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So in this post, I'm going to talk about some different games and how they deal with conflict resolution.

Specifically, in which games do conflicts work, and which they don't work, and how to help out the ones that don't work as well. I'm going to start with something bog-standard that pretty much everyone is familiar with (DnD), and move progressively further out until I get to an indie game with a lot of good going for it, a lot of good rep, and a conflict system that we keep failing to really 'get' -- Primetime Adventures.

DnD
So, DnD. It's hardly perfect, but the thing it WANTS to do well it does really well. The only real problem I have with combat is that there really isn't an end-state where someone doesn't end up dead; there isn't really a point in the game SYSTEM where you can say "no: the potential price here is too high -- I'm out". There is a point in the game FICTION (if the play group supports you) where you can do that, but that's it -- the rules themselves don't support it, and do a lot to discourage it (AoO rules, etc).

The main problem I have with NON-combat conflicts in DnD/d20 is they are all one-roll wonders; you roleplay roleplay roleplay, and then roll to see whether you succeed or just wasted your time. With combat, you get a blow-by-blow recreation of the action, and with a tense diplomatic session, you get... one roll. If you're lucky, the roll might be adjusted up or down via GM-fiat-bestowed bonuses, thanks to your roleplay, but nowhere in there do you get a system that will give you a sense of verbal sparring.

Result: combat is (sometimes unfairly) called "20 minutes of fun packed into four hours". Roleplaying is largely freeform, unsupported by the (inarguably solid) small unit combat system.

Heroquest
Here's a game where you get to use the same system used for everything (unlike DnD, applying the same granularity to everything as well), and as a result of that, all conflicts feel equally important. The basic one-roll system is used when some sort of conflict needs to be resolved, but it's not a hugely important conflict. The "Extended Conflict" system gets trotted out when a conflict is Really Important. This is kind of brilliant, because depending on the kind of game you're running, a huge set-piece battle might play out in 10 minutes, with two die-rolls, while a conversation over tea back at the castle might be THE MAJOR 'FIGHT' of the session.

The only problem with the current version of the rules is that the gulf between the ultra-simple basic conflict system and the ultra-complicated extended conflict is pretty broad, and often filled with house-ruled mini-extended rules, because the extended conflict rules are cumbersome. This is being fixed in the new rules coming out sometime this summer, and from what I've seen, the new "let's use the longer conflict rules, because this scene is IMPORTANT" rules are going to be easy and intuitive and do exactly what they're supposed to do. Bravo, sez I: I can't wait to do some stuff with that system again.

Spirit of the Century
Much like Heroquest, the game uses the same mechanics for both physical combat, verbal conflicts, and really anything else -- this means that everything is equally important (ie: represented by the rules and the time spent on it at the table) and any kind of character can contribute. In many ways it's a very 'traditional' game, but full of stuff you can use to really have some kooky story-game fun. I'd love to use this to run a middle-earth-style game of "subtle magics"; the system in the game of being able to Declare an Aspect on a location or in the scene is perfect for the kind of "did I really see that?" magic that's prevalent in the books.

((Note: it totally isn't fair to list Spirit at this point in the "timeline", because it comes after and learns from a bunch of the games I'm about to talk about, but whatever. It reminds me of HQ, so I'm mentioning it here.))

Dogs in the Vineyard
There has been a lot of talk in the indie-game-design scene in the last couple-four years about "stakes". This is all Ron Edwards fault, thanks to a little game he wrote called Trollbabe that originally introduced the term, after which it was promptly co-opted and at least partially misused in about a gazillion other games.

The idea basically is that before you start rolling dice, you decide what's at Stake. An example of this might be something like "Okay, I want to get Count Bobo to back down and release the prisoner to me -- if I win, he does that." or something like that. The problem with Stakes is that, if you do it wrong, in the process of defining "what happens if you win, and what happens if you lose" before you roll, you frequently end up discussing and halfway playing out all end result possibilities, so that once you roll the dice, there's really nothing else to PLAY. You just kind of grunt and say "Okay, well, that cool thing we already discussed to death? I guess that happens. Moving on."

((Trollbabe, incidentally, bypassed this problem in typical Ron Edwards fashion, via the mechanics of the game -- the stakes themselves aren't nearly as important as the pain you're willing to go through to GET them -- but as is typical with Ron, he doesn't really explain that in the text, and it's only head-slappingly obvious about five years later, after everyone's already cocked up a number of other games trying to pull off the same thing.))

