Blog, Jvstin Style

Christian Children's Fund Refuses Charity Tainted by D&D

http://www.purplepawn.com/2008/10/christian-childrens-fund-refuses-charity-tainted-by-dd/

This is ignorantly shortsighted on their part. Do they really think D&D players are satanic or something?

TBR 2008 Report

Rather than going into uninteresting minutae about the game, I will be the soul of wit and be relatively brief, rather than extensively and arrantly garrulous.

Pregame: I mentioned previously that I managed to get a ride in with Michael, Ginger and Karen Alfrey. That was a good way to start a low-key con.

Slot 1: Shadow Earth 2020
Small game (3 players), Spirit of the Century rules, PCs were non-Pattern initiated Amberites who were seeking the JOJ...and discovering that Earth had turned into a hellish cyberpunk shadow. As Raollin, investigator son of the Blood, I played straight man to the pyromaniac sorcerer and the shapeshifting son of Caine. Good fun.

Slot 2: The Fiona Affair
My first run game of the con and the only Amber-rules game I participated in. I had the PCs investigate Fiona (and her son's) disappearance, sending them to a shadow desertifying thanks to a loss of magical equilbrium, and from there, into a version of John Myers Myers The Commonwealth. The PCs met Shakespearean characters, swung through the jungles with Indiana Jones, rode the waves with Captain Barbarossa against a Cthulhuian monster, and more. Once again, I overplotted and cut out stuff. I think I probably should have made the adventure in the Commonwealth longer, but I wanted to show how messed up Fiona's unexpected departure could be--and the PCs *had* to be cautious.

Slot 3: Fortune's Fool: Jumping at Shadows

Michael Curry's SOTC game with zeppelin flying Pirates. I was given Spooky Jim, Navigator and Witch doctor, although I pressed heavily on the later. I managed to get Kevin Allen's PC to throw a dismembered arm at me for pimping the use of my "special brews" (which did help with an interrogation).

Swash!

Slot 4: Journey to the Center of Amber
The other game I ran, an SOTC game, with the PCs finding a journal of a long lost relative of an elder Amberite, and taking a long trip to the center of the Earth, finding said PC, dino-men, crystal towers, and oh, a Vampire queen. Again, left out cool bits and probably should have made the climatic stuff in the Castle longer. C'est la vie.

Slot 5: Harry Potter and the Secrets of the Blood.

No system, playing HP characters 10 years after the novels, discovering by accident links between Hogwarts and something much older...including a broken Pattern, Amberites coming out of cards, and the revelation of where the wizardry families came from. I think I played okay as Neville "Plant man" Longbottom. I thought Karen's portrayal of Draco was great, in particular, and Arlene's daughter had her first RP experience playing Ginny Weasley.

Sunday after the slots, I had lunch with Brian, Carolyn, Bridgette and a couple of others, and spent time in Michael and Ginger's get together, too, so I got a good dose of social time all around. It was great to see you all!

And that was the con. I do have ideas for my next con, be it ACUS, TBR or somewhen else.

TBR: Journey to the Center of Amber

Arne letter--Journey to the Center of Amber
Originally uploaded by Jvstin

Picture a Day 05-04-08: Roads and Boats

Picture a Day 05-04-08: Roads and Boats
Originally uploaded by Jvstin

GTA IV

Grand Theft Auto, Live (Almost) from Liberty City : NPR

Listened to a couple of stories on NPR yesterday about the release of Grand Theft Auto IV. I had no idea that the game was apparently so rich in satire. The game even equally skewers Fox News (as Weasel News) and Public Radio (you can listen to Liberty City's public radio station when you steal a car).

I'm still not that tempted to play the game, but the fact that the game has this level of sophistication does amuse me.

IMF, Exalted Style

The purple robed man opened up the scroll. A charm vocalized the written words, only for his ears. In the center of the scroll was a stylized painting of a white haired being. The Sidereal studied the painting.

"Good morning, Phelps. The being you are looking at is is none other than the Mask of Winters, the Deathlord who recently conquered the City of Thorns in the southern area of the Threshold, also known as the Scavenger Lands."

"We have received information through unusual channels that the Mask of Winters next target is the Horse Clans realms to his north, centered on the ranch town of Mishaka. We believe that he is attempting to create shadowlands as a threshold gate to move a force directly into the region around Mishaka via the Underworld rather than heading overland.

Your mission Jim, should you choose to accept it, is to stop the Mask of Winters efforts for a possible invasion. As always, should you or any of your IM Force be caught or killed, the Bureau Head will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This scroll will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim."

Sins of a Solar Empire

Sins of a Solar Empire
Originally uploaded by Jvstin

Sunday: Universalis

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/ramshead/

On Sunday I got my first taste of Universalis with the IndieGamers.

Universalis is a Forge game, an "Indie Game" where there is no set GM. The game's nature, different every time, is determined by the players. The players decide a series of Tenets, which shape the kind of game its going to be. Players spend tokens to declare Tenets, and once play begins, bid on scenes and components (which can include characters and locales and other things). Complications, which are conflicts, use these components.

So, Larry, Chris, Steve and I decided to start a game. Coming up with the Tenets was in a sense the hardest part.

Some talking back and forth came up with a proto-idea for a Norse Mythology game set in a modern setting. Tenets like Rune magic, Ragnarok, and "Norsepunk" started to set up the tone. Showing how the system can be used for constraint, one of our tenets was also that successive scenes had to be in "adjacent" or prior locations.

