Played more Deus Ex, though curiously that has not really been what’s been eating my time. I’ve really grown to appreciate it’s design of creating multiple paths to success, and what’s most interesting to me is that those paths remains mostly obscured unless you’re the kind of player who cheerfully spends time poking into every […]
Blog
The Clickable Map
Ok, so this is the overland map for the video game, Dragon Age:As you might expect, you click on one of the little squares to go there. The images in the icons have meanings (town, dungeon and so on – that one in the upper right is “make camp”) but the base idea is pretty […]
Deus Ex-ing it up
Played some Deus Ex: Human Revolution this weekend. Startlingly fun game, especially noting that I’ve never played the original or the (badly panned) sequel. Very interestign game to look at in terms of its relationship with tabletop for two reasons, one abstract one one nerdishly specific. Thr abstract one is something that’s held up as […]
Reading Fudge Dice
It should come as no surprise that I’m quite fond of fudge dice, and I’ve put a lot of thought into the different things that can be done with their three outcomes. I’ve shifted things on several different axes, and I’ve failed as often as I’ve succeeded, but it’s a fun area to play in. […]
PAX – More Bitter Envy
I am not at PAX, nor am I at PAX dev. This kind of sucks. I mean, it sucks a little bit less than not being at Gencon because it’s at least _possible_ for me to go the Gencon without punching a huge hole in my life, but all the same? Sucks. In fairness, much […]
What Else Compels are Good For
One of the curious issues I have with Aspects these days is that I almost never compel them. Not because I don’t bring their negative implications into play, but because my players are sufficiently enthusiastic about playing up the negative side themselves that I don’t even need to bother. It’s a good problem to have. […]
A Noun is a Person Place or Thing
I love the Discworld novels. They’re fantastic, and I enjoy the heck out of them, but like many fans I am partial to a particular subset of them. In my case, I’m a huge fan of the City Watch books. Nothing else comes close (except perhaps the Moist von Lipwig stuff, which I’m willing to […]
4 on 1
I had the unexpected pleasure of playing in a first edition AD&D game this past weekend. It was a long-standing game that my brother in law participates in, and they had an opening. This was pretty much the classic AD&D game in just about every way imaginable. They’d looked at other editions, played a little […]
Zooming In On Neverwinter
There is a writing technique that is commonly used when writing about a physical thing. The author starts from a very high level view, sketching a brief picture of the broader context, then steadily zooms in on the scene until focus is at the level of whatever’s being written about. Lots of novels start out […]
Jumping Turtles
I’ve been playing Bastion lately, and enjoying it very much. It’s a very pretty Xbox game with some reasonably fun gameplay and fantastic music and visuals, but what’s been keeping me hooked is the story it’s telling. Some of this is from interesting gimmicks, like a narrator who is very responsive to events in play, […]