Now, Vincent Baker wasn't immune to this use of Stakes -- he wrote Dogs in the Vineyard during that time, and the concept of setting stakes are there, but (in my opinion) are presented in a far clearer and cleaner way (because it's Vincent, really). Basically, the conversation you have before rolling is basically "Okay, I want you to reveal what you're hiding in the house", and then you roll dice and let the dice sort out what happens. If I just plain beat you in the series of rolls that follow, you're forced to give in.

However, you might not be willing to take the kind of Fallout (damage) from that full exchange, and give in early. In a sense, that is the heart of Vincent's conflict resolution in all his games: Negotiation with a Stick. The Thing You Want is out there, but the getting of it breaks down into ACTIONS; into What You Are Doing.

"What you get" is interesting. "What you are doing" is interesting and COOL.

In Dogs, this breaks down roll by roll and is narrated roll-by-roll as a series of discrete and interesting and impactful actions... all of those actions DO something to someone else (that's the 'with a stick' part) who might decide not to take any more and just give in. (Or they might decide to up the ante and Negotiate with a Knife. :)

It's genius. It sets a bar.

In a Wicked Age
I'm not going to sit on the Vincent Baker bandwagon for very long in this post, but I want to draw a parallel between IAWA and Dogs -- they both do the Negotiation with a Stick thing, but they manage it from completely different directions.

The big thing with In a Wicked Age is that Vincent has entirely done away with the idea of Stakes. Instead, you go back, waaaaaay back to that good old d20 stuff and just talk about "What I'm going to do", which (for me) is a more comfortable place to be as a player. And the end of a series of rolls, you know who actually did what they said they were going to do, and who failed. The winner can then say "give me what I want, or I hurt you." And the loser can say "Okay" or "hell no, tha's jus' a flesh wound!" and you go back into conflict for more pain.

Galactic
((I'm getting there. I'm almost to the Primetime Adventures thing. I swear.))

Galactic isn't a finished game, but it's by the same author who wrote PTA. Since it's a newer game, it shows how the author's learned and expanded what he wants out of the game and the conflicts, but it still carries with it some of the flaws. The biggest one I hear the most is that the conflict system is good for conflict, but not so great for roleplaying during the conflict... it has the back and forth dice and sacrifice tactics of, say, Dogs in the Vineyard, but there's a bit more dice-handling going on, and you're sort of focused more on that and less on the roleplay that (should be) allowing new dice to hit the table.

Hmm. That's not very clear. Let's go to the instant-replay, Bob.

Dogs in the Vineyard Example:
Dave is in a conflict, arguing with a recalcitrant member of one of the towns on his Circuit. The first couple verbal exchanges didn't work out that well for him, so he's going to assert a little authority in the form of his Coat -- the sort of badge of office of the King's Watchdogs.

Step 0: It's his turn.
Step 1: He roleplays bringing the Coat into the scene. Maybe it's how he stands, maybe he says something about it or asserts his right to wear it, or maybe he just flings it back and the end of it swings in the air, all cool-like. Whatever. He roleplays it first. That's mandatory, and whatever is narrated to bring the Coat into play DOES happen.
Step 2: He rolls the dice associated with his coat and adds them to his pool. Maybe the dice are awesome, in which case the coat will have had a big impact on the conflict, and maybe they suck, in which case it didn't.
Step 3. He narrates further, going into what he's doing as his 'move' and 'plays' the dice that will represent the strength of what he just did.

You see what happens there? Roleplay is a MANDATORY prerequisite that allows the player to both strengthen their character's position and justify the dice that he ends up playing against his opponent.

More importantly, it's specifically stated as The Way You Do It in the rules.

Galactic Example:
Dave is in a conflict, arguing with a recalcitrant member of a colony world he's trying to get some information from. The first couple exchanges didn't go his way at all, and he's gotten some of his dice potentially knocked out of play... plus the dice he has are kind of weak compared to his opponent's.