Actual play began with a scene in an apartment with two lovers interrupted post-coitus by a neighbor suffering a bad reaction from an addictive rune-magic based substance that induces a berserker state. Scene proceeded to a conflict with the landlord, and a subsequent one with the tenants subduing the berserker. The limitations of the tenet for successive scenes led to scenes in a nearby bar, a street, and a fatal conflict in a cab between Dagmar and her boss.

At this point we stopped, since I was off to go watch the Giants game, but we have intentions of picking it up in two weeks.

It was different, and a lot of fun.

Bobby Fischer, First U.S. World Chess Champion, Dies

Bobby Fischer, the first U.S.-born chess player to become world champion, died yesterday in Iceland of an unspecified illness, the country's national radio said. He was 64, and had lived in secrecy and obscurity for decades.

Born in Chicago and raised in New York, Fischer became the youngest U.S. national champion by age 14 and a grandmaster a year later. In 1972, he defeated Russian champion Boris Spassky in a world championship match in Iceland at the height of the Cold War. The game became known as the ``match of the century'' and his win was a monumental event in a century which saw the sport dominated by Soviet players.

I was surprised to hear of his death, to say the least.

Sure, he clearly went around the bend in his final years with his anti-semitic rantings and strange habits. Still, in the realm of chess, his was a brilliance like a supernova.

The use of Randomizers for GM Creativity

My session of Exalted that I ran yesterday for my newly reminted quartet of Exalted players (two new players adding to two of the original four) ran really, really well. The players all had opportunities to shine and do *their* thing.

The big thing, though, was how randomizers...that is to say, dice, inspired GM creativity and a plot twist.

While much of the RP that I do these days is diceless, I do some diced gaming. Much of the Indiegamers play revolves around games with dice, and of course there is my Exalted game here.

I've mentioned before, i think, the use of dice as a random element that helps reduce determinism in a game. However, in the last session, I used it as a plot twist.

The situation unfolded thusly:

The four PCs were at the site, a manor and farm, of the disappearance of the two former PCs, trying to determine the nature and bounds of the shadowland that connected to the Underworld that the PCs had deduced the former PCs disappeared into. One of the current PCs had advocated an approach of mapping out the bounds of the shadowland from the outside. The shadowland was weak enough only to be seen by night--however that is precisely the time when its the most dangerous, since crossing the bounds at night from the inside leads not back to the real world, but to the Underworld.

The PCs saw the danger and rode around carefully. A few undead inside approached menancingly and my envisioned plot was for the PCs to take them on, just outside the shadowland. (I am not so deprotagonizing or railroading to trick the characters unfairly into putting them into the shadowland by fiat.

And still...

In Exalted, there are several possible results for die rolls for skills:

Success, that is you rolled enough successes on the stat+skill (7 or higher on a d10, 10's count as two)
Failure--you didn't roll enough successes.

And then there is the botch. A botch occurs when you fail to roll any successes, and you roll a "1". Botches are when bad things happen.

In one of her riding rolls, Viola's character rolled a botch and so I had her horse plunge toward the shadowland boundary. The other PCs swung into action and so I let them make rolls to intercept and stop Viola's headlong flight.

They succeeded.

The trip around the circle continued, and the menacing undead came closer. I had the PCs roll a riding check again.

This time, Viola rolled even worse, with two "1"'s and no successes. I can be as dense as a neutron star, but even I could see that the dice were telling me to go with it. So I ruled that Viola's horse panicked and she went across the boundary into the shadowland.

Naturally the other PCs went across and it was there that the PCs and NPCs faced off against the undead foe. They defeated them, but now have a new problem, encapsulated by one of the players as "From Dusk to Dawn"

The PCs can't leave the shadowland until dawn, or else they will cross into the underworld. So they have to hole up into the manor until the break of light and survive as creatures from the underworld come and get in. That will be the next session, and I totally did not anticipate or expect it.

I will work hard to make it memorable and fun. And the plot is only possible--because of the inspiration of a die roll.

Puzzle Quest

My newest computer game addiction, as it were is Puzzle Quest, from Infinite Interactive.

Infinite Interactive should be familiar to some of you--its the company created by Steve Fawkner, creator of the Warlords series.

Although PQ is ostensibly a simple "bejeweled" like game, it really is an adventure game of sorts, set in a Warlords or Warlords like universe. You wander the landscape on adventures, facing opponents on a bejeweled game board. You can level up and increase abilities for your character.

Free Rice

FreeRice

A vocabulary game and a way to donate free rice at the same time, Free Rice was mentioned on NPR this morning.

Try it, its fun!

F & SF League Year 1 Details

Since my brother asked about the teams, I thought I would provide more details on the inaugural season.

AC North
Greyhawk Gargoyles 12 4 0
Dragaera Jhereg (WC) 10 6 0
Miranda Reavers 9 7 0
Melniboné Dragons 2 14 0

AC South
Gallifrey Time Lords 12 3 1
Skynet Terminators 8 7 1
Traken Keepers 6 10 0
Coruscant Senators 5 11 0

AC East
Mars SandSailors 12 4 0
Arrakis Fremen 7 9 0
London Jets 7 9 0
Nessus Optimates 2 14 0

AC West
Amber Royals 10 6 0
House Wererathe Spiders (WC) 10 6 0
House Hendrake Hellmaidens 9 7 0 .
Kashfa Amirs 6 10 0

NC North
Mordor Nazgul 10 6 0
Hobbiton Hobbits (WC) 9 7 0
Isengard Uruk Hai 6 10 0
Edoras Rohirrim 6 10 0 .

