For the second straight year, I helped judge (though I was terribly late) the One Page Dungeon Contest (aka 1PDC). For people that run RPGs, this contest is a gold mine of ready made adventures and campaign ideas.
The contest has been run for several years now by my good friend, Alex Schroeder. Check out this year's winners here: One Page Dungeon Contest Winners Announced. There are many spectacular entries, and those that did not win are definitely worth a look too.
Showing posts with label Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Games. Show all posts
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Playing Too Many Games is Bad for Your Health...
...and if that is the case, I am screwed.
Anyways, I have played a bunch of computer games since returning to the US, building a new desktop, and registering with Steam, Valve's online game distribution system. Here are a few femto-reviews on games I really, really liked.
The Witcher 2: The Witcher 2 is dark, grimy fantasy, with a badass protagonist, interesting Eastern European-inspired takes on fantasy monsters, and meaningful choices that come back and haunt you later in the game. The story is strong, the visuals are very good, and the overall feel is a nice departure from your bog-standard CRPGs. 5 out of 5.
Bastion: An action game produced by an independent developer called Supergiant Games, I picked up Bastion on a whim. The gameplay is great (different weapons give you different abilities, but you can only carry 2 at a time), the narration actually follows what you are doing in-game, and the soundtrack is fantastic. The thing that stands out most is the style. 4 out of 5.
Elder Scrolls V - Skyrim: I will preface this by the fact that I barely played Morrowind, and even though I bought Oblivion, I played it for a couple of hours and just stopped. What Skyrim has going for it is an incredibly rich world, both in terms of landscape (climbing to the top of mountains at night, when the sky is clear and the Northern Lights are out, is just ridiculous), NPCs, and quests. Now many of the quests become boring, but I did not find the open world approach in Skyrim as paralyzing as the previous games. There are still some hiccups in terms of bugs, and the leveling system can encourage some gimmicky min-maxing, but the world of Skyrim pushes all those small problems to the background. 4.5 out of 5.
Batman Arkham City: Arkham Asylum was another game I bought on a whim on Steam, after hearing many rave reviews about the game. It was tremendous, and I have been looking forward to the sequel ever since. Basically, this game lets you be Batman. Like, in every way -- stealthily taking out criminals, crushing a dozen thugs in hand-to-hand combat, gliding from rooftop to rooftop, and extricating yourself from trouble using an array of gadgets (the game even calls them Gadgets). My only complaint about the game, compared to Arkham Asylum, is that the main plot is a bit more forced, and has perhaps a few too many twists. On the plus side, the side quests and the open nature of Arkham City itself makes this game more interesting to explore than its predecessor. 4.5 out of 5.
Anyways, I have played a bunch of computer games since returning to the US, building a new desktop, and registering with Steam, Valve's online game distribution system. Here are a few femto-reviews on games I really, really liked.
The Witcher 2: The Witcher 2 is dark, grimy fantasy, with a badass protagonist, interesting Eastern European-inspired takes on fantasy monsters, and meaningful choices that come back and haunt you later in the game. The story is strong, the visuals are very good, and the overall feel is a nice departure from your bog-standard CRPGs. 5 out of 5.
Bastion: An action game produced by an independent developer called Supergiant Games, I picked up Bastion on a whim. The gameplay is great (different weapons give you different abilities, but you can only carry 2 at a time), the narration actually follows what you are doing in-game, and the soundtrack is fantastic. The thing that stands out most is the style. 4 out of 5.
Elder Scrolls V - Skyrim: I will preface this by the fact that I barely played Morrowind, and even though I bought Oblivion, I played it for a couple of hours and just stopped. What Skyrim has going for it is an incredibly rich world, both in terms of landscape (climbing to the top of mountains at night, when the sky is clear and the Northern Lights are out, is just ridiculous), NPCs, and quests. Now many of the quests become boring, but I did not find the open world approach in Skyrim as paralyzing as the previous games. There are still some hiccups in terms of bugs, and the leveling system can encourage some gimmicky min-maxing, but the world of Skyrim pushes all those small problems to the background. 4.5 out of 5.
