Christmas got you down? Your todo-list won't get shorter? Rest your eyes for half an hour:
via seanbaby
Friday, December 20, 2013
Friday, December 6, 2013
Friday, November 29, 2013
This map is not new
In fact, it is quite old. It has aged beautifully during the last few years, taking on that special patina that is difficult to simulate. Some locations, which only have been discovered during the preceding years, have been added. Enjoy the newly fotographed, well-worn worldmap in the scorched earth materials post!
On a related note: Everybody loves inventory. Nobody dare to tell me otherwise. Innawoods is a website that makes tracking your post-apocalyptic gear fun and easy. Alas, the site has been dormant for some time, so, while many nice doodads can be added to your backpack from the "others" category, and you can burden your character with dozens of jars of pickled olives, and it is finally possible to put a rifle-sized scope on your favorite revolver, this is possibly as good as it's going to get.
But then, that site is hardly the only one the drop the ball for few months, is it?
On a related note: Everybody loves inventory. Nobody dare to tell me otherwise. Innawoods is a website that makes tracking your post-apocalyptic gear fun and easy. Alas, the site has been dormant for some time, so, while many nice doodads can be added to your backpack from the "others" category, and you can burden your character with dozens of jars of pickled olives, and it is finally possible to put a rifle-sized scope on your favorite revolver, this is possibly as good as it's going to get.
But then, that site is hardly the only one the drop the ball for few months, is it?
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Five Rules
If you need a new gun, or new guns, or ammo to feed your guns, Five Rules is a good place to be. It might be a bit out of the way, though. An addition to the Scorched Earth materials post, in German.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Climate does its thing
Climate is strange today. Normally, these would be the days for serious indoor activities, the three-day Feast of the Shut-In: I got some modular stuff from eBay just for the occasion, it's time to construct a high-ranking member of the Adeptus Mechanicus. But now climate sits on the couch, it has a strangely sunny disposition and the mood just is not right. "Everything ok?" I ask climate. Climate fidgets and beams at me. Its eyes are all over the place. I want to say something, but I keep my mouth shut. We all have heard the stories: Climate has turned volatile. It misses whole days on the job, and when it finally turns up, its frantic over-zeal does more harm than good. Climate is no longer dependable. Climate is having a difficult time right now, it is turning or turned manic-depressive, that's what people say who know it really well. There are other stories, darker ones. Climate was involved in a home invasion. Climate has had so many "unfortunate accidents" recently its insurance premium went up, up, up. Some say that, one of these days, climate is going to kill somebody.
Climate gives me a warm smile. "Not to your liking?" "Nah, it's cool." I say. Climate's face turns clouded at once. I really hope I didn't say something wrong.
Climate gives me a warm smile. "Not to your liking?" "Nah, it's cool." I say. Climate's face turns clouded at once. I really hope I didn't say something wrong.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Friday, December 21, 2012
The world ends today
Well, not this one. Don't be daft. But please keep in mind that there are up to 500 billion galaxies out there, each of which is host to billions of stars. That makes for a high number of potential civilizations that have to roll against sudden existence failure each and every day. Somebody should crunch some numbers to find out the odds, but I have a feeling that on this day, at least one inhabited planet in this universe faces a catastrophic meteoric impact, catastrophic solar flares, polar shift, reversed polar shift, sudden onset ice age, zombie pandemic, rise of the machines, roving black hole, grey goo, green goo, red goo, red matter, super volcanoes, terminal ennui, doomsday device demonstration, nuclear slugfest or the irritation of the local godlike entities.
If you had this planet's demise in mind, it might be necessary to become a bit more proactive. Thank God there's an introductory primer.
If you had this planet's demise in mind, it might be necessary to become a bit more proactive. Thank God there's an introductory primer.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Far Cry 3
Far Cry 3 is my ideal Christmas game, because this time of the year, I fantasize a lot about stabbing people in the neck. Far Cry 3 delivers in the neck stabbing department, and it has all the other markings of a great game, but its flaws reduce the final score noticeably
Island helladise
Far Cry is as sandboxy as it gets. You get a huge tropical island to play with, and it is filled with pirates and tigers. The rest of the fauna is equally impressive. There are mountains and streams (full of pirates), lots of palms, ancient temples and Japanese bunkers (which are also full of pirates). But everything comes across as samey-same after a while. There are only a few distinctive landmarks which give you a sense of place. Other sandbox games give you strong visual cues were you are, but here, it all drowns in the same jungle green, so you are going around at high speeds, but you never have the feeling of arriving at a special place.
Nonetheless, Rook Island is beautifully realized, breathing a heavy mixture of undiscovered island paradise and third world hellhole: the rusty cars, the dwellings right between upscale alternative tourist destination and leper colony, and many, many micro-junkyards between the palms. And AK-47s for everyone. Ubisoft really can do tropical islands. It's just not very variable and comes across a bit bland.
