Thursday, April 27, 2006
I came across this quote on RPG.net and had to share...
"A Gygaxian dungeon is like the world's most fucked up game show. Behind door number one: INSTANT DEATH! Behind door number 2: A magic crown! Behind door number 3: ten pounds of sugar being guarded by six giant KILLER BEES!"
- SteveD
The press release just came through. Nintendo won't be calling its next console the Revolution. That was apparently just a codename. Oh no, Nintendo has a much better name in mind. It's now the Nintendo Wii.
How much crack are they doing at Nintendo? That's fucking stupid.
How much crack are they doing at Nintendo? That's fucking stupid.
Monday, April 24, 2006
I pushed The Hills Rise Wild on Logan, Xavier and Vince last night. It's essentially a miniatures-esque game based on the Cthulhu Mythos that I've had for probably five years (but it probably hasn't been played in four). I think we were nearing the three-hour mark by the time we had to wrap it up, and we still weren't quite finished. My entire clan (DeGhoule) was dead, half of Xavier's clan (Whateley) was corpsified. Vince (Marsh) and Logan (Ezekiel) had duked it out and suffered (and inflicted) many casualties.
Xavier had just taken possession of the Necronomicon, but a couple of Cultists of Ezekiel weren't all that far off. It was possibly he could've booted it back to his summoning circle and quickly made the roll, but more than likely, there was going to be another hour's worth of play (and that's assuming Xavier actually held onto the Necronomicon and didn't lose it to the Cult of Ezekiel).
I forgot how much fun that game was. I really wish the company responsible had got around to publishing the expansion.
Xavier had just taken possession of the Necronomicon, but a couple of Cultists of Ezekiel weren't all that far off. It was possibly he could've booted it back to his summoning circle and quickly made the roll, but more than likely, there was going to be another hour's worth of play (and that's assuming Xavier actually held onto the Necronomicon and didn't lose it to the Cult of Ezekiel).
I forgot how much fun that game was. I really wish the company responsible had got around to publishing the expansion.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
I've been following the "Palladium in trouble" thread at RPG.net this morning, and it's kind of funny that all of the chit-chat about Palladium and the company's games has me wanting to get into an old-school adventure game. I don't think I could deal with running or playing Palladium's systems ever again, though. :P
I forgot to put the link to the Palladium thing in. Here it is.
Palladium Books is in trouble, apparently. Check out this note that someone posted from Kevin Siembieda. Make sure to read the note about the Rifts game for the N-Gage. Y'know what, dumbasses? The N-Gage was a bloody flop before that game was even announced, and I'm sure you got warned several times. It's your damn fault. Learn to read market conditions ... or when you don't understand the market, find someone who does and hear what they have to say. The N-Gage's failure was being predicted from day one.
For those who are a fan of Palladium's books, I hope they'll be able to pull through.
For those who are a fan of Palladium's books, I hope they'll be able to pull through.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Somebody rang my doorbell earlier today. The dog started barking. I went to investigate. I opened the door and found two young men, both clean-cut and dressed in suits. And they were smiling.
I hate people like that.
We each gave the customary "hello," and then my eyes caught something in his hand. A small black book. And it wasn't the name and phone number of all of his conquests, either.
He started to thumb the book. He was about to open it when I spoke.
"Don't even think about it." It was a simple statement. No malice intended. I just didn't want to hear what he had to say. I mentally crossed my fingers and hoped he would be smart. The last guy who came to my door with a little black book wasn't.
"Okay. Have a good day." Yep. He was a smart one.
"You, too."
I closed the door. Crisis averted.
I hate people like that.
We each gave the customary "hello," and then my eyes caught something in his hand. A small black book. And it wasn't the name and phone number of all of his conquests, either.
He started to thumb the book. He was about to open it when I spoke.
"Don't even think about it." It was a simple statement. No malice intended. I just didn't want to hear what he had to say. I mentally crossed my fingers and hoped he would be smart. The last guy who came to my door with a little black book wasn't.
"Okay. Have a good day." Yep. He was a smart one.
"You, too."
I closed the door. Crisis averted.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
The Origins list of game events is up, and I don't even know where to begin. There are several THOUSAND events listed. :-/
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
I just watched the Clerks II trailer. The Quick Stop is gone and Randall and Dante are working at a Mooby's? What the fuck?
This is nothing like what I expected. But ... I ... must ... see ... it.
This is nothing like what I expected. But ... I ... must ... see ... it.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Ironclaw concluded
Last night, Logan ran the second half of the Ironclaw adventure he started running a couple of weeks back. Things went fairly well, although the game ran just a bit long so we could finish up the big climactic battle (which probably would've been a bit shorter if not for the comedy of errors of bad dice rolls).
The gist of the adventure is we were hired to go south to find a con artist who had a deed, get the deed and bring it back. To do so, we ended up taking a job with the con artist, only to get royally screwed over by a corrupt (or overzealous) magistrate. Still, we got the deed, brough it back and ended the game.
I liked the mechanics of the game. You get different dice to roll based on your abilities and skills, and then you take the highest number rolled on all the dice to determine success. That's more or less the basics, although damage rolls take into account all of the dice rolled and compare them to the soak dice rolled by the character getting hit.