Batman Arkham City: Arkham Asylum was another game I bought on a whim on Steam, after hearing many rave reviews about the game. It was tremendous, and I have been looking forward to the sequel ever since. Basically, this game lets you be Batman. Like, in every way -- stealthily taking out criminals, crushing a dozen thugs in hand-to-hand combat, gliding from rooftop to rooftop, and extricating yourself from trouble using an array of gadgets (the game even calls them Gadgets). My only complaint about the game, compared to Arkham Asylum, is that the main plot is a bit more forced, and has perhaps a few too many twists. On the plus side, the side quests and the open nature of Arkham City itself makes this game more interesting to explore than its predecessor. 4.5 out of 5.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Violent, Visible Death
One of the vices that I have reacquired since returning to the US are computer games. In part it is because I built a new desktop that can run current generation games relatively well, and in part because of the beautiful abomination that is Steam. Regardless, I have been playing more computer games now than any time since graduate school, including exploration of some smaller indie titles. At some point I hope to post some micro-reviews of games I have played in the last year, but I thought I would mention my latest drug: Space Marine.
Space Marine is a first/third-person shooter based on the highly successful Games Workshop property called Warhammer 40,000. Warhammer 40K is a table-top wargame (one that I have dabbled in twice, but I could not afford it, nor could I bring myself to do all the painting -- I like a well-painted army, but painting 5 guys is my idea of fun, not 50) that has moved into other media, including a number of successful computer games. To make a long story short, during development, the game developers said that one of their design principles was "Visible, Violent Death." Well, nothing sums that up better than nailing an Ork to the ground with a glowing power axe through his foot, then grabbing his upper and lower jaws and ripping them apart. Wow.
If you are a fan of the Warhammer 40K intellectual property, this game is worth checking out. If only to ram a chainsword through an Ork. Yes, you read that correctly -- a chainsword. As in a sword that is also a chainsaw.
Space Marine is a first/third-person shooter based on the highly successful Games Workshop property called Warhammer 40,000. Warhammer 40K is a table-top wargame (one that I have dabbled in twice, but I could not afford it, nor could I bring myself to do all the painting -- I like a well-painted army, but painting 5 guys is my idea of fun, not 50) that has moved into other media, including a number of successful computer games. To make a long story short, during development, the game developers said that one of their design principles was "Visible, Violent Death." Well, nothing sums that up better than nailing an Ork to the ground with a glowing power axe through his foot, then grabbing his upper and lower jaws and ripping them apart. Wow.
If you are a fan of the Warhammer 40K intellectual property, this game is worth checking out. If only to ram a chainsword through an Ork. Yes, you read that correctly -- a chainsword. As in a sword that is also a chainsaw.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
D is for Dungeons and Dragons
Dungeons and Dragons. D&D. The granddaddy of them all (by 'them' I mean role-playing games, or RPGs). I have been playing this game since 1989. That is a fairly long time -- longer than just about any of my other hobbies or leisure activities.
This post is not about the game, or its history, or the controversies it has sparked, or its recent re-emergence in popular culture (though on this point, the show Community recently had a D&D episode, and Freaks and Geeks featured one with James Franco playing Carlos the Dwarf a little while back), but rather my history with the game. As I said, I started playing in the summer of 1989, when a friend of mine invited me over to his house to play. He introduced me to another friend of his, someone I would quickly befriend in middle school, and away we went. I started with the famous Mentzer Basic rules (in the red box):
I quickly collected the rest of the BECMI series, but soon I had 'graduated' to 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Sometime in middle school the 2nd edition of AD&D was published, and we started playing that. Beyond just playing the game, I also became interested in fantasy and science fiction literature, for example reading the The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings for the first time in 6th or 7th grade; I was fascinated by mythology, not just Greek but also Norse and Mesopotamian, because of Deities and Demigods; I expanded my vocabulary just to understand what Gary Gygax was talking about in the books, learning words like "dour" and "taciturn"; and perhaps most importantly, I learned what a Lucerne hammer, Bohemian ear spoon, and lochaber axe are (thanks to the infamous Appendix T: The Nomenclature of Pole Arms in the back of Unearthed Arcana).
