MRAAKTAGON – Page 49

Books with spys and the like

Well I got some goddamned reading in the last month or so. I finished St. Liebowitz and the Wild Horse Woman and wanted some lighter pap to clear the palette for later heaviness. I got my dad GHOSTMAN for Xmas which he devoured and sent back to me so I tackled that first. As you can see it has a SHIT ASSED cover typical of the Robert Ludlum type books around today with some lame ass smeared photoshop crap across the cover.

This was a solid read about a guy that gets involved in cleaning up a failed bank truck robbery. It moves very fast and has a lot of really good spy tricks and trinkets going on. There was one scene used to establish the villain as a ‘real bad guy’ that was pretty fucking stupid and extreme, but the rest of the book was good. Unlike the two books below Ghostman says NOTHING about anything. It is meaningless except for the story itself, it makes no commentary about modern life or anything–just an ego trip by the author with some sneaky main character with a lot of pre paid cell phones. And they will probably make a movie of this one. It will be good action and a good story, but ultimately meaningless.

The second one goes back into the 30’s: Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key. This is a fucking masterpiece of noir/mystery writing about a political fixer (vote repeating, getting unions to vote X way, etc.) who is purportedly involved in some sort of murder. He’s assisted by the protagonist who is a gambling addict on waivers who uncovers a big fucking mess of intrigue. Hammett is no joke and this is as good if not better than Maltese Falcon. I’m going to watch the movies soon. What’s more this is a SCATHING indictment of political back-door dealing and buying elections. Hammett is trying to reveal some very bad things going on in addition to all the, you know, beatings and murders.

The last one was a new one from John Le Carre (of Tinker Tailer Soldier fame) called A Delicate Truth. While not as strong as The Glass Key, this is an excellent read about a bunch of really incompetent public officials and ‘spies’ who constantly fuck up everything and it sort of works out in the end. No one in the book is all that smart, so it’s sort of an everyman thrust into a series of terrible situations where more bad choices are made. Le Carre here is calling out corporate security and corporate war making abilities as adjunct to a government’s power over control of mass violence. It’s message is not subtle and resonates throughout the text where the shadowy shit is not in the government but in this horrific mash up of government, corporate and law enforcement mess where it’s not clear who is actually in control. Think Executive Outcomes from the 90’s (and of course, Jagged Alliance!) They are going to make a movie of this fucker eventually.

All three great reads, the first one is super light and altogether meaningless, but fun. The other two are also fast paced pulp noir stuff but have some interesting subtexts and social commentary.

Now back to the heavy stuffs.

The insane fuck sequences of Eva Green

Last weekend I had a bender in Miami. Part of this bender was being passed out on a couch with the TV on. Dark Shadows was playing over and over on one of the various cable channels and I was awake during one of the showings to watch the crazy furniture shattering fuck scene between Johnny Depp and Eva Green, a vampire and a witch respectively. That same evening I stumbled with Matt into a dark theater playing 300: Rise of an Empire. During the movie Eva Green is again involved in an insane fuck sequence with the main Athenian Character. Given that it was Alpha Male fucking Alpha Female for the win, this wasn’t actually too disturbing, but to have seen this same actress in two different films having furniture destroying fuck sequences was a fairly comedic coincidence to me.

Now, I guess I’m not a fan of 300 Rise of an Empire and will be even less so of the next film that doesn’t have Eva Green in it since her character gets eviscerated, but there are two notable things about it: the above mentioned sex scene and the multiple scenes of Eva Green’s character staring from a bow of her ship with her right eye twitching in anger–that’s one for the meme pile. The rest of the film, while visually stunning in parts is just plagued by… well, everything. They paint the main Athenian as some sort of physical badass, where he could have played the part not like Leonidas (since we already had the sacrificial alpha male in the first movie) but instead a scheming little rat who plays all these tricks on the Persians for the win. He did play tricks in the movie over and over and over so this would have fit (and also made a better contrast between Athens and Sparta) as they also characterize him as someone totally awesome at everything– sword fighting, archery, etc. He literally is a character characterized by his complete lack of any weaknesses in character or prowess–sort of like Superman. Also, the Athenians made the Spartans look sort of pussy, which just ain’t right. In 300, the Spartans work together as a UNIT to defeat the Persians, but the Athenians are seen fighting in Rise of an Empire like the Germanic and Celt tribes would– mano y mano in a full on melee. What’s more, the Athenian leader gives I believe FOUR pre-battle speeches, with all the heartfelt music playing and all that. That was ridiculous. Overall, the film just could have been so much better. I’m glad I saw it, if nothing more to make fun ever more of the gouts of blood that issued forth whenever someone was so much as touched by a sword, but Hotel Budapest was playing in a packed theatre next door, and I would have much rather seen that in retrospect. Anyway, back to the fucking. Below are two vids from the movies in question. You can see watching them the same day would create a comic juxtaposition.

