This is a short and very sweet talk about stories in games by the developer of Avadon the Black Fortres– essentially how this guy and his team make sort of crappy looking games with good stories and it’s the stories that build fan affinity and bring in more cash. I love how he readily admits his engines and graphics are not even in the realm of modern all the while being very comfortable in his niche. His slight digs on Mass Effect and Diablo 3 are essential listening and would probably bring out the “fuck that loser” from the D3 development team if they weren’t so busy lighting cigars with your money. The questions at the end are also awesome “You sell a game for money and that’s it?”
Author: littlemute
Dreadball Kickstarter
The diaspora of ex-Games Workshop employees continue to put out games of the miniature variety. If you remember White Dwarf from the early 2000’s you’ll recognize the designer on this one: Jake Thornton. Anyway, futuristic ball game, Orks and Humans. Could it possibly compete with Blood Bowl? Visually, it certainly looks striking. Have a look for your own self below:
Genconing 2012
I was a bit on the mend so decided to drive down to Gencon Friday and see what for. I got to indy about 4PM and had only a couple hours to wander around before the main hall (the MONEY SUCKING HALL) closed. Before I even got in there BAM right in front of me was the BOLT ACTION demo area with an amazing Riechstag set up and a bunch of other boards. Sat around talking about it for awhile but the demos were full– then ran into the MONEY SUCKING hall before it closed up and bought a couple things, but didn’t take the bite on the Bolt Action deals (yet). Wandering around after the hall closed sucked as I couldn’t find anyone I knew so I wandered into a showing of Trailer Park JESUS. Not sure about it but it killed time and featured a girl with breasts that started at the lowest level of the chest that I’ve ever seen.
Got up Saturday morning and played Shadowfist, and Shadowfist, and Shadowfist.. and a demo of Bolt Action and that was it. I took third in the yearly invitational using one of Mouth’s decks but didn’t make the final in the world championship. All good though as I got at least 9 games in.
Bolt Action plays like a combination of AT-43 and Epic 40K and I dig it and dumped 100$ in to get some figs and the rulebook. While I didn’t spend a lot of time shopping, I did get some finds in the hall– not as many as I’d like to have picked up, but solid stuff. No more Crazy Egor but plenty of other places that have gaming trash for cheap.
Stuff I saw of interest:
- Fantasy Flight was rocking– big game was Netrunner which I will eventually pick up, but no rush. They demo’ed the prototype of RELIC– the 40K Talisman game and it looked OK.
- Confrontation Phoenix edition was on display and I listened in for a bit but didn’t get a demo. While the miniatures are great, they have some work to do consolidating the rules from 3.0 to 3.5. Great highly detailed miniatures game that I would love to see ‘alive’ again in the 3.5 form as opposed to the simplified mass produced version.
- Forgeworld at the Con. I mistakenly thought it was Games Workshop returning after many many years, but it was Forgeworld–who has never been to Gencon before. They were showing off their awesome stuff and with 40K 6th edition out, that was the focus. They did have the Chaos Dwarf army in full effect for 8th edition.
- Not much for D&D. There was an area, but it was pretty toned down. Cool Drow strider sculpture but other than that– nothing on the impending 5th edition that I saw at all.
- In contrast, Pathfinder everywhere. That brand is hugely on the rise, not just for PNP roleplaying, but spreading out to everything else.
- The new Fate core version was around but I didn’t get into any demo’s of it.
- The new Marvel RPG was huge, but they had these little demo tables and the entire table was covered with dice dice dice. I was pretty silly. You play the game with no screen for the DM so it can work, but it was funny to see. While the rulebook is pretty economical, the first campaign book is pricey and huge. While I’ve gushed about the initiative system, I’m not sure the dice mechanic is all that great overall.
- No White Wolf. Sadly I didn’t even find the White Wolf booth and didn’t even know if there was one. So no perusing the Exalted books or asking questions about it. I don’t think there’s much to tell there since version 2.5.