A few things kind of threw me off, though. My atavist (kind of like the barbarian from D&D) had abilities that I never really did learn to use properly. Magic is a bit odd. At one point, Rawl's wizard tossed a haste spell on me, and it seemed a bit of a chore to figure out what the increase was. Once we got it down, we went ahead and ran the battle with the haste on, but it wasn't immediately obvious what my new dice would be. More experience with the game system would probably help, but with one-shots with games you're not familiar with, you're kind of stuck not knowing how everything works.
The game is themed as anthropomorphic animals in a medieval fantasy setting, but the anthropomorphic animals theme doesn't really come through in play. I found it a bit difficult to picture people as wolves, foxes, bears, gorillas, mice, cats and whatnot. Maybe it's because I'm not a furry. ;)
Overall, though, I enjoyed myself. I had some difficulty getting into the midset of my character in the first session, but it was easier last night. I think I'd definitely give Ironclaw (or its sister, Jadeclaw) again. However, next up in two weeks is probably something in the horror genre. I think I might be running Call of Cthulhu.
The gist of the adventure is we were hired to go south to find a con artist who had a deed, get the deed and bring it back. To do so, we ended up taking a job with the con artist, only to get royally screwed over by a corrupt (or overzealous) magistrate. Still, we got the deed, brough it back and ended the game.
I liked the mechanics of the game. You get different dice to roll based on your abilities and skills, and then you take the highest number rolled on all the dice to determine success. That's more or less the basics, although damage rolls take into account all of the dice rolled and compare them to the soak dice rolled by the character getting hit.
A few things kind of threw me off, though. My atavist (kind of like the barbarian from D&D) had abilities that I never really did learn to use properly. Magic is a bit odd. At one point, Rawl's wizard tossed a haste spell on me, and it seemed a bit of a chore to figure out what the increase was. Once we got it down, we went ahead and ran the battle with the haste on, but it wasn't immediately obvious what my new dice would be. More experience with the game system would probably help, but with one-shots with games you're not familiar with, you're kind of stuck not knowing how everything works.
The game is themed as anthropomorphic animals in a medieval fantasy setting, but the anthropomorphic animals theme doesn't really come through in play. I found it a bit difficult to picture people as wolves, foxes, bears, gorillas, mice, cats and whatnot. Maybe it's because I'm not a furry. ;)
Overall, though, I enjoyed myself. I had some difficulty getting into the midset of my character in the first session, but it was easier last night. I think I'd definitely give Ironclaw (or its sister, Jadeclaw) again. However, next up in two weeks is probably something in the horror genre. I think I might be running Call of Cthulhu.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Monday, April 03, 2006
SFB: The Planet Crusher
I want to get more time in with Star Fleet Battles, and while that means I'd like to play face-to-face with an opponenet whenever possible, it also means that the monster scenarios attracted my attention. I've been thinking of playing out the first monster scenario (SM1.0, The Planet Crusher) for a couple of months, and on Saturday afternoon, I finally spread out my starmap, set up the scenario and gave it a whirl.
In the scenario, a giant monster (dubbed The Planet Crusher) is heading towards a Class M planet (Sheboygan-III), and the player chooses a ship (or ships) to take on the monster. If the ship can do 200 points of damage to the monster before the monster can reach and destroy the planet (by doing 200 points of damage to the planet), then the player wins. Otherwise, The Planet Crusher destroys the planet, killing who knows how many civilians.
The planet starts roughly central at the top of the map (hex 2502), the monster starts in the bottom-left corner (hex 0230) and the player's ship(s) starts in hexes 4214, 4215, 4216 or 4217 (basically, the far right edge of the map, approximately in the centre).
For beginners, the scenario suggests giving the monster 100 damage points instead of 200, so I did that. I chose to use the Federation Heavy Cruiser (CA) before the re-fit, so perhaps that made it a bit challenging to begin with. The number of SSDs I have to choose from is fairly limited, though, and this one seemed like it was made for the scenario (the calculations for a 200-point monster suggest a 125-BPV ship, and that's what the CA pre-refit is).
Starting out at Weapons Status 0 (making it even more difficult for myself, I'm sure), I spent a good portion of my energy on getting my weapons ready while only going at speed 16 (the monster always moves at speed 6). Boosting my speed up on the second turn to speed 26 (I slipped up and didn't spend enough on my photons here; I thought it only cost two energy to load the torps and then one point to hold thereafter, but it's actually four points over two turns to fully load them, at which point you can fire them or you can hold them for one energy afterwards), I headed towards the monster, deciding to keep it on my right as I passed it and opened fire.
As soon as I got within six hexes (you can't fire at it from more than six hexes), the monster unleashed its weapon and I took a full 35 points of damage from the blast. It knocked down my front-right shield and did a little bit of damage to my internals. I really should've overloaded my torpedoes before firing on the monster, but I didn't, so I opened up with four phaser-1s and all four of my torpedo tubes, doing 28 points of damage to the beast.
