inexperienced to do anything but charge at a monsters with a club, unaware of the futility of your actions or the fact the DM will condescendingly never make you pay for them. After all, you're a noob.
Unless, of course, you're in one of my games, because I pwn n00bs.
To recap:
Cindy, Jack, and a mixed band of crash survivors and Others take the monorail to the Others' mountaintop planetarium. Clouds fly past over the green countryside. One of the clouds darkens, thins out, and shoots forward faster than the rail car. As the smoke monster careens across the sky, the black smoke peels away, revealing the monster to be a large, clanking railroad train.
At the top of the observatory, Ben is being held hostage by a splinter group of Others. They want access to the files on all the crash survivors. The Others have been studying the survivors to determine which 6 are the physical incarnations of 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42. There are 108 archetypes, and the splinter group has different interpretations of what character represents what number. One of them announces that Jack is 52. (This is significant, because he was not on Jacob's original list of the 108.)
A gunfight ensues. Confused and angry, Jack reacts to this revelation by ditching everyone and walking back to the beach. Along the way, a mist clears on the horizon and reveals the island to be just off the coast of a quaint Irish village filled with roads, houses, and hills where school children play.
Charlie, Hurley, and Sawyer cross the channel and enter the town. Charlie heads to the pub. Along the way, he accidentally stumbles into the town library. The locals become hostile and chase after the three castaways with tranquilizer darts. Sawyer and Charlie seek refuge in the castle ruins, but are eventually shot and shipped back to the beach with fuzzy memories of the village.
Hurley ducks into the library just in time. He locks the door with the glowing orange key as hypodermic needles whiz past him. He hides in the back behind a bookcase. The librarian opens the door and tells the townsfolk to be on their way. From their perspective outside the door, the library is devoid of visitors.
Hurley's friend Johnny sits at a table in the children's section of the library with the librarian. Johnny is convinced that Hurley has joined them to play Dungeons & Dragons. He points out the librarian's miniatures display case, where 108 fantasy miniatures are placed behind glass doors. The librarian explains that several of the miniatures have changed over the last few months, and one disappeared inexplicably.
The librarian invites Hurley to browse any of the books on his shelves. Hurley picks a few titles from the pearl softcover Mage: The Ascension print run, which has supplements and illustrations that mirror the numbers archetypes in the Others' files. Johnny expresses his gratitude at being reunited with Hurley, who he says is a kick-ass Dungeon Master.
Reactions and analysis:
After 2 1/2 years, we finally got some insight into what the numbers represent in the series proper. Those of you who participated in The Lost Experience or looked into Bad Twin (or who have been paying attention to this blog and my links to LOSTCasts), already know about the Valenzetti Equation. The numbers we know are the "core values." We now learn the Others are looking for the characters on the island who embody those values, presumably to reprogram them, thus changing the equation and preventing the apocalypse.
We also finally discovered the location of the island, though it's still possible the island is slipping in and out of time, or perhaps floating freely around the ocean. This seems unlikely, however, as the villagers all carry blowguns packed with Dharma darts. They must be in on the island's--er, islands' secrets. Then again, the library seems to be a gateway to its own pocket universe, and having a pocket universe inside a pocket universe would be pushing it.
Of course, there are always nitpicks. How did Jack get back to the beach unscathed? Why didn't he mention the third island to anyone, not even Sawyer and Charlie after they were dumped back on the main island with their minds wiped? Where were Rose and Bernard during all of this? What happened to Sun's bikini?
I suspect all of these scenes were cut for lack of time. Look for them on the season 3 DVD.
Hidden clues and Easter Eggs:
I'm sure it's no coincidence that one week after I suggested it would be nice to see Tamlyn Tomita in a flashback, Sung Hi Lee showed up in Hurley's past. As LOSTCasts pointed out, it's interesting that Hurley's father is named David, considering his imaginary friend is named Dave. Something they didn't pick up on though, was Hurley's real-time reference in the library to Johnny being dead. (Something to look forward to in a future flashback?) Also, the melted miniature and the librarian's reference a figure gone missing was clearly an inside joke about the abrupt departure of Mr. Eko.
Verdict:
This was the episode everyone was waiting for, though it's a shame we won't be seeing Hurley again until May sweeps.
Narraptor's theory of Cartoon Dungeons and Dragons seems eerily accurate, once you get past the whole "But my characters never got a magic hat!" arguments. Another point of correspondence to Dungeons and Dragons proper is that the show never had an ending, even though one was planned.