NC South
Centauri Diplomats 13 3 0
Babylon 5 Starfuries 9 7 0
Barrayar Vor 7 9 0
Tschai Dirdir 5 11 0

NC East
Dark City Tuners 13 3 0
Arkham Criminals (WC) 11 5 0
Gotham Crimefighters 9 7 0
Caprica Vipers 6 10 0

NC West
Earthsea Archipelagos 9 7 0
Cimmeria Barbarians 7 9 0
Lankhmar Lords 4 12 0
Riverside Swordswomen 4 12 0

Playoffs (home team in Bold)

Wildcard Round

Arkham 13 EARTHSEA 10
GREYHAWK 24 Dragaera 20
MORDOR 13 Hobbiton 10
AMBER 47 House Wererathe 20

Divisional Playoff Round

GALLIFREY 29 Amber 13
Arkham 13 DARK CITY 10
MARS 32 Greyhawk 14
CENTAURI 22 Mordor 10

Conference Championships

CENTAURI 27 Arkham 11
Mars 27 GALLIFREY 6

Front Office Bowl

Mars 26 Centauri 17

F and SF Football League Year 1: Mars 26 Centauri 17

Congratulations to the Mars SandSailors, winners of my first year in the F and SF Football League I created using Front Office Football.

They defeated the Centauri Diplomats 26-17.

Aided by a spectacular fumble return by LB Winfred Yukich, the Diplomats took a 3rd quarter lead, 17-13. However, the SandSailors scored the final 13 points of the game to clinch their victory.

Game MVP Emmett Lomax of the SandSailors went 25 for 33, for 359 yards and two touchdowns. He did throw one interception.

SimCity Societies

SimCity Societies: A Greener Version of the Urban Jungle: Scientific American

It's a testament to both how Scientific American has chosen the path of accessibility, and how popular the SIMS series of games are, that an online article on SciAm's website talks about the new developments in the forthcoming SimCity Societies.

I'm intrigued at the changes they've made. It looks like a reimagining of the core concept, which could be exciting. (the latest versions of the game, IMO, moved away from the concept of fun and made the game a drudgery.

Mass Effect

Xbox.com | Mass Effect - Splash Page

Now *this* makes me wish and tempted, to get an Xbox 360.

There are no plans to port Mass Effect to the PC. They did say that about HALO, too, though.

Galactic Civilizations II and Gaming companies which step it up

Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor - A Forum Post by Frogboy

Galactic Civilizations II, IMO, the currently best single player 4x space strategy game in current release, is going to have a second expansion pack, on the heels of their already successful first one.

The announcement of this release got me to thinking about computer game companies in general.

Stardock puts its customers, the players of its game, first.

Let's face it, computer bugs in games are inevitable. Without a standard platform, its impossible for computer game designers to anticipate every potential or even every common configuration of hardware. That, plus the hideous complexity of modern computer games, makes bugs and problems with games a fact of life.

And then there are balancing issues. Nothing can kill the fun of a game than finding a strategy that works against human (or especially) computer opponents most of the time. You either wind up with cheap wins, which lose their luster, or artifically changing your play to avoid the exploit.

Game companies handle these challenges in any number of ways. Some companies release their games and never follow up, or follow up in a desultory fashion. Others release a patch that solves some problems, but still results in diminished gameplay.

Some companies go far beyond this, with built communities, multiple patches to correct problems, listening to player concerns and ideas, and generally giving a damn about their product. Firaxis, makers of the Civilization games, and Stardock, makers of the Galactic Civilization games, are exemplars in this regard.

So, now that I have heard a new expansion pack is in the works for Gal Civ II...an expansion pact which is not just a few new units or a single race, but a full blooded expansion (on the heels of one already), of *course* I am going to buy it, and support a game company who cares.

Wouldn't you?

Help me populate a F/SF football league

One of the games I play is the stat based computer game Front Office Football.

Its a lot of fun, even if its mostly numbers. There is no joystick control a la Madden or its rivals. On the other hand the career mode is deep. You can play year after year of a league of your making and i have done so.

It occurred to me today that I could have fun starting a new league, with a draft for imaginary teams. I briefly flirted with world cities without teams, and then a better idea struck me, one that *you* can help me with.

2 Conferences, 16 teams in each conference. With a little creativity, I can change city names and locations and make imaginary places. And since I could start with a draft so that all teams started equal...

Well, I could have 32 teams taken from fantasy and science fiction.

Where you can help me is with suggestions. Site in a world plus a name for the team would be great.

For example:

The Babylon 5 Starfuries
The Amber Royals
The Traken Keepers

I open the floor for suggestions. Help Populate my league!

Get a (Second) Life

NPR : Go Get a (Virtual) Life

While I was off to the MN State Fair, Science Friday on Talk of the Nation did an hour on virtual worlds, with an emphasis on Second Life. I think its a good primer on the subject for the uninitated.

Second Life Prim Perfect

In quest of that perfect moment ｫ Prim Perfect

Once upon a time I MOOed and MUSHed, but I have never tried Second Life.

I may have to change that policy. The link above is to the latest article in Prim Perfect, a blog/zine about styling in Second Life. Think of it as Home and Garden for the Second Life set.

It'screated and run by a good friend of mine. It has been getting some good buzz lately, including a recent writeup in the NY Times.

If you are interested in Second Life, then I heartily recommend Prim Perfect. I myself may have to check out this virtual world to see just what its all about.

The Black Road 2007

Overall, I had a good time at the 2007 Black Road convention and it was good to see people I only see once in a year.

Slot One

I played as Brand in Brian D's Continuum-Amber crossover scenario The Eternal City along with Bridgette, Carolyn and Charles.

Didn't do as much touring of history as I might have thought, and I avoided PvP by avoiding the obvious opportunity to betray my friends. We did a little hopping through time, rescued the Jewel of Judgement, and even managed to be responsible for its creation, in a very "eww" sort of way. I thought Brian did a good job as GM and my fellow players were "on".

