Necessarily Evil

This is it, the blog you've all been waiting for. I'm finally going to talk about what's been going on in my Necessary Evil game.

I'm going to start things off with a bit of information on the systems used in this game. Necessary Evil is a campaign setting for the tabletop roleplaying game Savage Worlds from Pinnacle Entertainment. From what I've seen Savage Worlds had two main concepts that went into creating the system:

1. Create a system that can be adapted to any setting that the players desire
2. Create a combat system that allows players to get straight to the action without getting bogged down waiting for their turn.

Let's face it the core of any story is conflict. My son hasn't hit his 2^nd birthday yet, but one of his favorite books centers around the conflict generated when the train engine decides to go from one end of the line to the other without stopping. It's not epic, it's not a battle, and there aren't serious consequences, but it is still a conflict. Conflict is the center of any good story.

In roleplaying games, conflict tends to come in two main flavors: Social Conflict, and Martial Conflict. Social conflict is complex, there are nuances, the tone of voice you use can mean as much or more than the words that you say. Persuasion, seduction, bluffing, and many other actions fall under social conflict. Martial conflict is relatively simple, you shoot or swing at your opponent, you hit or you don't, and you do a certain amount of damage. Because of this relative complexity, many game systems have no rules, or very loosely structured rules regarding social conflict, but most have rules regarding martial conflict.

Savage Worlds is a game system that knows what it is. It doesn't really have any rules regarding social engagements beyond intimidation and taunts, but the rules for combat are very nicely streamlined. Enemies are divided into two categories, extras and Wild Cards. Like in a movie, extras will go down with a paper cut while main enemies and leaders will take a bit more to combat. Incidentally, player characters are also considered Wild Cards. If you attack and do a certain amount of damage you stun a guy and he probably won't be able to act on his next turn. If you do a certain amount of extra damage against an extra he is simply out of the combat. That's it, either you do nothing to him, you stun him and he can't act next turn, or you hurt him so badly that he is out of commission. This mechanic can make dealing with hordes of lackeys amusing and quick. Wild Cards take a few extra hits to take down, but the mechanics are essentially the same.

In the campaign setting Necessary Evil, alien forces have invaded the Earth. Naturally, most of the superheroes on the planet rose to combat this threat, but through some fairly clever tactics the aliens discovered most of the superheroes weaknesses and pretty much wiped them out. Now, groups of supervillains have come together to repel the invaders, agreeing to work together until the common enemy is defeated. Of course, this setting makes the distinction between hero and villain somewhat arbitrary, except for a few key differences. In a conflict between a hero and a villain, the villain can throw the hero off balance by putting civilians in danger and forcing the hero to save them. In the conflict between the aliens and the villains, nobody much cares about the well-being of the civilians so collateral damage abounds.

This game consists of me as the GM, my wife Maria, Mike, Elly, and Kevin. Maria is playing a character based largely on Storm; she can fly, control the weather, and hit people with lightning. She had a traumatic past and had a tendency to zap the other kids on the playground. Mike is playing a robot that is actually a mass of nanites all standing on one another to take the form of a woman. She can duplicate herself (duplicates are considered Extras), interfere with machinery, and repair damage in biological beings i.e. healing them. She's basically bent on taking over the world for the machines. Elly is a confectioner with a cruel streak. She doesn't get along will with other humans, and likes to send her army of gummy bear candies into peoples bodies to choke them and cause hemorrhaging. Kevin is a pretty straight-forward fighter. He's the typical lab created super-soldier with no one giving the orders anymore.

The players for this one are pretty spread out, Maria and I are in Indiana, Kevin is in Massachusetts, and Mike and Elly are in Japan. In order to come together to play the game we're using a couple of different programs. We're using Epic Table as our online tabletop. It provides us a common area for rolling dice, laying out maps, and in-character text-based chat. Epic Table is still in beta, but I plan on doing a preview of it pretty soon since we've been putting it through its paces. Rather than use the Epic Table chat, however, we've been using Skype to talk to one another. Because we're in three locations and none of us has a paid account, it's a voice only call, but that's still awesome... when it works.

As the game starts off all of the players are prisoners. I didn't bother explaining how they were all captured, but they all happened to be on the same prisoner transport at the same time. They were also all wearing nullifier gauntlets. These are special cuffs that the V'sori (that's the name of the alien race) use to nullify superpowers. They actually shouldn't have worked on Mike, but I just had him run with it. At this point all the players explained to each other what their characters looked like and what they might have heard about one another. As soon as that was all done, the transport they're in was hit by some kind of explosion and crashed. Soldiers rushed in, dispatched the aliens and hustled all of the prisoners into another transport which quickly took off.

Waiting on the transport was a man that all of the characters had heard of named Dr. Destruction. He'd been organizing cells of super-powered resistance called Omega all across Star City and, it's rumored, the world. As Destruction's minions placed small explosive charges on the former prisoners' manacles and earpieces in their ears, the man himself explained that he didn't care about any of them individually, they were all tools that he intended to use to drive out the invaders. He explained that they were heading to a medium security prison and in one of the cells was a particular individual named Mindjack. The task was to break Mindjack out and bring him to the central courtyard for pickup. Everyone was free to agree to the task or not, at that point all of the prisoners were unceremoniously thrown out of the hovercraft.

The thing about the nullifier gauntlets is that they don't just cancel out your powers, they actually make you a fair amount weaker than a normal human. As they fall through the air the players all choose to go along with the scheme and the explosives blow their nullifiers off, the few other prisoners were not so quick to take up with Destruction and they hit the ground with active nullifiers and went "splut". Maria's character could fly, so she pulled up before impact. The other player characters landed on the corrugated tin roof of a supply building at the prison and it absorbed most of their impact as it broke and they fell through to the ground.

At the moment, I don't have a drawing of they way I had the prison area set up, so I'll try to describe it. Just inside the gate were two buildings, the storage building that the PCs were all inside of or floating above on the South of the roadway, and a guard barracks to the North. West of those two buildings were several rows of free-standing cubes that were the cells. I designed it so that each cell was a singular unit and could be loaded onto a truck without having to take the prisoner out of the cell.

