My god, it's full of stars...
How do you take a lame 80's cartoon and make it incredibly awesome? Here's one way: Marko Djurdjevic's He-Man Redesign.
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October 30, 2006
Week in Review
Marginally frustrating week, in that I keep trying to get some games going, and the combination of everyone's schedules and the holidays continues to confound my efforts.
Said frustration was countered by a couple fun sessions of CoH, which hasn't happened in awhile.
Earlier in the week: Ran a couple missions with Pummelcite and Noelle -- got sidetracked on doing up 'fifth slot' costumes, which we decided to do up as halloween costumes based on other members of the Knights. Noelle did Kessa and Pummelcite did... heh. I'll post up a picture, soon. :)
Logged on Bear Claws and did the Halloween 'content', getting enough costume pieces for four or five people.
Ran a couple missions with Ginger in our Halloween costumes (the Hostess Heroes as member of the Freedom Phalanx! I did Manticore and Ginger did a positively inspired Swan. :)
Logged in Hang-time (the tank version of Hang Time) and teamed up with the DeepFreeze Debutante (Noelle Frost as an ice/ice blaster). I've had Hang-tank floating around on my toons list for a couple months now, but the recent rush of "alt-versions of your old toons" has actually given me a reason to play him some more. I like the Invul/Energy build, and it fits the powers that HT has as a blaster at level 50.
Friday: potential gaming cancelled. Randy and I ordered pizza, caught Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica, and talked game-stuff.
Saturday: Logged on Bear to grab one or two more costume pieces. Logged on Markov Chain to do a little Trick or Treating as well (which, at roughly the same level as Bear, was considerably more of a hassle, but not fatally so), and picked up at least three of everything.
Sunday: Visited my FLGS (Friendly Local Gaming Store) with Kaylee, chatted with Big Daddy, and picked up Settlers of Catan and Bang (plus Dodge City) and eyed Memoir '44 with longing. Went over to the Consortium (after being totally unable to find two of the three RPGs I wanted to pitch) and played two games of Catan. Unsurprisingly, did not win :). I ended up with pretty much the same result as always: being unwilling to sacrifice access to the more agrarian terrains in favor of heartless mountains, I didn't have the stone quarries I needed for a strong end game -- the result is a strong beginning and middle game, the Longest Road card, and about 70% of the points needed to win... then a stall out. Ahh well: still fun. Also: the NYC people play with Cities & Knights and the "Ships" additions, and it's very interesting playing WITHOUT them (Resource Cards are replaced in Cities and Knights, so I had no experience with them at all, and the multple islands of the Expanded game really changes the gameplay a lot).
Once home, teamed up Hang-time for a couple hours and got him to level 8 and Bone Smasher.
Two very frustrating things:
1. The rearranged powersets for tanks means you can't get Taunt before level 10. For me, a dyed-in-the-tights Tank, that's really frustrating, especially teamed up with blasters.
2. Tanks effectively have no "Archetype" power anymore: Gauntlet no longer does anything at all in the way of group aggro management, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out it doesn't do any kind of special taunting at all, even of your designated target. Invul's group taunt is a heartbreaking 10 levels away, and I'm not even sure it works as advertised anymore.
Unrelated thing: I know the Halloween event ends tomorrow night, but can you still go and trade in your costume pieces after that deadline? Anyone know?
Dungeons & Dragons flowchart
Considerably more useful: Merle Rasmussen's mission flowchart from his designer notes for Top Secret.
October 24, 2006
B-a-l-a-n-c-e
Durham 3: Balancing "Real Life" and gaming -- certainly, I get the point of the discussion. :)
Additional Prince of Persia, Warrior Within thought
I haven't muttered vulgarities at my computer this much since I had to replace the hard drive last year.
"Isn't that interesting? Doesn't that just make you go 'Oooh?'"
Eden Studios ends production of Buffy/Angel RPGs
For a number of months now, Eden Studios has been negotiating with Fox to settle accounts on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel roleplaying game licenses. This has been completed to both parties satisfaction, but the resulting arrangement does not include renewal terms. As a result, Eden Studios will cease producing new Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel game books or supplements. We will, however, continue to support those who play our games in our online forums and through our web sites dedicated to those games.
Let's see: good game, good rules, familiar setting and tropes, continuing company support, and no more endless strings of supplemental expansion "splatbooks" the consumer has to worry about picking up?
Sounds like the perfect time to buy the game, honestly.
October 23, 2006
Weeks and weeks and weeks in review
Been traveling for awhile, and scheduling is always hard during the holidays, so there hasn't been much gaming going on.
Played the second session of Dogs in the Vineyard, which I need to write up a log for. Next game... maybe Sunday.
