I'm very excited.
Today, Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved ships. AE is what Monte calls a "director's cut" of his original Arcana Unearthed.
Arcana Evolved is an alternate Player's Handbook. It has new races, classes, spells, the whole nine yards. It's predecessor, AU, brought me back into 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons gaming again. I hate to sound too much like an advertisement, but it really made the game new and exciting again.
For a while last year I ran an AU game, but it fell apart when work picked up. I have AE ordered at my Friendly Local Gaming Store, and I hope to start up a campaign again.
Monday, February 28, 2005
Friday, February 25, 2005
Bumper Stickers
Normally I'm not a bumper-sticker kind of person. However, I'm very tempted by this one.
Pizza and rat bashing together at last
I played Everquest for more than 2 years off and on. I started when it launched. I had horrible alt-itis, and could never play one character exclusively. Which means that even though I played for 2 years, I never got a character over level 25.
When I was strongly addicted I would come home from work, fire up EQ and play until after midnight. I'd get up, go to work, and repeat the whole thing all over again. Weekends were entirely consumed. There were several nights where I would either pick up something on the way home, or I'd order pizza.
Now I've kicked the Everquest habit (and moved on to other habits like City of Heroes, World of Warcraft, and Dark Age of Camelot), those wacky folks at Sony Online Entertainment have made it even easier to deal with the monotonous real life problem of ordering food while you're playing EQ. You can actually order pizza online.
As a gamer, I think this is awesome. Feeling hungry? /pizza
I can only imagine where this will lead.
When I was strongly addicted I would come home from work, fire up EQ and play until after midnight. I'd get up, go to work, and repeat the whole thing all over again. Weekends were entirely consumed. There were several nights where I would either pick up something on the way home, or I'd order pizza.
Now I've kicked the Everquest habit (and moved on to other habits like City of Heroes, World of Warcraft, and Dark Age of Camelot), those wacky folks at Sony Online Entertainment have made it even easier to deal with the monotonous real life problem of ordering food while you're playing EQ. You can actually order pizza online.
As a gamer, I think this is awesome. Feeling hungry? /pizza
I can only imagine where this will lead.
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Movies
Eunice and I have seen a couple of movies lately that are worth talking about.
First, Eunice and I rented The Butterfly Effect. We had wanted to see it when it was in theaters, but we never got out to. I hadn't seen any ads for it other than at previews to other movies, which is usually a good sign. I've found that the suck-itude of the movie is almost always directly proportional to the size of its ad campaign.
Anyway, on to The Butterfly Effect. The title refers to chaos theory, which states that a nearly imperceptible change can have massive effects. A butterfly flaps its wings in central park and the coast of Indonesia is hit by a massive tornado, which to me shows butterflies to be a menace on global proportions, but maybe I missed a point.
Anyway, Evan, Ashton Kutcher's character, finds out that he can travel back in time to specific points in his life. The movie is all about him trying to fix various things with a "small" change, and then seeing what happens. Everything hangs together well. Everything is important. It's very well written, and I have new respect for Ashton Kutcher. A word of warning though --some pretty messed up things happen. Evan and his friends don't have a very nice life.
It appears that the second move will have to wait for another post (which will hopefully come in less than a week this time...).
First, Eunice and I rented The Butterfly Effect. We had wanted to see it when it was in theaters, but we never got out to. I hadn't seen any ads for it other than at previews to other movies, which is usually a good sign. I've found that the suck-itude of the movie is almost always directly proportional to the size of its ad campaign.
Anyway, on to The Butterfly Effect. The title refers to chaos theory, which states that a nearly imperceptible change can have massive effects. A butterfly flaps its wings in central park and the coast of Indonesia is hit by a massive tornado, which to me shows butterflies to be a menace on global proportions, but maybe I missed a point.
Anyway, Evan, Ashton Kutcher's character, finds out that he can travel back in time to specific points in his life. The movie is all about him trying to fix various things with a "small" change, and then seeing what happens. Everything hangs together well. Everything is important. It's very well written, and I have new respect for Ashton Kutcher. A word of warning though --some pretty messed up things happen. Evan and his friends don't have a very nice life.
It appears that the second move will have to wait for another post (which will hopefully come in less than a week this time...).
Friday, February 18, 2005
RPG Nirvana
I think I can say, based solely on the name, that this is the BEST RPG EVAH! I don't think it gets any cooler than that. Monkeys. Ninjas. Pirates. Robots. Yup, all the coolness is there.
