games
Mostly Geek has a new home
Due to issues with hosting I’ve decided to go cheap and just use the freely hosted version of WordPress over at wordpress.com.
Therefore this blog now lives at: http://mostlygeeknz.wordpress.com/
Please update your links.
Felicia Day does Dragon Age
So for the last little while Felicia Day (aka Queen of the Geeks) has been tweeting about a “mystery project” she’s been working on. Day is most famous in geek circles for writing, producing and acting in a web series called The Guild, as well as being Penny from Dr Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog. Not to mention acting in two other Joss Whedon shows, Buffy: the Vampire Slayer and Dollhouse.
Last night the mystery project was revealedto be a new web series called Dragon Age: Redemption. That’s right, EA/Bioware have asked her to do to Dragon Age what she’s unofficially done to World of War craft. Make it cool and bring it to a different kind of audience. Details are a little thin on the ground but USA Today had the scoop and also did a nice little Gamer Profile on Day.
She has also blogged a little about the project, but no doubt the best place to get more info as it happens is to follow @FeliciaDay on twitter. She tweets a lot.
So info dump aside, what do I think? I think this is super cool. I’m not a huge Guild fan, but think that it’s pretty impressive that it’s been going for 4 whole seasons, and was bank rolled for the first season by fan donations. Day also then managed to keep total creative control when she signed a distribution deal with Microsoft. Also Felicia Day is a real gamer, she plays games, loves games and understands why the rest of us do. A quick quote from the USA Today article:
A life-long game player, Day is fully aware they have a poor track record when it comes to adaptation. “I am an organic gamer and I love games, and I particularly love this franchise,” she says. “I put every single effort into making this something that gamers will be proud of. Even though we were constrained a lot as a Web series, none of the people who were involved took that as a constraint. They took that as a challenge.”
So yeah, I look forward to seeing this when it comes out. I doubt it will be at the same time as Dragon Age 2, but hopefully not too long after.
New Scenario – Slayage by Gaslight
I’ve added a new adventure to the Scenario section. It’s another Unisystem, 3 hour game that I wrote for my Buffy group a couple of years ago. I streamlined it and ran it at KapCon 19 and 20, so I reckon there might be a few people out there interested in it.
It was meant to be part of a series, The Slayer Chronicles, but I haven’t quite got round to writing the others yet.
No editors cast their eyes over this one, and it’s basically the spruced up game notes so if you see any glaring errors please let me know!
The Silver Kiss of the Magical Twilight of the Full Moon – Review
Silver Kiss of the Magical Twilight of the Full Moon (Silver Kiss or SKMTFM for short) is a roleplaying game poking gentle fun at the myriad of young adult supernatural romance novels that have gained a lot of popularity in recent years.
It’s set up is pretty simple. You get 5 people in a room (sense of humor and ability to poke fun essential). One person will GM the other 4 will be two groups of best friends, one supernatural and the other human. Add a large dash of angsty teenage romance, shake vigorously and serve.
The end of my year of LARP
2010 was an odd year for me, but most of the reason why isn’t really what this blog is about. However part of it was that in March last year, I somewhat rashly agreed to write a LARP for 60 odd people to be run at KaCon XX – Unnatural 20.
I say rashly because at the time I had played in exactly 3 LARPs, one of which was an experience I really didn’t enjoy. However it seemed like a challange and I liked the theme, so I said what the hell!
Feeding nostalgia
It seems that there is a bit of a wave of nostalgia going on at the moment. An article over on joystiq.com pointed me to this interview with one of the original Quest for Glory designers.
As soon as I have a computer which isn’t a netbook running Ubuntu I’ll be heading to GoG and spending way too much money on games almost 20 years old.
Fallout fan film
So someone, somewhere has made a very entertaining 16 minute fan film set in the Fallout universe. It’s pretty funny, check it out.
Gaming plans for 2011
So I recently summed up 2010 and the gaming that I did. So I thought I might as well list the plans for 2011:
- Start a new campaign set in a homebrew world. I’m currently working through my ideas and am hoping to start in late February or early March. Interestingly I finally checked out True20 to see if it would fit my ideas for a low magic world, with a not too heavy system and it’s great.
- Continue to get plenty of playing in. I can see one or two of my current games winding up at some stage soon and while one of those will be replaced with my own campaign I hope to fill the other with another longish term game.
- Get a PC. There are heaps of good CRPGs coming out this year and I’m sick of playing on the Xbox 360. I want a PC again, rather than using my TV.
- Talking of non table top games this year I’m looking forward to Dragon Age 2, The Witcher 2: Assasins of Kings, Mass Effect 3, Elder Scrolls: Skyrim and maybe even my first MMO, The Old Republic.
- I’m going to continue to LARP in one off parlour games.
- Write and run a small LARP (for about 15 people). My ideas at the moment are running towards a steampunk-esque Society of Explorers.
And I think that should keep me pretty busy. What about you? Any plans for this year?
Real life RPG inspirations: The brutality of battle
Thanks to a tip from fellow gaming blog Cyclopeatron I’ve been pointed towards an excellent article from the Economist on the Battle of Towton, during the English Wars of the Roses. For anyone running a realistic game with large scale battles, this is well worth a read. It gives some real insight into the people who faught at the time, the way the battle was faught and the consequences of loosing.
Very interesting stuff, especially if you’re at all interested in Medieval history.
Old school adventure games
Do you miss the old days of PC gaming? When Sierra released games like Police Quest, King’s Quest and Space Quest (they obviously knew a good name when they saw it)? Games where you just died, no second chances? Where if you couldn’t work out which desk was yours the game ended?
Well now you can play them again! I just stumbled across Sarien.net where you can play these old games through your browser.
Or if you’re more into reliving the expirence with friends check out the Parsely Games from Momento Mori. A great way to waste half an hour or so.
And remember folks, don’t forget to save!!