Step 0: It's his turn.
Step 1: He checks off a couple Edges that let him 'save' some of his dice from being knocked out. He also spends a fortune point to bring one of his unused Archetypes into play, to give him more dice.
Step 2: He pulls the 'saved' dice back into play, and adds his new dice to the mix, and he and his opponent roll.
Step 3: We figure out, based on which dice stay and which dice get knocked out, what happened.
Step 4: We narrate what we deduce has happened ... it's a bit like reading tea leaves. :)

See what happens there? Roleplay/narration is a kind of... addendum. An epilogue. It is not central to either the action or the mechanics. Note that this is just the way my group does it. We could (and should, now that I've figured this out) do it this way:

Step 0: It's his turn.
Step 1: He roleplays the actions he takes and everything that happens that will bring in the Edges he needs and the Archetype he's introducing.
Step 2: He pulls the 'saved' dice back into play, and adds his new dice to the mix, and he and his opponent roll.
Step 3: We figure out, based on which dice stay and which dice get knocked out, what happened, and continue roleplay/narration from the stuff we already did in Step 1.

See how that's better? And there's no reason we can't do it that way... but there's no reason we can't do it a slightly sloppier, much less roleplay-reinforcing way either, cuz The Way It Is Done is not in the rules.

Hmm. Need to send these thoughts to Matt. Anyway.

Primetime Adventures
Whoo. Been a lot of typing to get here, hasn't it? Sorry about that.

Okay, so PTA is brilliant. Seriously, and truly, it's brilliant. I've never seen a game that so perfectly represents the way a story is told in the television-medium. The way fan mail works is great, but especially with screen presence and Issues... it's hard for me to watch a show now and NOT see it in terms of "who has the big screen presence this week" or "oh, it's an Spotlight Issue session for Angela", or whatever.

The conflict system, though. Oy. My head.

The problem is, it's so damned simple. I get x number of cards. You get x number. We flip them over, and whoever has more red cards wins. See? Easy.

No, no it isn't.

The problem is two-fold. Maybe threefold. Two-and-a-halffold.

One is stakes. PTA is built entirely on setting stakes, and it was written when the term was very vaguely defined by the indie community, so it's kind of vague and hazy here. It is very. very. very easy to discuss the stakes of the conflict to the point where you've entirely explored everything that can happen in the scene, before you even PLAY. THE. SCENE. We don't focus on what is being DONE; only on what (eventually) happens.

Two is the conflict mechanic itself: flip over of all your cards and you're done. Conflict mechanics are more interesting when you can insert narrative/roleplay action in the midst of them -- we said that even all the way back when we were talking about DnD, didn't we? The combat is better than the non-combat stuff, because there's more stuff going on -- it isn't just one roll. In Heroquest, the "important" conflicts are the ones with a few more rolls and detail. Dogs always has a series of rolls, into which roleplay is completely integrated. Galactic has a similar back-and-forth, but doesn't integrate the roleplay (yet), so it's not as smooth or as enjoyable.

PTA? It has one cardflip. Boom. Done. The most suspenseful conflicts in the games I've played in so far have been when we use the "Chase Scene" rules, which means we flip one card at a time, so if we each have three cards out, we break it down into rounds, basically, and narrate how the action is going up to that point, then flip the next ones.

That's good. Honestly, I think we should use that "Chase Scene" method a lot more of the time, if not always. If we houserule in a rule that said you can spend Fan Mail in the middle of the conflict to bring in another card (probably paying double for it, since it's mid-fight), as long as it was before the last flip, that would give us one more reason to roleplay each of those exchanges.

Problem Three, put simply, is just how the scenes are introduced.

Bad: "Okay, I think we're at a conflict here, what do you want out of this, if you win?" (this is how we do it when we're not feeling comfortable in the game)

Good: "She says 'I love you...' and looks at you expectantly." (BANG!)

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What's all that mean? Maybe nothing, maybe a lot. I'm possibly running Galactic this weekend after a lot of time away, and we're playing PTA next weekend, so these things are on my mind. I welcome any thoughts from those (two) of you who managed to stick with me til the end.

Posted by Doyce at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So a few weeks ago, I was poking through an old chest of junk from high school and found something I thought I'd long, long LONG since lost. That image to the right gives the suspense away, but I'll say it anyway:

The pink-box, 1980 copyright, got it for Christmas out of a Sears catalog, "red box" Dungeons and Dragons. The dice are gone (as is the crayon included to color in the numbers), and the spine of the book is cut through so I could put it in a ring binder, and the box is full of old maps and worlds and character sheets, but it's there. The expert rules, too, in all its weird, crazy, "dwarves, elves, and halflings are characters classes, like warriors and wizards" glory.