Looking toward the courtyard between the two large buildings, Maria could see four androids looking somewhat startled. The androids, known as drones, look pretty much like black Storm Troopers except for the helmet. The drone head is just a very smooth, featureless battle helmet.

Because the drones were surprised, I let the PCs act first. Maria shot off a lightning bolt and ducked for a little but of cover on the roof. Kevin jumped out of the building, guns blazing. Mike attempted to interfere with their weaponry and Elly threw some bear candies into the fray commanding them to jam up the drones joints and weapons. During the first volley only one drone was taken out. After the three remaining drones took their shots at the intruders, eight more filed out of the barracks but didn't get to act that turn.

The following turn Maria decided to summon a storm. The good part of that power is that she only had to do it once and it would sustain itself from that point on without her concentration on it. The bad part is that it takes 1d6 (that's 1 6-sided die) rounds for the storm to gather and she rolled a 6. The other players did their part and another couple of drones were taken down. Unfortunately, it turned out that the drones really packed a punch, so they were throwing around some pretty wicked damage and i was starting to think that we were going to have a Total Party Kill on our hands. I brought up my concerns to the group and everyone decided that we'd just play it out and if there was a TPK we'd just start again the following week having learned a lesson.

Elly's bears had been unable to find an opening in the drone armor that they were able to force open (come on, how strong can little confectionery bears be?) so she gave them new orders to blind the drone they had been working on. They covered his faceplate and he spend a few turns going in circles and firing in random directions. Mike took a particularly nasty shot and got knocked out, since he is actually a pile of nanites, that meant that he collapsed into a pile of grey dust which was somewhat disconcerting to his compatriots. Around this time Maria decided to pull out her other power, which completely turned the tide of battle.

Maria had the power to summon and control a small tornado. It took a round to summon, but once it was on the ground, everyone in its area had to make a strength roll or be thrown around. This caused several of the drones to go flying into buildings and be smashed into broken heaps. Close to the end of the fight, Maria's storm finally gathered and it started to rain hard. Once the last of the drones was destroyed the party started looking for Mindjack. They found him in one of the cells and had a hard time breaking him out. The alien material that the cell was made out of was tougher than anything that the party had available to them. So, Maria used her tornado to pick up one of the nearby cells and knock a hole in the wall. I wasn't expecting that one. I didn't have any rules for it, and i was pretty sure that something about it wouldn't work, but I thought the idea was so great that I ran with it. Maria knocked a hold in Mindjack's cell and pulverized the poor souls who were in her projectile.

Being villains, the party didn't bother to rescue anybody else and took Mindjack to the pick up zone. Dr. Destruction set them down in the docks area of town and told them he'd be in touch. The group decided to set up a small base of operations in one of the self-storage areas and we ended the game.

Whew, that was a long one. I hope you all enjoyed it and I'll plan on writing up the next mission before too long.

Until then,
Good Gaming.

What's been going on.

As a part of my effort to update this blog more often, I bring you the following.

What I've Been Playing:
Well, school has started up again. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I've decided to go back to school for my bachelor's degree. Add that to a full-time job, a toddler, and a list of chores and repairs that come with owning my own home, and it's a wonder I have time to play at all.
But this isn't a blog about why I'm not playing, it's about what I am playing. Lately I've been playing mainly Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Sims 3, and Minecraft.
First: Star Wars. Sometime recently I was clued into the problem with shadows in The Old Republic. In case you haven't heard, there is a huge performance hit if you have shadows on. I've heard that having shadows set to high does not have the same issue, but I can't confirm that. If you are experiencing lots of performance issues in Star Wars, make sure your shadows are set to "off". This was such an improvement that I can actually play the game on my laptop, though still only at the lowest settings.
So, I've been playing more Star Wars. My main when I played World of Warcraft was a Paladin tank. I really kinda liked tanking in WoW, though I was better at healing. So, for my first character in Star Wars I decided on a Jedi Knight, figuring I'd probably roll a Consular next. So far the storyline for the Jedi Knight hasn't been anything spectacular, it's nice but just about what I'd expect. I'm sticking to the Light Side, though, and I'm guessing that the story can be a lot different if you chose to focus on the Dark Side. I may chose to visit the Dark Side when I roll that Consular, but I just find it hard to justify a Dark Side healer.
As far as crew skills go, I chose to go with Cybertech, Scavenging, and Slicing. Cybertech allows me to create modifications that can be applied to most equipment that will accept modifications, which makes it kind of all-around useful. Later on I think it will also allow me to create earpieces and maybe some other gear. Cybertech suggests two compatible skills: Scavenging and Underworld Trading. The great thing about Scavenging is that a lot of times I get to loot droids for their spare parts. I decided to go with Slicing over Underworld Trading because it allows me to get cash which can be used to buy anything including the uncommon materials I need for my Cybertech.

Next: The Sims 3. While my previous rant about how Story progression needs to be fixed still stands, the addition of the ability to create a Young Again potion and the ability to give gifts to other sims does mitigate this to some degree. Given these factors, I finally decided to turn aging and story progression on in my game and start watching all of our friends grow old and move away. After all, I can always just add new copies from the tray later, right? We'll see what happens there. So my family is now aging and having kids, but none of that is going very fast. One funny thing, though was that when the first child was born I set the Sim lifespan to Epic, then I noticed that it had been several days and my baby still hadn't turned into a toddler. It turns out that on Epic setting, the baby stage lasts for 32 days. So I changed it back to Long, which reset my existing toddler's age to 1 day while Mom was pregnant with Baby 2, the end result being that Baby 1 is only 3 days older than Baby 2, such is life.

On to Minecraft. As I said in my last post, in Minecraft you have to make your own fun. The good thing about that is that I've been making a lot of it. I decided when I started that I wanted to do everything legitimately. The world is infinite, so if I run out of diamonds, I'll just have to go find some rather than hacking my save file or getting a mod that will generate whatever I want. I've also been looking at a lot of the machines that people have been building and I've started making some of my own. My current project is a monster spawner and killer that is taking a long time because I have to light up all of the places a monster could spawn to ensure they spawn in my machine. I'm hoping that my design will actually be able to trap slimes, but we'll have to see about that.

