PC games
I added this blog for a really bad reason
I just subscribed to Game Stooge entirely because of this. I am an idiot.
Age of Conan gets a free trial
So I’m not a massively-multiplayer kind of guy especially – I like the idea but I have a job, kids and other things that mean that they’re not suited to my lifestyle. I pelayed a little EVE Online and that was it. But I heard good things about Age of Conan and apparently there’s now a free trial. According to Economical Gamer you need to register and download by the end of the year (which is why this isn’t just a link post kind of thing) so get stuck in and drive your enemies before you…
It’s Thursday. Want some links?
- I personally don’t especially care about covers – I choose books based on reviews and previous work and I think most SFF covers are rubbish. But some people care a great deal. Here’s a post at A Dribble of Ink about the changes between editions of Mark Charan Newton’s Nights of Villjamur. The comments are pretty interesting if you like that sort of thing, with all sorts weighing in, including Newton’s editor.
- Filming of the Games of Thrones pilot has wrapped. Now we wait to see what the chances of a actual series are.
- Sex advice from D&D players. Actually serious advice, not a parody.
- The AV club’s best 15 video games of the noughties.
- Next time you’re at a loss for PC or NPC, try looking up this print of Characters for an Epic Tale. (via Boing Boing)
- The BBC discusses committing war crimes in video games. (via Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
- The Times covers ‘adult gamers’. Shock, horror!
- And, finally, Kotaku celebrates World of Warcraft’s 5th birthday by finding out from people why they’ve never played it. The intro where the writer discusses how it just doesn’t live up to tabletop gaming experiences is the most interesting one to me.
Yet another THURSDAY LINK DAY!!!
- More DMing advice from Penny Arcade
- The movie Gattaca is being made into a sci-fi, police procedural TV show. Sound pretty cool!
- How we’ll cope (or not) with the Dollhouse cancellation – the 5 Stages of Grief. But, maybe we’ll get more Buffy?
- Setting up your Mac to play PC games.
- Michael Chabon on breaking out of genre and the role of fan-fiction in popular culture.
- What Stormtroopers do on their day off.
- Some guy at the Guardian reads George R. R. Martin for the first time.
- Robin D. Laws does a great real world RPG inspiration. Maybe we should change the way we do ours?
- i09′s take on what SFF books you might like if you liked some recent movies. It’s a cool idea, done well and the recommend some great books!
- Finally, The Onion A.V. Club gives us more geek fun with their New Cult Canon write up on Army of Darkness, a movie I have never seen but now really want to!
Crap – console versions of Dragon Age lack isometric view (plus RPG info)
Well something had to ruin the party. According to Kotaku (and all over) only the PC version of Dragon Age will have the classic CRPG isometric view. And my PC won’t run the game! There’s rumours of other issues as well, including smaller battles.
Not sure exactly what I’ll do here – I’m planning on getting a new PC but it probably won’t be until next year and I don’t want to wait for Dragon Age. Stink!
In other DA news, there’s some details of the pen and paper RPG in a new podcast at the Green Ronin site. I haven’t listened but there’s details in this RPG.net thread. It sounds interesting actually – simple but with a stunt die sort of system called a ‘Dragon Die’.
A Ton of Links
I’ve been busy – what can I say? But I’ve been saving stuff up to post!
- Inquisitor – Another cool looking isometric indie RPG. I hope that and Age of Decadence come out!
- The Magicians – this book looks pretty cool and based on this interview, the author Lev Grossman is pretty cool as well! He’s also writen a great article about the improtance of plot in the Wall Street Journal.
- Erik Mona is doing a new blog – there’s no RSS but Erik Mona, Publisher at Paizo is going a blog over at ENWorld. The 1st entry is all about his history as a gamer.
- DragonAge‘s lead writer – here’s an interview with David Gaider! Pretty interesting stuff…
- A huge list of sci-fi – writen by people who aren’t white men.
- Tim Holman’s new blog – Mr Holman is the Publisher at Orbit. He’s writen some cool stuff including the state of the Urban Fantasy sub-genre and what gets onto the covers of fantasy books.
Phew.
Some video game links
I’ve been collecting links but had no time to post them. So here you go!
- Regular readers know that Sophie and I are pretty excited about upcoming PC/console RPG Dragon Age and may have even picked up that we’re both planning on playing it on the Xbox 360. Good news for us then because the Kotaku writers have had some time with the 360 version and say the controls work fine!
- There was also an interesting interview with video game designer Tim Schafer about the need for games to expand their subject matter beyond sci-fi and fantasy if the medium is going to grow larger. I could give a fuck about it getting bigger, but he’s probably not wrong.
- Finally, magicians Penn & Teller have dedicated an episode of their show Bullshit! to violent video games – pretty funny stuff.
I need to read a video game blog other than Kotaku. Any suggestions?
I guess I’ll be getting Dragon Age for Xbox then…
Because the PC specs are out and I don’t meet them!
No homosexuality in Star Wars?
Given Sophie’s coverage of the Dragon Age PnP game Green Ronin are putting out, I thought it was worth pointing out some rather silly stuff Bioware staff have been doing lately.
A mod on their forums for upcoming MMO closed a thread discussing discrimination against gay and lesbian forum members by saying that gay and lesbian are terms that “do not exist in Star Wars”.
Oh dear.
Bioware apologised and made the staffer apologise, but what a stupid move. One good thing was that it helped raise the issues surrounding gay and lesbian gamers and their treatment online. Kotaku ran a good history of these issues that hopefully a lot of people read. Just try to stay out of the comments…
Fallout 3 & pen and paper RPGs
The Age‘s Screen Play blog had an interesting post yesterday. Chris Avellone from Obsidian Entertainment (developers of the new Fallout: New Vegas game amongst others) apparently tested his design for the original Fallout 3 (never made, not the one that came out last year) by running playtests using a pen-and-paper version of the game, including running simultaneous parties whose actions affected the other group.
You can read all about it here but it sounds pretty damn cool! Given that Avellone worked on the magnificent Planescape: Torment amongst other clasic games, plus has a tabletop background too it would be very interesting to compare the two Fallout 3 based games when New Vegas is released.
There’s actually a longer interview with Avellone from Edge magazine here as well which is worth a read.