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05 January 2009PHONE: I am well and truly hooked on Valkryia Chronicles. Obviously designed by a miniatures player, you move around in third person but with a ruler at the bottom to show you how far.Permanent Link18 December 2008PHONE: Finally beat Civilization on the Playstation 3 at the highest difficulty, with every ounce of AI the computer would throw at me. I have been trying to beat that AI for years.Permanent Link07 November 2008Thanks to the guys at the Phoenix Command Yahoo group for a link to a Flash representation of the Aliens boardgame.Permanent Link04 November 2008Was up until 2 AM playing Civilization: Revolution. Can't remember the last time I slept so well.Permanent Link09 October 2008Monday night I watched four episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The first was live with limited commercial interruptions and some hilarious product placement shots. Then I caught up with the last 3 episodes of Season 1 on Blu-Ray. As I am watching this, I realize that it's an ideal setting for your role-playing game. The characters are going around a familiar city committing acts of terrorism in the interest of saving humanity. Like the TV audience, the players would have unlimited freedom of action along with whatever morality they bring to the table, not enforced from the top. But that's not the point of this post.Leading Edge games was supposed to put out a Terminator RPG in 1995, but it never materialized. They did, however, put out a miniatures combat game and two other licensed RPGs in 1993, Dracula (based on the 1992 film) and the Lawnmower Man. Checking the minis game, it seems servicable for a Terminator RPG. Though it is 15 years out of date, there is an active Yahoo Group providing support. Then, being further distracted, I started reading The Lawnmower Man RPG. Besides the fact that they "got it wrong" on Virtual Reality (and really, how could they not?), is the game itself playable as 1993 retro-tech science-fantasy? Two hours later, I concluded that the answer is yes. Let's get the bad out of the way. The game hews very close to its miniatures gaming roots. While its core 3d6 mechanic is fine and its combat system is dear to my heart, the game is strictly about building people for fighting, not deep characterization. Along that line, it and Dracula introduced a couple of mechanics I haven't seen elsewhere: Reputation and Investigation. Player characters start out with three Reputation points. This corresponds to three Supporting Characters that follow them around and act as henchmen. If they do something heroic, they can gain a Reputation point and eventually another Supporting Character. For vaguely defined unheroic actions (actually a chance to slip in some role-play), they can lose a Reputation point and thus a servant. While this system made sense in Dracula with its social class divisions, it's completely out of place in Lawnmower Man. Once Supporting Characters know about the Virtual Reality war, they would certainly want to stick around if for no other reason than to affect the fate of the world. The next system is Investigations. The Game Master breaks the day into 4 hour blocks and the Players make a die roll to uncover clues. The only tactical decision to make here is the Risk Level to take, a number from 1 to 10 that adds a bonus to your roll and represents the possible danger you face. This looks like a long, boring slog and a tremendous absence of fun. To be fair, when you gain some Virtual Reality Gear you can decide whether to Investigate or Train up your skills. The game seems to lend itself to adverserial play, where each team takes their henchmen and goes off to search by themselves. The game supports this and seems to encourage it. Competition among player groups - with open table talk, by necessity - seems to be the only way to make this interesting. The Comptuer Intrusion and Virtual Reality Combat systems, which are integrated but subtly different, don't seem broken on the surface. It needs some playtesting to be sure; I chuckled when I noticed the lack of playtester credits in the book. But the VR combat has several tactical options: Attack, Loop Attack, 2 kinds of defense, 2 kinds of Escape, and even a Melee attack where you materialize any weapon in your hand and do damage based on that real-world weapon type. Cheesy? Of course! But that's the point here, and their example actually seemed to work, though I can imagine the legions of players asking for a virtual polearm instead of a virtual axe or knife. Finally I want to talk about Training. You can use portable, low-powered computers (costing as little as half a million 1993 dollars!) to train Mental skills, slightly more powerful ones to train Physical Skills, and the highest-end mainframes to achieve Physical and Mental bodily enhancements. In order to get the ulitmate Cheese, where Jobe from the film reduces the enemy agents to globules, you have to find the "Angelo Programs". Remember that the Internet didn't and won't be mainstream in this setting, so its plausible that a computer program can pass as an Artifact of Power. Without Dr. Angelo's work, you can "only" train characters to go without sleep, to survive wounds and heal rapidly, and achieve something called Mental Acuity, which allows them to exceed normal human levels of comprehension. And you can Train up your stats: all your stats, including the stats which affect your rate of Training. The main stats that affect your Training limits are Perception, which keeps you from going mad, and Motivation, which you must roll less than or equal on three dice for every single Training attempt. If you fail a Motivation roll, you can never try to Train that Skill, Stat or superpower. Thus, it behooves you to train your Motivation first until it gets to 18; unlike GURPS, there are no automatic failures in this game. The Angelo programs don't require a Motivation roll, but do require you to have a low Perception and Will, which is how Jobe was able to progress. Thus the game is really about mankind's imminent progression towards a Singularity, which is consistent with the theme of the film. Normally these would be unbalanced game design decisions, but when everyone is racing towards the singularity, it makes sense. This race can be between the party members or between the group and external enemies, according to your play style. One more thing about Motivation for player characters. Motivation is a Secondary Characteristic, so you determine MOT by rolling 3 six-sided dice. You get an additional die to split among 3 Secondaries, but trust me, you want all of it on MOT. So you will average a 14. A MOT check is made on 3 dice, so that's a 90% chance of success for an average starting character. A slightly above-average start will make it a near-certainty, while a below-average roll will cripple you on your quest for the Singularity. This is a severe flaw in character creation, and MOT (inherited from their Aliens RPG) should have been promoted to Primary for this game. In conclusion, the game seems to hold together on paper, against all odds. However, it doesn't offer anything inspiring unless you want to do it as a gag or if you are entranced by the virtual landscapes of the 1993 film. I recommend trying to find the Extended version, which has some good Singularity-related scenes. Permanent Link04 September 2008Heads up: my school is hosting its first annual game convention. Note that Rice University's OwlCon is one week later.Permanent Link28 August 2008So last night I stopped by my local game store, Nan's Games and Comics, to see Secrets and Lies on the store shelf. Flipping through some of the old boxes, I came upon a second edition of Champions. Cost: twelve dollars, just like the day it came out in 1982. Nan's never marks up or down.Permanent Link14 August 2008So here it is, launch day. The PDF seems to be up on e23 without a hitch. No word from GenCon yet. If you came here because you heard of the game, please check out the forums and sign up.Permanent Link12 August 2008Bought another copy of the Shadowrun game for Sega Genesis. I was seeing greyscale, half-laced images. I guess I really did wear the cartridge out.Permanent Link12 August 2008Received the ashcan of Misspent Youth in the mail today. Just finished reading it.Permanent Link12 August 2008Pricing has been set for Secrets and Lies. Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price is $19.95, but you can get it at GenCon for $15. If you can't make it to GenCon, a PDF of the game goes on sale on August 14, just two days from today.Permanent Link07 August 2008Hey, welcome to everyone from e23. The full version of Secrets and Lies will be out one week from today, on August 14. On the same day, it will be available at GenCon at the Ashcan Front/PlayCollective booth.Permanent Link26 July 2008The Canon Puncture podcast is now online. It was a great show; check it out.Permanent Link18 July 2008Welcome to everyone from Steve Jackson Games. The full version of Secrets and Lies will be available at e23 on August 14. Meanwhile, if you have any questions please visit the forums or drop me a line: grant@plumbagolounge.com.Permanent Link16 July 2008Just finished a roundtable for the Canon Puncture podcast. We talked about our games and the travails of getting ready for GenCon.Permanent Link02 July 2008National Security Decision Making was excellent as always, though they steadfastly deny being a LARP.I want to thank Evan Tormer for some great games of Mortal Coil and Steal Away Jordan. Bought Grey Ranks and Dogs in the Vineyard. Finished Dogs by the time the plane touched down on Sunday. I found a great little Rio Grande game called "Stone Age". I think the S.O. will go for it. Also liked "Gangsters" and "Lascaux". Finally scored a copy of Advanced Civilization. Dread was a blast. Need to get a Jenga tower. Permanent Link27 June 2008PHONE: Having a good time. Picked up some new games and am in the process of reading them.Permanent Link25 June 2008Had this horrible feeling this morning, that I was about to leave for Origins without my badge. Like showing up naked for work. Fortunately, the Internets say that Origins doesn't mail out badges. You pick them up at pre-registration. Sounds like a nice long line to me.Permanent Link23 June 2008On my way to Origins this week in