Then there was a long hiatus, and I did not roll a single d20 (that's right, we use an icosahedral die!) again until graduate school. I sold all of my old books (which I really regret now) because I did not think, at the time, that this was something adults did. Boy was I an idiot. As luck would have it, one of my best friends in graduate school played D&D and had joined a regular group. I managed to weasel my way into that group, and never looked back. I played for the rest of graduate school (D&D was now in its 3rd edition), and when I moved to Switzerland, I started searching for a group.
Since I needed an English-speaking group (my French and German are far from being good enough for simple conversations, let alone for gaming), I had to hunt around a bit, and once again I got lucky and found a group in Zurich -- a two hour InterCity train ride from Lausanne (where I was living), but it was worth it. This brings me to my biggest point: the best part of playing D&D has been the people I have meet. I have made great friends from my graduate school and Switzerland gaming groups, and recently I even met up with the friend that introduced me to D&D oh so many years ago. D&D has been a vehicle for me to meet really exceptional people, that I would have otherwise had no business meeting. Even today, I have joined a fantastic group (playing the 4th edition of the game!) in Philadelphia made up of varied personalities, and I really enjoy it.
Basically, what I am trying to say is that, while the rules, mechanics, and history of the game interest me greatly, the reasons I have stuck with D&D for so many years are that the game is mentally stimulating and socially rewarding. Simple as that.
This post is not about the game, or its history, or the controversies it has sparked, or its recent re-emergence in popular culture (though on this point, the show Community recently had a D&D episode, and Freaks and Geeks featured one with James Franco playing Carlos the Dwarf a little while back), but rather my history with the game. As I said, I started playing in the summer of 1989, when a friend of mine invited me over to his house to play. He introduced me to another friend of his, someone I would quickly befriend in middle school, and away we went. I started with the famous Mentzer Basic rules (in the red box):
I quickly collected the rest of the BECMI series, but soon I had 'graduated' to 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Sometime in middle school the 2nd edition of AD&D was published, and we started playing that. Beyond just playing the game, I also became interested in fantasy and science fiction literature, for example reading the The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings for the first time in 6th or 7th grade; I was fascinated by mythology, not just Greek but also Norse and Mesopotamian, because of Deities and Demigods; I expanded my vocabulary just to understand what Gary Gygax was talking about in the books, learning words like "dour" and "taciturn"; and perhaps most importantly, I learned what a Lucerne hammer, Bohemian ear spoon, and lochaber axe are (thanks to the infamous Appendix T: The Nomenclature of Pole Arms in the back of Unearthed Arcana).
Then there was a long hiatus, and I did not roll a single d20 (that's right, we use an icosahedral die!) again until graduate school. I sold all of my old books (which I really regret now) because I did not think, at the time, that this was something adults did. Boy was I an idiot. As luck would have it, one of my best friends in graduate school played D&D and had joined a regular group. I managed to weasel my way into that group, and never looked back. I played for the rest of graduate school (D&D was now in its 3rd edition), and when I moved to Switzerland, I started searching for a group.
Since I needed an English-speaking group (my French and German are far from being good enough for simple conversations, let alone for gaming), I had to hunt around a bit, and once again I got lucky and found a group in Zurich -- a two hour InterCity train ride from Lausanne (where I was living), but it was worth it. This brings me to my biggest point: the best part of playing D&D has been the people I have meet. I have made great friends from my graduate school and Switzerland gaming groups, and recently I even met up with the friend that introduced me to D&D oh so many years ago. D&D has been a vehicle for me to meet really exceptional people, that I would have otherwise had no business meeting. Even today, I have joined a fantastic group (playing the 4th edition of the game!) in Philadelphia made up of varied personalities, and I really enjoy it.
Basically, what I am trying to say is that, while the rules, mechanics, and history of the game interest me greatly, the reasons I have stuck with D&D for so many years are that the game is mentally stimulating and socially rewarding. Simple as that.
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