T w e n t y S i d e d
Hi, everyone, I’m Shamu. Did you know that games have been getting consistently better over the years? As I was saying to my best pal, Bobby Kotick
Oh. Shamus finally added those avatars, huh? I had another twenty pages where I explain why Medal of Honor: Warfighter was GotY 2012, but I guess I’ll just get to the point.
Remember Aunty Paladin? You probably do, since most of you were around last year, hecklin’ on us, watching us play roleplaying games, participating in crowd activities, and generally havin’ a blast. But for those of you who didn’t make it, let me sum up.
Every year, the RPG association I’m president of does a 24-hour Livestreamed RPG marathon for as long as you guys pay us to. Damn fine people play damn fine games from sunrise to sunset with only the comment stream to keep us company. All the proceeds go to Child’s Play, and we’ve hooked it up so you can send your donations simply and directly this year. Frankly, I’m jazzed.
The official schedule will be posted soon, so keep an eye out for that, but here’s some of the glory you can expect:
- We’re kicking off with a game of Hobospy, the dark comedy RPG designed and produced by yours truly
- A game of Paranoia run by me, the master of mindscrewery!
- Can five players survive Tomb of Horrors? Almost certainly not!
- An exclusive, officially sanctioned live beta test of Evil Hat’s awesome magnum opus, Fate Core!
- Can Rutskarn and company stand that bad sci-fi novel come to life, Immortal? The number of walls I punched trying to figure out the first chapter is a nonzero number.
- Audience-participation game of Fiasco, which I’ve unofficially dubbed the Coen Brothers RPG.
- The return of your favorite cast members, like Wolfnord, Kiltbeard, Troy, Sam, Arturo the Bear, and many more!
Seriously, folks, this oughtta be great. As long as we’re funded, we’ll be rolling until midnight Friday. Spread the word–this isn’t just a great opportunity to help kids and have fun, it’s a great way to show people a.) what roleplaying games are, and b.) that they’re a riot to play. Ever try to describe what an RPG is like to someone who’s never seen one before? Trust me, this is easier.
Oh yeah, we’ve got an embedded stream now. So there’s that.
What Does a Robot Want?
No, self-aware robots aren't going to turn on us, Skynet-style. Not unless we designed them to.
The Best of 2019
I called 2019 "The Year of corporate Dystopia". Here is a list of the games I thought were interesting or worth talking about that year.
Free Radical
The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.
Video Compression Gone Wrong
How does image compression work, and why does it create those ugly spots all over some videos and not others?
Fixing Match 3
For one of the most popular casual games in existence, Match 3 is actually really broken. Until one developer fixed it.
So what’s the day/time this all actually starts up? I can’t seem to find it.
‘The official schedule will be posted soon’
look closer :P
I had taken “official schedule” was referring to what games would be played in what order.
Starting time is 8:00 AM PST!
4 gmt…Finally I can actually watch A show on here as it happens :)
So that’s 16:00 on GMT?
link for all timezones:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Aunty+Paladin&iso=20121217T08&p1=137
I’ve gotta remember that site, that’s really handy.
Also, I can actually be there at the start this time, yay!
So it starts….
3 Am tomorrow?
Guess I am missing the start. I dislike that.
more FATAL!
No FATAL. Just don’t ask about it.
not asking would be a fatal mistake
Obligatory link to RPGnet review of FATAL
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14567.phtml
Will Reginald cuftbert be making an appearance this year?
I couldn’t even make it through that review.
Agreed! I missed it the first time, and I would love to see you guys play more FATAL, purely out of Schadenfreude.
From what we’ve been told, FATAL is definitely, definitely not happening again. I think forcing them to play it may cross the line from schadenfreude into outright sadism.
They should try it in the next saw movie, it’s not like they could get worse.
Technically, that would require them to have played FATAL. They gave up halfway through character creation.
So no. Rutskarn & Co. will NEVER, EVER be playing more FATAL.
No, we’re not doing it.
If you weren’t there last year, it was a mistake. It wasn’t funny. No-one felt good about it. Some of us woke up crying the next day. I was one of them.
We’re not doing it. We don’t even want to talk about it.
i saw some of it. I thought that the game was hilarious in the worst way, I guess I’m just a sadistic bastard. I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed playing it either but I guess that’s why the term schadenfreude was invented.
Like I said I only saw some of it, so I was a bit disappointed that you Didn’t keep the footage, although I understand why. I’ll stop bringing it up, but secretly I’m still hoping that i’ll witness something so terrible again.
It started out funny,yes,but it ended up really,really ugly.It was not a pleasant thing to watch.
As a substitute here’s a podcast in which they attempted to create a character in FATAL:
http://theadventuringparty.libsyn.com/webpage/character-creation-may-2011-from-another-time-another-land
this is hilarious.
Yeah, it went very fast into the “this is not funny, but seriously uncomfortable and demeaning” territory. After it, the whole mood of the event was pretty fragile, and not in a funny way.
