In Video Games:
The Last of Us
After getting back from the week at "the happiest place on earth", I obviously needed to decompress from all the "fun". What better way than to shoot zombies in the head?
On the surface, The Last of Us is not a game I would ever play, as it is a combination of elements that I greatly dislike: shooters (yawn), zombies (overdone), linear storyline (bleck), post-apocalyptic (meh). But this game is just so beautiful. Even my wife, who is not a fan of any video games in general, had to comment on how impressive the graphics were. The lighting, the characters, the scenery...awesome.
The game-play is, overall, not too bad. My dislike of shooters was overcome by the game's good array of stealth and melee option (and nicely graphic melee combat). I'm up to about 8 hours of play and have used a gun maybe a dozen times, compared to the 100+ kills from sneaking up and strangling someone or stabbing them with a shiv or bashing their head in with a brick or a lead pipe. The addition of the "Clickers" (sound-sensitive fungus zombies) makes for a nice change as well, taking silence into account for stealth, rather than just the usual crouch behind a couch (though there is plenty of that too). It also seems to handle sight-lines relatively well, so that the "crouch behind a thing" method only works from a fairly long/low angle...if the bad-guys walk up close to the barrier, they will both see you, and probably shoot you in the head.
The story-line, which centers on an outbreak of a human-infecting strain of the Ophiocordyceps fungus is pretty good (for a zombie apocalypse story), at least in terms of the interaction and emotional tension between the two main characters. Plus the player character's "listen" ability (which lets you spot enemies through walls and hear conversations at a distance in sonar-like fashion) is sufficiently similar to the "Clickers" that it gives a nice feel of creepy inevitability/futility to the whole venture.
...note, I haven't finished the game yet, so if the dude does not turn into a Clicker at the end, don't tell me. I'm enjoying imagining his eventual demise...The Bookshelf:
Lots of time on planes this month means getting lots of reading done. A couple of recent reads have sparked some ideas...
The Dresden Files
Yeah, yeah, how have I not read these yet. I just plowed through the first five books: Storm Front, Fool Moon, Grave Peril, Summer Knight, and Death Masks. There is so much awesome to be had in Jim Butcher's series, but one thing really stands out in both its simplicity and its evocativeness. Potion making.
I've always been a fan of collecting ingredients for magic items, often compiling complicated lists of things to obtain with numerous plot hooks and moral quandaries when players express an interest in making a specific, custom item of their own devising.
The Dresden Files boils all potions down to a simple formula of eight parts: a liquid base, five ingredients to engage five physical senses, one to engage the mind, and one to engage the spirit. What's cool about this is that it adds a small level of predictability/structure on what is otherwise a very open, free-form system. Every item (let's not limit it to potions) has eight ingredients, in eight very broad categories, but these could be anything the DM or player imagine...
I like the elegance of it, and will definitely be using this formula the next time a player asks how to make their dream item...His Majesty's Dragon
I just started this book by Naomi Novik and am already hooked. Set during the Napoleonic Wars in what basically amounts to normal 18th century Earth...with dragons, the setting for His Majesty's Dragon just screams to be made into a game. In many ways it feels like something that might have come from GG hanging out with his wargaming contemporaries, injecting fire, acid, and poison-spitting dragons into famous Napoleonic naval engagements.
The grafting of fantasy elements onto a historical epic, with small doses of Trollope/Austin-esque English country life makes for a really compelling story so far. I greatly look forward to tearing through the series (which is apparently already up to 8 friggan books) and running a game (or three) using the setting.Expanded Petty Gods
Game books are hard to just sit down and read, but I would still recommend picking up a copy of Petty Gods: Revised & Expanded Edition. If you like a little weirdness in your games, or are a fan of very broad pantheons with lots of highly specific (but not very powerful) deities, then this is a great resource.
You also can't talk about the Expanded Petty Gods release, without talking about ORC, the Old-School Role-playing Community designation. ORC is one of the things that makes Expanded Petty Gods truly awesome as a book. It is a collaborative community effort, with all contributions made without compensation, and distributed free as a PDF and at cost in print. As a strong opponent of capitalism and for-profit enterprises in general, this kind of community driven effort to put out a free resource for the good of the contributing community is something I very strongly support.
Much thanks to Richard LeBlanc for putting this together (both the book and the ORC idea) and I very much look forward to seeing a great many more ORC publications in the future.