Only about half of the games I've ever run or played in have had a true ending. Sometimes, I've been lucky enough to experience the grand reveal, where everybody reveals their secrets. Other times, I'm left with no clear idea why the Aztec werewolves were attacking our building. (Or its sister question: Why Aztec werewolves?)
Every role-player I've known has a path strewn with dead stories. Their tales of adventure end suddenly with, "And then, we never ran another game. I wonder what would have happened to the Drunken Ratman Yakuza..." The causes always seem to fall in the same three categories:
1- Inconvenience: Too many people move too far away to achieve critical mass. Or else scheduling conflicts prevent the gamers from ever meeting each other again, barring a solar eclipse.
2- Natural Causes: The players begin to seek other things to do, and the game withers and dies in their absence. Invasive species of gaming also fall in this category, like when Magic The Gathering temporarily replaced all forms of role-playing in late 1994.
3- The Bastard killed the game.
Far as I can tell, there's no standardized name for the Bastard, even though he's as endemic as a "Rules Lawyer" or "Min-Maxer." Many groups don't even acknowledge they have a problem with their Bastard, until a decade passes and they can no longer understand why they put up with him in the first place.
Every role-playing game at least pays lip service to the idea that the main objective of gaming is to have fun with your friends. And yet just about every beginning group of role-players starts off with a Bastard, or shortly picks one up. The lucky ones get rid of him in five years or so. The unfortunate ones get new Bastards to replace any they lose. And during this time, the Bastard will do his best to monopolize the game. He will be a main character, but more importantly, the game will only revolve around what he considers fun. And unfortunately, his fun does not include anyone else into the equation. People in the group are annoyed by the Bastard, but they're never annoyed enough to directly confront him. Instead, they make jokes when he's away, and try to finesse him when he's present.
A great deal of rationalization goes along with this. The Bastard might be a pain, but he's not as bad as that other guy the group no longer hangs out with. You know, the guy who reveal his pet theories on race relations in the middle of an Underdark campaign. At least now you know why he always played a human. Also, the Bastard is indispensable to the group. He's the one who picks up Tony, he's willing to host the game when Bill's not around, and Sarah will drop out of the group if the Bastard goes, and she's cool. And even if he went, his character has half of the Artifacts of power and is the only one who knows the true name of God, so the plot would be fucked without him.
I don't know if the cartoon show accurately represents that aspect, however. The cowardly character of Eric exhibits some of the symptoms. He constantly berates his teammates, never wants to do what everyone else is doing , and he has a shield of complete invincibility. But on the other side of the ledger, he seldom gets his own way. A true role-playing Bastard has the ability to warp any campaign just by being in it. Along with annoying other players, the Bastard wants to have fun, and his definition doesn't jibe with everyone else's. He'll constantly exert pressure on all the other players, and especially on the Dungeon Master, to change the course of the game into a path he feels more comfortable with. (And one that makes him a primary character, usually.) The more the group secretly plots to stop the Bastard from getting his own way, the more pressure he exerts. Which means that Eric could be the Bastard... but since it's all from an in-character point of view, it could easily be Hank instead.
If only there was a scene of the Barbarian kid snapping, and finally saying "Fuck you, Eric! I'm quitting the game forever!" we'd have definitive proof. We'd also have another five episodes of the cartoon lurching along, with everyone trying to pretend that nothing had gone seriously wrong, and Eric making jokes about how they didn't need a kid running around in a loincloth anyway.
The next week, it would be mysteriously replaced by Soul Train. And as always, I'd be fooled for a few seconds into thinking that some really cool new cartoon about space trains was about to start.
The complete Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series came out on DVD a few months ago. In comparison to other fantasy cartoons of the '80s, it holds up well. There's an over-arching plot, some effort made at internal consistency, puzzles are overcome with clever (though narratively convenient) solutions, and episodes advance at a Goonies-like pace, eschewing setup, dialogue, and continuity in editing in order to cram in as many monsters and set pieces as possible. For children without access to InuYasha, its appeal is forgivable.
The series departs from the source material in many ways. Magic in particular is handled very differently than any version of the D&D game up to this point. Presto pulls spells from his hat, the evil Venger shoots magic energy from his palms, and Merlin recites words from a giant book and boils spell components in a cauldron. There are no clerics. At the beginning of the series, each character is given a magic item that requires no charges (they only need to be powered up in the Hall of Bones every 300 years) and has different functions depending on the situation. Enemies that can raise ancient temples out of the desert seem to possess no magic resistance or saving throws against these weapons. The 5-headed dragon god Tiamat (a recurring threat, the crocodile to Venger's Captain Hook) can be fooled by an invisibility cloak. Talk about NPCs not using their magic items and innate powers.