That's pretty much what's been going on the past week. I'm hoping to play some more Savage Worlds soon, so I can tell you all how that's going. If anybody wants to say Hi on Star Wars, I'm on the Hedarr Soongh server and my main is Haledar.

Good Gaming.

Happy New Year!

To all my readers, “Happy New Year.” This past year has been wild. Many new things have been going on in my life and the lives of my friends, but one thing has remained constant: gaming is still my number one pastime.

What I’ve Been Playing:
Since my last post I did manage to beat Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I liked it a lot, though the boss fights were frustrating. I thought the story was great and I was really interested to uncover some of the secrets of Jensen’s past. Unfortunately, those secrets are never really revealed beyond a bunch of hints. I was also disappointed with the endings. There are 4 different endings, and if you save after the last boss before you chose your ending, you can see them all in one play-through. I was hoping for some nice cinematics and some plot resolution; what I got was a collection of still images, some stock photos and some generated for the game, accompanied by a voice-over explaining what happened after the end of the game. Yawn. Nevertheless I still enjoyed the game and I jumped right back into it to try to get the platinum trophy before Kevin moved away. I didn’t make it, but I did get a few other trophies I’d missed.

A few months ago I mentioned that my group was planning on starting up a Savage Worlds supervillian game. We managed to get that started, but we’ve only had a few sessions so far. Look for more information on how that game is going in the near future.

I also said that we had found a couple who was trying to start a Rifts game. Unfortunately grad school and pregnancy got in the way, but hopefully we’ll be able to get together with them in the future.

Not surprisingly, I’ve been playing Star Wars: The Old Republic since it came out. As I mentioned previously, my laptop isn’t exactly up to running Star Wars. It makes a good effort, but it just can’t handle it. Fortunately my wife’s laptop is a bit newer and manages the game a bit better. The side effect of this is that I have to borrow her computer to play Star Wars, which means that I haven’t been playing as much as I might have under other circumstances. Technical issues aside, I’m loving this game every bit as much as I did during my beta weekend. I managed to get my smuggler out of the bug I ran into in the beta and got to play around some with that class. Normally I’m okay with “glass cannon” classes, but the addition of the cover mechanic really detracts from it for me, so I don’t think I’ll be spending much time as a smuggler for a while.

I also picked up Minecraft which is great if you can make your own fun, but doesn’t really have anything in the way of quests. And I’ve been playing a lot of The Sims 3 since I got the Ambitions and Generations expansions over the holidays. One thing I can definitely say is a technical achievement in The Sims 3 over The Sims 2 is that you can actually install the expansions out of order and they still work properly.

What I Have Planned:
The biggest thing I have planned right now is building a new computer that will be able to run Star Wars and Diablo III. It will be a while before I can actually do that, but I’m still planning on it.

The Playstation Vita is coming out on February 22nd. I’m still looking forward to it, but based on things I’ve heard from the Japanese release, I may wait for a few software patches, and maybe a hardware revision, before I buy it.

A while ago I had an idea for a con game using the Desolation system. I may still try to get that all planned out for Who’s Yer Con in March, but I’m guessing it’s going to get pushed off until later.

What I’m Looking Forward To:
Diablo III is still slated for a first quarter 2012 release, I’m looking forward to that. I’ve already pre-ordered the collector’s edition even though there is a distinct possibility that I won’t be able to play it until I get my new computer.

We have a local tabletop gaming convention here in Indianapolis called Who’s Yer Con (link above) that’s coming up in March. Maria and I are planning on going and are thinking of joining the Pathfinder Society and going to a couple of their games.

That’s pretty much what’s been going on. Lots of exciting stuff has happened and is on the way, so stay tuned.

Until next time,
Good Gaming!

My preview of Star Wars: The Old Republic

This weekend I got to play in the beta for Star Wars: The Old Republic. I thought I'd take a moment and tell my readers who didn't get the opportunity what I thought about it. My first experience with The Old Republic was basically what I expected, I got on around 11:00 on Saturday and was told that I was approximately 500th in the queue to get into the server. Fortunately, I occupied myself with designing a lightsaber I've been thinking about building and the queue only toke me about 20 minutes. After that point I only had one other time all weekend when I was in the queue, so I was pretty happy about that.

First, a note: If you are worried about spoilers, don't be. I only got out of the starting zone with one character so I really don't have any spoilers to reveal. The only story-related points that I'm going to talk about are things that you either can guess without too much trouble, or will learn within about 10 minutes of playing the game.

The first thing that I noticed about Star Wars: The Old Republic is that it is Star Wars. I mean it really IS Star Wars. They got the feel, the atmosphere, the stories, the music, everything just right to make this game really feel like Star Wars. As far as I can tell, here's the storyline setup for the game: Once upon a Time there was an empire ruled by the Sith. Eventually the Sith Empire was destroyed and the Republic was formed. 20,000 or so years later (sounds like a long time for any government to last in my opinion) the Sith returned, destroyed the Jedi Temple, and started seizing power across the galaxy again (that part is in the opening movie). Some time later (seriously, I can't find anything that says exactly how long it's been since the opening movie) the game starts and your character arrives on the planet you will be spending your first several levels on.

The first thing you do in any MMORPG is create your character. Star Wars has two factions, The Republic and the Sith Empire. The first time you pick your faction you get a fully rendered movie detailing a bit about how things are going for your chosen faction. Later characters that you make for that faction won't trigger the movie, but you can view it at any time from the server select or character select screen.

Next you select your class. Republic players have access to the Jedi Knight, Jedi Counselor, Republic Trooper, and Smuggler classes. Empire players have access to the Sith Warrior, Sith Inquisitor, Bounty Hunter, and Imperial Agent classes. Once you reach level 10 (the current level cap is 50), each class has two options for Advanced Classes. My experience was that after gaining their advanced class, most players stopped referring to their character by the base class name all together. They became Snipers, Guardians, Scoundrels, and Commandos.