So, yeah. If you missed it and hear about the whole ‘never again’ thing – you didn’t miss anything entertaining. Fatal was like a rancid surstromming hidden in a cake.
Oh god,no!My sleeeeep :(
So brolina,will you push paranoia a bit sooner this time,so that it can be with a larger group?
It’s Brolita.
Wait. Table top RPG stuff? Here?
. . . Are we sure we’re still on the right website?
There’s RPG stuff at Twenty Sided, Halo stuff at Halolz…
Yep, the end is coming.
Fate Core & Fiasco. Excellent choices!
Any idea what playset you might use?
Hopefully they’ll fill in some time with another run of Kobolds Ate My Baby at some point. Looks like a lot more people involved this year though, so not sure what there will be for time to fill in. Well, we’ll see.
Also Savage Worlds (“it was winnable!”). Also, Maidiators (which was the only run of Maid that I was able to catch).
I don’t see a donate link yet, though. Hmm. …Aha, flashblock was hiding it! OK, that’s solved then. :-)
Oh man oh man! THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER. I remember last year this being hilarious and hilariously painful.
I’ll be sure to tune in.
Yesss! I can’t wait! I can’t believe it’s been a whole year already! Last year’s Aunty Paladin was so much fun!
By the way, you should absolutely play some Call of Cthulhu.
After hearing spoony talk about it and those somethingawful wtf d&d games, I’d love to see a call of Cthulhu game.
The problem with seeing a Call of Cthulhu game is that you can’t ever UNsee it. Remember that every piece of knowledge causes negative modifiers to your SAN check :-)
I managed to totally derail the one and only CoC game I’ve ever taken part in before we’d even started playing.
Somewhere in the middle of things I pointed out that the military unit based characters that the GM had whipped up for us corresponded quite well to Team Fortress 2 classes.
That let to TF2 quotes all night, and since this took place over Skype, me linking to Gmod videos relating to just about everything.
Will Reginald cuftbert be showing up this year?
Mos def, holmes.
Then me and my bonnet will be there :)
I find it funny that there are four or five people watching the test pattern right now…
I told Jarenth that I would show up if he did.
BUT APPARENTLY, FLYING TO CALIFORNIA FROM EUROPE IS SOMEHOW MORE DIFFICULT AND EXPENSIVE THAN DRIVING TWO HUNDRED KILOMETERS THROUGH THE DESERT.
Lies I tell you… Lies! The desert shall never be conquered!
DAMN YOU
It’s true though. I’d love to crash all of Rutskarn’s parties, but flying is expensive.
The solution is obvious:You should swim.
Simple, star a kick-starter next year.
Expenses be damned, it’s the probing at american TSA checkpoints that’s the real downer.
What day does this happen?
This Monday!
Ah-HA! My last final is on Tuesday so I’ll actually be able to goof off and follow most of the marathon this year (Assuming you guys make it to Friday).
Are you guys going to record it so those of us with prior obligations can go back and watch the games we missed due to exams/work/terror missions?
We’ll attempt to.
Damn you, Rutskarn. Damn you.
Also you left Jibar’s underwear at my condo again.
Is this something my RPG obsessed 13-year-old should watch? Not playing FATAL this year is a good step in that direction so I thought I would check.
If Rutskarn is there,it is safe for anyone over 12.
Judging from last year, he’d be able to safely watch it (Although there is occasional mature language), but I’d advise you to somehow disable the chat for him.
Because last year it descended into the naming of random pairings of the various cast-members for slash fics, up to and including Futa Mumbles/ Femskarn.
LOL Not knowing anyone involved would probably not prevent my daughter from engaging in some random ‘shipping. She’s heavily involved in the Hetalia fan-fic ‘shipping communities. And if she knew either Rutskarn or Mumbles she would have laughed maniacally at that “crack pairing.”
I though Futa Mumbles/Femskarn was all but canon at this point.
By “mature language”, we mean the sort of thing that will scandalize overprotective parents, but won’t be any worse than what we all heard back in 8th grade.
The games themselves may contain drug-related content (though not in graphic detail) and sexual content (again, not graphic). And, well, lots of non-graphic violence, but that should be no surprise at all.
We of course can’t guarantee that the people in chat won’t take things in a graphic direction, but everyone was pretty well-behaved last year.
(Damn, haven’t had anything to say on here in a while, been lurking since…I sent josh to the wrong store in the Saints Row 3 live stream, almost a year ago…)
ANYWAY!
Shamus is still a contributor on the Escapist right? Why don’t you whore Rutskarn out on there, do a little article, about charity and childs play etc, and just name drop Rutsky as a table-top version of desert bus, but not sooo mainstream (hipsters will flock to them).
Bringing the escapist forum crowd onto this marathon? I guess it would be good for the money numbers, but I predict the chat would have to be taken down pretty fast with that bunch swarming in.
Over/Under on how many people go insane this year due to no Julie to take care of them?