Wait a minute.
The characters in the D&D cartoon come into the fantasy world via magical roller coaster, resulting in several anachronisms NPCs hardly bat an eye at. Dungeon Master, the gnome who sends the characters on their quests, is a combination of a stereotypical DM (when he says "when in darkness, seek the light" he means one instance in particular, all the other times you're in darkness and see light be damned) and an Elminster deus ex machinae NPC who is powerful enough to disappear on a whim and hand out magic items as if it were Halloween in Waterdeep, but doesn't feel like stopping the bad guys himself. There's a mad rush from one combat encounter to the next. The one character who suggests a course of action contrary to what the rest of the party or the DM wants them to do is shouted down, either for metagaming, because no one else likes him, or because that's not the direction the story's "supposed" to go.
There are two possibilities here. One, this is the way the game is "supposed" to be played. Two, the D&D cartoon is so hardwired into peoples' brains that it's nearly impossible to find a group of players who want to do something else with the system.
(Author's note: This was written after watching only 3 1/2 episode of the complete Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. Oh, and "to be continued...")
You might not have taken the time to check out our highly selective list of tolerable links. Allow me call your attention to the Fear the Boot podcast.
Fear the Boot began as a "how to role-play good" show. More recently, the FTB crew has been detailing how to create a marketable tabletop RPG. As an example, they are offering a behind the scenes look at the creative process behind Skies of Glass, their post-apocalypse game where radiation does not give characters superpowers.
If you've ever wondered why some games use d20s and others rely on d6s, you should check it out. And if you've never thought about that (I didn't), then you really should give it a listen. Understanding how a game's mechanics match its feel (what you want to do in the game vs. your odds to succeed) will help you to spend your game time wisely.
The latest Fear the Boot podcast is an interview with Ryan Dancey, the guy responsible for Wizards of the Coast buying out D&D. There's a lot of stuff in there to interest role-players, even those of the casual, lapsed, and MMO variety. He discusses how games are marketed more to players than DMs, how White Wolf changed the gamer demographic, and how MMOs are both killing the tabletop market and offer the chance to bring real role-playing to the Internet. (I'm still waiting for that point and click meets Ventrillo RPG interface that Neverwinter Nights always wanted to be.)
They also do bonus episodes on subjects ranging from videogames to the D&D movies to cigars and candy. I highly recommend the Ryan Dancey interview, though. It's the most interesting podcast I've listened to since that guy on GFW got my hopes up about Vanguard.
Go forth and listen, and in the future we will celebrate World Wide Wing Night with buffalo sauce and copious amounts of beer.
Mr. Bile asked me to discuss the games I no longer play. I suspect this is an attempt to make me feel inferior to him, as he actually has friends he doesn't have to kidnap from their apartments and tie to chairs in front of a table full of Energon drinks and handmade sushi in order to get them to touch a pair of dice, much less some traitorous foreign game from Europe that involves tiles or bidding rounds. Or maybe he just wanted to lord it over me that he has friends with a "s", whereas I have friend.
Ignoring computer and video games, which I could go on about at tedious length, I don't have much to say about games I no longer play. I got rid of them when I moved. When I see the RPGs gathering dust on my bookshelf or the board games piled up in my closet, my perspective isn't that I will never play them again (or in the case of certain titles, for the first time), I'm just not playing them right now. I'm waiting for the right group of friends to play them with.
"Friends" is the key word. Since college, I've found gaming groups who were nice enough to let me join their sessions and tolerated my playstyle, and I've found groups of friends who I could hang out with, but games were an afterthought or of the junior high school DM versus the players variety. And of course, let's not forget the Wangomancers.
I have yet to establish a post-graduation group of like-minded individuals who will show up on Fridays with equal enthusiasm for alcohol, Battlestar Galactica, and existential horror meets Iron Chef in a game of furry action. One of the things my wife and I have found in LA is that people join groups just for meetups. With a few notable exceptions (also recently relocated) most of the people I've role-played with here are very secretive about their jobs and personal lives. Maybe it's me, but I don't feel comfortable inviting people over to my house for a game unless they're also interested in Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter night.
During the last blog post of Canned Food And Shotguns, we will break all of our rules with gusto. Until then, I suppose I'll have to endure these unnatural restraints. It's much easier to obey the common-sense laws of Canned Food and Shotguns. For example, we don't need a prohibition on using the phrase "Jump The Shark." A healthy desire to maintain our self-esteem is more than enough to keep that at bay.