Unreliable narrator
This game has a strangely weak and somewhat offensive plot. You are Jason, a douchy American tourist. You and your douchy friends went to this unspoiled island, were a lesson in skydiving suddenly became an exercise in surprise adoption (kidnapping is such a harsh word). You got away, the nice (black) islanders crowned you their warrior king just because, and you are off fighting (black) pirates and freeing your friends.
"Colonialist subtext" is a rather mild word for what appears to be happening here. So you are the great white dope who has to set things right? And it involves shooting so many black guys that the whole American police force shakes with impotent envy? There have been attempts to color the whole experience as the view of an unreliable narrator, i.e. that the protagonist is subverting or hiding the "objective truth" of the narrative from the recipient, making the whole game a delicious puzzle, as we try to ferret out what Jason really did and why. The problem is: I don't buy it.
This is mainly a problem of the medium. A first person shooter offers a strangely unmediated access to the narrative, even more so then a first person narrator in a novel. The medium is also based upon a contract between the player and the game: You as the player are directly able to influence the world according to the rules of the game. These rules might be changed, and control might be yanked away from you for short periods of time (e.g. cut scenes), but basically you are able to do stuff, and your actions have direct consequences which are "real" in the game.
Thus it is easily possible to posit an unreliable first person narrator in a novel who boasts about liberating this island paradise from pirates while still leaving enough markers to appear unreliable, it appears far more difficult in the medium of the FPS.
Secondly, Jason lives through various hallucinatory experiences which are clearly marked as such. While his normal stay on the island is depicted in the highly realistic and physical glory that a high-end PC can render, the dream sequences stand out as such - strange colors, milky vistas, dreamlike visions, gravity twists and so on. This is also true for their beginnings and their ends: Thus, after the dream sequences, we are explicitly put back into the "normal" reality of the game. This makes it more difficult to ascertain a third, additional level, where Jason experiences Rook Island differently from "subjective reality" or where he makes up a reality of his own.
There are a lot of nice small touches which could elevate the narrative from FPS boiler plate, but some of them fall flat. Jason starts out as a whingy bro with a bro haircut: In the starting mission he is a bag of nerves and close to a breakdown because of all the violence, but the game mechanics undercut a slow evolution from nervous wreck to apex predator. The whinginess returns in some of the later cutscenes, but it feels false then, because I have been killing bears with rocket launchers for hours when that cutscene arrives.
But as said before, some subversive touches remain: Glimpses in Jason's recent past show some unsettling potential for violence and create a very unflattering image of white tourists in the Far East. The "bad" ending is apt to twist the whole perception of Jason's role on the island and the islanders who made him "king", but many players won't get that far, or will choose differently. The scavenger hunt for Japanese war letters, the communications of a drug ring and the tribal relics insinuate that Rook Island has always been a place of violence, and replacing all your starting gear with the pelts of all the animals you have slain is nicely atavistic. On this note: I think I have driven the leopard past extinction into reality deletion. I have shot so many of the big cats. I am sorry. Speaking of which:
Fun parts
Hijacking a patrol boat, going around the whole island and peppering every pirate stronghold with the turret machine gun. Running a machete-wielding pirate over with a quad bike, after the seventeenth attempt. Becoming neck-stabbing king of stabneck mountain. Running over bull sharks with a jet ski. Shooting a bear with a RPG-7. Driving a two-ton truck off a cliff. Burning down a football field of ganja plants and inhaling the fumes. Cleaning out one pirate outpost all stealthy-like, the next from really afar, and the third one by just walking up and hosing it down. Note: You can do nearly all this without entering into the plot - a real strength of the game.
Little stories
The effects of the ecosystem and the sandbox: So I drive up to river where I see a small, cozy hut and a fence between me and the river. One of the nice islander stands at the river, partly hidden by the fence. I get out of the car to say hello and look at the hut, when the islander suddenly says "ack!" and disappears behind the fence. I run up to the fence, look down on the river and see a fat crocodile. "So that's where the islander went" I think, but then there is no more fence and my screen is full of crocodile jaw. And that was the first time I died.
Or: I am busy crafting healing drugs by the road (you take so many drugs in this game) when a jeep full of pirates rolls up. They get out, but then two cassowaries join the party and peck the shit out of them. After that, I shoot the cassowaries and turn them into a nice new wallet matching my leopard leather case for all the needles I've been using. Other players will have completely different stories to tell.
Mandatory instafail stealth mission
This game has it. One full point automatically deducted.
Vaas Montenegro
My favority madman in gaming right now. Excellent voiceacting, this guy really steals the show every time he turns up. I would like to have seen more of him. The next deathdealer hordeboss is going to be Vaas, with some new grotty paint on.
4 of 5 stabbed necks, -1 for mandatory instafail stealth mission, for an effective score of 3
Island helladise
Far Cry is as sandboxy as it gets. You get a huge tropical island to play with, and it is filled with pirates and tigers. The rest of the fauna is equally impressive. There are mountains and streams (full of pirates), lots of palms, ancient temples and Japanese bunkers (which are also full of pirates). But everything comes across as samey-same after a while. There are only a few distinctive landmarks which give you a sense of place. Other sandbox games give you strong visual cues were you are, but here, it all drowns in the same jungle green, so you are going around at high speeds, but you never have the feeling of arriving at a special place.