The class you chose affects the races that are available to you. I did not go through all of the options to check them out, but I found that some races were only available to Force wielding classes. Some of the races available for play are Humans (who seem to be able to be just about anything), Cyborg (again, can be anything but only on the Empire side), Twi'lek (the people with the head tails you see in Jabba's palace in Episode IV. I don't think I saw them as an option for the Empire), Miraluka (a race that looks exactly like humans except they have no eyes. They perceive the world through the force and thus are only available as Jedi), and Sith Pureblood (turns out that the Sith got their name from a race that has been exterminated. The name Pureblood is not really true, they are of mixed blood, but they show the characteristics of their ancient ancestors. Sith Purebloods are only available as Sith characters). There are other races, but I did not check them all out. Each race does have a unique ability, but none of them seemed to be combat related or really have any in-game use, only a bit of flavor.

Finally you chose your gender and start working on your appearance. Unlike most other MMOs that I've played (City of Heroes being the notable exception) SWTOR actually allows you to change your character's body size. There are only 4 or 5 preset models, but I was impressed by the options because it can make gear difficult to attach to the model. There are several choices for face, which actually change the character's head model, so they will have differently shaped noses or jaws instead of simply having different shading. most characters have scars that you can add. They range from cuts to claw marks, to burns, and not all of them are pretty. It's an important reminder that the galaxy is at war and there are consequences for that. Many races also have tattoos as well as different hair colors and styles. One perplexing slider is complexion. It's not skin tone, there is a slider for that. Complexion actually alters how your character's face flushes in different places and is a very, very subtle effect.

After you finish creating your character you get the iconic Star Wars logo and a block of flying text that is tailored to your class followed by a short cutscene showing your decent to the planet. Every time you log into your character from the character select screen you will get a few paragraphs (that won't fly across the screen) that will update to follow your character's progression through the storyline.

I've stated from the beginning that I'm a casual gamer. That means that I don't have anything resembling the latest hardware for my computer. In fact, my laptop is four years old and it wasn't top of the line then. This technical limitation definitely affected my play experience. I turned all of the graphics options to their lowest settings and still the game was choppy and difficult to control. Other people online reported that they had no problems, so I feel pretty confident that it was my computer that just couldn't keep up. Even with the graphics turned down I was impressed with how the game looked. It's no Skyrim, but it was amazing. not only were the visuals were exactly what I wanted from a Star Wars game, but the environments were beautiful for any setting.

As I said before, my limited computer resources affected my play experience, but I still had a blast. By level 4 my Jedi Knight was flying across the countryside pouncing hostiles with his practice sword. My Bounty hunter felt appropriately cool firing off rockets and barrages of blaster fire as soon as I started playing. Every storyline that I experienced started out by telling me how I was special in some way, and the game did a great job of making it feel that way.

I simply can't get out of this blog without talking about the storytelling and missions in this game. The class stories are great. They are specifically tailored to the motivations and characteristics of each class and you start the game in a series of missions that are custom tailored to your class. Even though most (maybe all) of the classes start in the same area as another class, the majority of the missions are completely separate. Every mission start and end is a voiced interaction with conversational choices that sometimes can give you Light Side or Dark Side points based on what you choose. This method of giving quests has a way of pulling you in and making the quests more interesting than just a block of text that doesn't end up meaning very much.

It's very difficult to find much to complain about with Star Wars: The Old Republic. I had a blast playing it and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in Star Wars, or who has gotten bored with World of Warcraft or Everquest. I've already pre-ordered it and I know that I will be upgrading my computer so that I can play Star Wars to the limit.

[Insert Generic Title Here]

So, it's been a month. Considering my track record that's not really so bad. In this post I'll talk about what I've been doing recently, what I'm planning in the near future, and what I'm looking forward to in the coming months.

What I've Been playing:

Being a parent is time consuming. At some time in the future I'll probably say something about how gaming and parenting affect each other, or about how they're similar, or something, but that's not this post. I bring up parenting because I've been doing a lot of that. A lot of parenting and not a lot of gaming.

My son is 17 months old, so he doesn't play games with rules yet. He plays a lot, and I love playing with him, but it's so freeform that I'd hesitate to call any of it a "game". Also, since he's so young I can't play any violent video games while he's around. In general I don't like to play video games around him too much because I think it's important that I get down on the floor and play with him.

When I wasn't crawling around mountains of Duplo blocks with my son, I managed to beat Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines for the PSP. I got all of the accomplishments except for the three pertaining to getting combo-kills. I never really figured out how to do combo-kills, and I don't care quite enough about getting those last three acomplishments to go back through a significant portion of the game.

Kevin bought a Koei game called Warriors: Legends of Troy. Man, was that game ever frustrating! I was expecting essentially a Dynasty Warriors game that was set during the Trojan War. To pe perfectly fair, that is what I got. I won't say that there weren't some good parts to it, but the game angered me so much that I put it down and didn't look back. If I were serious about trying to write reviews for games, I'd switch it over to easy mode and slug my way through it, but there are plenty of venues out there for people to get well-informed reviews.

Kevin also bought Deus Ex: Human Revolution. He finished that game and has now loaned it to me. Now I'm not good at shooters. I'm zen with this truth. So, I don't get into competitive shooters very much, but I do enjoy a good RPG/Shooter hybrid. I liked the first Deus Ex even though I never finished it. I'm really enjoying Human Revolution. It feels really good, and I don't mind too much that I get shot in the head a lot. One thing that bothers me, though, is that I can't use my sniper scope from cover. I have yet to find a situation where I can be hidden and shoot someone, rather than just have them looking the other way.

What I Have Planned:

Unfortunately there were problems with the Pathfinder game, so that's not happening anymore. On the plus side, we met a couple that's running a Rifts game from Palladium. Maria and I are really excited about that, and hopefully we'll be able to join in soon.

Also, we're getting together with some of our old gaming group that has moved out of town and we're planning an online Savage Worlds game from Pinnacle Entertainment. We'll be playing in a savage setting called Necessary Evil where everyone will be playing a supervillian. It'll probably be a lot of fun. We're going to be getting everone together online over a product called Epic Table that I picked up at Gen Con. Expect more information on that in the future. It's still in beta, but I'm looking forward to giving it a shot.