And I want to run it so, so bad.

Or at least something like it. For me, a romp down the OD&D lane would be one thick with nostalgia, but I understand that, while the rules are kind of light, not everyone would want to spend the time grokking them (and ignoring the stuff you know from more recent, if not really improved editions) just to smack some kobolds for 1d6 damage with an iron mace.

But... something like that, you know? I love me some Wicked Age, or Spirit of the Century, and I long for a good campaign using Heroquest rules, but while WIcked Age is lean and mean and good story-making fun, and Spirit is a hell of a fun romp and plenty rules crunchy, and Heroquest has a kind of all-in-one fantasy beauty to it, none of the games I'm playing right now scratch a particular itch that I can best sum up as "defined progression."

You know what I mean; that thing that D&D does, where you get a certain number of experience points, and then there's a ch-ching and you get a new skill or new trick or new something. Wicked Age characters change, but it's more story-like. Spirit of the Century characters... shift but, superhero-like, don't really level up. Dogs characters change all the time, but it's as a result of things that happen in the story, not because you got 1000 xp and became a Dog-Exorcist, Level 3, you know? There's no level-up chart for fixing 2 Dogs towns and then *ding!* Heroquest is more traditional, but is like Hero System or other point-based games in some ways -- little, incremental changes that you pretty much get by your own spending of points.

I want... I dunno. Burning Wheel would probably do it, with its skills and mega-crunch and life paths, but it's a big meaty system that Kate played once and didn't love, and I don't want to have to learn and then teach another huge, meaty system, anyway. I did that with DnD 3.0 and 3.5, and it burned me out to the point where I won't play those games anymore; they make me sad the way a failed, codependent relationship does.

So I want something with some structure to character progression, some smacking-kobold fun, that I don't have to spend a lot of brain power learning... so something I already kind of know, and like, and didn't burn out on.

Basically, I want this.

I remember, with great fondness, a two-semester-long campaign I ran in college in Warhammer's Old World. Surprisingly, De remembers the same game with much the same fondness.

And there's a bright and shiny new edition of the game out about two years ago (now available for a lot less than it was when it was out new) that won a bunch of design awards and, from what I've read in the last couple days, keeps pretty much everything I liked about the game, and fixed most all the things I didn't like as much, and updated it with an advanced timeline to work with the changes to the Old World (as represented by the Warhammer Fantasy Battle storylines). And some cool supplements that have come out in that intervening time for things like more monsters and magic stuff... and a pile of player-written scenarios and general neato stuff...

And it has the kind of gamey stuff that Kate likes from her NYC crowd (brutal combat and cool/horrible things happening to your character), and De wants to play, and Lee is interested in it (I wager) just because the WAR MMO is coming out, but whatever... that's one reason *I'M* interested.

So we're gonna to play some Warhammer Fantasy RPG.

Let the crushing blows and amputations commence!

Posted by Doyce at 7:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So I've mentioned this game a couple times on the site, but haven't really gotten into the game that much or talked about the sessions. Let's fix that.

A few months back, I went down to Lee and De's with Kate, and we cracked open my copy of In A Wicked Age -- a game designed to do Sword and Sorcery in the vein of Howard or Tanith Lee. There's a cool podcast interview with Vincent about the game, here.

The game basically let's you draw a few cards to define the elements of the setting, pick up some of those elements as PCs, some as NPCs or setting, get each of them pointing guns at each others heads (metaphorically) and then dumping them into a situation together.

Combat/conflict is about as complicated as any "roll initiative/roll defense/gain advantage for next round" game, and is basically perfectly designed to create a kind of an anthology of loosely connected short stories that involve many of the same characters (to a greater or lesser degree) in many sessions. Each session jumps to a new chapter... forward in time... backwards, sideways... whatever. It's pretty hot, and the rules cool and pretty easy to 'get'.

It hit the gaming community, and everyone promptly built like 300 million new oracles to use the system in different settings -- unlike Dogs, it's highly setting-independent as a system.

Anyway, we got to the game-starting, and I opened to that part of the book, and we did that stuff. Here's what the book said to do, and what we did.