So instead of meager excuses for late posting, I offer swagger and braggadocio. Last night, I ran a game of Unknown Armies with players who I can trust to outsmart me nine out of ten times, and the tenth time is usually because they forgot about an obtuse comment mentioned by one person three months ago in the middle of the night. Plots were hatched, mysteries were plumbed, and I managed an accent that didn't careen into "Not Even Close To Sounding British."
And do not let Narraptor fool you with his devious trickery! Even though I've burned out on almost the entire genre of wacky card games, I still enjoy Give Me The Brain. Games like Munchkin, Chez [EDITED BY BRAIN GREMLIN], and Gloom have not been so lucky. The gameplay for each of them is disturbingly similar. The first few times, you have to learn a set of rules that feels a touch more complex than it was meant to be, and made more so by some very vague definitions. Then someone plays a card that has new rules printed on it that take precedence over the ones everyone else has been playing by. The card's grammar and syntax are puzzled over, someone is hosed, and the game continues.
As familiarity with the set of cards sets in, you get down to the serious business of applying deep strategy to a game that doesn't have any. You start basing strategies on whether or not the Big Unfair Card you need will show up, and praying that the chaff that makes up half the deck ends up in someone else's hands. Then, everyone gets sick of the game and it's either time to pony up for a new expansion featuring more wacky cards (Do you think "Auntie Paladin" is funny? What's wrong with you?) or move on. Alternatively, someone in the group can get an official Munchkin T-Shirt that gives him bonuses in the game. That will bring the game to a much swifter ending, especially if alcohol is involved.
The revised edition of Give Me The Brain is another matter altogether. The rules are only as complex as they need to be, and each card has a sense of fitting into a fairly balanced whole. Six years of playtesting turned out to be just what the game needed.
Finally, I might as well expand on Guitar Hero 2. The game provides you with a mostly complete single player game and a good enough multiplayer mode. If you can put the two together, you'll end up with a complete game. Other facts of note:
Playing on Easy and Medium are easier than in the first game
Playing on Hard and Expert are harder than in the first game
There is no difficulty level in between Medium and Hard
A practice mode is included in the game, to help facilitate the endless replaying you'll have to do once your natural talent runs dry.
As I mentioned before, expect to play through all of Medium difficulty before you even touch the multiplayer game. If you want to unlock more than just a few characters and all the available songs, expect to plumb the mysterious depths of the fifth fret, and the best of luck to you.
The song list has a bit less goofy fun and a bit more angry metal and arrhythmic guitar wanking than I care for. That said, it's the only licensed rhythm game made that doesn't force you to play A-B-C, making me more than willing to forgive songs like Yes We Can. I've even made my peace with Freebird, since the last song I'd want to play is the last song that I have to play.
As an added bonus, the vocals in Killing In The Name Of are performed by a man who only pretends he can't sing.
I was exposed to the World Of Darkness by a well-meaning classmate in high school. He had heard that I had been playing Dungeons and Dragons and wanted to spread the word of something a bit more contemporary.
He gave me a role-playing game called Werewolf: The Apocalypse, part of White Wolf’s The World Of Darkness series of Gothic-Punk roleplaying games.
At first, it didn’t seem that much different from Dungeons and Dragons. It even began with the same form of introduction: “Imagine something that’s not roleplaying. Now imagine that it is!”
But as I read deeper, I wanted to give the game a spin. It was the first role-playing game I had encountered where a character wasn’t created by randomly generated numbers. And being forced to choose between pre-defined stereotypes to play made things even easier, allowing a person to easily role-play their character without having to spend time on a backstory. There was even flavortext sprinkled liberally across each page…bad poetry, stories in unreadable fonts, outright lies deluding you into thinking that with five points in Law, your character was the reincarnation of Perry Mason. But the flavortext didn’t have to be good, it just had to exist. Even the mechanics seemed novel back then, rolling and re-rolling dice like a game of jacks.
Werewolf was set in a world where nature was Good, and technology was Bad. You fought businessmen with a penchant for turning into tentacle demons when cornered, and evil werewolves that looked just like you, but slimier. In downtime, you got to jockey for political renown amongst your clan, who were all power hungry assholes and/or sage mystics. In other words, it was a game steeped in anime insisting it was Gothic-Punk. But since I didn’t know a damn thing about anime, Goths, or punks, I just accepted this as fact.