Played some CoH -- mostly Pummelcite, but a smattering of other characters, including Hype.
Played and finished Prince of Persia - Sands of Time. Fun.
Played and quit Prince of Persia - Warrior Within. Not fun.
Reinstalled Warrior Within and approached it with a significantly different mindset. The first one is still more fun and more reminiscent of the original game, but I'm not hating PoP-WW this time -- except that one of my fingers hurts from pressing the same button so damn much.
October 21, 2006
Heh.
Story Games for Everybody - Fixing Gaming Theory Terminology Once and For All
Ansa dansa mo go fop is for every shoo! Just find your plat!
*sniff*
It's just so... TRUE.
October 20, 2006
Gaming with Kids
Have Games, Will Travel discusses Faery's Tale, The Princes Kingdom, and "playing well with others." Good stuff, as always, and just the thing to have on the headphones on a Friday leading into a game-less weekend.
October 19, 2006
"Back that Legolas up! MeOW!"
DM of the Rings -- LotR as a tabletop game. Hi-larious.
October 18, 2006
Wah?
Somehow, I forgot to write down the Actual Play from the second Dogs session. That's just wacky. I will fix soon.
Bloody huge scrolling map of Victorian London
October 17, 2006
Great Resource Thread
"Tiggers like everything... except honey."
Seems familiar, a bit.
Want List:
Shadows Over Camelot. Just a note to myself. Nothing to see here.
I'm back in the states and enmeshed in Le Television
I made the mistake of drinking the visual koolaid that is Studio 60 last night, back to back with two episodes of Heroes.
MAN I want to play me some Primetime Adventures.
October 6, 2006
GNS & Exploration
Ron and a Rifts player talk about the Big Model and GNS. I dunno if the end result will be fruitful, but this opening thing from Ron is good, if only for correcting a mistake *I* make in my understanding:
Imagine a little platform made of green-painted wood, standing a few inches high off the ground on its little legs. That's Exploration, the necessary imaginative communication for role-playing to occur at all. Perhaps it's a very pretty shade of green or particularly well-crafted in terms of pegs and glue. Doesn't matter. It's not the Creative Agenda.
Now imagine a secondary wooden structure built on top of it, reaching a whole foot off the ground at its tip. That's your game in action. Whatever shared goal or priority puts it there, or (in the analogy) whatever shape or material it is, that's your Creative Agenda. It's what you and the group do with the platform.
A Simulationist CA happens to be made of wood and happens to be painted green. That's why people are always mistaking Exploration for Simulationism, when it's not. It's still a secondary structure on top of the platform. It also so happens that Gamist and Narrativist CAs are always brutally, recognizably distinct from the platform that supports them - made of plastic or aluminum, and always painted a different color or not painted at all. That's why people are always forgetting that no matter what, those agendas need the platform too.
Andreas, I'm going through this kindergarten imagery because, in your post, I see a lot of rhapsodizing about "wonder moments" and all that. I anticipate that you are going to claim that's some kind of Simulationist presence in your group. Well, if you think that's Simulationist, lose that mistaken idea right now. That's foundational Exploration, the platform. Maybe your group's CA on top of it is "the same stuff," and hence Simulationist, and maybe it's not. We have to look at it to see.
October 5, 2006
Extensible community.
I direct your attention to the "Random Chat" link on the right sidebar. Just playing around, but it might be vaguely interesting. :)
October 3, 2006
Geh
Took a minute to go look at the CoH forums and take stock of all the crap I've written up there and have yet to move.
Eh. Wondering if it's worth it. Much as I like some of the Epitaph stuff (amnesia -- what is it about amnesia stories?), and being moderately impressed with the... sheer MASS of the Hang Time stuff...
I mean, the writing (when I was actually writing and not just grabbing logs of online rp) was decent, but it's not as though I can't write something else just as good or better that hasn't got sticky little 'legal use' issues glommed onto it.
Well. We'll see.
October 2, 2006
Awesome
I totally want to do some customized cards for a game of Primetime Adventures or Savage Worlds. :)
October 1, 2006
Have Games, will Roach
Have Games, Will Travel #74 talks about Don't Rest Your Head (dark "supers" in the vein of Dark City, Matrix, Neverwhere, awesomeness written by Fred Hicks) and the Shab al-Hiri Roach.
I'm just... incredibly awed by how well Paul Tevis explains an entire game (setting, mechanics, and play) in 10 minutes. He is REALLY, really, good at it.
Heh. Good quote re: Shab al-Hiri Roach:
"I don't want you to think this is a game you can play to win... but it is definitely a game you SHOULD play to win."
... if you've played, you know what he means. :)