Here is the comedy scene from Dark Shadows:

And the non-comedy scene from 300: Rise of an Empire (has boobs)

Farewell to Dark Souls (#1 at least)

With Dark Souls 2 out in a few days, players are lamenting the end of Dark Souls 1 as the video above is probably just the first of many tributes. Now this is strange because it’s a single player game primarily? Correct, however there is a massive multiplayer component to the game that some people may never experience (with the exception of the computer invasions that mimic when another player invades). Since many people will be immediately switching to Dark Souls 2, they have to say goodbye to their characters and such, so it’s truly bitter sweet since the new game has already been reviewed and found AWESOME.

What caught me on this video is that it references the dragon archers I mentioned in an earlier post. The money shot is at 2:12.

Blade Runner

Dark Souls almost broke me!

I get so little time to play games and Dark Souls is one that you really have to take seriously, especially when it’s trying to emotionally maim you at every turn. The last few days I have been stuck in one single area and yesterday I almost threw in the towel on the game for good.

The situation is that you have to fight through some fairly tough enemies only to have to then walk up a series of ledges while under fire from some archers who have GIANT dragon killing arrows that will knock you off the ledge if you get hit (whether you block or not). You are forced to run between them so while one is shooting you from the front, another is shooting you in the back. Then you must engage one of them in close combat without falling off the ledge. All told, I think I tried this 50 times before making it through. At try 45 I was like–fuck this game forever. My last ‘stuck’ point was the first Capra Daemon which is understandable for me since it’s a boss and all. Those are SUPPOSED to be difficult. This is just… some area in the game. Praise the fucking Sun I got through it and on to what I’ve heard is the most difficult boss fight in the game…

People have even made artwork of this area... — People have even made artwork of this area…

READING games

I picked up the beautiful Banner Saga as part of the Kickstarter, as well as the very indy but so far pretty awesome Inquisitor and am switching between them both with a little Torchlight 2 and Chivalry in between.

The issue I’m having is that Banner Saga and Inquisitor are both READING games. There is just so much text on screen to read in both games (especially Inquisitor) that it’s like reading a novel on the computer– and that’s tough to stomach after Skyrim. Of course no indy shop is going to be able to do the sort of VAST voice acting work of Skyrim or Oblivion– we take that shit for granted at this point. However, these indy RPG’s (including Eschelon and Avalon the Black Fortress) are excellent games with really good writing but… it’s still writing on the screen, and I’m finding it quite a bit of a slog, especially with two games like at once. I get the urge after about half an hour to blow shit up instead.

So how are these games? Banner Saga is unfortunately really boring, but awful pretty. The combat system, compared to Disgaea, Phantom Brave, Final Fantasy Tactics, etc. is not up to par. I’ve been in 10 or so battles and they all are on a flat plane with the same enemies over and over again. With Disgaea and the like, I am excited to get into a fight– with Banner Saga it’s zzzzz….. Frankly, I’m never going to finish it. Other people are liking it so the kickstarter was worth supporting, but I’m not a fan of the game. People have just done that this of game so much better. Aesthetically, it’s amazing to look at though.

This is how you will feel during the combat in the game-- sleepy and bored. — This is how you will feel during the combat in the game– sleepy and bored but you do feel pretty.

Inquisitor is VERY Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. You spend your time dealing with NPC’s and reading their responses and accusations of each other. I do enjoy it but it’s been a LOT of reading. Compared to Eschelon you don’t do much exploring (at first) as you start in a pretty big village. The combat is just fine for this type of game– what’s misleading is that it looks a bit LIKE Diablo 2 so you expect the game to play that way in combat, but it doesn’t, not at all. So, if you like Eschelon and finish 3 quick, Inquisitor is worth looking at. I really like the plot lines so far. There was a battle with bandits early on where they run away after a few go down–that was the moment that I knew this game was a keeper.