As far as the blog goes, I'm trying to get a video card that I can take some screenshots of my console games with. I have some plans for a couple of things I want to do with the blog, but they're on hold until I can get this.

What I'm Looking Forward To:

I already preordered Star Wars: The Old Republic. I've been looking forward to that one for a while and now I finally know that it's coming in December.

Diablo III recently got puched back to 2012, but long-time Blizzard fans have gotten used to the company's "It get's released when it's finished and not a moment sooner" attitude. I'll admit that I'm a touch worried that it will be a monotonous click-fest, but only time will tell.

There was a rumor that the PlayStation Vita will be coming out at the end of February. I'm excited for the system, but part of me is glad I won't have to fit it in with my other holiday season purchases. Also, the closer it gets to the end of my current cell phone contract, the better. If everything goes according to plan, I'll be able to use the PS Vita for all of the functions I have my smartphone for, allowing me to drop to a regular "dumb" cell phone to make way for the Vita data plan.

I'm still upset that Sony decided to make AT&T the exclusive carrier for the Vita data plan, but I'm sure there were plenty of financial reasons for making the commitment. Also, it looks like I can add a wireless hotspot to my cell phone plan for probably the same price as the Vita data plan. Plus I can use it if I get a tablet.

So, that's what I've been up to, what I've got planned, and what I'm looking forward to. If anyone is actually reading this blog, please leave me a comment. So far I'm not really sure there's anybody out there, and it would be pretty cool if I found out somebody actually read this.

Good Gaming!

How EA can fix Story Progression in The Sims 3

My last post was about Gen Con, and that was two weeks ago. The last couple of weeks have been pretty barren as far as gaming goes. I cancelled my World of Warcraft account again. I got a free month of Rift at Gen Con so I’ll probably check that out before too long. Then Star Wars: The Old Republic will be coming out some time this year and I’ll check that out too.

Mike and Kevin hadn’t seen Portal 2, so I played through that for them to watch. I love that game. The concept is smooth, the puzzles are well designed, and the writing is amazing. I love everything that comes out of Cave Johnson’s mouth. The replay value is a little sketchy. There were some rooms that took me forever to figure out the first time I did them, but once I’d figured out the solution it was really easy to remember the next time I played.

On the tabletop games front, I’m getting into a play-by-post Pathfinder game that is going to be following the Carrion Crowne adventure path. I’ve never done play-by-post before, but I’m excited to see how it goes. I’ll be playing a Halfling Paladin. I’m going to do my best to play a lawful-good paladin without being the giant d-bag that the class is known for. I’ll let you know how that goes.

On Monday I went to my friend Nicky’s place for her weekly game night. I played a game called 7 Wonders that I had heard good things about but hadn’t had the opportunity to play. I really liked this game. The sequence of play was very simple and after a few rounds we had it figured out, but the strategy is really involved. There are about six different ways to gain victory points and several of those involve the cards that the players on your left and right have played. I didn’t win either game that I played, but I had a great time anyway. Another group there was playing a game called Telestrations that also sounded like a lot of fun, but I couldn’t work in a game.

This brings me to the meat of the post. I’ve beenn playing The Sims 3 on my PC for a while. I’m trying an experiment this time. I’m making a family specifically so that they can make Ambrosia. Then I’m going to make them friends with all of the characters in the game that I’ve created to represent my friends. I plan on keeping my immediate circle of friends young, but allowing their children to grow naturally. I don’t know how well it will work, probably not at all, but that’s why it’s an experiment.

One thing that I’m somewhat disappointed about with The Sims 3 is the way they decided to handle Story Progression and Ageing. When the game launched you could turn Story Progression and Ageing on and off (seperately) for the entire town. Then they released a patch where they said that if you had directly played a household then Story Progression (and I think ageing as well) would be off while you were playing other households. Well, that didn’t work out apparently.

What I did in my experiment was I created my family and our circle of friends and placed them all in the game. I built each family’s house and played them long enough for everyone to get a job. Then I created my Ambrosia family and pretty much ignored the rest while I was working on their skills, confident that my sims would remain exactly as they were aside from relationship scores. Then I send one of the Ambrosia family to the house of my wife’s and my characters to make friends, only to discover that we had both aged to Elder and had children. I was unhappy with this and immediately turned story progression and ageing off for the entire town intending to delete the existing characters and replace them at a later date. I hope that works out the way I intend.

What I would really like to see, and EA can take this one for free, is for Ageing and Story progression to be able to be affected on a per-household basis. Just give me a little toggle when I’m on the Edit Town screen to flip those settings for each household as I see fit. I can’t imagine that it would really be that monumental a programming challenge. And if it’s not something that can conceivably be worked into a patch, at least work it into The Sims 4.

That's all I've got for now.
Good Gaming!

Gen Con 2011 Wrap-up

Gen Con Day 0:
Wednesday, August 3rd 2011
I'm an Indianapolis local. That means that I'm lucky enough to not have to fly to Gen Con every year. I actually work close enough to the Indianapolis Convention Center that I was able to work half a day on Wednesday and then walk to get our badges from Will Call. I heard that the Will Call line was around a quarter of a mile long, reaching all the way back to the J.W. Marriott when Will Call opened at noon. I really feel sorry for the people who waited in that line in the heat. I hope some company decided to get some good PR by handing out water. Once Will Call opened, though, they must have really been running hard. By the time I got in line around 1:30 it was hardly into the next room and I only had to wait in line for about 20 minutes.

Here's a rundown of the swag for this year, omitting fliers and things that were purely advertising:

• Full copy of the Rift video game


• 30 card Magic the gathering starter deck (I got the white deck, Maria got the Green)


• True Dungeon treasure token (I got a Bone Scroll Case, Maria got a Nixie Vest)


• Voucher for the yearly commemorative Gen Con die from Crystal Caste


• Gen Con coupon book

My next stop was the Cheese Weasel booth. Cheese Weasel Logistics is a marketing company. Every year they hand out quest cards to con goers. The quests are really simple: while you're in the vendors' hall, visit the booths that are advertised on the quest card. You do a product demo or listen to a short presentation and they punch your card. If you get all of the punches on a card you get to enter it into a drawing for prizes.

