Spring 2018 LAN was goood
The weather this weekend was pure shit. rain, then snow, then rain, then snow, then a lot of snow and all shit until late today.
We played all day Friday and Saturday and I think my eyes bled while I slept fitfully last night with the retinal burn. Here’s what we got in on.
Zandorum Doom 2: both Free for All and vs the Monsters. If you are an FPS player and haven’t played doom multiplayer to see just how fast an FPS can (and probably should) be, play Doom 2! However, all the tricky giant maps with all the key searching was fucking annoying when playing with 5+ people. Getting lost in Doom isn’t so bad because you rocket through the level, but when there’s a hidden door that leads to the other 50% of a level where everyone else is at, and you can’t find the fucking thing even with the map, it’s real annoying.
Quake Super8. Maurice!Bastard got the multiplayer working with this excellent visual mod for Quake. This one looks THE BEST and closest to my favorite Quake renderer: Verite Quake, built specifically for the Verite video card.
Unreal Tournament 4: This was the most balanced deathmatch that we played. I had a ton of fun with this and it worked very well for the LAN, which is a rarity with new FPS games which are nearly all anti-LAN (Quake Champions for example) and take forever to get from one map to the next so players can get their ‘prizes for playing.’ This is most of a UT game, basically the team that was working on it went to go work on fortnight and it may never be worked on again. Remember what happened to UT3 after Gears of War came out…
Quake 3: While far more balanced than Quake, I still like the original Quake better. Q3 is super tight deathmatch though.
PUBG and the goddamn pubg event. There was an event this weekend where you could drop into a small area of the first pubg map with a group of 10 players and fight until a certain number of kills were scored by a team. While it gave a chance to use a bunch of weapons and constantly fight. It was pretty frustrating most of the time.
Company of Heroes. This was the only RTS we played and since people had seen me on steam playing PA:Titans, that was a no go. People were OVER concerned at my skill at COH as well and it became obvious only after I was soundly beaten in a 3 vs 1 game. This isn’t a super hardcore RTS and is pretty n00b friendly with the pacing and defensive nature of the game, so good for the LAN. I really expected to be playing Dawn of War 3 instead of this but man– what happened to that game? Aesthetically awesome, but the gameplay was trash.
There was a mess of video captured during the proceedings, so I’ll get some posted as soon as possible for your viewing pleasure. mraak.
Quake haiku 1997
Man oh man I submitted these over 20 years ago and found them again on accident during the LAN. Reposted again with some notations and context.
– I hook far above,
– Dark shaft in House of Chthon.
– Ride the lift for me!
—- littlemute[WM]
There is a single lift to get from the bottom level to the top level in the map the House of Cthon. If the server has the grappling hook, the level becomes a contest on who can get the rocket launcher and sit at the very top of the lift (where you cannot be hit from either level unless directly below) and just camp for frags the whole time. Great stuff.
– Server a chat-room!
– My macros end the babble,
– I am nuked again.
—- littlemute[WM]
The thing that quake also did was have an easy way to chat with other people in real time. This was not something that was all that easy to do in 1996, so people would use the quake server as a place to chat with each other rather than play. You could bind keys to macros and spam them over and over and over (they fixed this in later versions of the game) which would lead either to a denial of service attack from someone else or getting booted from the server.
– Lava-less level,
– The shame of negative frags.
– Reconnect again.
—- littlemute[WM]
You could reconnect to the server to instantly reset your score to zero. Pretty useless unless you are at negative frags….
from: https://www.quakewiki.net/archives/que/haiku/97-07.htm
The Spring 2018 LAN is coming!
Next friggin’ weekend. Likely going to be a LOT of Zandorum Doom played and best of all Maurice!Bastard got Quake Super8 working multiplayer, which just looks fantastic.
A few inspirational images.
Losing stuff with ideas in it !
Well, I found my notebook with my FASERIP BPRD notes in it in my daughter’s room after a few weeks of looking and even starting over in another notebook! I have a lot of notebooks and they have random ideas in them all over the place. I realize that most of them are places of dead roads that nothing will come out of except the fervent act of creation itself in the moment and that’s just dandy, but sometimes I have stuff written down that I aim to do things with, like finish a LotFP module the cartography of which ALSO was in the lost notebook! (one demand I have of my non work notebooks is that they are all graph paper). So now I need to finish off the maps and get this thing done.
Another issue is playtesting. I’ve had the thing read over by a few people and it’s been playtested once in 5E, but I haven’t done it, mainly because my roll20 group does not generally like the character thresher that is LotFP. It’s something I gotta do. It’s not a long adventure: 3-4 set pieces and some ‘connective tissue’ between if the characters take the bait.
This points to an organizational issue of keeping everything straight paper wise when you run and play 5-6 different RPG’s in a given year (13th Age, Into the Odd, lotFP, Mythras, FASERIP and Dungeon Crawl Classics in 2017). What I’ve started doing after my ‘trapper keeper’ idea sorta failed (it got filled with stuff from all sorts of games and it’s a fuckin mess) is get one of those zipper folders and put all of the crap for that game you are running inside. It has to be totally self contained except for the rulebook (which shit for most games you don’t even need if you’ve played enough), but if you have a small rulebook like the LotFP or Into the Odd books, throw it in there too. So, that’s all character sheets, the module, any previous module the characters have run through (trust me on that one, you’ll need it), and all session notes. The key is to have EVERYTHING there, even if you have to throw a 95% empty notebook in there (what are they? 2$?), it’s worth it so you can grab and go even if it has been years since the last time you’ve run it.