Nonetheless, Rook Island is beautifully realized, breathing a heavy mixture of undiscovered island paradise and third world hellhole: the rusty cars, the dwellings right between upscale alternative tourist destination and leper colony, and many, many micro-junkyards between the palms. And AK-47s for everyone. Ubisoft really can do tropical islands. It's just not very variable and comes across a bit bland.
Unreliable narrator
This game has a strangely weak and somewhat offensive plot. You are Jason, a douchy American tourist. You and your douchy friends went to this unspoiled island, were a lesson in skydiving suddenly became an exercise in surprise adoption (kidnapping is such a harsh word). You got away, the nice (black) islanders crowned you their warrior king just because, and you are off fighting (black) pirates and freeing your friends.
"Colonialist subtext" is a rather mild word for what appears to be happening here. So you are the great white dope who has to set things right? And it involves shooting so many black guys that the whole American police force shakes with impotent envy? There have been attempts to color the whole experience as the view of an unreliable narrator, i.e. that the protagonist is subverting or hiding the "objective truth" of the narrative from the recipient, making the whole game a delicious puzzle, as we try to ferret out what Jason really did and why. The problem is: I don't buy it.
This is mainly a problem of the medium. A first person shooter offers a strangely unmediated access to the narrative, even more so then a first person narrator in a novel. The medium is also based upon a contract between the player and the game: You as the player are directly able to influence the world according to the rules of the game. These rules might be changed, and control might be yanked away from you for short periods of time (e.g. cut scenes), but basically you are able to do stuff, and your actions have direct consequences which are "real" in the game.
Thus it is easily possible to posit an unreliable first person narrator in a novel who boasts about liberating this island paradise from pirates while still leaving enough markers to appear unreliable, it appears far more difficult in the medium of the FPS.
Secondly, Jason lives through various hallucinatory experiences which are clearly marked as such. While his normal stay on the island is depicted in the highly realistic and physical glory that a high-end PC can render, the dream sequences stand out as such - strange colors, milky vistas, dreamlike visions, gravity twists and so on. This is also true for their beginnings and their ends: Thus, after the dream sequences, we are explicitly put back into the "normal" reality of the game. This makes it more difficult to ascertain a third, additional level, where Jason experiences Rook Island differently from "subjective reality" or where he makes up a reality of his own.
There are a lot of nice small touches which could elevate the narrative from FPS boiler plate, but some of them fall flat. Jason starts out as a whingy bro with a bro haircut: In the starting mission he is a bag of nerves and close to a breakdown because of all the violence, but the game mechanics undercut a slow evolution from nervous wreck to apex predator. The whinginess returns in some of the later cutscenes, but it feels false then, because I have been killing bears with rocket launchers for hours when that cutscene arrives.
But as said before, some subversive touches remain: Glimpses in Jason's recent past show some unsettling potential for violence and create a very unflattering image of white tourists in the Far East. The "bad" ending is apt to twist the whole perception of Jason's role on the island and the islanders who made him "king", but many players won't get that far, or will choose differently. The scavenger hunt for Japanese war letters, the communications of a drug ring and the tribal relics insinuate that Rook Island has always been a place of violence, and replacing all your starting gear with the pelts of all the animals you have slain is nicely atavistic. On this note: I think I have driven the leopard past extinction into reality deletion. I have shot so many of the big cats. I am sorry. Speaking of which:
Fun parts
Hijacking a patrol boat, going around the whole island and peppering every pirate stronghold with the turret machine gun. Running a machete-wielding pirate over with a quad bike, after the seventeenth attempt. Becoming neck-stabbing king of stabneck mountain. Running over bull sharks with a jet ski. Shooting a bear with a RPG-7. Driving a two-ton truck off a cliff. Burning down a football field of ganja plants and inhaling the fumes. Cleaning out one pirate outpost all stealthy-like, the next from really afar, and the third one by just walking up and hosing it down. Note: You can do nearly all this without entering into the plot - a real strength of the game.
Little stories
The effects of the ecosystem and the sandbox: So I drive up to river where I see a small, cozy hut and a fence between me and the river. One of the nice islander stands at the river, partly hidden by the fence. I get out of the car to say hello and look at the hut, when the islander suddenly says "ack!" and disappears behind the fence. I run up to the fence, look down on the river and see a fat crocodile. "So that's where the islander went" I think, but then there is no more fence and my screen is full of crocodile jaw. And that was the first time I died.
Or: I am busy crafting healing drugs by the road (you take so many drugs in this game) when a jeep full of pirates rolls up. They get out, but then two cassowaries join the party and peck the shit out of them. After that, I shoot the cassowaries and turn them into a nice new wallet matching my leopard leather case for all the needles I've been using. Other players will have completely different stories to tell.