After picking up the quest cards for use Thursday through Sunday, I started wandering around the convention center looking for QR codes associated with Wizards of the Coast’s “Explore Neverwinter” con game. Eventually I ran across some friends from Game Paradise and we hung out until Maria was able to get away from work and then we headed to the Stink.

The Stink had its own swag, so I’ll list that here:

• Stink Die


• Untold Undead card miniature standees from Clerics of the Midwest


• Lanyard


• Gen Con 2010 T-Shirt


• ”Bathes Daily” Badge Ribbon


• ”You Stink!” Badge Ribbon


• ”Thanks for Bathing” Badge Ribbon

Gen Con Day 1
Thursday, August 4th 2011
Thursday started off right at 10:00 when the exhibit hall opened. Unfortunately, we missed the opening ceremony. Actually, I don't even know where it was this year since the Convention Center was revamped. So we hit the Exhibit hall and ran straight for the couple of booths that had free stuff in the coupon book.

After about 3 aisles in the exhibit hall we decided we needed lunch and headed to our first seminar titled “What is the Pathfinder Society?” It was two guys from Paizo who are heavily involved in the creation the the sanctioned adventures that make up the Pathfinder Society games. Maria and I hadn’t played pathfinder before, but knew it was a lot like D&D 3.5. And we’d never played in any organized play events either. We’re not members of RPGA, DCI (okay we’re members of DCI now because of a game we played on Saturday, but we weren’t then), the Camarilla, or anything like that. The Pathfinder Society, however, just sounded cool. I’m pretty sure we’re going to try to get into some games in the near future, though it may have to wait for Who’s Yer Con in March.

After “What is the Pathfinder Society?” we headed off to our next seminar. This seminar was about designing adventures and adjusting existing adventures to fit your group. It was run by a few guys from Wizards of the Coast. I was hoping to learn some great tips for designing a few con games that I'm hoping to run in the future. I did pick up a few pointers, but not as much as I was hoping. We ended up skipping the other seminar we had scheduled for Thursday and headed back to the exhibit hall.

Thursday night we played a game called Jumpers. In this game you play yourself. You rate your physical and mental attributes from one to five then roll your magical attributes. As you play through the game, if you need a skill that you personally have but you haven't written down, you just write it down and rate it from one to ten, then roll it.

We started out where we had all been on Wednesday evening, so three of us were at Gen Con and the fourth was sitting at home painting minis. There was a huge storm, lightning, chaos, panic, then we all woke up in the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago inside one of the bear enclosures. We snooped around and found something that told us the year was 1991. We decided that it would be really tough to explain ourselves, so we avoided security and snuck out of the zoo. Shortly thereafter, we jumped again.

The place we jumped to this time was a desert. We were on a highway and the sun was directly overhead. We walked along the highway for about an hour or so and the sun didn't dip an inch. I want to say that at some point we passed a sign that said we were in Arizona. Anyway, we found a little town off to the South of the highway, so we got off at the exit and headed for it. Then we noticed that the sun had jumped about 2 hours worth in the sky. Walking back to the north caused the sun to rise again toward Noon. When we reached the outskirts of town it was almost dusk.

A general store held some tools, supplies, and clothing. There was no one in the store. The date on the newspaper said it was in the Seventies. When we checked the back room we found our first person on this world. He was frozen in place and didn't move a muscle even to breathe, though he seemed warm to the touch. If we moved inside the room in a North/South direction he moved as if her were reaching for something on the shelf. We quickly ascertained that those of us that were standing in different parts of the room observed the clerk in different positions.

By this point we had all been up for close to 30 hours, so we headed to a hotel for a few hours rest. In the hotel we saw several more people frozen in time, and again they all seemed to go throughout their motions as we moved in a North/South direction. We decided to set watches and those who were awake heard a periodic sound of a screen door opening and banging shut. One person saw a bright light coming from the open doors of the church at the center of town.

After we woke up, we all decided to check out the church. Inside we found the disemboweled corpse of the man who had probably been the town’s pastor nailed to the cross. There was also a smooth-talking man in an impeccable suit standing in front of the alter. He told us, “This is my place,” and that we should leave in that manner people assume when they are supremely confident in their ability to persuade/force you to do whatever they want. Something about the whole situation just screamed “demon!” right in my ear, and I was perfectly willing to walk right out that door and on into the backwards sunset. Maria was about to join me too, but then the demon said something that made Maria stop, and I was obligated to stay with her.

When it became clear that we were going to pick a fight, the demon started to remove his jacket so he wouldn’t get our insides on it. Maria took one of the milk bottles I had filled with water and headed to the font to put holy water into the bottle. Apparently that turns the entire bottle into holy water. One of the other players had picked up a shovel at the general store and he charged the demon while his back was turned. He rolled spectacularly, so our Jump Master ruled that the head of the shovel had cleaved through the demon’s shoulder and buried itself in his chest. This rather displeased the demon. As he screamed, tore through his nice suit and grew to a size larger than the church, we jumped again.

This time we found ourselves on a beach. Looking around we saw a wooden dock a ways down the beach, and what looked like a Roman city along the cliff above us. While we were discussing what we should do, a couple of Roman spearmen approached us and started talking to us in Latin. None of us could really figure out what they were really saying other than that they probably wanted us to identify ourselves. Maria tried speaking in Spanish, but apparently Spain didn’t exist yet. Eventually we ended up attacking the guards, probably not our wisest choice but it worked out.

After subduing the guards there was a large earthquake. We looked up to see what was apparently Mt. Vesuvius erupting. Immediately we started sprinting for the docks. Everyone else jumped onto the last ship as it was leaving, but I missed and fell into the water. Just as the pyroclastic flow was reaching our location we jumped again in time to save our bacon.

That was the end of the Jumpers game, as it was midnight. I had a really good time playing and I wish we’d been able to make it to the Mega-jump on Saturday night, but we already had a game scheduled for that night. The Jump Master (Josh) gave us some T-shirts and buttons and we said our goodbyes. After a quick stop by White Castle, we called it a night and got ready for Friday.