Slot Two

I GMed my SOTC-Amber cross: "The Children of Amber in the Machinations of Duke Icarium" with a strong cast of Carolyn, Bridgette, Chris, JP and Mel. It was a new system for nearly everyone and there was some hesitation in getting the system to work, and I know what I would do better, especially with scene aspects, which I didn't use as well as I might.

Still, the game allowed for pulp action, involving planes, zeppelins and a false bride in a wedding dress firing guns like mad. I tried to give everyone stuff to do and chances to shine and have fun.

I might run another SOTC mechanic-ed game next year.

Slot 3:

Tales of the Regency: The Invasion of Time.

My typical straightforward Amber game (there were a paucity of those this year). With Bridgette's very direct Catherina, and BriAnne, Deb, and JP . Karen K came late but just in time to be sprung from prison and join the adventure against a Spikard trying to bend time and space to its will. Evan wound up with its intellect in his brain, and the Spikard's focal person was killed, stopping its ability to construct the temporal monoliths.

I think it was a servicable, okay story but not as effective as my SOTC game, overall. I think I know what I should have done (split the party up more and given more chances to shine) but I think I didn't balance the game as well as I should have.

Slot 4:
This was Michael and Ginger's third and final Equalizer game, Equalizer III: The Courts of Kashfa and so how could I resist bringing Aram for the third and final installment. He was not as colorful as Mel's Millicent, as driven as Brian's Quinlan, as mysterious as Bridgette's Shelley, multifacted as JP's sorcerer, intense as Karen's Eve, et cetera, but I didn't sit in the corner and do nothing. It was a satisfying end to the series, with the villains defeated and the other PCs did shine and shine brightly.

Slot 5:
This was Mel and Charles Gal Ren Game, set on a space station ready for an important conference regarding the drug Necro, fresh influxes of it coming into the galaxy from a moon in this transfer point of a system (but not otherwise important to the empire). With diplomats, a caterer, a reporter under cover and a ship captain, my somewhat disabled lawyer fit in all right, and it was useful to poke to get legal information after a poisoning and other intrigues led to a firefight on bikes inside the hollow moon where we learned what Necro really was and where it came from. It was an intriguing and interesting story and a good way to end the official con slots.

"Slot 6"

Karen and Carl very kindly ran another session of Carl's Storycards for me, Mel, Charles and and Chris. We learned the system, and generated characters for a living toy "Toy rebellion" comedic game that, in the end, was Amber themed. I played an atypical character, a martial arts toy that actually could fight, against Mel's british Barbie, Chris' floppy dog, and Charles' "Kang the Conqueror" who was not really a toy but a model of sorts.

Lots of fun was had and in the post mortem Mel used the storycards to do tarot readings for Time Under Chaos PCs and NPCs, easily adapting a hitherto to her unknown deck for the purpose.

In between all of the gaming, I got to be social with a number of people, broke bread with many on a couple of occasions, watched the final episode of Season Three of the New Doctor Who thanks to Jack Gulick torrent, and in general had a very good time.

Board Game Renaissance

MPR: The LoopHole

The Loophole, a blog on Minnesota Public Radio, posits the idea that a Board Game Renaissance is in progress, led by Settlers of Catan.

Certainly, a walk through "The Source" gamestore shows that the board games are getting more and more space at the expense of some RPG stuff. And Catan is a lot of fun as are their ilk, even if I rarely do well in playing them.

Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword

As my brother knows, my current gaming time is mainly spent on Galactic Civilization II: Dread Lords with the Dark Avatar Expansion.

I do also play Civilization IV, especially with the Olsons in hotseat play when I visit them. And so this announcement is of definite interest:

NEW EXPANSION ANNOUNCED: `BEYOND THE SWORD`
Strategy Informer has exciting news: a new Civilization IV expansion pack is on its way! Titled Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword and scheduled for release in July 2007, this expansion will focus on the later eras of the game (post-Gunpowder). It will include:

* Expanded epic game: Firaxis Games delivers a massive increase in new units, buildings, and technologies to the epic game with additional focus on the late-game time periods.
* 12 scenarios: The expansion [...] will deliver 12 challenging and decidedly different scenarios [...] many containing themes never before included in the Civilization series, custom designed by the team at Firaxis and select members of the Civ Fan Community.
* 10 new civilizations: includes the Netherlands, Portugal, Babylon and a native American civ.
* 16 new leaders: These include leaders for the new civilizations (such as Sitting Bull) as well as ones for existing civs (such as Abraham Lincoln).
* Corporations: A new gameplay feature that allows players to create corporations and spread them throughout the world. Each corporation provides benefits in exchange for certain resources.
* Expanded espionage: Now available much earlier in the game, this expanded feature offers players many new ways to spy on opponents, stir citizen unrest and defend their government’s secrets.
* Random events: New random events such as natural disasters, pleas for help, or demands from their citizens will challenge players to overcome obstacles in order for their civilizations to prosper.
* 5 new wonders: Five new wonders await discovery including the Statue of Zeus, Cristo Redentor, Shwedagon Paya, the Mausoleum of Maussollos, and the Moai Statues.
* Expanded Space Victory: Winning the race to Alpha Centauri will now require more strategic planning and tactical decision making.
* Apostolic Palace: The United Nations will become available earlier in the game, providing a way for players to win a diplomatic victory earlier. New resolutions will also be added which will expand the available diplomatic options.
* Advanced Starts: A major fan request, this new feature will enable players to “buy” components of a custom-tailored empire and begin play in the later part of the game, allowing them to experience many of the new features of the expansion pack in a shorter amount of time.
* Enhanced AI: The AI has received many enhancements, making it tougher to beat on the higher difficulty levels. The ways in which the AI will attempt to achieve victory have also been expanded.