Mandatory instafail stealth mission
This game has it. One full point automatically deducted.
Vaas Montenegro
My favority madman in gaming right now. Excellent voiceacting, this guy really steals the show every time he turns up. I would like to have seen more of him. The next deathdealer hordeboss is going to be Vaas, with some new grotty paint on.
4 of 5 stabbed necks, -1 for mandatory instafail stealth mission, for an effective score of 3
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Peter Jackson: The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey
The good stuff first:
- It is better than I anticipated. Well, I spent the last couple of weeks lowering my expectations, but still.
- There is a bit of Jar Jar Binks around, but it is spread thinly across many figures, so it never got on my nerves. Although some scenes got pretty close.
- Gandalf levelled up and can call in air strikes now.
Some gripes to get out of the way:
- Smaug shows a bit of leg, and that's it. That was a bit disappointing.
- As an old GURPS-afficionado, I hated how the old grand dame Physics and her lapdog Falling Damage was treated
All in all, it was a very enjoyable experience. Maybe I was just in the right mood, but the humor found the right mark with me. Strangely, the scenes I dreaded most (the dwarfes' home invasion of Bilbo and everything with Gollum) came across really well.
Bilbo comes across as a dignified bourgeois in over his head, but still with a bit of spine. While he ends up as a troll's hanky, he never loses his poise, and he is much more watchable than Frodo, who I wanted to smack right in the quivvering lips for two long, long movies. Also, apart from three or four exceptions, I wasn't able to keep the dwarfs apart. If there only was a chart or something.
It is very different viewing compared to the old LOTR-films. Those hat some kind of grimy patina which became a hallmark of them. Strangely, the Hobbit looks like a high-end TV production, like Game of Thrones, only with less tits and more midgets, or a documentary. Yesterday, I learned that Jackson used 48 images per second than the usual 24: This somehow explains the strange cleanliness of the sets and the docudrama flair. Seems that this technical gamble didn't pay off. Also, 3D - next time, I wouldn't bother.
The movie shifts between kitchen sink-drama and grand, hectic CGI-vistas, and strangely, I enjoyed those small scenes more than the big, noisy ones.
3.5 (bordering on 4) of 5 of goblinoid living SMS messages
- It is better than I anticipated. Well, I spent the last couple of weeks lowering my expectations, but still.
- There is a bit of Jar Jar Binks around, but it is spread thinly across many figures, so it never got on my nerves. Although some scenes got pretty close.
- Gandalf levelled up and can call in air strikes now.
Some gripes to get out of the way:
- Smaug shows a bit of leg, and that's it. That was a bit disappointing.
- As an old GURPS-afficionado, I hated how the old grand dame Physics and her lapdog Falling Damage was treated
All in all, it was a very enjoyable experience. Maybe I was just in the right mood, but the humor found the right mark with me. Strangely, the scenes I dreaded most (the dwarfes' home invasion of Bilbo and everything with Gollum) came across really well.
Bilbo comes across as a dignified bourgeois in over his head, but still with a bit of spine. While he ends up as a troll's hanky, he never loses his poise, and he is much more watchable than Frodo, who I wanted to smack right in the quivvering lips for two long, long movies. Also, apart from three or four exceptions, I wasn't able to keep the dwarfs apart. If there only was a chart or something.
It is very different viewing compared to the old LOTR-films. Those hat some kind of grimy patina which became a hallmark of them. Strangely, the Hobbit looks like a high-end TV production, like Game of Thrones, only with less tits and more midgets, or a documentary. Yesterday, I learned that Jackson used 48 images per second than the usual 24: This somehow explains the strange cleanliness of the sets and the docudrama flair. Seems that this technical gamble didn't pay off. Also, 3D - next time, I wouldn't bother.
The movie shifts between kitchen sink-drama and grand, hectic CGI-vistas, and strangely, I enjoyed those small scenes more than the big, noisy ones.
3.5 (bordering on 4) of 5 of goblinoid living SMS messages
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Blessing
Blessing: A nice town just down the Vever from Holy Flame City. Enjoy all the amenities of the big city without the usual hassle, even if you are a wanted man. An addition to the scorched earth material post, in German.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Sam Mendes: Skyfall
Spoilers, so many spoilers.
This is the movie you have been waiting for. Go see it, even if you are not into Bond - this is a great action movie on its own merits, while it ticks away at a lot of Bond-boxes.
Wonder slackjawed at the amazing pictures, the amazing, amazing pictures. Javier Bardem plays the Joker filtered via Bobby Peru: This alone brought tears of joy to my eyes. Learn important stuff about small island ecologies. See Moneypenny shoot Bond off a train. Marvel at our crocodile pit. Dame Judi Dench becomes the best Bond girl of them all. See the Joker pull off one jokeresque plan after another, including the mandatory "I wanted to be caught" scheme and the all-new subway train to the face. The Aston Martin comes out of the garage, only to be blown to bits by the chopper from Apocalypse Now. Voldemort now is the chief of the double-0 section. I wasn't kidding about those spoilers, it's the kind of state of mind this movie inducts in reprobates like me. Sorry. But the movie is still great after a second viewing, so nothing of value was lost.