Gen Con Day 2:
Friday, August 4th 2011
Friday was our big hall day. We wandered the hall, we were very careful to at least go past every booth. I’ve lost track of all of the demos we did, but I did pick up a whole mess of business cards and I hope to start working through them once my Internet connection is repaired. One of the things I did keep our eyes open for was a virtual tabletop program. If you don’t know already, a virtual tabletop is a program that allows players in different locations to have a common space to play their game. Typically there are in- and out-of-character chat channels, dice rollers, maps, tokens, and some whatnot. This was important to us because we wanted to see if it would be possible for us to continue gaming with our current group, even though we’re scattering across the globe. We saw a few of them, but the one we settled on was Epic Table. It’s still in beta now, but it’s already pretty slick without having a lot of extra stuff that you have to pay extra for.

Friday night was a game called Genesys. Genesys is a universal roleplaying system. Largely what that means is that it’s a system, and you can add your own setting to it and it should work out. The dice systems are pretty standard, but what they innovated with was a system they called Fate. At the beginning of the session you get a couple Fate Points, if you roleplay well you get more kinda like with Style Points in the Ubiquity system. In a combat situation, initiative is handled by dealing out cards like in Savage Worlds. What was different was that each card has 2 traits on it, a Light Side trait and a Dark Side trait. When the cards are dealt to you these traits do not apply, but if you choose, you can spend a Fate Point to activate the Light Side trait to affect you for the round. A Fate Card is also laid down for the combat and whichever side of the card Light Side or Dark Side is right-side-up to the DM affects the entire round of combat. If you like, you can also spend a Fate Point to negate the effects of the group Fate Card. Fate Cards are then dealt again for each round of combat. It’s an interesting system that could use a bit of refining, but that’s why it’s still being playtested.

The game we were playing was 1950s pulp. We were called together by a museum curator who told us that a magical artifact had been stolen and that it was going to be used to resurrect a particular evil goddess whose name escapes me. We were all given other magical items and then we boarded a plane to Iraq, at least I think it was Iraq. During the flight three women who were traveling with us, a professor and her assistants I think, were possessed by demons and attacked the curator and tried to crash the plane. A few rounds of combat while shoving each other out of the way and they were brought down, but they did almost break down the door to the cockpit.

Landing in Iraq we found that there had recently been a coup and the woman who met us on the ground told us to refuel and leave immediately. We told her we couldn’t and eventually she gave us a truck. An hour or so down the road the truck dies and we start seeing Iraqi military heading our way. My character had a mechanics background, so I threw up the hood and managed to get the engine restarted (it had been sabotaged by the woman at the airport) in just one skill check. We jumped back into the truck and avoided the entire encounter. To the DM’s credit, while we hadn’t been intended to bypass the encounter so quickly, he let us do it anyway.

The next trick was finding our way to a monastery in the mountains. Out information told us that somebody in this particular village would know, but that they didn’t commonly share such information with strangers. On our way to the village we saw a man and boy walking along the road. Maria’s character had some telepathy, so she decided to figure out what she could glean from them. She rolled really well and was able to get the exact route to the monastery from the boy’s head. Later on the DM told us that he’d had groups spend an hour trying to sneak into town to get the information covertly.

At the monastery we met a monk who had not heard of a temple to the goddess we were talking about, but he said there was a temple to Lilith in the mountains, but no one entering has ever left. Eventually we persuaded him to show us where it was and he took us there. The entrance was underwater in a small pool. We had to enter one at a time. As soon as the first person entered the first monster appeared and we went into combat. Then when the second person entered the second monster appeared, and so with the third. There were only three monsters, and there were six players, Maria was in the back of the line outside and didn’t even know there was something going on until it was over, she didn’t get to participate in the combat at all. I think that particular encounter needed to be tweaked.

We solved a couple of riddles, found our way to an alter and the museum curator raised the goddess. Big surprise, right? So Maria took his head clean off with a shotgun preempting him turning into another monster for us to fight and we started fighting the goddess. It took us a few rounds to think of screwing with the statue that had been used to summon her, that took half of her life away. And eventually we killed her. Another fun game under our belts. I don’t know if I’ll be picking up Genesys when it finally gets released, but I’ll at least think about it.

Gen Con Day 3:
Saturday, August 5th 2011
Saturday was a big game day for us. We started bright and early at 10:00 with Desolation. Now, I know I’ve said in the past that I love desolation. I’m actually planning a Desolation game to run at a con in the future. But this time it was not so great. All of the players seemed pretty into it, we were ready to have a good time, but the DM seemed a bit less fired up. Maybe he hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep the night before, maybe he was hungover, maybe it was just starting to feel too much like work, whatever the reason he just wasn’t on fire.

It was a short game, only scheduled for 2 hours. We were exploring some old Dwarven caves when an earthquake brought down the passage we’d been in previously. Trying to find our way out, we happened across a pair of Dwarf women, twins, who were also trying to find a way out. I was playing a Dwarf, so I knew what the women were scared of. The Deep Horrors are a somewhat insect-like race that can take over humanoids and turn them into warriors. They are the bogeymen that Dwarven mothers tell their children about, except they’re real.

The women thought they knew a way out, so I was all about heading that way with as little delay as we could. Unfortunately, the other party members wanted to explore every side passage along the way. In one side passage we found what had once been a Dwarf but was mutating into something else. After a few rounds of conversation we put a merciful arrow through his skull and went on our way.

We went further along our path and faced a group of Dwarf corpses that were animated by corpse fungi. in the real world there is a fungus that can infect ants that will cause them to do certain actions (mostly just walking around) even after the ant had died. Desolation’s Corpse Fungus works pretty much the same way except it will cause the infected corpse to fight somewhat and to exhale spores.

After that we started to find our way out and came upon the brothers of the women we’d been traveling with. Of course they had already been turned by the Deep Horrors so we had to destroy them, but that’s usually the way these things work out. A few rounds of combat and we were back in the light of day.

