Hoo boy. Lots of things happening in my life right now. I’ll see if I can put it in words later.
I’ve started doing some writing for a new wiki, the Encyclopedia Gamia. It has only existed for about four days so far, but we’ve already passed 500 articles. We are a bunch of people from the Penny Arcade forums, but we’ve started spreading the word now.
It’s great fun to check a random page and maybe add some content of your own there.
“I mean, you have many, many stab wounds and those ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ fantasy games involve swords and knives and daggers and things of that nature. There may be a connection but I can’t say for sure.” Bruce Castor, district attourney
That’s some great logic there. Yet another crusader against RPGs, looking for something suitable to pin the blame on. Does the perpetrator even play D&D?
Roleplaying games are my biggest hobby, and dirt slinging like this angers me greatly.
I bought the new World of Darkness core rules some weeks ago, as an early Christmas present for myself. I’ve been quite interested in the Vampire setting for World of Darkness, but I’ve never actually played anything in WoD apart from two Vampire: The Dark Ages and Werewolf: The Apocalypse adventures at a couple of RPG conventions.
White Wolf recently ended all their RPG storylines and decided to restart the World of Darkness from a blank page, making fans all over the world scream bloody murder.
This time, the core rules are released in the World of Darkness rulebook instead of being reprinted in every setting book, and only contain rules for playing as a human. Individual setting books for each of the settings will be released, with rules for playing as that particular entity.
So far, only the new Vampire setting has been released, titled Vampire: The Requiem. I’ll probably pick that up at a later time, since this is the setting I’m really interested in.
The basic premise in World of Darkness is that the world is really a grim, dark place where monsters exist, but the majority of the population live on in ignorant bliss. A rare few, however, are Awakened and aware of the things that go bump in the night — vampires, werewolves, ghosts and demons. This was the setting in Hunter: The Reckoning in the last World of Darkness; humans who fought back against evil.
I’ll be back with more once I’ve read a bit more of the core book.
I’ll be keeping an eye out for a used copy of Ikaruga at TV-Spelsbörsen. It’s such a niched game that many will probably buy it, don’t like it and sell it again.
Also, it’s made by a bunch of crazy Japanese.
The new iPod looks darn sleek.
Via Penny Arcade I got wind of the next Phantasy Star Online game, and it’s going to be a collectible card game! To quote Tycho: “I don’t know if they could possibly have made a game that is more attractive to me.”
At the moment I’m playing Etherlords in Duel mode, which is major fun. It’s also a card game, where you use cards to summon creatures, cast enchantments and whoop your opponents using said creatures. There are several nice strategies available — my favorite deck is called “Clone Lord” and is based on cloning the creatures of the opponent and using them against him.
I like collectible card games. Nice, turn-based strategy. Etherlords 2 sounds promising.
There’s a phase in your life, usually the years before you hit the teens, where you somehow feel that it is important to act grown-up and eschew anything childish and immature.
Screw that, I say. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s stupid not to do something just because someone else might think of it as childish.
Thus, I feel perfectly fine in buying a Gamecube and sitting with a large smile on my face and playing Super Smash Bros Melée. Next Friday, Zelda: Wind Waker is released. Yay!
People should have a chat with their inner child more often.
Speaking of games, Tycho of Penny Arcade did a nice rant about a whole bunch of various shareware games: “I found a number of great games this weekend through various sources, and should you ever require respite from X where X equals some stupid bullshit, allow me to help.”
First out is Pom Pom, a company with a logo featuring a psycho-looking robot waving two pom poms. They have two games available; Mutant Storm and Space Tripper.
I found Space Tripper to be the most interesting of the two. It’s essentially a Defender clone, where you steer a space ship across a horisontally scrolling level and blowing stuff up. Apart from the arrow keys, you only need three buttons to control your ship: shoot, switch weapons and turn the ship around.
It’s a very simple idea (based on the 20-something year old Defender), but it still works. No story, no plot, just action. And big bosses.
Starscape from Moonpod Games looks very promising and entertaining indeed. Unfortunately, you can only play for 20 minutes in the demo version before you get kicked out of the game. That sucks… You really can’t get a good feeling for the game in 20 minutes. But I liked what little I played — should I happen to get a credit card or equivalent in the near future I’ll probably shell out $25 for the full game.
Via Jason Kottke I found Enigmo, a puzzle game similar to The Incredible Machine, if you happen to remember that one. Unfortunately I don’t have a Mac with the juice to play it.
I’ve joined the Marines. Sort of. I’m playing America’s Army, a free game by (have you guessed it?) America’s military. Quite good, actually. The basic gameplay is like Counter-Strike, only with more mature players that don’t cheat. And with more tactics (should you choose to use them).
Tonight I had the luck to end up on a team with two other players who like to play it tactical, and we rocked on for several hours. The map we played was a snowy mountain with limited vision, where the assault team is to reach a convoy and the defense team is to, well, stop us from reaching the convoy.
Trouble is, most players get bored just standing still waiting for the attackers to arrive, so at least half of them run off on their own, resulting in them bumping into our fire-team sooner or later and getting picked off one by one. The first turn we simply snuck around the central peak and onward to the convoy.
The defense team managed to get their act together and actually defending after a few more turns, and then we were pretty even. There are many ledges they can wait for us on.
Need to practise my M203 skills, though. Hard to lob 40mm grenades in the fog.
Anyway, I had a great time with those other two players. Much fun ensued. Will definetly be playing more.
I’m seriously thinking about picking up wargaming again. I use miniatures to represent combat in D&D anyway, so there’s quite a bit of overlap.
Too bad that Warhammer (or Warhamster, as I call it) is so expensive. Games Workshop has lots of nifty miniatures in both their 40,000 range and Fantasy Battles range. 40k is probably the most popular, but if I get started I’m thinking about Fantasy Battles. I get the impression that FB players are more mature, while 40k draws all the low-end teenagers with its big guns, tanks and heavy armor. Not that FB doesn’t have big guns and heavy armor too, though…
For the latest edition of FB, the Undead have been split in two different (and often opposing) armies: Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings. In previous editions, the Undead used to have all sorts of ghosts, skeletons, zombies, vampires and mummies. Now the Vampire Counts have all the typically gothic undead, and the Tomb Kings have been refitted with a pseudo-Egyptian style with mummies and skeletons.
What I really like about the Tomb Kings is that it isn’t just a shambling horde of bones and mummy wrappings with rusty weapons; it’s a resurrected, well-organized army lead by an undead Pharaoh. Just the way I like my undead.
There’s one scene in The Mummy (you know, the pulp movie with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz) that sums up the Tomb Kings perfectly. Near the end of the movie, three undead tomb guards march up in phalanx formation with their shields and kopesh swords held ready.
Ye gods, I’m in rant mode. Sorry about that. I just like Egyptian mythology. And undead. Especially in combination.
Skeletons and mummies are easy to paint, too. Black primer (I never use a white primer, even for skeletons), base coat of bleached bone, a brown ink wash, and then drypaint and highlight with skull white. Or skip the skull white to get a weathered and ancient look. These guys are supposed to have been buried in the desert for a thousand years.
Well, there’s more to paint than just bone, since the Tomb Kings are organized and well equipped. But still pretty easy, with open areas on shields and weapons.
…but as I said, it’s darn expensive to have a GW game as a hobby. The Tomb King battalion box costs 1800 SEK, but gives you a full army. A bone giant costs 300 SEK…
Not planning to start playing WFB at the moment, though. I have better things to waste my money on. And I would like to have a look at Mechwarrior: Dark Ages too.