Go Play Amber!

Yeah, I decided to make one of these "Go Play"icons, too.

Petals around the Rose

Lloyd Borrett - Computing - Play the Petals Around the Rose game (JavaScript)

I've seen this before, but its been a while, so I had to relearn this anew.

Do you know the secret?

I put a hint in the extended entry.

This game can and should be solved visually, and the title is evocative of the method

Comic Book Movie Brackets

Talk of the Nation : Best Comic Book Movies - DailyBracket.com

Talk of the Nation now has a blog, and in addition, provided a pointer to Daily Bracket, a site where you can make imaginary "brackets" a la the NCAA. Their sample one is "Best Comic Book Movies."

I think i could have a lot of fun with this site.

Happy Chinese New Year

Fontplay-Happy Chinese New Year
Originally uploaded by Jvstin.

Galactic Civilizations II

Galciv2Shipdesign
Originally uploaded by Jvstin.

More screen shots of the game I took to look are are available here.

Gal Civ II Screen Shots

Three webcomics

I don't have time to read as many of these as others of my friends do, but I do like a couple in particular:

Wapsi Square
It looks at first glance to be a webcomic about a few friends in a fictional Minneapolis neighborhood. In reality, its urban fantasy, and I am really enjoying the storylines.

Order of the Stick
Satirical of the rules and regulations and conventions of Dungeons and Dragons, it still manages to tell a great story even through obscure jokes about the arcana of how D&D actually works as a game

Girl Genius
Steampunk Mad science at its best by Phil Foglio. I've heard a GURPS sourcebook for this is long in the pipeline and if it ever comes to fruition, I'll buy it.

IMC: The Re-drawing of the Pattern

One of the themes that I've used in some of my one-shots, and only now becoming apparent in SB in the instance of the Moonriders is the consequences of Oberon re-drawing the Pattern at the end of the first five novels.

If Pattern provides as much direction and form to shadows that are already in existence as creating them, then what exactly happened from the time that the Primal Pattern was damaged, until Oberon's repair of the Pattern?

Certainly the Black Road was a consequence of weakening the Pattern, allowing such a strong instance of Chaos to penetrate where it had difficulty otherwise. But it is Oberon's re-drawing of the Pattern that is the real kicker, and what I've made good use of.

Why should the post-redrawn Amber side of the universe be precisely the same as it was pre-damaged Pattern?

--Dworkin drew the Original Pattern, Oberon redrew and repaired it. Its certain that the Pattern would be at least subtly different, in the Post-Patternfall world.

--Oberon died during the process. We're not told where on the Pattern he died
---Did Oberon really finish the process? Perhaps Dworkin finished his son's work, Oberon's repair of the Pattern was enough to provide enough sanity for Dworkin to finish the job. Or, Oberon did finish it, but since the effort killed him, his repair was not as careful as it might have been. Things can be missed.

Think of it this way, changing metaphors. When I got a new computer, after the failure of my hard drive, I lost a good many things that I could not find again on the Internet--fonts, programs, and so forth. In some cases I have gotten substitutes, in some cases I have lost them forever.

And its certain that I've forgotten things. Every so often I will remember a particular program, or document, and only then remember that it was on the old HD and not replaced, gone and forgotten.

So, too, for the Amber side of the Universe. Prisons, major changes to the universe post-Pattern creation, and the like can wind up being lost, or imperfectly placed back.

I've done it in a number of games, Ghosts of the Past, for example. A couple of the Regency games have touched on this theme as well.

And, although it may not be clear just yet, and I don't want to speak more about it for fear of spoilers, I've done it in SB as well. Things re-drawn and remade are not the same as the originals, the Pattern and its influence included, and the differences can lead to all sorts of complications.

A skill book for RPG games

As first heard on Have Games Will Travel:

The Ultimate Skill: The latest book in Hero Games’s Ultimate line takes an in-depth look at Skills. In addition to expanded and alternate rules for learning, using, and modifying Skills, it contains detailed information about every Skill in the game, making it a resource unparalleled in the world of roleplaying games. If you want to know the modifiers for picking a double-wafer lock (or even what one is), bypassing a fingerprint analyzer, navigating by the stars, living off the land, tracking a fearsome monster, bribing a city guard, or anything else that has to do with a Skill, The Ultimate Skill will tell you all about it. The product of hundreds of hours’ and thousands of dollars’ worth of research, The Ultimate Skill will bring new levels of detail, excitement, and fun to your game.
Author: Steven S. Long
Tentative Release Date: Mid 2006

Iain Banks, Civilization Addict

I may not have liked the one Iain Banks book I've read to date, but he and I have something in common. From the Independent Online:

Iain Banks has committed the cardinal sin of failing to meet a deadline.

"It is very unprofessional of me. I had to ask for an extension for the first time, which made me feel just like I was a student again."

Goodbye to Guardians of Order

RPG Blog: R.I.P., Guardians of Order

Guardians of Order, publishers of games including Nobilis, the new Tekumel, the Game of Thrones RPG and others, is shutting down operations.

I am an acquaintance of Mark's (through the Amber gaming circuit of course) and so I hope he gets through this madness with his sanity intact. I also wonder what exactly will happen to the properties currently held by GOO, from Nobilis to GOT, to, of course, Amber.

GNS, Redux

I've been thinking about the old "GNS" axis in terms of the 7th Sea game that my friend Scott Olson runs.

Scott is definitely heavy on the S side of the Gamist-Narrativist-Simulationist side of the spectrum, based on the one and a half sessions I've had under him as a GM. Scott is very big on the details, of getting those details right and consistent.