Gather up you and three or four of your smartest, boldest, most creative, and hottest friends.

I don't know that it's fair to list anyone as an 'est' in any particular category, but I certainly feel they met the criteria well enough. Participants: Lee, De, Kate, me.

Someone choose an oracle. Your choices are Blood & Sex, God-kings of War, the Unquiet Past, and a Nest of Vipers. It doesn’t matter who chooses.

We chose Blood and Sex, because... well, it's us.

Someone shuffle the deck and deal four cards where everyone can see. Someone go to the oracle and read out its entries for your four cards.

We drew:

• 2 of Diamonds ...A woman suddenly bereft of love and family, daughter to a long heritage of sorceresses and poisoners...
  
• Ace of Spades ...A field of herbs and wild flowers, alive with bees, where a certain half-bestial creature brings his many lovers...
  
• 3 of Hearts ...A sorcerously animate homunculus of a wizard, more clever than wise...
  
• 10 of Spades ...A wandering spirit, visible at will, an inflamer of human passions...
  

All together, read the entries out into a list of characters. Note the explicit characters, and read the implied characters too, and decide as you go and by your gut what counts as a character.

We identified as characters:

• The woman bereft of family, heir to sorceresses and poisoners
  
• Some patriarchal enemy group of that matriarchal lineage (which we didn't really use)
  
• The half-bestial creature
  
• The half-beast's lovers
  
• The bees (the players were quite, quite adamant that the bees were a character)
  
• The homonculus
  
• The wizard
  
• The passion-inflaming spirit
  

Everyone chooses one character from the list, except the GM, who gets the rest. It doesn’t matter who chooses first and who chooses second. As a group you can expand and contract the list as you go, at need.

In no particular order:

• Lee called hasty dibs on the homonculus
  
• De selected the woman bereft
  
• Kate selected the half-bestial creature, now made a 'she'
  
• Doyce took everyone else
  

Players: Give your character a name. Choose whether your character’s going to have a particular strength. Assign one die each to the six forms; higher dice are stronger.

Chiela, A woman suddenly bereft of love and family, daughter to a long heritage of sorceresses and poisoners
* Covertly d12, Directly d4, for Myself d6, for Others d8, with Love d10, with Violence d6
* Particular Strengths: Bee Magic (gm says: "The Appian Way", which De detailed in the next step)

Cupix, sorcerously animate homunculus, more clever than wise
* Covertly d10, Directly d6, for Myself d8, for Others d4, with Love d6, with Violence d12
* Particular Strengths: Show true form (gm says: "Horrific Visage")

Ursula, a certain half-bestial creature who snares many lovers
* Covertly d8, Directly d6, for Myself d10, for Others d6, with Love d12, with Violence d4
* Particular Strengths: Carnal Seduction

GM: Give the NPC character a name. Copy the character’s description from the story sheet. Assign two dice each to the three NPC forms: action, maneuvering, self-protection. Choose whether the character’s going to have a particular strength.

Shahu Seen, the spirit that enflames passions (which I totally just copied from the example in the book)

Samson, one of Ursula's lovers, a noble son
* Action d12 d8, Maneuvering d6 d4, Self-protection d10 d6

Illabeta, one of Ursula's lovers, a well-born girl
* Action d10 d6, Maneuvering d12 d8, Self-protection d6 d4

The Bees
* Action d10 d6, Maneuvering d6 d4, Self-protection d12 d8
* Particular strength: Swarm

The Wizard, Kuriguzal
* Action d12 d8, Maneuvering d10 d6, Self-protection d6 d4
* Particular Strength: Wizardry

Create particular strength sheets. Give the strength a name. Describe the strength. Describe the strength’s special effects: what it requires, and how it appears in action. Choose both a PC and NPC form the Strength is linked to. Choose one Significance option from potent, broad,consequential, unique, far-reaching.

Done.

Best interests GM starts, with one of the strongest of the NPCs, and names two best interests for them. Each should represent a direct attack on at least one player’s character. From there, you and all the players take turns, until every player’s character has at least two best interests named and every NPC has at least one (and many have two).