Confrontation Kickstarter in April
While I was looking for easy ways to fix a Succubus Golgoth busted off her base from AT-43, I found this little surprise out on the interweb tubes.
Note the word “CLASSIC” which likely means 3.5 Conf. and not the AT-43 based version that came out with the plastics.
Not much other information is out there, we’ll have to wait and see with April right around the corner here.
MAAAAT 2018
Today was maat’s birthday. We played a bunch of games at 42 Alehouse last night (well, 3) including a massive 6 player game of RISING SUN which was chaos incarnate.
Then we busted out the STUDY IN EMERALD and it was pure gold. The first game was a grind with two restorationists and three loyalists, but the second game saw Cthulhu destroy London, destroying all of Shawn’s agents and ending the game (as he was a restorationist), and yet he still won on points! Pure gold.
We love you matt even though you take too long to take your damn turns.
March 2018: I loathe most of the top 10 games on BoardGamegeek
Boardgamegeek has a ranking of games that’s been around for a long time. During living memory, Twilight Struggle has been the top game with the usual suspects filling out the other slots (Brass, Agricola, Power Grid, Caylus, etc.).
I had a peek at the top 10 games today and of the games I’ve played or know enough about, all of them are absolutely terrible. Not only that, Cosmic Encounter has dropped out of the top 100 games which indicates to me that something has gone very, very wrong with the BGG algorithm (all of the top 10 games are from 2012 or later except for one).
1: Gloomhaven
This solves a problem for many gamers without game masters to play a real RPG or to avoid continuing to play with a group’s really awful GM, but after two excruciating plays of this, I can say I hated every moment of this game, from the set up to the leveling up to the combat. Like Mage Knight, everything about this one stinks.
FAR Better games: Descent, The Others, Massive Darkness, Dead of Winter, Heroquest, Advanced Heroquest, Talisman
2: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1
Legacy games (where the game changes forever as you play) are great fun, Pandemic is not. What Pandemic is, unfortunately, is a solo game where one player plays against the board like CHAINSAW WARRIOR, except it pretends to be coop instead of like CHAINSAW WARRIOR, it’s supposed to be solo. All the other players are not only superfluous, but hamper attempts to win the game. Needless to say, Pandemic is the ultimate quarterbacker game. No thank you.
FAR better games: The Others, Dead of Winter, Descent, A Study in Emerald
3: Through the Ages
Never played, can’t comment.
4: Twilight Struggle
This is a good game, but it’s 2 player and a bit programmed. I’ve only played it once and while I would play it again, the subject matter isn’t all that interesting to me. I was surprised this stayed on the top of the pack for so long, and I’m surprised it’s number 4 at this point.
Somewhat better games: MTG, Pokemon CCG, Seasons, Advanced Squad Leader
5: Terraforming Mars
Never played, can’t comment
6: Star Wars: Rebellion
This is a lot like Twilight Struggle and is probably a good 2 player game. I watched a multiplayer game being played though and it looked painful to me. Very painful. It was simply a quarterback on both sides and one of the players on each side were not needed at all, and they knew it.
Better games: Pericles, Eclipse, Fief, All the Quartermaster General games.
7: Terra Mystica
Played this once and out of my mouth came ‘never again.’ This is like an accountants Fantasy Empire game, a game that is so dry in play that it’s akin to getting an I.V. of gin for a few hours, or a gin suppository. This is by far the worst game in the top 10. So dry, so tedious, so boring.
Way better games: everything else in the top 300 games on BGG is better than this and probably a few hundred games sub 300 as well.
8: Scythe
Another game I’ve had to sit through a few times in mental pain and anguish. This looks like a Euro/Ameritrash mash up, but it’s not AT ALL. It is a garbage euro with nice pieces and cool art. I know a lot of people that talk about how they love this game, but then does it hit the table? Very rarely because it’s just not very good. This company’s previous game (Euphoria) is pretty solid, so I don’t know why they went so wrong with this one. There’s just so little interaction for what this game looks like, it’s sad.
Better Games: Eclipse, Nexus Ops, Blood Rage, Rising Sun, Fief, Struggle of Empires and even Twilight Imperium 2nd edition, Caylus, many others.
9: Great Western Trail
Haven’t played, can’t comment. I want to play this one though!
10: 7 Wonders Duel
Another 2 player game in the top 10. This is a good game, fun, fast to play but with a really messy and confusing set up. Is this the 10th best board game every made? Nope. I can see why this one ranks high though.
Slightly better games: Netrunner, MTG, Seasons
I bet we see only games released in the last 5 years in the top 10 going forward because I think that’s what the algorithm is built off of.
Garycon 2018
Always a fun, mellow con where you can get food and drink no problem, from where ever you are in the Hotel. We showed up on Saturday only and hit the board game library and then commenced to playing DCC until my kids nearly fell asleep at the table. This is one Convention where you can just basically show up and fairly easily get into games.
This con is getting … bigger. We’ll have to see how long it remains at the Grand Geneva which itself is huge– I think it would not be as unique or fun if it moved. Hopefully it stays a smallish/medium con in the next few years and doesn’t approach the monstrosity that Gencon has become. However, if you want to experience what GENCON was like in the early years– Gary Con is definitely it.
A Study in Emerald Sequel: AuZtralia!
A Study in Emerald has quickly become one of my favorite games. It’s combination of solid deck building and treachery just warms my cockles!
After the events in A Study In Emerald, Northern Europe is in ashes and the peoples need to rebuild civilization in Australia with trains and stuff and of course, the remaining Old Ones waking up. Auztralia also by Martin Wallace, looks great and will be good for a twofer Saturday of aSiE. It’s not out yet but should be in 2018!