No new additions this round, as I've had a lot of time away from both gaming and my computer. That doesn't mean I didn't find anything interesting...
Beyond the Wall
I've always been a fan of stories that feature young shepherd-types who get shoved into adventures and come out as heroes (of which there are many). I've played around with the concept a lot in my games, often starting adventuring parties as class-less tabula-rasas with no exceptional abilities. Thus I was very happy when WrathofZombie started blogging about Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures. This looks like an awesome game (or even just an awesome character-creation system that could be tacked onto other d20-system games) focused on creating a party of local nothings -- childhood friends forced to deal with adventures greater than themselves.
At first glance it is like any other d20 game, but the character creation really stands out. Each character selects a "playbook" representing a specific country-bumpkin-turned-adventurer archetype (such as "Future Warlord", "Self-taught Mage", or "Reformed Bully"). Starting ability scores are determined not by dice rolls, but by your choice of archetype and a series of choices about your backstory (which may be determined randomly). Choices about such things as "What did your parents do in the village" or "How did you distinguish yourself as a child" add specific ability score bonuses and possibly bonus starting equipment or skills. The best part is that character creation is also collaborative party-creation. One question from every playbook involves a shared experience with another character. "The player on your right was there when it happened" and gains an ability score bonus from participating as well, which means that your choices impact the final stats of your friends, and vice-versa.
There are several books out for it now, a few of which are available for free on DriveThru RPG. In addition, WrathofZombie has made a number of additional playbooks (I'm particularly fond of The Cursed) and also ported some Pathfinder spells to the system. Smirogan at Department V has also created a nice guide for building playbooks. And, of course, there is a G+ Community.
This is definitely getting busted out for the next game I run.Regarding Royalty
Strangely monarchal/feudal systems of government do not appear very often in my games, despite much of them being staunchly medieval. My games tend towards a post-plague 14th-century vibe, when councils of guilds and merchants took over most of the cities after the mass-die-offs weakened the noble castes and their military dominance. However, discussion of the role and nature of monarchies as dominated a good chunk of the game-blog-world over the last month: Emily wrote about the pros and cons of primogeniture versus undeath. I've always been a fan of the latter, for, as Maester Kinos said, "Enlightened rule by the dead is preferable to the misguided failures of the living." Jeff talked about the length of reins of the kings of England (and how to synthesize a dynastic line in-game). And Zak put it all together with discussion about how to make dynastic depth gamable.
Maybe I'll actually try this, maybe not, but if I find a story reason to plunge into monarchal dynastic politics, it's nice to know that someone (or many someones) else out there has started doing some of the heavy lifting of putting some dice to it.
What I've Been Playing:
As stated before, I've done very little gaming this past month, but very little is not none. Here is the current state of the many ongoing Ruins of Adventure campaigns.
Good Intentions:
My Sunday group finally got a name, mostly because some of the party keeps insisting that they are good-aligned despite throwing in with Devils and carving out a barony in Hell. After several (poorly documented) sessions of working with the forces of Hell and playing with powerful artifacts and magic beyond their ken, the party finally returned to the material plane to find Phlan in flames. At this point, they are chronologically well ahead of many of the groups and seeing (and heavily influencing) some of the end-game that I have planned for the campaign as a whole. They've (at least partially) achieved many of their stated individual and party goals, and are gearing up for a major showdown once everyone is back from vacations and ready to dive in again.The Amazons:
Firmly ensconced as the do-gooder counterparts to the devil-dealing Sunday party, the Amazons have officially wrapped up their plot-line. Last session saw the party sail to the far south to break up a wedding and get Princess back in the party. Time-wise they are caught up with the Good Intentions party, whom they have been hunting for some time and who are finally where they can be found.
Thus, the Amazons are officially done. The party has handed over their character sheets with instructions for them to be used to kill the other party. Thus, that big showdown I just mentioned, next time the Sunday group meets they will be throwing down with a complete, equally-leveled adventuring party that intends to kill them. Sadly schedules do not allow for this to be actual mass PvP, so instead I will be botting the Amazons (which admittedly reduces their chances of success, though they are really only truly bent on killing one member of the other party).Play-by-Email:
With the off-time this past month I have spun up a second play-by-post game, this one using a G+ thread as the primary medium. It's an oddly mis-matched party, and thus should be a lot of fun, although it's been a slow start...
You should expect to see the first log from that game on here in the next month.
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