• Kuriguzal wishes to recapture and punish the errant Cupix.
• Kuriguzal wishes to acquire the secrets of TheAppianWay from its last surviving practitioner.
• Cupix wants to use the "bee magic" in conjunction with acquiring the soul of a 'changing spirit' (read: Ursula). For this, he needs the cooperation of Chiella and Ursula as a victim.
• Chiella wishes to enact punishment (on Ursula, one presumes) for the recent destruction of her family/the family apiaries.
• Samson wishes to continue his relationship with Ursula, perhaps unto marriage.
• Chiella wants to marry a noble of some kind to continue the family line.
• Illabeta wishes to expunge the shame of her dalliance with Ursula by marrying well, perhaps to the beautiful Cupix. She'd also like to see Ursula suffer vast indignities.
• Ursula wishes to mate with someone powerful to stave off the 'long sleep'. Also, as the bees of her meadow are the source of much of her power, she would like to utterly control them.
• The Bees wish to see the hive free from outside control, including Ursula plundering their hive.

Right. So that was "character generation" -- which is basically setting/antagonist/protagonist/situation generation. All this stuff is also on my Wiki, along with the first session of play.

We've now had two sessions of play. Here's what I like:

• Nice solid system; easy to understand, limited handling time, little need to look stuff up and pretty unobtrusive when i wanted to check stuff out anyway. It's so SIMPLE and INTUITIVE to look at your stats and say (for example) "I am acting 'with violence' and 'for others' in this conflict."
• Love the Oracles. Love em. Atmospheric and fun. For our second Chapter (which will be played in Session Three), which is going back in time from the first Chapter, we grabbed the "Ghosts" oracle and drew from that for new story elements, and it was perfect. Can't wait to play it more.
• The "we owe" list is awesome. Basically, the idea is that if you go into a conflict where you're at a disadvantage, and don't get totally blown away, you go on the "We Owe List", which can then be "traded in" for Advantage in a later conflict, or to bring your character into some later Chapter. This let's you do a kind of "With Great Power" kind of thing, where you get the crap beat out of you for awhile and then, Parker-esque, kick ass at the end.
• Conversely, you can totally kick ass and play to your strengths for a whole Chapter and never get on the We Owe list... and really have no 'right' to come back in on a new Chapter without making some "story sacrifices". That works too.

I'll have to get back to you on what I don't love or what's ugly about the system. I'm not sure yet. I like it it a lot. It drives some nice story with a good system behind it, but unlike Primetime Adventures, the system itself is much more intuitive to me than the "Stakes setting" of PTA, which gives me good games, but which I really struggle with on every conflict. There is no Stakes setting in Wicked Age; there is only what you do -- what you actually accomplish is handled via the 'negotiation with a stick' that happens during and after the dice rolling.

Okay, here's a minor peeve: it's not crunchy. However, that's something I don't think is a flaw of the game, it's just that -- while I'm enjoying this game -- I'm in the mood to play a crunchier rules system right now -- which is something else I'm going post about separately.

Next? I want to use this game to run Wuxia Kung Fu. Seriously.

(How long have I had a jones to run a wuxia game and still haven't done it? Oy.)

Posted by Doyce at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The internets are pretty darned quiet today... at least the areas I listen to. This is, I think, almost entirely due to the release of the Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures on Friday -- all those folks who normally blog about WoW stuff are creeping through the jungle, watching the branches above for Stygian assassins. Seriously: I mean it. WoWInsider posts maybe 50 to 70 news items a day, and yesterday a bunch of new information on the upcoming and much-looked-for Expansion was leaked out.. and today, there have been seven posts.

Seven.

It's set up to be a big hit.

* Huge potential fan base. A major fantasy property. A million subscribers in the beta, alone. That would be, as a point of reference, three times more than the best numbers CoH has ever put out for a quarter, and larger just in the BETA than all but the truly huge players in the US and Euro market are doing with their production models right now. Their BETA had twice as many player accounts as LotRO -- a successful game by any measure, representing possibly the most definitive fantasy setting in the world -- does right now.

* Beautiful, evocative, machine-straining gameplay. I've known I've needed to upgrade my desktop machine for a while now -- it's ... (checks Dells site) ... wow... it's over FIVE YEARS old, and although I have tweaked and upgraded and pushed and prodded and squeezed additional performance out of that box until it damn near vibrates with the strain, the very very best I can get out the old horse today is less than the cheapest desktop models Dell is selling today as factory refurbs. Age of Conan knows it -- their bare minimum requirements to run the game are beyond anything I have.