Hacking in movies still has to take place in a haze of technobabble, but now everyone uses a PC, so it's no longer represented by flashing the word "HACKING" on the screen, but by convulsing nets and numbers, while someone blathers on about "self-obfuscating code". The IT security thug to my left couldn't hide his merriment at all the beautiful nonsense on display. But it's still nice to look at.
Monday, I'm buying two VAIO notebooks.
Five of five rats in a barrel
This is the movie you have been waiting for. Go see it, even if you are not into Bond - this is a great action movie on its own merits, while it ticks away at a lot of Bond-boxes.
Wonder slackjawed at the amazing pictures, the amazing, amazing pictures. Javier Bardem plays the Joker filtered via Bobby Peru: This alone brought tears of joy to my eyes. Learn important stuff about small island ecologies. See Moneypenny shoot Bond off a train. Marvel at our crocodile pit. Dame Judi Dench becomes the best Bond girl of them all. See the Joker pull off one jokeresque plan after another, including the mandatory "I wanted to be caught" scheme and the all-new subway train to the face. The Aston Martin comes out of the garage, only to be blown to bits by the chopper from Apocalypse Now. Voldemort now is the chief of the double-0 section. I wasn't kidding about those spoilers, it's the kind of state of mind this movie inducts in reprobates like me. Sorry. But the movie is still great after a second viewing, so nothing of value was lost.
Hacking in movies still has to take place in a haze of technobabble, but now everyone uses a PC, so it's no longer represented by flashing the word "HACKING" on the screen, but by convulsing nets and numbers, while someone blathers on about "self-obfuscating code". The IT security thug to my left couldn't hide his merriment at all the beautiful nonsense on display. But it's still nice to look at.
Monday, I'm buying two VAIO notebooks.
Five of five rats in a barrel
Monday, October 29, 2012
Monday, October 22, 2012
„I’m still unconscious, right?“
Wait, the fucker sits on my chest? And I don’t get to roll?
This is a
question you will never hear in real life, just like the sentence „you are
still asleep“. You hear them all the time at the gaming table.
Basically,
there are only two ways to deal with this.
Players of
sleeping or unconscious characters are sent out of the room. This takes some time, and you need a space to
store these players. Maybe they can do the dishes or check the barricades for
midgets. But they might get the feeling they miss out on the action (especially
when the checked out during a tense fight). It smacks of rudeness to send a
player out of the room just because he failed a health-check. It may even be
perceived as a punishment: Tommy could not keep his raconteur-assassin in the
fight, so he is sent out of the clubhouse, while we are having fun, fun, fun.
So, this is mostly not the way it is done: Players are only sent out when
something momentous happens in their absence, or there are individual prophetic
dreams, or the thief is up to something very much, like stealing the
distributor cap to the party’s car. Most gamemasters in “grown-up” groups trust
their players to differentiate between the knowledge of their characters, and
their own knowledge. So everyone gets to sit at the table, even if only one
character is awake. This is much more practical, and most gaming groups I know
handle it this way. But there are reasons to go another route.
The voice
of the powerless (is fucking annoying)
Players are
just human (dissect one, if you don’t believe me). In a tense situation, they
will want to do something, even if they can’t. Because of their PC’s heavy
skull trauma or exotic poisoning. Often
it is the deadest PC who comes up with the best ideas, because he is the only
one at the table who can take a step back and look at the situation.
Well-behaved players will keep those ideas to themselves, only to brag about
them weakly after the game, but sometimes it’s just too tempting to share, and
just as the party is going to do something amusingly stupid, a disembodied
voice of reason pulls them back. Shut up the nagging by sending the players out
of the room when their characters keel over.
Discipline
is enforced by continuous physical presence of the enforcer
“While you
are sleeping, I steal your stuff.” You don’t say that, it sounds crazy.
It’s easier
to steal, manipulate and be an amusing jerk when you don’t have to look at the
other players’ faces while you are going about your nefarious business. It seems
like the little interior policeman can only do so much without outside help.
There is also less interference with sudden declarations that certain items are
of course firmly tied down, used as
pillows or transported in a secret pouch cut into the inside of the character’s
cheek: just you and the game master coming to a gentleman’s agreement that
someone has a brand new full-body tattoo and a lot less silver in his purse. In
any case it’s more fun to throw around accusations when you don’t know the
culprit (like, for real), and it makes for a real surprise when the paladin is
outed as a kleptomaniac and tattoomancer.
Spoiling
the surprise
If players
are only sent out when some momentous occasion is due during their PCs’
absence, you create a heavy sense of foreshadowing, if you want to or not. It’s like when FedEx delivers big cages to
your house in late December, and you just know that you’ll be fed to alligators
for Christmas and you’ll have to make a big show of being surprised/ terrified.