After Desolation we went to the Wizards of the Coast room to have our first introduction to Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition. We played in a rather extensive D&D 3.5 game and I have prepared a few others that we never actually played so we have some experience with D&D, but we hadn’t yet tried out 4th edition and we were interested to see what was different.

I won’t bore you with the differences that we found, most of you have already played 4th edition by now anyway. The encounter was just six of us in a field with 2 wolves and 2 goblins. We were all 1st level characters and none of us had played 4e before, so we didn’t exactly trounce them, but it wasn’t a difficult fight. What really stuck with me though, was that the woman running the game was easily the worst DM I have ever gamed under. She didn’t know her stuff, she discouraged playing in character, she didn’t even have a book.

We grabbed some food and headed to the Pathfinder Society room to try out what they called a Delve. The delve was basically one encounter in an arena to teach us some mechanics of the game. We were kind of hoping for a little more than that, but it’s what they had that was free. There were 7 players at this table including a couple who was probably in their 50s and had never played an RPG before. I don’t know what possessed them to try it out, but they seemed to have a great time. The DM was kind of confused with us because we already knew basically what we were doing, and since the new couple was sitting next to Maria, they kept asking her questions instead of the actual DM.

Through with our quick little delve, we headed on to our next game: Hollow Earth Expedition. Hollow Earth uses the same Ubiquity system as our earlier Desolation game but is set in a 1930s pulp world. Kinda like Indiana Jones in a lot of ways. This particular game was not set in the default setting. It didn’t even have anything to do with the Hollow Earth. We were playing a double feature, the first two hours were a western, the next two hours were a 1001 Arabian Nights kind of deal. The DM ran both games like we were in a corny movie on SyFy.

In the western I was an Apache boy who had been raised in England and trained as a doctor, now returned for revenge on the man who was responsible for destroying my village. Maria was a Chinese miner with martial arts training. The whole party was out for the blood of one man in particular. We rode into town on a rainy day that happened to be his funeral. We demanded to see the body and one of the pallbearers dropped the casket into the grave, which made an odd sound. I decided to go all in and jumped into the grave on top of the casket. The bottom of the pit gave way and I fell with the casket into a mining tunnel. There were strange creatures down there and the rest of the party soon followed me to confront them. They were kind of like the ugliest Nosferatu you’ve ever seen in a movie, and they were pretty feral, attacking their dead instead of us. We made short work of them then checked the casket to find, not the man we had all been coming to kill, but a woman who fit the description of his most recent mistress.

We headed down the mining tunnel toward the cliff face. We picked up an NPC who told us that he had seen several shackled women and children being moved through the tunnel. We came out of the tunnel into a large underground chamber that had a large lake and a ship moored inside. There was a firefight and a lot of maneuvering for cover before we finally found and killed the sniper. Next was the ship’s cabin and the man we had all come to kill... wielding a Gatling gun. The truth be told, I couldn’t tell you how we got him, all I remember is that I wasn’t very instrumental in it.

In the second part of our double-feature I played a 1300 year old Djinn who had been transformed into a 13 year old boy with no magical powers. Maria played a man who had been transformed into a monkey. We were all a part of Sinbad’s crew. We started at night, on deck. Apparently we were the most worthless members of the crew and were forced to sleep above deck.

During the night a giant bird breathed fire onto the ship and landed being ridden by a man in a golden helmet and a woman in chains. The man summoned four skeletons and then took the woman and walked into Sinbad’s cabin. We all started hacking away at the skeletons and the bird while Maria, as a monkey, climbed the rigging over the bird and went to help Sinbad. We had a warrior princess with us who took care of the skeletons handily and we managed to get past the bird. I’m not really clear on how exactly it went down, but the man in the helmet was a mage and he somehow got Sinbad to the bird, who took off with him, before we knocked him out and I stole his helmet. Then we remembered that the ship was on fire so we decided to swim for shore.

The woman had a spyglass with her that had Djinni writing on it. The magician in the group (who I knew was a fraud, but I didn’t out him because I thought it was funny) said he’d study the device to determine what it did. I casually walked over and stared at the spyglass in a wide-eyed 13-year-old manner, read the inscription on the spyglass, and said something in a tone that only the magician could hear that amounted to “Wow, I’ll bet it can see through illusions and stuff,” then walked away.

After a bit we were given clues that led to the basement of a building by the bay. On the wall there were alcoves that after a bit of investigation formed a pattern resembling a star constellation. The Magician sweet-talked the first mate of a ship owned by the Caliph himself to take us out to where the stars pointed. once there the area was surrounded by thick mist, but looking through the spyglass allowed us to find the safe way through the reef surrounding a sunken island.

The highest point on the island was still above water and we climbed the volcano until we looked over the rim and saw the mage that had transformed me into a boy and Maria into a monkey. Sinbad was bound to an altar and the giant bird was standing off to one side. The first thing I did was toss three grenades, I had demolitions for some reason, then our warrior princess jumped down to the mage and the bird took off to breathe fire on us. When the bird got up to us to incinerate us I tossed a few grenades down its throat and its head blew pretty well off.

When the princess dispatched the mage he turned into mist and started to invade Sinbad’s body. The princess grabbed the body and started moving him away and I jumped down to the alter and pulled out the lamp that had once bound me. Saying the proper incantation I bound the mage to the lamp which reversed his spell on Maria and myself. Since the lamp that had bound me was already occupied, I was a free Djinn, free to cause all sorts of mischief. I ended the game by transporting all of us to Baghdad.

Gen Con Day 4:
Sunday, August 7th 2011
Sunday of Gen Con always seems to have kind of a somber feel to it. Everybody’s backing up, getting ready to leave, talking about what they’re thinking about for next year. I think we’re going to try to plan more events on Sunday late in the day so we can keep going to the last minute without just wandering through the exhibit hall trying to figure out if we have the budget to buy just one more book.

This was my fourth year going to Gen Con. I always have a blast and this year was no different. We’re planning our budget better for next year and we already have a list of stuff we’re looking at buying. I’ll miss it, but it’ll be back next year and so will I.

That wraps it up for the Best Four Days in Gaming.

Until the next post,
Good Gaming.