13th Age – first real session

We still had communication problems, but were able to eek out a few hour session of 13th Age last night. I really like Roll20 for facilitating online play, despite the crappy voice chat, the rest of it is fucking top drawer. I mostly hate it when people describe what actually happens in a PnP session so I won’t bore you with the details around what happened, but rather stuff about what it’s like to GM the game.

Encounter
There was a short fight in the session, and it went fairly fast– slower due to communication problems than it should, not because of the game. I built the antagonists for this encounter in about 10 minutes and could have been faster but I wanted some sort of weird power for the caster so did a bit more searching. Balance wise it was exactly perfect for what I was trying to go for, the characters took some damage (two of them were at their staggered level) but the enemies went down quick, since this was a bit of an interlude from the main plot. There’s a lot of stuff that 4th Edition D&D did right, and the encounter building was one of them and it’s even better in 13th Age because only the most ungodly powerful monsters have the mega stat-lines that 4th Edition has. So, I don’t feel like I have to build out mass stats for, say, an Exalted enemy (making the 10 or so that I did took hours and hours) and yet I can have enemies with interesting powers that sometimes don’t come into play during a single fight since they may not proc. Surprise for next time!

XP
This is another area where this game shines. After last night’s session there was no diddling around with XP since…there’s no XP at all! It’s just slowly dawned on me after the last two sessions how awesome this is for me as a GM. I get to decide when the players level up– when it’s best for the STORY and I feel like they’ve earned it. It removes all the fiddly crap since people aren’t writing large numbers on their character sheets, erasing it over and over, using a calculator and then messing around with trying to get into fights with barmaids to try to milk out 5XP for the next level. None of that shit is in 13th Age and I don’t think anyone will miss it at all. I do favor the per-session XP of WFRP as an alternative to no XP, but that is as about as detailed as I want to get.

Characters
I frankly don’t know what all the characters can do yet. I’ve read through the classes, but my retention is low– I really leave it up to the players to let me know what their class powers and talents do so far. A couple of the dudes do not have the book, so the fact that they put out an SRD for the game is fucking AWESOME. Really a player just needs a character sheet and the 5-8 pages for their class info and that’s it.

Adventure
I’m running the first adventure out of the back of the book, it’s no Oldenhaller Contract, but works fine. The players could read it, sure, but with the Icon Rolls and other stuff going on, it’s likely going to be very different than what it’s written as. I have written a custom 5-6 session adventure for the group, if they choose to continue so we’ll be hitting that next.

13th Age first session (not a) total disaster

I wanted this post to be about how I am digging GM’ing 13th Age, but we had serious issues for our first session. The trouble with RPG sessions usually center around people not showing up rather than any sorts of technical problems, which is what we had last night with our first session. To give you perspective, we started things off at 8PM and called it at 10:45PM or so; a good 2.5 hours plus– and we were playing online– NEVER a good idea if you can help it. We can’t so there we were.

First, we were using Roll20 and whatever voice chat system they implemented– it simply doesn’t work or in the hour or so spent with it, it didn’t. We switched to Steamchat with voice but could not get everyone to hear each other — as in one person could hear everyone, another person could hear everyone but one person and so on. It was a complete communication mess.

One option in Roll20 is to use Google Hangouts, and I know that shit works– however, the account that I use with Roll20 has been BANNED by Google for not adhering to their names policy. Since we are Google’s product, we’re not a sufficient product unless we use a real name on our account… but I have MANY google accounts and only one uses my real name so I don’t know what the issue is there. You think I want to use my real name for all this shit? Am I some attention whoring millennial?

In terms of game played, it was just terrible progress. I had to work on some characters a bit but to give you some perspective of how little game we actually got to play: at the start of each session of 13th Age, you roll Icon relationship dice to see what Icons are somehow involved in the session– , this is a roll of 3 dice per player and I wrote down the results, this was the ONLY thing we were able to get done in terms of the adventure proper.

In terms of planning, I figured we would get through the ENTIRE included adventure in the back of the book…

Happy 40th D&D!

