T w e n t y S i d e d
From The Archives:
Black Desert Online
This Korean title would be the greatest MMO ever made if not for the horrendous monetization system. And the embarrassing translation. And the terrible progression. And the developer's general apathy towards its western audience.
The Best of 2013
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2013.
My Music
Do you like electronic music? Do you like free stuff? Are you okay with amateur music from someone who's learning? Yes? Because that's what this is.
The Opportunity Crunch
No, brutal, soul-sucking, marriage-destroying crunch mode in game development isn't a privilege or an opportunity. It's idiocy.
Crysis 2
Crysis 2 has basically the same plot as Half-Life 2. So why is one a classic and the other simply obnoxious and tiresome?
I know that DM of the Rings is meant to be a parody of both Lord of the Rings and of bad D&D campaigns, but I can’t believe this games DM was so bad as to make an encounter where they gained more than one level after the end.
In some game systems, regardless of xp accrued, characters can only gain levels (or equivalent) at certain points in the story, such as when in a civilised, safe location in-game. Many GMs may ignore this restriction, but not all. If those moments are too widely separated, it may be possible to accrue a truckload of xp before one comes around, and this group have had a mass battle (Helm’s Deep), and a bunch of roleplaying and combat since leaving Edoras. However, since Edoras was distinctly challenging when they first arrived and there was little to no downtime before they headed off to Helm’s Deep, their last safe haven plot point might well have been Lothlorien. If the challenges of Moria had been enough to get them close to levelling but not quite there, then I could quite see a battle of rolling for each individual orc – and presumably accounting for each individual xp award the same way, since that seems to be the way this GM works – putting characters in a position to level more than once. In a situation like that, dictated by the structure of the adventure (I.e. events outside the players’ control) it would take a fairly nitpicking GM to stick to the rule of one level at a time, which was certainly a thing in Basic. Unfortunately, that’s exactly the case here.
It just makes me appreciate systems with ‘milestone’ levelling more. No more tracking ever-increasing numbers and grinding every little thing to gain levels – it just happens after story beats or when the DM thinks it’s appropriate. Much better.
It gives the DM a lot of power, but that’s not a new thing or exclusive to this situation.If you can’t trust the DM, you’ve got problems WAY before you consider gaining levels.