Month: June 2014
Joan Cornella’
Free RPG Day : yay!
Went out to the gaming stores this morning like a true nerd and scored a 13th Age Adventure (Make your Own Luck) and one for Lamentations of the Flame Princess (Doom Cave of the Crystal Headed Children!!). Matt picked up the Dungeon Crawl Classics which looks pretty crazy. I really don’t know why this day exists, but it’s pretty damn cool.
In other D&D news, there has been a release of a pregenerated fighter character sheet for D&D5.
Some points of interest:
Looks like there is a specific set of skills that all characters have, that all characters can try to do (like Runequest or OD&D). For example, anyone can disarm a trap. Will they succeed? Likely not if they don’t have skills.
Proficiency bonus– I’m not sure what this is but it looks like a plus to EVERYTHING the character tries to do.
The character sheet looks promising especially in the bits where 3.5 sucks–skills and feats. Does it look better than 13th Age for powerful character gaming? Does it look better than Lamentations of the Flame Princess for old school style gaming? Not really sure on either counts. Definitely the 5E fighter is a lot more boring than the equavalent in 13th Age, which gives you a lot of options and various PROCs to pick from plus the one unique thing and your backgrounds (a much better way to do skills with the added punch of narrative potential) and OD&D gets down to the real deal really fast without all the mess.
Third time’s the charm
Given that the existence of the Ghanaian soccer team is to prevent the USA from advancing in the World Cup, it was amazing to see the very close victory this evening by the Yankee horde. The game looked… sloppy at best from both sides. Given Altidore’s injury, I feel the air was taken out of the USA’s offense early on, and it was all defense after that. The corner on Ghana where the second US goal was scored was beautiful but unfortunate for Ghana as that didn’t need to happen– especially when they were peppering the goal right and left during the middle of the game. Needless to say, both teams need to take it to Portugal (if possible) and then minimize their loss to Germany to advance. Ghana could still end up being the foil to USA’s chances to advance out of the group. Just you watch!
“Irrational Games was unprofitable and probably misrun”
A lot of people swung off the dicks of Bioshock and the first two thirds of the original were very good (last third was not needed) to the tune of two sequels. While I didn’t play either of the follow ups (Bioshock was not a good FPS) they were reportedly good games.
That took forever to make.
And cost more to make than they sold.
So there goes Irrational Games. Three solid games put out and a closed studio. How does that happen? Essentially it comes down to Poor project management.
I’ve been there, where a project is so fucked and my teams have been sent to die on a hill by the upper management and everyone busts ass to get the work done only to be fired a month later because the sales and management team sat around for a year on Facebook instead of bringing in new work from clients or making sure scope was reigned in so the budget wasn’t blasted to the Kuiper Belt. That looks like what happened here except in the game industry with a lot more budget dollars.
Guilty Gear XRD
From E3. This is not hand drawn. These are 3d Models. We have entered an era where the 3D 2D fighters look as good as the hand drawn ones. Just look at these guys! Some chick disgorged from the bowel of some monster and a kid that fights from a hospital bed robot. All I can say is holy shit.
Millia Rage Vs Ky.
Runequest 6 Essentials -free PDF
With D&D 5 going free in PDF form others are following suit with free PDF’s. The king of fantasy BRP (basic role playing, which powers Cthulhu and Elric) RUNEQUEST in it’s 6th version has come out with it’s own set of rules in PDF format.
This is a great set of rules that I wish I had played more when I was young enough to play a ton… (i.e. 1984) and when it was heavily supported in White Dwarf. The character creation rules may be a bit longer than normal to get going with, but the combat system is something to experience.
A Study in Emerald – First play
Sacrilege, I know, but I hated Arkham Horror. Played once with 6 players and it was a fucking disaster mess that took forever and got nowhere. I was hoping every single turn that the game would be over. I’m not sure if it was the Fantasy Flight version or what, but it sucked… bad.
Since then I have shied away from the cooperative ‘vs the board’ type games like Battlestar Galactica, etc. just assuming they would try to emulate Arkham and be crap. While I did dabble on the iphone with the excellent FF created dice game XXX, that’s about it.
Now let’s talk about a Study in Emerald. It’s a Wallace game, so I’m biased a bit from the outset, but let me tell you this is a fantastic game that really turns both deck building (which are mostly all CRAP) and cooperative play vs the board into an extremely compelling experience of fuckery. Like Bang or various werewolf games, the players don’t know which side they are on at the beginning of the game and cannot know for sure until there is a reveal. Players must watch the other player’s movements in the game to determine which side they are on, and may take action with false or misleading information.
That said, this is not all mental fuckage, the game mechanics are extremely solid for something so chocked full of stuff. Part of the game is bidding, part tile buy, part area control and some light combat. All of it adds up to what at first seems an insurmoutable pile of special rules, but the play is actually quite smooth and easy– offering tons of tactical and strategic choices each turn. While this is not a review of the game per-se (especially after a single play) this game got my gander up from a gameplay perspective.
The theme of the game– a sort of Cthulhu/Sherlock Holmes mash up with all sorts of late 1800’s references and characters works really well when at first you’d think it would be completely stupid. One faction are the loyalists to the Royals who are actually various Cthulhu monsters and the other are revolutionaries trying to free the world from these insidious alien powers. You play as agents involved in a shadow war to either help or hurt the “Royals.” I found it familiar yet strange and mysterious at the same time.
On the cover are two men standing over a tentacled body and the word REVENGE in German is written on the wall behind. To me, this is a game made as revenge for all the people that had to sit through Arkham Horror before a Study in Emerald came along.