Now imagine if big, gnarly cages were coming in all the time: After a week or
two of non-stop terror, a sense of false security would set in, and then, bam,
it’s the alligators.
Like in
children-raising, rules and predictability (and early exposure to j-horror
films) are of the essence. Make it a habit to send players out of the room for
certain, codified circumstances. It helps if you have a large man cave with
lots of other diversions or you might tell them to get their character sheets
up to date while their PCs are bleeding out – anything to keep hope alive. Then,
a few sessions in, a player wises up and makes most of the opportunity. And
from that moment on, simple sleep is to be feared. Still, it’s a lot of
interruptions. Atmosphere might suffer.
What about
little notes?
Or SMS? Or
interpretive dances behind the other players’ backs? This is very difficult to
do in a subtle way, at least for me; I took a few levels in klutz (we get killer
talents later on). So most players see the little paper packets going around,
and most of them don’t think drugs, but “Steve
is trying to fuck us again.” Maybe if you make it a habit as a game master to
pass around lots of empty notes you can drown the signal in noise, but this
appears as a lot of work, and also spoils atmosphere.
I think you
should send players out, but use it as a precise tool to set or shift the tone
of a campaign:
- Always out: harsh realism in any genre, Illuminati, spying in the Cold War mode, lots of backstabbing, Paranoia. Feels excessive to me
- Out quite often: according to fixed rules which are common knowledge. So it could be the rule that a split party is always, and I mean it, handled apart, even if they are only gone for five minutes to check the perimeter. Or you’re always away from the table when your PC is asleep and some other PC is on watch, doing whatever. Or you, as the GM pull people arbitrarily outside, and handle the thing just like a surprise employee appraisal – “Where do you see your barbarian in five years? Do you think your clan handled the yeti-situation well? Is there anybody you would rather see as first shield carrier than Thorgrund Eisgrund?” Nothing might come of it, but the more entrepreneurial of your gamers will use the opportunity to fuck over the other guy while garnering a nice extra bonus.
- The Golden Mean. The Correct Way of Doing Things. How The Secret Masters Do RPGs.
- Almost always in: surprises coming from other party members are not that important, twists are visible for miles and miles: high fantasy – “Look, Steve had a prophetic dream again which he won’t share with us.”
- Always in: As above, but your group actively hates party conflicts (they also might have trust issues), or you play a campaign where all characters are part of a hive mind or the various personalities inhabiting a schizophrenic’s body.
That last one sounds like fun.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Dishonored
The mark of a good game? Simple - shutting down the computer at five in the morning. I like Dishonored very much, and there are only minor quibbles. You should try it. Spoilers abound.
The Dickensian aspect
You play Corvo, a supernatural assassin, in this first person stealth game/ shooter. Your playground is the city of Dunwall: Imagine two-thirds Victorian London and one third Blitz era London, add a large spoon of leper colony and garnish with steampunk walkers. Corvo is in service of a conspiracy hunting the conspirators who killed the Empress, so that they can be brought to justice or crown the Empress' daughter, as the case may be. There is also a plague, the whale oil powering the trains and walkers is running out, and premonitions of capital-D-doom are everywhere. If you think this will end well, you are as naive as Corvo, a professional assassin who will suck down any drink handed to him.
The city of Dunwall is a delight to explore. While this is not a sandbox game, the single missions take place in sprawling levels which make the most of Corvo's ability to jump nearly everywhere, and every bit of location oozes atmosphere. The missions function as a kind of Gin Lane for single aspects of an imperial metropolis in final decay. So one of the first missions leads you into a large, bureaucratic institution, a nice mix between the Vatican and the Reichssicherheitshauptamt. The artwork is spot on, as in all levels, creating a strong quasi-Victorian flair, with lots of brilliant details bringing the world to life, although every household seems to have the same two-by-four meter oil painting of the regent. As this is a stealth game, you get to eavesdrop and watch little scenes playing out between religious fanatics, and after you ganked them, you get to read their correspondence. Leaving the level, you have been the witness to some splendid world building, and each of the "topic" levels enforces this effect - at the end, I really thought I "knew" the society of Dunwall. There are lots of tantalizing hints about why Dunwall is in dire straits, although these are not expressly explored, and their moral (The Empire kills magic whales to power their war machines) is quite heavy handed. Regrettably, the grand finale of the game does not use this foundation, leaving you in an impressive location that, regrettably, seems quite divorced from Dunwall.
I think this is the greatest strength of Dishonored - Dunwall sure leaves an impression, on par with Rapture, and that is saying something.
The story itself is not that strong, with a big honking twist visible even behind the horizon.
Now you see me, now you don't
Dishonored is a stealth game, and normally I am not great fan of those, especially if you instafail a mission if a single guard notices you. If a stealth game is unforgiving, I unforgive right back. The stealth-aspect is very strong here, but there are always many different approaches available to you. This is not only true for the possible ways to reach a target, but also for the level of violence you want to employ. The levels are riddled with rooftops, canals and secret approaches: The careful examination a plaza from a rooftop may uncover surprising ways to get into the arch overseer's office, and all the while you get to listen to small dialogues, and the insidious artwork drips into you brain...And even if you fail the stealth, you can mostly fight your way free. A mission might become more challenging after an alarm, but if you really hate nosy guards, there is nothing here to keep you from slaughtering them all.