While not a bad start, it was far from over. I had one shield down (why didn't I reinforce my shields? d'oh!), and the monster was going to blast me again at the start of the next turn. On turn three, I slowed down to speed 12 to stay near the monster and try to fight it out. Unfortunately, I couldn't fire torps this turn, so I was stuck fighting with only phasers. The next attack from the monster was weaker, but it still did some damage (this time, I started reinforcing shields, but I reinforced the wrong shield and the monster fired right through my downed shield). I took some internals and even lost a torpedo tube, as well as a phaser. Dumb mistake on my part.
Over the next couple of turns, I stayed pretty close to the monster, hoping to wear it down while angling my ship so that the monster couldn't fire into that downed shield again. However, I started losing other shields. I lost my rear shield next, at which point I decided to keep my left side to the monster. It didn't take long before I'd also lost my front-left shield.
At the beginning of turn six, the monster had taken 96 points of damage and I had my torpedoes ready. The beast was 13 hexes from the planet. This was most likely to be the last turn, so I turned right towards the monster (my front shield hadn't taken any damage yet) and opened fire with my torps at a range of three. Boxcars! Both missed. Thankfully, I'd also declared to use all of the phasers I could, as well. I did enough damage to kill the monster there, but it would have been somewhat more dramatic if my torps hadn't fizzled. :p
I like this scenario. I wasn't sure how well SFB would work as a solitaire game, but after giving the first monster scenario a try, I'm looking forward to playing it again, as well as playing some of the other monster scenarios listed in the Basic Set. I'll play The Planet Crusher a few more times before moving on, boosting the damage the monster can take by 25 points with each attempt. At that point, my plan is to move onto the next monster scenario.
In the scenario, a giant monster (dubbed The Planet Crusher) is heading towards a Class M planet (Sheboygan-III), and the player chooses a ship (or ships) to take on the monster. If the ship can do 200 points of damage to the monster before the monster can reach and destroy the planet (by doing 200 points of damage to the planet), then the player wins. Otherwise, The Planet Crusher destroys the planet, killing who knows how many civilians.
The planet starts roughly central at the top of the map (hex 2502), the monster starts in the bottom-left corner (hex 0230) and the player's ship(s) starts in hexes 4214, 4215, 4216 or 4217 (basically, the far right edge of the map, approximately in the centre).
For beginners, the scenario suggests giving the monster 100 damage points instead of 200, so I did that. I chose to use the Federation Heavy Cruiser (CA) before the re-fit, so perhaps that made it a bit challenging to begin with. The number of SSDs I have to choose from is fairly limited, though, and this one seemed like it was made for the scenario (the calculations for a 200-point monster suggest a 125-BPV ship, and that's what the CA pre-refit is).
Starting out at Weapons Status 0 (making it even more difficult for myself, I'm sure), I spent a good portion of my energy on getting my weapons ready while only going at speed 16 (the monster always moves at speed 6). Boosting my speed up on the second turn to speed 26 (I slipped up and didn't spend enough on my photons here; I thought it only cost two energy to load the torps and then one point to hold thereafter, but it's actually four points over two turns to fully load them, at which point you can fire them or you can hold them for one energy afterwards), I headed towards the monster, deciding to keep it on my right as I passed it and opened fire.
As soon as I got within six hexes (you can't fire at it from more than six hexes), the monster unleashed its weapon and I took a full 35 points of damage from the blast. It knocked down my front-right shield and did a little bit of damage to my internals. I really should've overloaded my torpedoes before firing on the monster, but I didn't, so I opened up with four phaser-1s and all four of my torpedo tubes, doing 28 points of damage to the beast.
While not a bad start, it was far from over. I had one shield down (why didn't I reinforce my shields? d'oh!), and the monster was going to blast me again at the start of the next turn. On turn three, I slowed down to speed 12 to stay near the monster and try to fight it out. Unfortunately, I couldn't fire torps this turn, so I was stuck fighting with only phasers. The next attack from the monster was weaker, but it still did some damage (this time, I started reinforcing shields, but I reinforced the wrong shield and the monster fired right through my downed shield). I took some internals and even lost a torpedo tube, as well as a phaser. Dumb mistake on my part.
Over the next couple of turns, I stayed pretty close to the monster, hoping to wear it down while angling my ship so that the monster couldn't fire into that downed shield again. However, I started losing other shields. I lost my rear shield next, at which point I decided to keep my left side to the monster. It didn't take long before I'd also lost my front-left shield.
At the beginning of turn six, the monster had taken 96 points of damage and I had my torpedoes ready. The beast was 13 hexes from the planet. This was most likely to be the last turn, so I turned right towards the monster (my front shield hadn't taken any damage yet) and opened fire with my torps at a range of three. Boxcars! Both missed. Thankfully, I'd also declared to use all of the phasers I could, as well. I did enough damage to kill the monster there, but it would have been somewhat more dramatic if my torps hadn't fizzled. :p
I like this scenario. I wasn't sure how well SFB would work as a solitaire game, but after giving the first monster scenario a try, I'm looking forward to playing it again, as well as playing some of the other monster scenarios listed in the Basic Set. I'll play The Planet Crusher a few more times before moving on, boosting the damage the monster can take by 25 points with each attempt. At that point, my plan is to move onto the next monster scenario.
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