RPG
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.
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.
2010 in review
Floating around somewhere is a post I did early last year saying what I wanted to acheive in gaming in 2010. I would link to it, but I can’t seem to find it. Regardless I thought I would sum it up here:
- I spent the better part of 2010 writing, in collaboration with two others, a 66 person LARP called Al Shir-Ma. It’s set in an Arabian Night-esque world which borrows from Al-Qadim. It was done for the yearly KapCon gaming convention here in Wellington, and it’s first run through is happening next weekend. It’s been a really interesting experience and has I think made me a better scenario writer. But man, has it been a lot of work.
- I wrapped up my campaign, using the Green Ronin A Song of Ice and Fire rules, in a not hugely satisfiying way. By the end I’d kind of lost interest and time, and it all got a bit too railroady. It showed me that I really want to run long term games that leverage off character backgrounds and story rather than some over arching plot I’ve come up with. Means less work for me too.
- I ran Peril in King’s Landing a pre-written scenario for ASoIFRP. It’s one of the few times I’ve actually run a pre-written scenario and while I liked the low prep of it all, I found that I had the most fun when I was adding in new elements passed on player actions.
- I played a lot of Xbox 360. Notably Alpha Protocol, Fallout 3, Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Fallout New Vegas. Some of these games, like Mass Effect, I played through for a third time so I could carry my character into the new game. Yes I am that much of a geek.
- I played a lot of table top and LARP games. For the first time I played more than I GM’d and it was great.
- I discovered some great new table top games like Prime Time Adventures and Apocolypse World.
So from a gaming perspective 2010 was great. Though as the silence from June on might have told you, other stuff wasn’t. Now though it’s time to look forward to 2011!
Hot War: Transmission
Hot War hasn’t been getting much love here recently (but let’s be honest, nothing much has. That’s real life for ya!) so I thought I’d quickly mention the Hot War Transmission series that have come out over the last few months.
So far there have been two Transmissions. Issue 1 focused on the work of Nigel Kneale, creator of the Quatermass series which was a huge influence to Hot War creator Malcolm Craig. Issue 2 focuses on UK politics in the early 1960s and how they might have flowed into post-apocalyptic London.
Each Transmission also includes a pre-written game set up, with appropriate characters so you can give Hot War a go with minimal set up.
They’re both well written and useful for Hot War games. So go check them out.
Green Ronin bags another licence
But is it one too many? I was surprised to read that Green Ronin had signed an agreement with DC Comics to release a series of four books as part of their Mutants and Masterminds line. It makes me wonder how many licensed products are sustainable for a small publishing house like GR.
Fall – Episode 23 Lull before the Storm
This is also known as the Filler Episode (as Norm couldn’t make it), and happens to also be the most amazingly awkward roleplaying Ive ever done.
Not much happened in terms of plot in this one, most of it is dealing with the bomb Calvin dropped in the episode before and Alex not knowing how to deal with it all. As all of this is gone into in by Jenni in her blow by blow recaps, I think I’ll leave it at that.
But to sum up:
- Calvin and Alex barely talk when they wake up in Calvin’s bed the next morning, having spent the night together.
- Alex gets busted leaving the house by Martha, Calvin’s sister.
- Megan tries to sweet talk a priest into giving her some holy water, and when that doesn’t work steals it instead.
- Darius is still recuperating (either in hospital or at home, I was a bit confused).
- Calvin tries to find Gina, and discovers that shes disappeared. The car she borrowed is found in a parking lot near the train station and he assumes that shes left town.
- Megan is oblivious to whats happened between Alex and Calvin, even when the three of them hang out at her house trying to find out what happened to Gina. (Cue awkward silences)
- Alex totally confuses Calvin by bursting into tears in front of him, after he offers to just forget about the night before and she says she doesn’t want to.
- Calvin and Alex have another bonding cemetery moment when they’re attacked by two vamps. This fight doesn’t go so well and Calvin ends up getting bitten.
Next time round well be getting back on track with the plot and edging that much closer to the end of Fall, Season 1!
Previously on Fall
Jennis write ups