Columbus, OH.Permanent Link17 June 2008Picked up the new Player's guide for Dungeons and Dragons yesterday. I didn't have a lot of exposure to the previous edition, and I haven't gotten very far into the new book, but I don't see a great departure from D&D's design goals and techniques. They are clearly and explicitly spelled out at the beginning of the book. The game focuses on combat and on detailed mapping of the fantasy environment.I admire it as a design aesthetic. It made me realize that my own game design is more of a "sandbox" game. The players have freedom to explore the whole world, which in the case of Secrets and Lies is the modern world. This is easier than dungeon design, but less disciplined. A dungeon is a finely crafted mechanism, each room's challenges depending upon the ones that came before. To sit down and design a dungeon requires patience and thoroughness. It is is to be admired. In the age of multimillion-dollar video games, it is also quite the marketable skill. But it can lead to disappointment for the designer. Even in a best case, most of a dungeon probably goes unexplored, its best traps untriggered. In the worst case, the players want to skip it entirely; sometimes innocently, sometimes to tweak their friend who worked so hard. It's reasonable to want to cushion yourself from that kind of disappointment. Enter the sandbox. The Planner describes the setting in general terms and lets the players make the next move. In the case of Secrets and Lies, the next scene can be pulled from a Florida guidebook or the day's newspaper. The Planner improvises and play moves on. But it's important to own up to the fact that this sandbox play relies on improvisation over preparation, and to appreciate the intricacy of a well-stocked dungeon. Personally, I try to have it both ways by cultivating a library of maps, settings and adventures that can be easily translated from one game system to another. Modern settings are more difficult to find than fantasy settings, but there are a few. I want to recommend the GM's Companion for Millenium's End (long out of print), a d20 product called the New Glory Naval Base, and the Floor Plan series from Steve Jackson Games. Permanent Link11 June 2008Just got the prototype of Secrets and Lies from Lulu.com. A printer friend of mine thinks that book-binding such a small page count (currently 85) will cause the pages to fall out quickly, so the jury is still out on an actual print run. But I will print them for distributor review and for conventions.Permanent Link04 June 2008Spent some more time with Grand Theft Auto 4 last night. Finally met the feds.My last save file is two weeks old. I'm really not being pulled into this one. Just read that the Civilization demo for consoles will be available on Thursday. Finally a little strategy gaming for the next-generation consoles. So far I have Star Trek: Conquest and Battalion Wars 2 for the Wii, if you can call the Wii next-gen. Star Trek is very shallow. BW2 turned out to be a third-person shooter and the online multiplayer got old fast. Permanent Link02 June 2008The playtest went well. We recorded it, but there was a lot of sharp, painful noise created by the forks on plates at the beginning. Also, a transient was created whenever someone put something on the table.The game itself went very well. This was the first version that didn't need major changes afterwards. While I have made a few changes, we will be using the same hardcopies for the next game. Permanent Link30 May 2008Separated my personal web site from the main page. Now the main page is sparsely populated, but it's all about the game. Next playtest is tonight.Permanent Link27 May 2008Updated the demo for Secrets and Lies to match the current changes to the rules.Permanent Link22 May 2008It hasn't been updated, but I have restored the Demo at a player's request.Permanent Link17 May 2008PHONE: My game demo will be down until May 30 so I can do some revisions.Permanent Link17 May 2008Playtesting went well last night. The Draft sheet needs bigger cells, but generally went over well. We had another short combat and will be taking some things out.Permanent Link16 May 2008PHONE: Playtest tonight. Will experiment with video and audio recording.Permanent Link09 May 2008Welcome to everyone from Story Games. I don't know if you'll find my game to have a strong emphasis on story. There are so many talented players out there that I can concentrate on the game-related aspects and let Game Masters do what they want with that.Permanent Link07 May 2008I'm finally ready to announce my new role-playing game, Secrets and Lies. I've had playtesting and now have a sample ready for release.I downloaded some forum software called Vanilla and have set up plumbagolounge.com to overlay my web site. I'll continue to use the main page for blogging. Permanent Link02 May 2008Played Grand Theft Auto IV again last night, past 12:30 this time (though I was writing for most of the evening). My character got drunk and while I had him take a cab home, I now understand what this article is about.In my opinion, MADD couldn't be more misguided on this one. Drunk driving in GTA seems like a strong incentive *not* to try drinking and driving in real life. Once again, the grown-ups show how out of touch they are. Permanent Link30 April 2008PHONE: Bought GTA4 yesterday. Played until 10:30 last night. If it was awesome, would have played until 2. Pretty, though.Permanent Link28 April 2008Now that this document is fairly stable, Here are my character creation notes for GURPS Transhuman Space. The campaign has been dead for six months, though I will talk to Michael and Ben on Friday.Permanent Link07 April 2008PHONE: Griefed on Advance Wars. Exploit allows you to move the same unit over and over. Very disappointing.Permanent Link27 March 2008Just saw an episode of CSI: New York about Second Life. Insultingly bad. Sets virtual worlds back a decade. I might as well be watching the Lawnmower Man.Permanent Link15 November 2007PHONE: structure, subjectivity, collaboration.Permanent Link08 November 2007WII: I have been listening to role-playing game podcasts ever since GenCon. By far, the best one I have found is Sons of Kryos. I've also been listening to Fear the Boot because they're from St. Louis. If anyone out there knows how to reach Jamie Schneider, tell him to drop me a line.Listening to the podcasts, in turn, has led me to some interesting independently-published RPGs. I would really like to run Panty Explosion as a one-timer, but the name always turns people off. Fred Hicks has some very impressive products with Don't Rest Your Head and Spirit of the Century. I also managed to find a copy of Burning Wheel at my local game store (Nan's in Houston). I see why so many people get excited about it. It was almost enough to get me going on a few campaigns rolling around in my head: Lord of the Rings, Warcraft or Romance of the Three Kingdoms. But the rules would still need some work. In particular, I don't see how players would get enough Persona points to get over certain Advancement humps. Also, there is such a thing as being too averse to wound accumulation. As I read it, each weapon does exactly three discrete levels of damage. To me, that's like saying that you can only be struck in exactly three points, none of which are necessarily fatal. Since this post has turned somewhat negative, I suppose I should say something about the notion of distributed storytelling. I suppose that we've all had some politics with the idea of the all-powerful game master, and there might be a desire to share the load. I can relate to Ron Edwards' comment on the podcast Theory from the Closet, that there can be power struggles in a gaming group followed by 'Maoist' tendencies for the loser to be written out of history. But a single GM isn't an inherently harmful concept. In terms of social contract, someone has to organize the game, to host it, to set a time and try to get people to come. It's reasonable that the same person prepares an adventure for the night and runs people through it. If you are lucky to have a game group that is both willing and able to share the load of creating the whole adventure (rather than just their character's action), great. But it's not for beginners, and you can't neglect beginners if you want to grow the hobby.My purchases have been somewhat limited because I try only to purchase from e23. I trust them and am even willing to pay Texas sales tax to use them. But their selection of independent RPGs seems limited. Permanent Link15 October 2007This weekend I purchased an old-school dungeon-style role-playing game book for a modern setting, 'New Glory Naval Base' by Darkfuries publishing. Lately I've had my eye out for realistic maps of modern settings. I realized that what I was looking for was a dungeon, something completely mapped and thought through. Since, in general, I don't run fantasy RPGs, I didn't make the connection until recently.Thinking back on it, I can't remember the last time I drew a map. I bought Campaign Cartographer for my Battletech 3000 campaign, but just used Fractal Terrains to draw the planetary features. I might have transferred that over to a GURPS Space planetary record sheet. But the most important map, of cities and their adjacencies, was taken straight from King Arthur Pendragon. There was a map sketched out on dry-erase paper, somewhere down on this blog topic. Usually I grab a map from some unrelated game; my favorite is the Millenium's End GM's companion. I was sure to pick up all the maps released for Lord of the Rings, though I will need to write a game system from scratch. Permanent Link08 October 2007PHONE: Been listening to RPG podcasts since GenCon. Picked up an RPG called Burning Wheel at Nan's. Very meaty.Permanent Link24 September 2007I'll be checking out zaon.com today. As I mentioned after GenCon, they sell detailed maps of starships for your role-playing game, and their online store is supposed to open today. I noticed a plethora of map-selling booths for fantasy games, but hardly anything else. So I'm looking forward to buying a couple of maps today.Alas, I won't be buying Halo 3 tomorrow. If I was going to get an Xbox 360, it wouldn't be for Halo. This weekend I finally got around to purchsing 'God of War' for the PS2 and it was as good as people said. Looking forward to Batallion