Likewise, the storyline of the rest of the World Of Darkness games were a schizophrenic mish-mash of conflicting ideas, and for a while, that was what I was looking for. I enjoyed the fact that each book featured an entirely different conspiracy that controlled 80% of the world, and didn’t know about each other. What I didn’t realize for a while was that each game put the players in the position of being given goals they could never actually achieve. You could play as Mages who couldn’t use magic, or Ghosts who couldn’t save themselves from Oblivion. Werewolves were already extra-doomed, to the point that “The Apocalypse” was in the subtitle of their book. And of course, there were Vampires. Ancient, alien intelligences that would plot and scheme for thousands of years to bring about the downfall of their enemies. You didn’t play as those people. You played as their henchmen’s henchmen, so far down the totem pole that there was no way in hell you could ever gain a bit of political power. But since no game company could put out modules based on a character’s individual struggle to gain contentment and peace in their lives, all adventures were about being sent to fight people much stronger than you in an attempt to gain favor with a powerful Vampire lord. That was unless you were involved in storylines that could equally be defined as a “Comedy of Manners” or “Dilbert.” Could you bluff your way into the inner circle of upper-class twits who could read your mind and then rip it out of your skull? Of course not.
At the time, we didn’t know any better. Most of the role-playing games we played offered sadistic advice we’d choose to ignore. Dungeons and Dragons would warn that actually letting the players collect the wealth and fame they sought would destroy your precious storylines. Call of Cthulhu was about defeating the undefeatable, and in Paranoia, everyone was trying to survive to see the next day, and that simply wasn’t going to happen. The difference is that World of Darkness was the first role-playing game publishers to take deviation from their vision as insulting. Players who became the prince of their city were simply carving out adolescent fantasies, and werewolves who kicked too much ass were not being realistic enough. The very idea that people were playing Vampire-Werewolves in the privacy of their own home really annoyed them, and they weren’t shy to say so. Repeatedly. In sidebars of books that you had just paid too much money for to few pages of information. Then they’d publish a book featuring a werewolf with a cybernetic arm and nothing to lose. Of course, he has a mysterious past.
But I played the games because role-playing games are viral in nature. Each time my group of friends got tired of the strange mechanics and awkward storylines, someone else would come up with a new idea, and we’d be back on the wagon. In college, this trend continued, as any new game was as likely as not to be about things that went bump in the night.
As time went on, White Wolf became more concerned with defining what the game was not than what it wasn’t. In an entire supplement devoted to wire-flying humans and people armed with robots powered by the dreams of Japanese children, they took the time out to explain why Blade was stupid, and you were stupid for thinking vampires could learn kung-fu. But that wasn’t what finally tipped the scales. In the end, it was the simple fact that the good people at White Wolf games would reissue new editions of their books every few years, usually with hard to define rule changes, and a lack of hooks that would drag a player in…and a steeper price tag. This is the sort of thing that stops a player from continuing on, and also causes him to re-evaluate his previous investments.
My final exposure to White Wolf was Adventure!, a game based on pulp novels from the '20s. It ended with trying to play it. In a game of fast moving action and dramatic flair, I question mechanics that divide “rolling on the ground, picking up a knife, and then throwing it at a goon” into three separate actions, each requiring a separate roll to determine success.
I’m told that eventually White Wolf decided that their storyline had gotten much too complex, and that it was time to end over a decade of interweaving books, comics, and in-game fiction by weaving them together into the final ending that the series had been striving for all those years.
The ending was, “Well…what do you think happened?”
Then White Wolf rebooted it’s series of games from ground zero. It featured the same plotlines, the same themes, and suspiciously similar characters…but it did have better statistics.
If the last haunted house I went to is to be believed, the Post-Apocalyptic World Of The Future is now considered haunted. Similarly, the one I visited earlier in the week featured a foam rubber monster that had escaped from Doom. Questionable themes aside, both had effective moments and fun ideas, especially in a group where each of us was alarmed by different triggers. I was the one that twitched and giggled whenever people leapt out at us. Also, I discovered that haunted houses are more impressive when one is suffering from an acute lack of sleep. Not that I can remember what impressed me so much, but that's the price one pays for sensory overload.
I didn't go to the haunted house that's right next door to me, though. Which is a shame, since I'm told that it had much less of the actors-jumping-at-you scares, but did feature wandering alone through very dark hallways for five minutes at a time.
Next week I'll be discussing games I no longer play, and at least one of them will be filled with praise. Considering how many bad games I've played, this also means "exactly one post will be filled with praise." I won't even be discussing video games, because it's already expected that once you beat a game, you turn it into Gamestop for a complementary fifty cents credit voucher.
Are you in, Narraptor? Surely there's a centuries-long game of Jenga or two you'd like to talk about...