For example, while a more narrativist style GM (like, say, me) might handwave things like seasickness on the sea trip that the party is on, or suggest that it happened, Scott made us roll--and even put a modifier on a PC who had stated he had been drinking.

His attention to detail on things that he knows quite a bit about--the shape and specifics of the ship, of weapons that our characters were looking over to buy, and so forth, are very "S" as well. Scott cares, and makes you care about the small differences.

Its somewhat a change from the more Narrativist GMs that I play under--Gal Ren is completely N, for example and character driven as opposed to GM driven, at that.

SB might be a little more top down than many of the other games in its weight class, but I admit that I handwave some details when they don't contribute to the story. But I do like to have a consistent background and a world behind that story, which gives me, I think, some shadings of S. For example, I recently detailed the minutae of House Hendrake's ranking system, not because its that likely the players will care overmuch, but because I wanted the consistency and regularity of same.

Still, to play under Scott as opposed to the more N games I am used to does take some getting used to.

London Wall Walk

London Wall

My brother in a recent comment mentioned traversing the London Wall Walk with me a decade and a half ago, when we visited London together. A little Googling has found an online version of the booklet that we purchased and used to follow the route. We got as far as the Museum of London, in the Barbican.

One day, I want to do it again.

Rome on 640k a Day

I've been asked to give a thumbnail history of one of my favorite computer game series of all time, equally up there with Zork, Front Page Sports Football, and Warlords.

I speak of nothing less than Civilization.

Civilization, the Original, came out in 1991, around the same time as the original Warlords, and when high graphics were still a mote in the eye of developers.

Still, even with primitive graphics and with micromanagement, and minimal differences between the offerings of civilizations, it still was a lot of fun to play, and replay and replay. Who wouldn't want to conquer the world as the Russians, or the Germans, or, yes, the Romans?

Civilization II came out five years later, in 1996. Although the Civilization Games have never been cutting edge in terms of graphics, Civ II did look a lot better than its original. Civ II introduced a raft of new concepts, ranging from caravans to a more detailed system of working game tiles. It also introduced your advisors, who help suggest what the player should concentrate on next.

The civilizations, too, became somewhat differentiated. Different Civilizations now clearly had different technologies to start with. Units also had firepower and hit points and zones of control, providing the first real possibilities of tactics with units.

Civilization II was a highly successful version of the game, spawning a couple of add on packs, and a "Remake", Civilization II : Test of Time.

I played Civilization II endlessly for a long time.

Civilization III, was, IMHO, a step backward in some respects for the Civilization Franchise. Oh, certainly, there were a lot of new innovations in the game, not all of them were positive ones.

Civ III introduced the idea of leader traits, that each Civilization had a couple of different special traits that gave them specific advantages. For example, Babylon was Scientific AND Religious, and so got bonuses on doing science, and on building things like temples.

On the other hand, the idea of corruption and pollutions became extremely annoying in the game. New cities, after a certain number, were plagued with so much "corruption" that they couldn't build anything! Worse was "Whack a mole pollution". Late in the game, pollution in cities would manifest as skull and cross bones icons that made the tile useless, and had to be cleaned up by your engineer units. A lot of the end game was spent automating or sending engineers off to "whack" the latest outbreak of the endless stream of pollution, even if you ran clean cities.

Still, despite its glitches and problems, while it wasn't quite as fun as Civ II, I still played it, especially with the add-ons, which made some of the problems far more bearable.

Newest to the franchise is Civilization IV.

Civ IV has made numerous changes. New and more leader traits, providing a new breadth of gameplay. Units no longer have different attack and defense values but rather an overall hit points and strength. The game has revamped its models of corruption and pollution to be far less constricting.

The biggest change is the addition of religion to the game. More a method of forming alliances and a source of happiness for citizens, I still get a kick every time of being the first Civ to a particular tech that provides access to a religion. Another large change is Civics, an expanded take on the "Government" that a Civ has. Now you CAN have a Free Market Police State, if you want.

It does lack some of the favorite Civs from previous versions of the game, and some long cherished tactics (suicide galleys!) no longer work. Still, I have to admit that, overall, Civ IV seems to have captured the spirit of Civ II that Civ III never quite grabbed.

Game IRE #26: Gone Fishing

It's been too long since I've had time to think of an IRE that isn't depressingly tied to natural disasters, political disasters or other such unhappy topics. Fortunately, living in the Great White North has given me something to work with.

Last weekend in Minnesota was the Fishing season opener. It's a very big deal in the state with over 10,000 lakes, a large economic boost to the lake dominated northland part of the state. Gas stations, among many other places, sell fishing licenses. The site of where the Governor of the state goes fishing on fishing opener weekend is news here, even in the urban Twin Cities. (And no Governor would dare not go fishing this first weekend). Going "up to the lake" is a tradition among Minnesotans during this first weekend of the fishing season, which runs until the winter.

So, let's go fishing for this Game IRE

Of the various aspects of the Fishing Opener, the idea that the Governor of the state's fishing plans are news amuses me the most and seems the most game worthy.

Let's take Burning Wheel, since I play that with the IndieGamers group. Set a group of characters to accompany a high noble (doesn't have to be a king) to accompany him to relax on his summer estate by the lake.

Naturally, with the high noble there, his vassals are going to show up, seeking succor, alliances, intrigue and more. I can see plenty of opportunities for duels of wits, and depending on the tone of the game, actual duels, romances, and more. And perhaps there is something lurking in the lake, something that strikes when the noble actually deigns to go fishing himself (perhaps a tradition or ritual in this world). The characters may have the opportunity to save the noble's life, or not...