Wars 2 for the Wii next month and I hope to share it with friends. Permanent Link17 September 2007PHONE: Star Wars d6, DC Heroes, Marvel RPG, Aliens. These are the role-playing games I would introduce a new player to.Permanent Link07 September 2007PHONE: Rented Tiger Woods 2007 for the Wii. Controls are bad.Permanent Link29 August 2007PHONE: Managed to get hooked on Gain Ground for the Wii virtual console. Continues seem to be disabled at Stage five.Permanent Link21 August 2007I went to Gen Con in Indianapolis last week. Computer gaming has vastly increased this year, possibly in the wake of E3's cancellation. Apparently the biggest news coming out of the convention was a 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, which I will let others comment on.I want to start off by telling you about a neat little service I found in the Art show. Zaon produces high-quality deck plans for science-fiction starships. Apparently their online store isn't ready yet, but they had one drawing for sale and I immediately picked it up for my game on Friday. I like it so much that I'm going to find a way to work it in, even though it's far too large for a typical Transhuman Space vessel. Permanent Link13 August 2007I have purchased a new webcam to include a friend in my game night. We'll see how it goes.Permanent Link21 July 2007For any of Minerva's friends who were interested in what we were playing last night, here is a link to the game. Just "check out": you don't have to register to download free PDFs.Permanent Link08 June 2007PHONE: Beat Advance wars for the DS last night. need to give the handheld a rest. got the web browser for it as a birthday present but cannot bring up my personal site.Permanent Link24 May 2007WII: Wanted to recommend Thaddeus Greibel's paper in the Dec. 2006 edition of gamestudies.org.Permanent Link22 April 2007Got to Best Buy first thing this morning and purchased a Nintendo Wii. I like the Sports games it comes with as a novelty, but I'm really looking for some kind of strategy game I can play with my friends. I'm also interested in the Virtual Console; we're getting cable modem set up as soon as possible.Permanent Link19 April 2007PHONE: This morning i woke up early and couldn't go back to sleep. but i did not want to go to work early. so i started up my fifteen year old genesis and played desert strike, back when it was honorable to attack iraq. Meanwhile, my xbox is up for auction on ebay.Permanent Link30 March 2007Last night I unpacked the stereo. I decided not to use the surround speakers; too many wires around the house.I also unpacked the Sega Genesis in the bedroom. I decided that the Sega CD and 32X would be too much clutter. Besides, my favorite games are on the core system, though I would like to fire up "Sewer Shark" and "Double Switch" again. My four favorite games on the core Genesis are Shadowrun, Midway Arcade Classics (none of the later ports do it justice), X-Men, and Desert Strike. "Joust" remains one of the best two-player games in existence, along with "Combat". I can't believe the Genesis is over 15 years old and I still keep it around. The Xbox is in my trunk, waiting to be dropped off at the Ebay store. It's about the quality of the games and the willingness for the manufacturer to keep them playable on some platform; next-gen, mobile, whatever, as long as the controls are faithful. If the Nintendo Wii would carry these games, I could finally retire the Genesis. Permanent Link21 March 2007It looks like my plans for "How to Host a Murder" are going to fall through. The game requires exactly eight people - four men, four women - to play. I just don't know enough women who would be into it.My GenCon Event is ready to go, but I've asked a friend to look at it and see if it needs more work. That leaves GURPS. I plan to design the rest of the Transhuman Space campaign with an ending in 6-12 months while working on my next project. The core combat rules will be Phoenix Command, which has some GURPS-like elements (e.g. 3 dice) in its free-form task resolution system. Brent is starting a couples night of gaming at his place; I hope he keeps it up. Permanent Link07 March 2007PHONE: last night i got 'lunar lander ' for the game boy. quickly becoming addicted to it. seems even better than i remember in the arcade.Permanent Link07 February 2007Played Lost Planet yesterday. It was pretty good, better than Perfect Dark Zero.Permanent Link06 January 2007I'm thinking about the next game I want to run. I need something for GenCon and something to run locally once per month, in addition to hosting "How to Host a Murder" each month. Today I considered WWII, but that's just because I bought some GURPS books recently and have been playing a couple of PC games about the war. I still have DarkStryder ready to run off the shelf, but I need to come up with something myself.I wonder why GenCon is taking so long for event registration and housing signup to get started. I seem to remember signing up around the beginning of the year. UPDATE: Speak of the devil. GenCon is starting Pre-Registration on Sunday, February 11. Permanent Link11 December 2006PHONE: I have lost the ability to beat the computer at