T w e n t y S i d e d
 |
Railroad Goes Ever on and on”
DM of the Rings C:
Railroad Goes Ever on and on
Railroad Goes Ever on and on”
DM of the Rings C:
Railroad Goes Ever on and on”
Final Fantasy XII: Too Clever to be Understood
 |
| Hey, remember when I ran out of the room and let you guys all get captured? Yeah, I was just messing with you. Pretty funny, huh? |
In the comments yesterday several people said they found the politics and scheming in this game to seem small and uninteresting alongside the planet-smashing threats we’ve faced in the past. I said the same thing at one point, but after reading responses from people who like the plot I can see there probably is a gripping tale here. There isn’t any real reason a war and struggle for freedom can’t be just as thrilling as fighting Jenova and Sepheroth or Sin and Seymore, as we did in games past.
The problem here isn’t the scope, it’s the presentation. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Final Fantasy XII: Too Clever to be Understood”
Final Fantasy XII: First Impressions
 |
I’ve written before that I was a huge fan of Final Fantasy X, which was my first contact with the series. It’s still my favorite, and I can’t help but view the other iterations of the game through my warped FFX lens.
In FFX, the game introduced us to the main character, and then used that character to introduce the world of Spira. It made us care about Tidus and his plight, and then used Tidus as the “man from Mars”. Throughout the game, other characters would teach him about this new world he’d been pulled into. By the end of the game most players would be able to tell you what all the major races and subcultures were, what those people looked like, where they lived, and even a bit about their culture. This is a lot to learn, but we absorb it because it’s all part of the main character’s journey. Each bit of information is built on something we learned previously.
But FFXII does this all backwards, and from a storytelling perspective the thing is a mess. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Final Fantasy XII: First Impressions”
Show Me the Money
A reader sent me a link to this, which tells you how much your blog is “worth”. Ask it how much Twenty-Sided is worth, and it will tell you:
My blog is worth $277,189.14.
How much is your blog worth?
$277k as of May 11, 2007.
The question that I would naturally ask when reading this is “to whom?” Because it isn’t really worth a quarter-million until someone is really willing to pay that much for it. I suppose their calculating this based on what people have been paid for similar-sized blogs.
But even that has never made much sense to me. Who would buy a blog? Let’s assume my blog was not burdened with all of the money-making difficulties of DM of the Rings. (As in, let’s pretend I wasn’t using stills from a major motion picture that preclude making a profit.) How much is the blog worth? If you just want the traffic and the audience and you think it would be easier to buy a popular blog as opposed to buying a new one and advertising, then you might consider putting down some money for a popular blog. But the new owner probably won’t be able to give people a good reson to keep coming back (if he could, he wouldn’t need to buy someone else’s site) so visits will taper off. People will stop linking the blog. In six months the blog would be worthless again.
Having said that: If there is someone out there with $277k who wants this site, I would like to let you know that I’m totally ready to sell out. Thank you.
DM of the Rings XCIX:
Alliterative Antagonists
 |
Alliterative Antagonists”
The 3d Sugar Printer
Via Steven I find this, a machine that will create solid 3-dimensional shapes out of sugar. I wonder if the machine can stand minor impurities like dye and flavoring? This could be a very cool sort of novelty gift. Just provide a LWO, DXF, or 3DS file and make your friend a big ‘ol hunk of candy in the shape of your choosing. It would be a lot more exciting than a cake with their name on it.
Me? I’d make myself a giant set of edible geek dice. But you knew that.
A Klein Bottle would be a cool thing to make as well, and it would be a lot easier than the crazy steps they have to take to make them out of glass. Sadly, it would lose some of it’s appeal since it would probably be opaque.
Becoming the GM
In response to a question posed in the comments here:
[…]would you mind writing a little bit about how you prepared to GM a game when you had no previous experience with gaming? I'm in the same boat (wanna start a group, haven't ever played or GM'd before) as you described.
My first step was to soak up the rulebooks. They aren’t designed to be read cover-to-cover, but I read quite a bit of the core rulebooks this way, particularly the combat sections and the stuff that covers running a game session. I only had about three weeks to prepare, and the last thing I wanted was for every battle to be a series of research projects where we dug through the books and trying to figure out what should happen next.
The other thing I did during those three weeks was design the setting. I just made up the game world from whole cloth. (I stuck my players on a single island with about eight towns, which limited the scope of the gameworld nicely.) This was a lot to accomplish in three weeks: To learn the D&D 3.5 game system from the beginning and design a game world, but I didn’t see the point in using a pre-designed setting, since that would just be one more thing I’d have to learn. For me, it’s easier to contrive new settings myself than it is to memorize the settings crafted by someone else. This is my favorite aspect of running a game, and I’m eager to do it again. Making up stories is fun.
Then before I started the game I held a sort of test run. We got together and held a short battle, sans plot, just to see if there was anything I was missing and to make sure we were all on the same page when it came to how the game was to be run. The test run went smoothly, and the next time we got together we started playing the campaign.
Note that I don’t suggest you try this if you plan to play with experienced players. I was a newbie DM, but my players only had a few sessions under their belts, so when I diverted from the rules they didn’t notice or get bent out of shape. It was a very relaxed campaign between friends, and so I didn’t have the pressure of trying to please a bunch of veteran strangers. The other thing I had going for me was that my players were a great bunch of guys who were all on the same page about what sort of game we were playing. All of them were happy with a deep story, low magic, moderate combat type game where the focus was on roleplaying and not stat-building. I’ve since learned that getting that large of a group to agree on this sort of thing is a rare and wonderful thing.
From The Archives:
Shamus Plays WOW
Ever wondered what's in all those quest boxes you've never bothered to read? Get ready: They're more insane than you might expect.
Object-Oriented Debate
There are two major schools of thought about how you should write software. Here's what they are and why people argue about it.
Another PC Golden Age?
Is it real? Is PC gaming returning to its former glory? Sort of. It's complicated.
Games and the Fear of Death
Why killing you might be the least scary thing a game can do.
The Best of 2017
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2017.
DM of the Rings
Both a celebration and an evisceration of tabletop roleplaying games, by twisting the Lord of the Rings films into a D&D game.
PC Hardware is Toast
This is why shopping for graphics cards is so stupid and miserable.
The Biggest Game Ever
How did this niche racing game make a gameworld so massive, and why is that a big deal?
Are Lootboxes Gambling?
Obviously they are. Right? Actually, is this another one of those sneaky hard-to-define things?
Diablo III Retrospective
We were so upset by the server problems and real money auction that we overlooked just how terrible everything else is.