Anachronism Card Game

A N A C H R O N I S M

Now where was this game when I was in High School? I know a lot of my classmates back then would have snapped this up like mad.

Back from Yellowstone

Back from Yellowstone National Park.

Photos are available here on Flickr.

And one for your viewing preview pleasure:

Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park (National Park Service)

And so, BJS will go quiet for a couple of weeks, as I head off on my exciting and adventurous trip to Yellowstone National Park.

Take Care and Be Well until then.

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

The Onion 2056

The Onion has been doing a "2056 edition" online recently. This entry above, reminds me of the song Big Yellow Taxi

Paranoia XP

Remember that a few months ago that I mentioned that Paranoia was coming out in a brand-spanking new edition?

I saw it in The Source today, after work, and couldn't resist getting it.

I've not read it in detail...yet, but I will discuss it here when I do so.

Kids play classic video games

Julia has a link to an online article about today's kids playing classic video games like Pong, Super Mario Brothers, and Space Invaders.

Their overall reactions are predictable, but its funny to listen to their complaints about the games.

Ah, Nostalgia. I remember when games like "Adventure" were the cutting edge.. Heck, you don't even have to go that far. The graphics on Front Page Sports Football, ten years ago, are nothing compared to the Madden football graphics today. (and FPS with a 3-d approach was light years ahead of the 80's 2-dimensional top-down view football games)

A busy weekend

Yesterday was the first day that I haven't put a blog entry up for over a month, and with good reason.

First things first, Scott and I went over to what is going to soon be my new apartment. A tiny matchbox sized studio over in Circle Pines will shortly become home sweet home, since the whole baby thing is coming closer and closer. The downstairs bedroom (where I am now) will become the office (which it once was), and the office will turn into a nursery. So even with a temp job (although a fairly stable one) its time for me to risk a place of my own, and it was high time I left from being underfoot at the Olsons anyway.

Scott and I also mapped out and drove the route to a place that I have a job interview for on Monday. Yes, a real life job interview, finally. The job market has been tighter than, well, something better mentioned in A Grand Affair. So I realize that I have a fair amount of competition, so I am neither overconfident, nor am I "counting" on getting this job. It would be a fair commute, too, about 30 miles each way in a car.

But for a real, full time job, is it worth it? As they say here in Minnesota...you betcha. I got some badly needed driving practice on Interstates, even if I don't get the job.

On the way back, we stopped in the high-end grocery store Byerly's, which looked a lot like Zabar's back in NYC. Unable to find them elsewhere, it was here that I finally found good old Nathan's hot dogs, and I bought a package, naturally.

Scott and I also went to Big Bowl, even if save for the appetizer we didn't stray from our favorites. Scott went for a Thai inspired dish, I went for the equally spicy "Blazing flat noodles". As an appetizer, since I had not had them in quite some time, we had lettuce wraps (ground beef, scallions, rice noodles to which you add sauce and put in bibb lettuce, fold and eat).

And today, well, on Oct 5, 1971 at 1:35 PM EST, I was born.

No major plans for today...maybe buy stuff for the apartment, a few other minor chores and things. Last year I spent hours on a bus, bus, train, bus trip from my apartment in Anaheim all the way to the Getty Center and back. It was a long and exhausting trip but a lot of fun.

Well, if I were to be so lucky as to get this job, I probably will "celebrate"...otherwise I will be relatively frugal about the matter.

The telescope Game

Dyson Telescope

Sort of like Sokoban, you manipulate telescopes to move a ball into a hole in as few moves as possible.

Lego Escher

You'd think the laws of physics would mandate that such a compound word could never exist. However, Stet has links to some interesting lego designs of famous Escher stuff.
Yes, some are photo-manipulated, but not as much as you might think.

Warlords IV demo

The computer game that I've been anticipating for a while, and mentioned in this space earlier now has a demo.
It's a thick and meaty 142 MB, and, unfortunately, the server is rather slow. It took several hours (even on a DSL) yesterday to download it.

The look is definitely a change from the previous Warlords series, much more along the lines of Heroes of Might and Magic than Warlords. I'm still experimenting with it, so a full and fair and balanced report will be forthcoming.

Degrees of Kevin Bacon

The Volokh Conspiracy

The Volokh Conspiracy has a couple of notes on the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, including a link to a website which computes "Bacon numbers". There is even a note that President Grover Cleveland of all people has a Kevin Bacon number of 6.

I do better than President Cleveland, however. My Kevin Bacon number is 3

Paul Weimer is on the Videssos Mailing List with Steven Silver
Steven Silver was on Jeopardy with Alex Trebek
Alex Trebek was on Celebrity Jeopardy with Kevin Bacon.

(And, therefore, a bunch of you all have a Bacon number of no greater than four, as a result of linking to me via things like Bete Noire, Grand Affair, Strange Bedfellows, etc.)

Warlords--My favorite Game (series)

Inspired by Jack's continuing series on his favorite games, I've decided to talk about my favorite Computer Game Series, the Warlords Games.

The Warlords game series dates all the way back to the days of Dos-based games, back in 1990. Warlords, published by a little Australian company called SSG, was a tactical turn-based, fantasy-based strategy game. Set on a map representing the imaginary continent of Illuria, you had to assemble armies, conquer cities and take on up to seven other sides for control. My older brother and I spent endless hours with the original game, he usually playing Elvaille (Elves) or the Sirians (Knights), while I would usually favor Lord Bane (undead units) or the Selentines (the masters of the Ocean). The graphics were no great shakes, the battles between army stacks was (and to this day) is relatively simple, but the AI was challenging, and the replay value of playing different sides was enormous.