Previously I thought the award would go to Ninja Burger (also based solely on the name). I mean, it has Ninjas. And they do food delivery. How could you go wrong with that?
Previously I thought the award would go to Ninja Burger (also based solely on the name). I mean, it has Ninjas. And they do food delivery. How could you go wrong with that?
Thursday, February 17, 2005
For Freedom!
I was a big fan of the PC RPG/strategy hybrid Freedom Force. It had some issues, but overall I thought it was a great game. I have two requirements for any game that claims to simulate superheroes, and FF actually fulfilled two of them.
First, the surroundings have to be breakable. As a hero, I want to be able to knock holes in walls, topple buildings, and generally reshape the terrain by force.
Second, my character should be able to tear up chunks of scenery and use them to pummel bad guys.
Third, my character should be able to knock bad guys through scenery. If I can't knock some blockhead through a building, it's not a superhero game.
So, if I can't tear a street light out of the ground and use it to whack some bad guy through a building, it's not a real superhero game. To date, there have been no real superhero games available on the PC. FF has come the closest. It does let me destroy the scenery, and use chunks of it to pummel bad guys.
Anyway, ever since I played FF, I've been looking forward to a sequel. It appears that I won't have to wait much longer, because you can already pre-order Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich. I haven't pre-ordered it, because I'm not usually a pre-order kind of guy. What is neat about this is how developer Irrational Games paid for the project.
I think it's really cool that they're self-funded. Having worked for both a self-funded publisher and a company that relies on publishers to pay for everything, I can say that from a worker-bee's perspective self funding is much nicer. The big issue for me is having creative control. If you are self funded, you don't have a publisher telling you that they just played Tetris, and they want some of that falling brick action in your RPG, or worse yet they decide your RPG won't sell because RPGs aren't hot right now, and can't you just turn it into a Starcraft clone? But don't forget the falling bricks.
First, the surroundings have to be breakable. As a hero, I want to be able to knock holes in walls, topple buildings, and generally reshape the terrain by force.
Second, my character should be able to tear up chunks of scenery and use them to pummel bad guys.
Third, my character should be able to knock bad guys through scenery. If I can't knock some blockhead through a building, it's not a superhero game.
So, if I can't tear a street light out of the ground and use it to whack some bad guy through a building, it's not a real superhero game. To date, there have been no real superhero games available on the PC. FF has come the closest. It does let me destroy the scenery, and use chunks of it to pummel bad guys.
Anyway, ever since I played FF, I've been looking forward to a sequel. It appears that I won't have to wait much longer, because you can already pre-order Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich. I haven't pre-ordered it, because I'm not usually a pre-order kind of guy. What is neat about this is how developer Irrational Games paid for the project.
I think it's really cool that they're self-funded. Having worked for both a self-funded publisher and a company that relies on publishers to pay for everything, I can say that from a worker-bee's perspective self funding is much nicer. The big issue for me is having creative control. If you are self funded, you don't have a publisher telling you that they just played Tetris, and they want some of that falling brick action in your RPG, or worse yet they decide your RPG won't sell because RPGs aren't hot right now, and can't you just turn it into a Starcraft clone? But don't forget the falling bricks.
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Earthsea
I got A Wizard of Earthsea for Christmas. I had heard that it was a classic of fantasy literature and I'd seen Monte Cook refer to it as an inspiration for Arcana Unearthed, so I was interested. I had also seen the advertisements on the SciFi Channel about the miniseries, so I figured now was a good time to read the book.
It's a good thing I missed the mini-series, because I really loved the book. The author herself talks about what went wrong with the miniseries, and it makes for an interesting read. I think I'm going to have to see the series myself, just to see how awful it actually is.
It just serves to remind me how few people in the movie/tv industry "get" fantasy, or comic books for that matter. It just seems like most fantasy we see in movies and on tv is crap. There are some notable exceptions of course, but by and large the fantasy movies we see measure up to the likes of the Dungeons and Dragons movie.
It's a good thing I missed the mini-series, because I really loved the book. The author herself talks about what went wrong with the miniseries, and it makes for an interesting read. I think I'm going to have to see the series myself, just to see how awful it actually is.
It just serves to remind me how few people in the movie/tv industry "get" fantasy, or comic books for that matter. It just seems like most fantasy we see in movies and on tv is crap. There are some notable exceptions of course, but by and large the fantasy movies we see measure up to the likes of the Dungeons and Dragons movie.
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