The End

As my last post of 2012, I wanted to look back on my posts for the year and determine what content I would prioritize for the coming year.

2013

I thought I'd look at 2013 and see what releases I'm particularly looking foward to.

The Morning After

It's the morning after Christmas. What was your yield? What was your best find? What do you wish you got?

Happy Holiday-Thing!

To Celebrate the Apocalypse...

The Steam holiday sale has begun.

Secret World End of Days Situation Room ARG

Funcom is at it again, running a Secret World ARG that follows the standard Secret World mission structure. For existing players, it's easy to dive right in, but this ARG is open to all players -- and given Secret World's new No Subscription Fee model, new players are very well welcome to fight against the coming end of the world.

12.21.2012: The End is Nigh

NASA has explained their interpretation of the 2012 end of the world phenomena.

Mongoose Traveller Cheat Sheet

The Traveller books have always had some editing issues.  The layout leaves you flipping through the combat chapter to identify where all of the rules you're looking at are, and there is inconsistent usage of terms in the Mongoose books.  There are also a lot of things that are left unsaid.  I made a cheat sheet to walk players through combat.  The one thing I had to extrapolate was unarmed damage -- that part was left completely unexplained.  I got the damage from the creature damage chart, but I guessed (and I might be wrong) that player damage is locked at d6+Effect damage.  If it's wrong, I'm more than glad to correct it.  But for now -- a download link.

The Sin of Damnation

After my nerdgasm about the possibility of a true-to-tabletop strategy adaptation of Warhammer Fantasy, another foot drops: Space Hulk is being re-made as a digital title.  This goes to show that Games Workshop is trying to draw players in on more platforms at a time in order to increase the value of their IP.  It's working.

Kickstarter: D&D/Pathfinder Miniatures

For quite a while, I've wanted a set of miniatures with interchangeable parts that covered humans in most of the armor available in Dungeons and Dragons or other fantasy games. It's been particularly difficult to find, and cost-prohibitive, as to properly assemble models representative of adventurers (and not just soldiers), one needs to cobble together a lot of parts and spend quite a bit of money.  Kingdom Death changes that.

Warhammer Online?

One of the largest draws of Games Workshop's games is its intellectual property itself.  Within each game, dozens of factions both unique in appearance and play style compete with one another.  Each faction is richly developed, and has at this point more than twenty years of fiction tying it into a cohesive universe in which no faction is strictly "good," but is primarily vying for survival.  Each faction is nuanced to the point where you can see factions within factions, moving in directions that the core faction may not explore.  Both Fantasy and 40k have had video games attempting to capitalize on it, but while Dawn of War was largely successful, Fantasy has not had similar success.

Competing with an IP

Competing with an established IP is difficult.  Even with players generally unfamiliar with source material, a quick search on Google can net a wealth of information, effectively spoiling plot.  This leaves gamemasters with a wealth of background knowledge that could be exposed at a moment's notice, or leaves the gamemaster heading into uncharted territory in a manner that leaves the players feeling like the GM has moved too far away from the established IP.

The Problem with Modding

One of the reasons I primarily play games on the PC involves a higher level of support and customization.  The bulk of this support doesn't come from developers, though: it comes directly from players, usually in the form of modding.  Whether it's to fix a broken game or add new content, mods have become essential for playing specific games (like Skyrim), and I can't imagine the game without them.