Ye old blue book.... — Ye old blue book….

Wow. If I was to point to one single thing that influenced me more than anything else, it would be D&D, both playing it as a kid, trying not to play it as a teenager (to be cool) and then moving on to better games as an adult (better being Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay for the most part) and just all around gaming– D&D was the gateway drug! I’ve spent some of my tiny amount of leisure time this week going through some of my old RPG shit and trying to ID the path I took through the hobby. I think it’s this (bold means I feel it was a huge influence):

D&D Basic (blue book) > Moldvay Basic (boxed sets) > AD&D (sort of, since it really fucking sucked and we just used the Basic rules with the AD&D monsters) > Gamma World (ahem…shoplifted copy I shamefully admit..)> Champions > Star Frontiers > Paranoia > Call of Cthulhu > Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles > Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (this lasted all through college and beyond) > Werewolf > Feng Shui > Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition > Exalted (this got me back into RPG’s seriously around 2006) > Dresden Files/FATE > Marvel Heroic Roleplaying > Carolina Death Crawl > ???

Now, of course, it’s all about the narrative style games and I haven’t played a D20 in years. 13th Age will be the first delve into a modern D20 since a single session of Pathfinder about 4 years ago. Of course, 13th Age IS a mash up of narrative and D20 crunch, so we’ll see how it plays vs FATE and vs 3.5.

That said, there have been many awesome RPG’s that came out in the last couple years and even just last year besides 13th Age: Fate Core, Numenera, Fiasco, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, Carolina Death Crawl are all huge additions to the genre that are moving the ball forward– it’s really tough to pick what to even run!

Looking forward to 2014, we’ll have D&D Next, Exalted 3 and what looks like a crazy interactive game by Robin D. Laws: HillFolk. While I feel the new version of D&D is already out and it’s called 13th Age, I’m interested to see what D&D Next is able to do. Let’s face it, Pathfinder has the ‘miniature heavy’ version of the game locked so Next will either bring it back towards the OD&D versions already handled by Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess or try to take Pathfinder head on (which is sort of 4th edition after all).

I know some of you have already been roped into many of my experimental games (playtest of fate core, carolina death crawl for example) and it will continue…

The Gaming of 2013

ahhh… the unlucky ’13 year was quite a year for games– or, dare I say, it should have been. We had some MASSIVE releases last year with the culmination in some cases of decades of work for some development teams. Yet for all their glory, the massive budget games were not the ones that I played and enjoyed, with a few exceptions.

Let’s run down the releases I got to play. Now I’m an ancient person with familial and work duties so there’s no chance in a given year that I’ll be able to play even close to everything that’s good. I have to make choices– very difficult choices with my budget of TIME.

Here we have the list of stuff I played or was seriously considering in order:
Anarchy Reigns: This was the first game I bought in 2013 and it was…not great. The price tag was good at 25$ or so, but I couldn’t get through the single player and the multiplayer, while interesting, just didn’t hold my attention. The key issue was the core of the combat system– it just wasn’t all that great. Compared to the AMAZING Urban Reign for the PS2, which is quite similar, it was a vast disappointment and from the ex-Clover team, that was sad.

Crysis 3: I am a huge Far Cry fan and though it pissed in my mouth with Far Cry 2, I still like the original developers a lot and I picked up the original Crysis and it was great fun. I haven’t bitten on 2 or 3 yet but probably will in the future. I guess what did it for me was continued play of Battlefield 3. Crysis 3 just seemed redundant and I didn’t buy it.

Hotline Miami: The first indy game of the year I picked up. The ad campaign for this one was so incredible it was a must buy. I never finished it — to be truthful after the school shooting last year I just couldn’t play it anymore– but I got a long way into the game before moving on to other games. It was awesome.

Hear of the Swarm: Ok, for all it’s polish, Starcraft 2 is not fun for me to play. The single player is quite boring and the actual storyline EXECUTION is just shit (the ideas are really cool though, just executed poorly and all tongue and cheek with the shitty-accent space rednecks and trying to be serious at the same time plus romance? what a space pissery!), the multiplayer, the meat of the game, feels like a fucking chore to me. Plus, it’s a terrible annoyance to have to use Blizzard’s version of steam and ALWAYS BE ONLINE. I figured out finally that as much as I love RTS games and Warcraft 3, I’m just not a Starcraft player so I skipped this one and will likely never play Starcraft 2 in any form again because it’s jsut goddamn tiresome.