Warlords was followed by Warlords II (and the Deluxe version) which featured better graphics, more maps, and different army sets. It also included an editor, which my brother and I used to modify a map of Europe used in a world-war scenario, and created a set based on the tabletop game OGRE. We uploaded this set to one of the many FTP/websites devoted to hosting maps, units and scenarios for Warlords II.

Warlords III came out in two editions as well: Reign of Heroes, and the later Darklords Rising. The major innovations included more kinds of heroes, who could gain different abilities, as well as campaigns--scenarios linked together explicitly by a story. The graphics were somewhat better, if still relatively flat, but the gameplay was much the same.

I was dubious and rather surprised when the creators of Warlords decided to put their hand into the Real Time Strategy genre. How, I thought, could you convert Warlords to something that looked like Warcraft? I shouldn't have been disappointed, because Warlords Battlecry (and its sequel) delivered the goods. Unlike Warcraft, the focus and emphasis is on army production and battles, and Warcraft even stole the "hero" idea for Warcraft III. The types of heroes, the number of sides and the persistence of heroes represented advancements in the Warlords franchise.

Still, Warlords' roots remain in the turn-based genre. And so I was surprised to learn that Steve Fawkner split from his old company SSG, and has created his own company, Infinite Interactive.. His first game will be none other than Warlords IV, returning the game back to its turn based roots, while taking some of the innovations pioneered in the Warlords Battlecry games. W4 is due out in late fall, and I am eager to gird my loins as a Warlord once again. I attempted to reinstall Warlords III: Darklords Rising recently, and found that my Windows 2000 (and probably XP machines) would not run it properly. Thus, I donated it to Felicia's son Daimon, whose Windows ME computer runs it just fine.

The Warlords universe has even made a cameo of sorts in Strange Bedfellows...the name of the shadow held by the Caliph, Sterling is none other than Etheria, the imaginary universe of the Warlords games (except for the first).

So I did install RON after all

So I did install Rise of Nations last night after all (after pushing out a few posts for SB).

After playing one of the tutorials (there are more of them than in the demo), I started but did not finish a "quick battle". I'm playing the Spanish, on a map with the Egyptians, Chinese and Aztecs.

One thing about the different Civs that I didn't mention before is that they do all get special abilities as well as special units. My Spanish, for example, start off seeing the whole map's resources and terrain (although not where the opponents are, or special "goody ruins"). The Aztecs get extra resources when they kill enemy soldiers. The Egyptians can build more farms than the rest of the nations and can build two wonders per city, rather than one. The Chinese can build citizens, caravans and such instantly. (Everyone else takes time). It seems the designer took a lot of time to try and balance these very different special traits (and consider that there are 12 more Civilizations, with their own, too).

So, in this game so far, I have not had anyone declare war on me yet (not even the murderous Aztecs). There are a few brushfires between the three computer Civs, though. Then again, I am playing on easy level to get used to the full game.

My latest time sink

Rise of Nations Make History

My latest time sink has been a demo of the new computer Game, Rise of Nations...

I am generally not a fan of the RTS genre in computer games. RTS, for the uninitated, stands for Real-time Strategy games. These are games which run continuously, rather in discrete turns. The archetypal RTS games (which you may have heard of) include Warcraft and Age of Empires.

Until Rise of Nations, few RTS games really interested me. I am much more a fan of the TBS genre...Turn Based Strategy. If you go outside the computer world, Chess is a TBS. Football is also a TBS, since its played in a series of downs. Soccer, however, is RTS, since the action is usually continuous.

The archetypal TBS game in the computer world is Civilization. The Civ series is possibly the bestselling computer game series ever. Even though Civilization III had shortcomings, Civ I and II were bestsellers and extremely successful.

Now, back to Rise of Nations. It actually is a meld of Civilization and Age of Empires. It's still RTS, but it has a epic focus you don't normally find in RTS games.

RTS games are notorious for the "tank rush" problem--basically a player need only build a bunch of powerful units quickly (forgoing anything else) and march to destroy the enemy before they can get off the ground.

Rise of Nations is designed by Brian Renyolds, who helped with the Civilization series, and also created the "sequel" to that series, Alpha Centauri. RON, from what the Demo shows, addresses a lot of the "tank rush" deficiencies of the RTS genre, and yet provides a relatively exciting and entertaining experience.

The basic idea is that you take control of one of 18 nations (only three are available in the demo). Starting from the Ancient age, and with one city, you have to harvest resources, build troops, expand your borders, research technologies and more. Its not the clickfest that most RTS games can be--although there does seem to be civilizations devoted to every player type. The Egyptians, in the demo, seem to be industrious builders. The Germans are definitely militaristic, getting bonuses and fierce special units (every civilization gets a few types of armies only they can build). The British are a mercantilist power.

Like in Civilization, but in a RTS format, you expand your empire, meet your neighbors and, just like Pinky and the Brain, try and take over the world. There are mulitple paths to victory, too. Don't want to conquer and destroy all of your neighbors? Well, you can win by building "Wonders"...a concept from the Civilization games where if you build a unique building first, you and only you get its special properties. You can win by expanding your borders, taking over enough of the map. And you can win by researching technologies. The game goes from the Ancient Age to the Information Age, and plays relatively quick. In just an hour long game today, my Germans went from the dawn of civilization to Tiger Tanks. (I used the latter on the British and the Egyptians). Ironically, I won by building Wonders, although I was winning, militarily.

Its a very fun game, and you don't want to say these things too often, but its a landmark game. It corrects a lot of the things about RTS which are not fun (like continually looking for new resources--once you set up a mine or a farm, it doesn't run out like in earlier games).

I will definitely buy the full version of the game.