* A combat system that's actually... you know... different.

* A crafting system that you don't have to screw with for 40 levels, if at all.

* Acknowledgment of the growing-older playerbase with an "M" rating that it works HARD to deserve. Bloody, violent, grown-up fun. That alone will put it in the shopping cart of another 500 thousand folks.

I'll be honest -- it's not the only reason I want to replace my home computer, but it's one of em.

Posted by Doyce at 2:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Again, look at these as snapshots from a recent vacation.

The first shot is from a few weeks ago, taken a few hundred miles northeast of the Shire, in the easternmost reaches of the north downs. It's one of the passes into the mountains that leads (after quite a lot of winding and ambushes and scary dragon kin) into the southernmost reaches of Angmar, the Witch King's seat of power. The statues framing the pass look a lot like Nazgul to me. The dark trail on the ground marks the passage of a massive army that went through not too long ago (now occupying the valley of Dol Dinen to the south).

Rivendell. What more do you need to say? In this shot, Geiri pauses on the steep, steep path leading down into Imladris to take in The Last Homely House. At this point in the game's timeline, the Fellowship is resting up after all the misadventures that got the hobbits there from the Shire; Gandalf and Elrond are in deep council; Aragorn ponders the reforging of Narsil; Boromir remains as far from Elrond as he can; Gloin hasn't arrived yet, nor has Legolas; Frodo mopes; Samwise worries about him; Bilbo spends his time in the Hall of Flame, telling riddles... and Merry and Pippin smoke barrels of Old Toby don't pay much attention to anyone else.

Geiri and Tiranor, somewhere in the inhospitable reaches between the northern Shire and Lake Evendim.

Geiri, at Tinundir -- Dunedain-held ruins along the shores of Evendim, at sunset.

Geiri, facing off against one of the bestial gauradan, LotRO's nod to werewolves while staying true to Tolkein. They're very beast-like in movement and appearance (I had to work at getting a screenshot that showed me their human face under the wolf head for several minutes and numerous fights), and their tribal areas are very cool. I particularly like their facial characteristics; that lantern jaw and heavy brow really sets them apart from other Men.

In this shot, I'm doing what I usually do: smashing my shield into the bad guy's face until Tiranor gets a couple arrows into them and they decide to have a lie-down.

And that's it, for now. I tried to get a shot that captured us on our (new!) horses, riding through frozen Forochel, with the northern lights in the sky and our breath coming out in white puffs, but I never quite got it all in a good shot at the same time, so that will have to wait.

Posted by Doyce at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Really, what is an MMO but a mini-vacation? And what should you do on a vacation? You take pictures.

I'll have some screenies from LotRO soon as well, because they are much prettier. WoW is much more comic-book style, but pretty in it's own way... or maybe I'm just a nerd.

This image is from a Karazhan run that, judging from the gear I'm wearing and who I'm grouped with, was probably about 2 or 3 months ago. First, I like this picture because it's kind of a heroic action shot: Grezzk has just released an arrow at Prince Malcheezar, Octan's water elemental is blasting an ice bolt over my head at the target... it's cool.

Second, it's a pretty good shot of my customized user interface in action. I've tweaked the look of the game a lot from the default (thanks to Blizzard making the UI pretty much open-source for developers to mess with at will and release addons for). If you click on the picture above, it links to the Flickr page where I've made a bunch of notes on the elements in the picture, just because I've never done that before, and it was pretty fun to do.

Next...

Whoops. I killed Dr. Boom.

Who's Dr. Boom? Officially, he's a guy you're supposed to kill in this one quest in Netherstorm -- a mad goblin who specializes in making exploding robots or something. The thing is, the guy has like like a million-zillion hit points, so in the quest you get some special bombs that you can chuck at him if you can get close enough -- hit him with like four of them and he goes down. Unofficially, his stupidly high health and the fact that he never aggros on you -- just surrounds himself with bombs -- means that ranged DPS like mages and hunters can use him to test out new shot rotations with a DPS-meter running to see what options do more damage, without worrying about (a) killing your target or (b) dying.

I had cause to use him for that purpose last weekend.

Turns out, you will eventually have to worry about (a).

Posted by Doyce at 1:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)