And there are many many ways of slaughter. Dishonored is basically like Bioshock, in that you have various weapons and powers, but here truly all powers have their uses in that you can build your style of play around them. If you liked the mechanics of Bioshock, you will feel right at home. You even heal by gulping down food, like potted whale meat The weapons and magic powers (not gained from gene-tonics, but awarded by the benevolent Prince of Darkness, who has taken a liking to Corvo) are steeped black magic or steampunk, and although I have a bit of a dislike for this genre, playing around with the various tools handed to you is great fun.
Consequences, schmonsequences
And there is a moral choice system. There are two endings based on how much of the Dunwall police force you cut to ribbons. One is all sweetness and light (hard to believe in a city that just lost a third of its population to the plague), the other is rather dark, and, concerning the endings, there is nothing in between. This is a bit weak. But the missions also change a bit with regard to your previous exploits. If you kill with gay abandon, the street with fill with voracious rat swarms, aggressive plague victims (basically zombies) will be everywhere and City Watch will step up security. This not only changes the tone of the game, but also adapts the missions to your play style. An aggressive player will have that much more enemies to play with, while a stealthy player can go for a playthrough without a single character killed (although this defeats the purpose in my opinion, I mean, you get all these nice toys, and you can stick a razor wire mine to a guy while you stopped time, so that he explodes into bloody chunks when time starts up again and you are twenty feet off on a rooftop, scratching your chin and going hmmm...why would you want to miss out on that?). I like it it that even the weepers, the half-zombified victims of the plague, are integrated into the moral choice system. The game counts them as people, and if you want a happy Dunwall, then you should too.
Too short
this game is.
I really like Bioshock
Yes, I do.
Four and a half tins of Pratchett's Jellied Eels
The Dickensian aspect
You play Corvo, a supernatural assassin, in this first person stealth game/ shooter. Your playground is the city of Dunwall: Imagine two-thirds Victorian London and one third Blitz era London, add a large spoon of leper colony and garnish with steampunk walkers. Corvo is in service of a conspiracy hunting the conspirators who killed the Empress, so that they can be brought to justice or crown the Empress' daughter, as the case may be. There is also a plague, the whale oil powering the trains and walkers is running out, and premonitions of capital-D-doom are everywhere. If you think this will end well, you are as naive as Corvo, a professional assassin who will suck down any drink handed to him.
The city of Dunwall is a delight to explore. While this is not a sandbox game, the single missions take place in sprawling levels which make the most of Corvo's ability to jump nearly everywhere, and every bit of location oozes atmosphere. The missions function as a kind of Gin Lane for single aspects of an imperial metropolis in final decay. So one of the first missions leads you into a large, bureaucratic institution, a nice mix between the Vatican and the Reichssicherheitshauptamt. The artwork is spot on, as in all levels, creating a strong quasi-Victorian flair, with lots of brilliant details bringing the world to life, although every household seems to have the same two-by-four meter oil painting of the regent. As this is a stealth game, you get to eavesdrop and watch little scenes playing out between religious fanatics, and after you ganked them, you get to read their correspondence. Leaving the level, you have been the witness to some splendid world building, and each of the "topic" levels enforces this effect - at the end, I really thought I "knew" the society of Dunwall. There are lots of tantalizing hints about why Dunwall is in dire straits, although these are not expressly explored, and their moral (The Empire kills magic whales to power their war machines) is quite heavy handed. Regrettably, the grand finale of the game does not use this foundation, leaving you in an impressive location that, regrettably, seems quite divorced from Dunwall.
I think this is the greatest strength of Dishonored - Dunwall sure leaves an impression, on par with Rapture, and that is saying something.
The story itself is not that strong, with a big honking twist visible even behind the horizon.
Now you see me, now you don't
Dishonored is a stealth game, and normally I am not great fan of those, especially if you instafail a mission if a single guard notices you. If a stealth game is unforgiving, I unforgive right back. The stealth-aspect is very strong here, but there are always many different approaches available to you. This is not only true for the possible ways to reach a target, but also for the level of violence you want to employ. The levels are riddled with rooftops, canals and secret approaches: The careful examination a plaza from a rooftop may uncover surprising ways to get into the arch overseer's office, and all the while you get to listen to small dialogues, and the insidious artwork drips into you brain...And even if you fail the stealth, you can mostly fight your way free. A mission might become more challenging after an alarm, but if you really hate nosy guards, there is nothing here to keep you from slaughtering them all.
