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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.

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!

Enjoy!

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.

It’s important to note that you don’t actually need to have read the source material to get this game. Watched Buffy and seen the drama of Buffy’s relationship with Angel, or Willow’s with Oz? Ever heard of this small book series called Twilight? Then you’ll get the game. Find your inner teen, ramp them up 10 fold and make them as self obsessed as possible and you’ll be all good. The author obviously does know the source material well though, so if you want to get in the right frame of mind check out the Recommended Reading and Recommended Viewing section of the Appendix.

SKMTFM is elegant in it’s simplicity, which is actually really refreshing in a pick up game. Many other games I’ve read that are meant to be easy to just jump into generally aren’t and get bogged down by too many rules and game design discussion. It’s a small book (40 pages), but covers everything you need to know about running the game, hand outs and character sheets. There is even an intro scenario to help you out if you find the idea of making it all up on the fly a bit daunting. It’s also been very well designed, which is a plus.

I would recommend going through the whole process though, as that is a large part of the fun. Deciding on your supernaturals, who the characters are and what their secret agendas are is hugely entertaining. I’ve played it three times, twice as the supernatural love interest (a goddess of fire and a were-panther) and once as the human best friend.

Over all this is a hugely fun game for when you have players not show up, you need a break from killing orcs or want to run something at a convention. If this sounds like you then pop over to Lulu or RPGNow and grab a copy!

(Disclaimer: I know the author well, game with her regularly and was given a review copy of the game.)

• 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?

Very interesting stuff, especially if you’re at all interested in Medieval history.

• 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!

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.

The launch of their last two licenses was done with a hiss, a roar and the promise of great support and interest. However as time marches on it seems that this isn’t quite happening.

A Song of Ice and Fire has had it’s core book, a GM screen and an adventure in the year an a half since it’s been released which is great. But the Campaign Guide is almost a year overdue and momentum seems to have really slowed. This is a great game and one which has given me many hours of fun, but despite winning ENnie awards and getting great feedback from the community, I worry that it isn’t going to get many more books released.

Dragon Age is the other major licence they’ve recently released and while this has only been around since late last year there has been very little in the way of news about new products. A book of adventures and adventure seeds called Blood of Feralden has been announced, but a release date hasn’t been. This game has the potential to tap into a whole group of gamers who don’t have any experience with dice, but unless GR keeps up the momentum on this licence I think it’s just going to fade away.

While I’m sure that Green Ronin is certainly very keen to support these lines and no doubt see them prosper, it is hard to stay enthused when there is next to no news of what’s coming up. I know that they are a small company and that they no doubt would rather be writing and producing games than creating hype. However part of keeping a fan base happy is news, rumor and titbits of information. It would be nice if they were a little more forthcoming with this sort of thing.

So the point of this post, if there is one, is that a great company like Green Ronin, who release interesting games with good systems needs to work a little harder to support the communities it has already established. I’m more than happy to accept that games like A Song of Ice and Fire and Dragon Age will have long approval processes. But if that is what is holding things up, tell me and while you’re at it, tease me with what’s next to come.

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