Shadowfist of interest:
- Dragons + Lotus is still the best combo of factions FTW
- Great Walls were everywhere, so even less reason to play straight Ascended. If you hit a front site in a tournament, it’s going to be the Great Wall.
- Monarchs were everywhere (as usual with all the love they’ve been getting in sets)
- There were no Ascended decks in the tournaments at all
- Syndicate still did nothing (but at least people played the faction)
- I played against a very good Jammers deck a couple times. It had some glaring weak spots, but wasn’t the usual shite you usually get from Jammers.
Fuck those losers!
Good stuff
Still under the weather and I’ve been having a lie down with the youtube.
Frog Legz trailer.
Sick!
Laid up ditherings
I got something, either some virus or god knows what off the disease bombs that live in my house and expose me to such things. While I was largely comatose until 10AM or so, I got in some hours (feverish, granted) of DARK SOULS; managing to finish off the first real boss and then get killed during an invasion almost instantly afterwards. This is how you do MMO’s frankly. You either join someone’s game to help them or kill them, all the other mucking about in stores and towns and the socialization aspect is left far behind in the chatrooms where it belongs. Fights are very fast, at most a few minutes and many over in seconds (like when I was invaded today). Having trouble with a boss? Call in someone to help. Want to kick som ass? Invade other player’s games. Otherwise the game is fantastic even if you never play it with anyone else–and comes to PC August 28th!
In addition, I spanned some time wandering around the internet and was fully titillated once again by Warlord Games “Bolt Action” by Rick Priestely. While I have a few AT-43 armies and managed to find all my old 2nd edition 40K stuff recently, I’ve never been a big fan of miniatures games with guns, much preferring the huge blocks of sword and board armed models crushing into each other. That said, Bolt Action looks great. The scale looks about what you’d expect for 25mm. ie not an out of control tank swarm game like 40K. A couple tanks, about 30-40 guys and you’re good to go. I will definitely pick the game up when it comes out later this year. But will it ever get played? Who can tell…
Torchlight 1 vs Torchlight 2 infographic
40K Talisman
What we’ve imagined and babbled about here and there over the years is actually happening. Fantasy Flight is publishing a Warhammer 40K version of Talisman called Relic.
Vikings.
Crassus, Cicero, Calius, Clodius, Caesar, Cato
I just finished Tom Holland’s “Rubicon:” a narrative history of the end of the Roman Republic: i.e. the part where the senate mattered to the part where the senate didn’t matter any more (except to complain about stuff and get horses appointed to it) along with a lot of fighting. It was extremely fast paced and well done and if you want to delve into a little piece of Roman history (well, a big piece actually)– this is definitely a book to pick up. However, and this is no fault of Holland’s, one section of the book (right before the formation of the Triumvirate of Crassus, Caesar and Pompei) deals with so many historical figures with a name starting with ‘C’ that it becomes totally insane to keep track of them. I personally got Crassus and Cicero confused MOST of the time, which is ridiculous because they were drastically different people. Once you get to the next tier of players (Calius, Clodius). it’s almost comical trying to keep track of people and what they did before to lead up to what their doing (and eventually, of course, how they got killed). I only remembered Clodius because he’s the dude that dressed as a woman to hide in Caesar’s house during the women only ritual of the good goddess and got busted for it.
I would describe this phase of Roman history as the thug showdown at a massive scale. With the exception of Cicero and Cato, the rest of the bunch, including Octavian, were total gangster thugs when in Rome and pretty much the same outside of it. The sad fact was, however, that there was no way to survive at that level without being one FULLY. The last man standing, of course, was Octavian who, having spoken to people who lived through Marius/Sulla and the Caesar/Pompei showdowns was fully prepared to do what needed to be done to gain total power over the Republic. Anyway, give it a go. As narrative history, it’s written to not be boring dry micro history or entirely academical historiography, both of which have their place, but maybe not for you.