And there are many many ways of slaughter. Dishonored is basically like Bioshock, in that you have various weapons and powers, but here truly all powers have their uses in that you can build your style of play around them. If you liked the mechanics of Bioshock, you will feel right at home. You even heal by gulping down food, like potted whale meat The weapons and magic powers (not gained from gene-tonics, but awarded by the benevolent Prince of Darkness, who has taken a liking to Corvo) are steeped black magic or steampunk, and although I have a bit of a dislike for this genre, playing around with the various tools handed to you is great fun.
Consequences, schmonsequences
And there is a moral choice system. There are two endings based on how much of the Dunwall police force you cut to ribbons. One is all sweetness and light (hard to believe in a city that just lost a third of its population to the plague), the other is rather dark, and, concerning the endings, there is nothing in between. This is a bit weak. But the missions also change a bit with regard to your previous exploits. If you kill with gay abandon, the street with fill with voracious rat swarms, aggressive plague victims (basically zombies) will be everywhere and City Watch will step up security. This not only changes the tone of the game, but also adapts the missions to your play style. An aggressive player will have that much more enemies to play with, while a stealthy player can go for a playthrough without a single character killed (although this defeats the purpose in my opinion, I mean, you get all these nice toys, and you can stick a razor wire mine to a guy while you stopped time, so that he explodes into bloody chunks when time starts up again and you are twenty feet off on a rooftop, scratching your chin and going hmmm...why would you want to miss out on that?). I like it it that even the weepers, the half-zombified victims of the plague, are integrated into the moral choice system. The game counts them as people, and if you want a happy Dunwall, then you should too.
Too short
this game is.
I really like Bioshock
Yes, I do.
Four and a half tins of Pratchett's Jellied Eels
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Timur Bekmambetov: Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter
This film has an interesting premise, and that's basically it. What if vampires - creatures defined by their ability to jump really far - were real and the Great Emancipator fought them? This sounds like something that this crew could turn into something glorious, but the idea is not enough to carry the movie for its running time, although, mercifully, it's only 105 minutes long.
There is a lot of very obvious CGI, including a horse stampede so fake it hurts and the longest bridge of the world on fire. Maybe the film would have been more interesting if it had really tried to keep Lincoln's vampire hunting business in the shadows, maybe even concentrating on the necessities to keep the war secret. Instead, there is this huge bridge, which must be the engineering marvel of the world, only now it's on fire, and the fields of Gettysburg are left littered with solid silver cannonballs. The premise of the movie (there is a shadow war against vampires, and Lincoln was part of that) is left hanging in the air (a shadow war has to stay in the shadows, or it's just your standard, run-off-the-mill war). All that remains is a guy with a manifestly false Honest Abe chin strip twirling an axe before our tech level's variant of a painted backdrop.
Bekmambetov did the fascinating Night Watch and Day Watch - look for those instead.
One and a half gloating vampires
There is a lot of very obvious CGI, including a horse stampede so fake it hurts and the longest bridge of the world on fire. Maybe the film would have been more interesting if it had really tried to keep Lincoln's vampire hunting business in the shadows, maybe even concentrating on the necessities to keep the war secret. Instead, there is this huge bridge, which must be the engineering marvel of the world, only now it's on fire, and the fields of Gettysburg are left littered with solid silver cannonballs. The premise of the movie (there is a shadow war against vampires, and Lincoln was part of that) is left hanging in the air (a shadow war has to stay in the shadows, or it's just your standard, run-off-the-mill war). All that remains is a guy with a manifestly false Honest Abe chin strip twirling an axe before our tech level's variant of a painted backdrop.
Bekmambetov did the fascinating Night Watch and Day Watch - look for those instead.
One and a half gloating vampires
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Anomalies
The 200th comic by Subnormality! Take your time.
"We are looking for anomalies." This has become a staple of RPG-parlance, it basically means that the characters have a thorough look at their surroundings, trying to note everything that is peculiar, noteworthy or simply wrong, from secret compartments, a diary's pages stuffed under the carpet to a large blood spill on the ceiling. It is a way to cut to the chase if you are just tossing some guard shack, but it is a shortcut, and harms the feeling of immersion. This especially true if you are going for some period or genre feel, which in my opinion is based in large parts on the depiction of specific details: Size and make of furniture, age and disrepair of a room, traces of a personality and their role in the world etc. Of course, details take time, but the time taken to depict a search (even of some area that is not that important or special) helps to create a clearer image of a game world that exists apart from the group and the plot.
"We are looking for anomalies." This has become a staple of RPG-parlance, it basically means that the characters have a thorough look at their surroundings, trying to note everything that is peculiar, noteworthy or simply wrong, from secret compartments, a diary's pages stuffed under the carpet to a large blood spill on the ceiling. It is a way to cut to the chase if you are just tossing some guard shack, but it is a shortcut, and harms the feeling of immersion. This especially true if you are going for some period or genre feel, which in my opinion is based in large parts on the depiction of specific details: Size and make of furniture, age and disrepair of a room, traces of a personality and their role in the world etc. Of course, details take time, but the time taken to depict a search (even of some area that is not that important or special) helps to create a clearer image of a game world that exists apart from the group and the plot.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
