T w e n t y S i d e d
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “DM of the Rings CX:
Roleplaying, at Last”
DM of the Rings CX:
Foremost Message
James Lilek’s new blog at Buzz.mn is already dealing with F1RST P0ST! issues. He suggests a “disabling jolt of electricity” for anyone first-posting his site, but I notice comment #1 is just such a post.
It’s time to respond in kind: I’m going to senselessly delete the very first comment on this post, no matter what it is. :)
UPDATE: And the victim was Telas, whose musings are now lost forever, alas. Seems sort of stupid now, but I promised. who cheated by double posting. Curse you Telas! I’ll get you for this!
A New Spell
In the comments of this post a reader notes their overlong comment and remarks that they posted a “wall of text”.
Reader Zaghadka responds:
What a great idea for a spell:
“Wall of Text” (Illusion, Bureaumancy)
Upon casting this spell the mage bathes a 10′x10′ cube/lvl. area with mindless mutterings, ranting, copious formulaic backstory, or repeated iterations of “Romani ite Domus!”
Anyone in the area of effect must make a will save or suffer one of three effects: Confusion, Emotion of Hopelessness, or their head explodes. Blind targets are not affected. Dyslexic targets save at +3.
Counterspell: Erase
Perfect. I’m still laughing.
Jade Empire: Character System
(NOTE: I wrote this weeks ago and then forgot all about it. Recently I was playing a different RPG which brought all of this to mind.)
Being a real-time fighting game, Jade Empire is very different from other character development systems. (“Character development” in this context means the player increasing the stats of their in-game persona – leveling up, and whatnot – and has nothing to do with developing characters in the sense of establishing personalities and getting to know NPCs.)
Some games are very level-driven. Diablo is a good example. In that game, having good equipment and decent skills at playing will tilt the odds in your favor, but never so much that you could overcome a monster ten levels above you. Levels are everything in that game. By the time you finish Diablo, you will be doing at least an order of magnitude more damage than you were at level 1. If you were to take a level 1 Diablo character and transport them to the final levels of the game, it would be impossible to play. Even the weakest monsters would kill the player in a single blow.
Jade Empire sits at the opposite extreme. Levels just don’t have much impact on the game. You have three stats (Body, Spirit, and Mind) and each level you get a mere three points to spend on these stats. In the long run, those points just don’t ammount to much. In my game, a majority of my points came through questing, and just 28% of them came as a result of leveling up. This means if I had gone through the entire game and remained at level 1, my stats would only be 28% lower by the end. Where in Diablo an end-of-game character might be doing ten or twenty times more damage than a new character, in Jade Empire your damage will – at best – double during the course of the game.
The other aspect of the leveling system is the sheer simplicity of it. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Jade Empire: Character System”
Pedantic Nitpicking
Steven talks about some of the reasons he quit writing at his primary site a few years ago. As his site grew, he started getting mail that would “set his teeth on edge”. Steven recently said:
What I really hated was people who could only see details and were obsessed with them. I could predict what kinds of things would cause them to respond.
I know exactly what he’s talking about. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Pedantic Nitpicking”
Links to Lileks
Back in 1999, I was a 3d modeler / texture mapping artist. I wasn’t particularly talented. I’m still not. I just don’t have a lot of artistic style, but I made up for it with raw technical knowledge and a Jedi-Master level command of shortcut keys. Sometimes I’d get an assignment to to something that required a bit more art than I had to give. At one point I needed to come up with some realistic domestic scenery: Houses, interiors, and whatnot. I wasn’t sure where to begin.
I turned to Google Image Search, looking for stuff on interior design. I was hoping for some sort of crash-course on home interiors. Instead I found James Lileks’ Interior Desecrators and I blew the next hour or so of work surfing around his site and laughing. Eventually I stumbled on his blog (although I don’t think I knew the word “blog” at the time) and I’ve been reading The Bleat ever since. He’s a newspaper columnist. He’s not as funny as Dave Barry, but that’s like saying he’s poorer than Sheik Al-Mufar Petrol III and he’s not quite as focused as Batman. There are worse faults a man can have. Anyway, I love his work.
I even subscribed to the on-line portion of his newspaper Star Tribune, just so I could read his column there. A couple of years ago they cut his already-meager newspaper column down, and what was once a “fun size” bag of Fritos became A Frito, singular. He was the only reason I visited their site, and sometimes they couldn’t give the guy enough space to sum up the plot to an episode of Full House. It seemed silly to me, but then I’m half a country away and not exactly their target audience. Maybe they didn’t care if I was reading or not.
Then some sort of buyout happened, and they took Lileks away from his Quirky Column duties and were going to make him a reporter. A recorder. A summerizer of events. A job that, by its very definition, precludes the making of ironic observations or the spouting of witticisms. This is like giving James Earl Jones a job as a movie theater projectionist. Sure, I bet he could do it, but aren’t there better things you could have this guy do?
The news spread on the internet, and There Was An Outcry. As with most outcries on the internet, there really weren’t any instances of anyone crying out, but I was vaguely aware that some people got mad and blogged about it.
The paper has changed their minds. They have decided to pay Lileks to blog. Here.
From his debut post:
Hello everyone: I'm the new Buzz.mn content-wrangler. I'd say “editor,” but to me, the words “James Lileks, Editor” look like “Wile E. Coyote, Genius.”
Do give it a look. Maybe say hi. The site even has open(ish) comments, which is pretty cutting-edge thing for a newspaper site to do.
DM of the Rings CIX:
Give Peace a Chance
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Give Peace a Chance”
From The Archives:
The Dumbest Cutscene
This is it. This is the dumbest cutscene ever created for a AAA game. It's so bad it's simultaneously hilarious and painful. This is "The Room" of video game cutscenes.
If Star Wars Was Made in 2006?
Imagine if the original Star Wars hadn't appeared in the 1970's, but instead was pitched to studios in 2006. How would that turn out?
Joker's Last Laugh
Did you anticipate the big plot twist of Batman: Arkham City? Here's all the ways the game hid that secret from you while also rubbing your nose in it.
Video Compression Gone Wrong
How does image compression work, and why does it create those ugly spots all over some videos and not others?
This Game is Too Videogame-y
What's wrong with a game being "too videogameish"?
The Best of 2012
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2012.
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.
Philosophy of Moderation
The comments on most sites are a sewer of hate, because we're moderating with the wrong goals in mind.
The Brilliance of Mass Effect
What is "Domino Worldbuilding" and how did it help to make Mass Effect one of the most interesting settings in modern RPGs?
Control
A wild game filled with wild ideas that features fun puzzles and mind-blowing environments. It has a great atmosphere, and one REALLY annoying flaw with its gameplay.