Starcraft. Of all the realtime strategy games out there, I think that could be the Chess of our time. Like chess, you have to get very good at it before you even try to compete. Beating the computer only scratches the surface; you need to beat the higher difficulty, then try two computer opponents. A graphical update of the game would probably fail and new rules would just be a hassle, but there are other options: a better computer player or a new single player campaign.Permanent Link29 November 2006PHONE: Still haven't decided on a Playstation 3 or a Wii. The answer is probably neither; I don't have time to play the consoles I have now. The Nintendo DS has been the best for the kind of interstitial gaming I am forced into.Permanent Link16 March 2006I just re-organized the 'Games' section of my Windows Start Menu. I noticed that I have a lot of Strategy Games, including The Sims and The Sims 2, so I created the category 'Simulations' just to split them up and make it manageable. I put Hearts of Iron 2 in there because of the level of historical detail, and Republic in because, frankly, the idea of Republic is more intriguing than the actual gameplay. Let me explain.In Republic, you play a man who starts out trying to overthrow a brutal dictator. Your avatar travels through a clockwork city with a decent level of detail, with artificial people you can follow (with the camera, not your avatar) through the city, living out their lives. Eventually, you can engage in nefarious tactics and, once you have taken control, resort to the same brutality as the man you deposed. Unfortunately, the game tends to be slow and bug-ridden, though I intend to give it another chance when I upgrade my computer. It's more interesting to follow people around the city than to actually play, though eventually even this wears thin. So that's why I placed it in the "Simulations" category, being a clockwork city. This is not to say that "The Sims" and "Hearts of Iron 2" are also boring to play, but that their entertainment lies in the details. Along this line of reasoning, perhaps Kuma/War is being judged by the wrong yardstick. While its graphics are sub-par for action shooting game, its purpose is the same as that of toy soldiers and civil war re-enactments. People are interested in battles, and now they have the chance to re-enact these battles almost immediately after they happen. Now, by *this* metric, Kuma/War has a disastrous flaw. The scenarios in the game are deliiberately "balanced" to provide a more challenging play experience. This is anathema to any war re-enactor. So if you dislike Kuma/War, do so for the right reasons. Permanent Link30 January 2006As I get older, component quality of my games becomes more important. This weekend I found a great deal on Hasbro's Clue and Sorry games packaged together in this nice wooden box. There's also a deluxe Scrabble in a wooden box at Barnes and Noble, but I haven't picked it up yet. For a time, I showed my miniatures in this beautiful display case I inherited from my Grandmother. Fantasy Flight has finally learned this lesson with their latest edition of Twilight Imperium, and Eagle Games definitely has the right idea with their game pieces sold separately as metal. I bought a copy of Fury of Dracula at the GenCon auction a few years ago, with the metal minatures instead of plastic, and painted them. Games Workshop included a flyer in Blood Royale for minatures available for purchase, but now that I have money I could never track them down.Permanent Link19 January 2006PHONE: Last night I downloaded and played the demo for Star Wars empire at war. It uses the mechanic from Battle for Middle Earth where you construct and select a whole squadron of soldiers or fighters. I was able to do well in space but battle on the ground was frustrating.Permanent Link13 January 2006I'm suffering from writer's block on my GURPS campaign. I have plenty of adventure ideas, but I haven't been able to weave enough of the over-arching story arc into the game. Now I have a bit that I really want to incorporate, but a bit is not an arc. I need to get back in touch with the guys.Permanent Link11 January 2006Minerva and I started "Shadow of the Colossus" yesterday. That game is hard, and doubtless will get harder. The graphics are stunning, with so many polygons devoted to so few characters and to the terrain.Permanent Link03 January 2006Games I got for Christmas:
Permanent Link15 December 2005Yesterday I beat the computer at Starcraft, without Eric's help. Eric has had me over for the last two weekends to play, and all of a sudden I can play a decent game. This is usually the point where I'm ready to venture out and play against other people, but anyone still playing Starcraft in 2005 must be a master indeed.Permanent Link05 December 2005My next video card shall be from nVidia. Not only is my ATI card recording in a format that won't work in Quicktime, but now I can't run Civilization 4 on my Radeon 9550. This is partly the fault of Firaxis, but I patiently went through every step on their support page and it still didn't work.Permanent Link21 October 2005The guys in my GURPS campaign want some Martial Arts, so I spent some time yesterday working on it.Permanent Link17 October 2005This weekend I cancelled my Xbox 360 reservation and used the deposit to buy a Game Boy Micro, my first Game Boy Advance. I bought Dynasty Warriors Advance, thinking it looked like a Strategy game. I was wrong, it's definitely an action game, and I like it.It has the standard Musou mode for taking a character through the Three Kingdoms storyline, a Free mode for replaying previous battles to increase stats, and a new "Challenge Mode" to start playing with as few keypresses as possible. Just like the PS2 version, this game offers exactly the kind of action that was lacking from my mobile phone games. Judging by Gamespot's poor review, I'm looking forward to seeing what else the GBA has to offer. Permanent Link03 October 2005Minerva and I bought "We Love Katamari" and have been playing it all weekend. Mostly, she plays it while I'm playing Star Wars: Galaxies. She wanted it on the big TV in the front room, and Katamari gives me motion sickness even faster than usual. Minerva is getting to the higher levels of the game, and it seems to be harder than the last one; she's getting frustrated but hasn't given up. To me, it's so much more of the same that I want to go back to the original Katamari Damacy, see if I can improve my scores. I love the instruction book, though; laid out like a children's book.Permanent Link28 September 2005I'm on the verge of giving up my Xbox 360 reservation and purchasing a Game Boy Micro. I just can't get excited about fancier graphics anymore; my life is changing and I need something for "interstitial gaming", and the V300 just can't cut it.Permanent Link27 September 2005Last night I renewed my subscription to "Star Wars Galaxies", but I didn't get to play; I had to re-install the game and I was still downloading patches this morning.Permanent Link08 September 2005Tony is hosting a Katrina fundraiser barbecue and auction Saturday. Any gamers who might want to pick up some hard-to-find items should attend.Permanent Link19 August 2005PHONE: Up until 330 last night. Have scheduled 14 hours of gaming today.Permanent Link18 August 2005PHONE:Came in. Dropped off my stuff. Walked the entire dealer room in two hours.Permanent Link18 August 2005PHONE: 2:35 and I am on the ground in Indianapolis. Couldn't sleep like I usually do. Instead, I finally finished reading "Indiana Jones Adventures" from 1996. This RPG book is not only of decent quality itself, it comes within a hair of being a self-contained game.Permanent Link17 August 2005My friend Joshua has just informed me that, due to a nasty smell in our room in Indianapolis, we have been upgraded. To the penthouse.Permanent Link16 August 2005PHONE: Was disorganized on Friday night. Also unprepared for so much netrunning.Permanent Link12 August 2005Making a list of games to pack for GenCon. One of them is Fastlane, for which I need a roulette wheel and chips. Note that GrantDavis.net is not a gambling site and no actual money is involved.This got me to thinking about other times when poker chips would be good to use. Some players spend more effor tracking their character's money than their own. Chips would be a way to shake them loose from that thinking and spend as freely as people tend to in life. I have a GURPS campaign where the players can purchase skills on the fly. They get to spend 4 points, no more, no less. A chip could make that flow easier. However, there aren't any chips going back to the player, and not everyone has leftover points. A better fit would be the Possibilities from Torg. Players go through them like water. There's even a precedent for giving them to other PCs. Permanent Link05 July 2005Finished Riddick for Xbox last night. Excellent game. It takes elements from plenty of other games, but uses the so that you feel you're there, that you're larger-than-life and yet you believe it. I started Splinter Cell (for PS2) the other day and it just didn't grab me the same way. They're both descended from Tomb Raider, but even the stealth in Rainbow Six 1 was more compelling.Permanent Link17 June 2005Continuing with Transhuman Space, I need to establish how memetics (which can upset players if done wrong) will be handled in play.“OK, you’re being attacked memetically. Define your level in European Pop Culture or Memetics and make a check. You, you and you don’t realize you’re being attacked. You didn’t take any level in Pop Culture, so you’re immune to this vector. You and you Roll base Will, the others roll at +4. You and you have to spend 20 Euros on the Faces InVid when it comes out. You critically failed…(writes something down). (Later…)Remember that meme you picked up? You have to vote for the Islamic party in elections today.”
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Secrets and Lies is a modern-day table-top role-playing game for ages 16 and up. There are no ghosts, pirates or ninjas. It's a game about relationships and feeding or beating your inner demons. It's set in a ficticious nightclub in Miami Beach called the Plumbago Lounge. |
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Last Modified on 10/14/08
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