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger: This was an impulse buy and I didn’t get through it but played it a bit and was impressed. It’s essentially a rail shooter with a CRAZY story integrating with just about every Old West hero in the late era (think Jesse James/Butch Cassidy). If this is cheap, pick it up, you won’t be disappointed even if you get like 3-4 hours of play only.

The Last of Us: Ok so this was a PS3 exclusive and I had no chance to play it. Apparently this is a great game for the story as it integrates stuff from the hugely influential THE ROAD into a zombie shooter. I just wanted to note that if this had come out on other consoles, it would have sold a LOT more copies, especially PC. Plus this has that short lady that’s in all the fucking movies these days that is always talking too much on screen.

Xcom: Enemy Within: This is a follow up to Xcom: Enemy Unknown from 2012 and I just didn’t bother with it despite my love for the first game. I hope this combat engine sees more life as it’s great. I will pick this up eventually…

Company of Heroes 2: Ok so here is a sequel to one of my favorite RTS games. COH, along with Warcraft 3, redefined what I wanted out of an RTS, and they did it in very different ways. Unfortunately, the ENTIRE COH team left Relic Games long before COH 2 was started and I read so many bad things about the game that I didn’t pick it up. The comments from Russians about the game is pretty crazy if you check metacritic– I guess they forgot that Stalin was a murderous dictator that was able to save the country from another murderous dictator?

Rogue Legacy: While I don’t have a controller to hook up to my PC, I gave this one a shot and it was pretty interesting. It’s not Battle Block Theater though.. no sir. Hence, I had problems playing it for very long.

Dota 2: 2013 IS the year of DOTA2, hands down. The game came out of beta and everyone was playing it before, and everyone and their MOTHER is playing it now. It is the best game of 2013, no question about it. Obviously it’s a game that doesn’t appeal to everyone and it’s a very very deep rabbit hole to get into (and you have to practice) but I think this was a huge release for the year. It’s tough to say it was the best when you want to give it to something new– since the game is getting close to 10 years old from it’s first incarnations, but DOTA 2 is by far the most important and best game of 2013.

Saints Row IV: I loved Saint’s Row 3. Loved it and played the shit out of it. IV is excellent— except I can’t play it anymore. Whether it’s my configuration (unlikely) or a patch I can’t tell, but the game will no longer run on my computer. I got 20 hours in and then simply had to stop playing after one of the patches hit. I uninstalled, reinstalled, check the interweb tubes for a solution which ended up being “wait for the next patch” which I don’t even think ever came. Sad that they didn’t take their PC users seriously this time around.

Diablo 3 (consoles): The monumental failure of a game that is Diablo 3 hit consoles in 2013 and they did a good job. Unfortunately, the game is fundamentally flawed and cannot be ‘fixed’ with the removal of the real money auction house. This is what happens when you spend 12 years and millions of dollars on what amounts to a PAY TO PLAY iPHONE GAME.

Total War Rome 2: How the mighty have fallen. This was my fucking BIGGEST disappointment of the year. I warned my wife and wee children that I would be huddled in the basement for MONTHS on this fucker, but I put in 40 hours of frustration and was done. Rome 1 was my second choice for game of the DECADE from 00 to 10 only second to the almighty Warcraft 3. What the fuck happened? 1) Too large of a budget 2) Too short of a timeline 3) crappy battle engine. This series is dead to me. Shogun 2’s battles sucked despite EVERYTHING else about the game being excellent. The design choices + the battles being shit tanked this game forever. Warhammer Fantasy Battle Total War will suck.

Path of Exile: Another Diablo 3 killer, I did not get a chance to play this and probably won’t. It’s been on my radar for a long time, but — I just want to keep playing Torchlight 2– like forever.

Battlefield 4: Why come out so soon? I still feel like I didn’t have the time to get into BF3 and ALREADY there’s a new BF game out? And it’s not an offshoot like Bad Company or 2142, it’s the full on thing… why? I just didn’t want this and saw no reason to buy it. This does not need to come out every 2 years…

And for all that– it’s still just the year of DOTA 2.