T w e n t y S i d e d
I hope your new year is very… new and extra uh, annual. Or something.
I should add: I took today off. Next DM of the Rings comes on Wed, Jan 3.
Catching Up
I’m missing out. Last week I didn’t touch this blog except to trade comments and clean the spam filter. Pretty much all of the posts were pre-written, which really saved me from leaving a week-long gap on this thing.
But while I was writing four or five miles of code, I was missing out on a ton of stuff:
The big thing I missed was Steven’s bit on Linux Standardization. This thing made my spider sense tingle about ten different times. There were so many things to say and so many ideas to tackle that I ended up having a paradox of choice and saying nothing.
Fledgling Otaku put up a great Holiday Greeting. Back at you, man. He also linked to this funny YouTube bit on the Wii vs PS3. (Warning: This thing is a little daring. If you come from a formal office you might want to give it a pass. Better safe than sexy.)
Back at the beginning of December Cineris posted this bit from the Unreal Tournament forums, imploring the designers to take the game back to its roots and recapture the incredible fun of the original Unreal Tournament. I have a bunch of thoughts on this, but I never took the time to cobble them together into something readable. I will say this: The original author is spot-on. I have all of the Unreal Tournamant games here, but whenever friends come over for a little LAN gaming, it’s no contest. We play UT99 every time. The game is almost eight years old, and even up against brand-new games with the fancy pixels, it’s still no contest. Like the PS3 vs the Wii, raw technology is no match for compelling gameplay.
Bioware Poll
Right now, on Bioware‘s front page, they have a poll asking people for their favorite webcomic. There are 11 listed. DM of the Rings is one of them.
Really cool.
I’m getting pasted though. This is not a bad thing. Scoring 1% of the vote on a poll with PvP, Penny Arcade, Dork Tower, and StrongBad is still a great honor. It’s like being the guy with the most strikeouts in the world series. Sure, I did terrible, but hey: World Series!
Even nicer that it came from a cool company like Bioware. (Makers of the excellent KOTOR) This would have been less exciting coming from some console company that I was never attached to, or from someone like EA, who I lothe.
LATER: Hey! They left out OotS! No they didn’t. Geeze. I’m goin’ blind here, blind.
DM of the Rings XLV:
Last Disrespects
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How to motivate your players:
- Entice them with a compelling story.
- If you can’t do that, then bribe them with treasure.
- If you won’t do that, then let them know that if they don’t play along they will be stuck in this boring, treasure-less campaign forever.
Session 13, Part 2
The party rides away from the Dwarf camp, and heads around the southern side of Lake Emlin. By nightfall they reach Della Minera, where they freed the slaves a couple of weeks earlier. To the north is now a huge area of tents and soldiers. The last shreds of the Alidian army are here, defending the bridge nightly against attack.
They rest here for the night and then head to Fol Thron.
They head for the Citadel, but as they pass by the Mages Guild they see the place is surrounded by a crowd. Skeeve stops to see what is going on. The place is surrounded by town guards, who are keeping everyone at a distance.
Skeeve asks a nearby guard what is going on. The guard begins to explain, but is cut off by a thunderous BOOM from the tower above. Another town guard comes sailing out of one of the second-story windows and lands with a thud nearby. Black smoke pours from the window.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Session 13, Part 2”
Liquid Clock
This is a fun and amusing gift from my wife. A novelty clock with different liquids with differing weights. You can rotate the clear section and watch the liquids change places like an hourglass.
Cool.
DM of the Rings XLIV:
The Exodus Continues
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Merry and Pippin were about the most underused characters in this campaign. I imagine the two of them sat on the couch playing XBox, and if they were needed for anything they would shout their actions over their shoulder without looking away from the TV. Now that I’ve come to this point, it would have been nice to have a gag where (during some tense or serious moment) the two of them were playing something like Halo 2 and their chatter was distracting the roleplaying. Ah well. Maybe I’ll go back and add it once the story is over.
From The Archives:
Playstation 3
What was the problem with the Playstation 3 hardware and why did Sony build it that way?
The Gradient of Plot Holes
Most stories have plot holes. The failure isn't that they exist, it's when you notice them while immersed in the story.
D&D Campaign
WAY back in 2005, I wrote about a D&D campaign I was running. The campaign is still there, in the bottom-most strata of the archives.
Diablo III Retrospective
We were so upset by the server problems and real money auction that we overlooked just how terrible everything else is.
Silver Sable Sucks
This version of Silver Sable is poorly designed, horribly written, and placed in the game for all the wrong reasons.
Steam Summer Blues
This mess of dross, confusion, and terrible UI design is the storefront the big publishers couldn't beat? Amazing.
Juvenile and Proud
Yes, this game is loud, crude, childish, and stupid. But it it knows what it wants to be and nails it. And that's admirable.
Deus Ex and The Treachery of Labels
Deus Ex Mankind Divided was a clumsy, tone-deaf allegory that thought it was clever, and it managed to annoy people of all political stripes.
What Does a Robot Want?
No, self-aware robots aren't going to turn on us, Skynet-style. Not unless we designed them to.
Mass Effect 3 Ending Deconstruction
Did you dislike the ending to the Mass Effect trilogy? Here's my list of where it failed logically, thematically, and tonally.