It’s only porn, mom

Don’t go and download the leaked DnD 4e books. It’s bad for you.

Asune-sune

It is i :p

Asune-sune…random Sim speak for hello – i think. So intrepid passer-by two guesses as to what today’s topic is……yip, you guessed it The Sims 2. Some might scoff at the idea of totally controlling a person, their likes and dislikes, who they get together with, not i dear passer-by, not i. This post shall be about the joys of playing The Sims 2 and all of its expansions as, as far as i’m concerned, there are no sorrows.

If you are about to acquire the game for the first time, the deluxe edition is a really good option, as it comes with the base game and an expansion – Nightlife, i believe. Nightlife is one of the expansions that brings a new element to the game, namely a new aspiration for sims to have. Seasons is another of the expansions that brings a new dimension to the game, as does Free Time, it truly is fun watching a sim freeze to death. Yes, i am mean and sadistic, which is why the game and the aspects of control are so appealing to one such as i. Free Time could be considered sims 2.5 as you can age three of your sims friends from the neighbourhood along with your sim. I really enjoy this aspect, as now your sim can marry her high school sweetheart.

If you like having money and who doesn’t, then Open for Business is tons of fun. Essentially, you need to forgo the tricky aspect of actually running the business to make some cash. All you need to do is get some fun things in your home and leave the door open; with the meter running of course. That way you score all the business rewards and the cash to make your home fun for your sim and others.

Alas, it is time for me to go…till another time dear passer-by.

:p

Cities, knights and sheep

The last board game I mentioned was Settlers of Catan (base game). Today is about its expansion: Cities and Knights. The first difference is the box is green (Base game has a red box). Secondly you start with a city and a settlement instead of two settlements. One also needs 13 points to win the game (instead of 10). Now that we have the minor differences out of the way, lets get on to the good stuff.

So how does this expansion make the game of Catan from a great idea to an awesome game? It fixes the silly bits (like buying rubbish development cards) and keeping the good bits (sheep!). It completely replaces the old development cards with three new shiney development card decks and whats best is you get the cards for free. Well almost. You have three paths for city improvements (three paths, three development decks. See the connection?). Each improvement gives you more of a chance of getting a corresponding new development card. Right. So now the base game is fixed, we can look at the additions.

To improve your cities you need commodities, which only cities produce. Commodities are paper, cloth and coin. Since the peasants are busy making commodities, those hexes that produce commodities don’t give double production in resources (lazy peasants). (Paper with lumber, cloth with sheep and coin with ore). You still get double wheat and clay though.

But where there is coin there are those that want to take it: Barbarians. With every roll of the dice, there is a chance that the barbarians come closer to invading your quiet little island. So how does one fight them off? With swords and shiney armour! Huzzah! Knights repel the invaders but only if the number of knights on active duty are more than (or equal to) the barbarian strength (which is equal to the number of cities on the island). So in effect your knights are battling your own cities (Down peasants!). But this is a group effort so everyones knights pitch in to help, and as an added bonus, the one who lends the most might in knights gets a victory point for being a Defender of Catan. Huzzah! And if the barbarians win? Then a city is demoted to a settlement, but only those players with the weakest knights are affected.

It’s still a resource gathering game, but one has to balance between building knights and cities. Getting your knight down before the barbarians arrive the first time can be difficult (they always sail in too fast), though good starting placement can usually deal with this problem. (Yes, that’s right, if you can’t deal with the barbarians the first time, you are a bad player, or just bloody unlucky.)

Until next time: Leave the sheep alone!

println(“foo”)

The Monk: Still not awesome

I was originally going to write more about the DnD campaign I’m running, but then I realised that I tend to write like this. So, I’m going to take a break from writing about Lia, Willow and Raistlin, unless there’s suddenly a huge public demand for it.

Instead, let’s talk about the DnD 3.5 and Pathfinder monk. To me, the monk never could keep up with the rest of the party from about level 1. Top problems with the monk, as I see it:

MAD: Multiple Attribute Dependence. A monk needs a good strength, dexterity, constitution and wisdom score to perform. A rogue needs a good dexterity score. A wizard needs a good intelligence score.

A wad of class abilities that can be duplicated by magic items, at sometimes earlier levels. The monk doesn’t get anything really unique to make it stand out.

Flurry of blows as a full-round action directly contrasts with the high mobility of the class.

The Pathfinder alpha 3 monk, tries to fill the gaps, but still seems to fill a bit short. It still suffers from the above three drawbacks. I do, however, like the idea of a ki pool. Most classes that have per-day class abilities in 3.5 instead now have a pool of points which they can use to activate their class abilities. This allows for more controlled use of your rage or bardic song and possibly allows for cooler abilities at earlier levels, balanced with point expenditure.

Reading the forum threads about Pathfinder’s monk, I’ve been half inspired to try and work out my own version of 3.x compatible base martial artist class. Wouldn’t it be a fun project?

Reduce MAD.

Make it unique! We don’t need another tank or DPS machine.

Make the class simple, yet highly customizable. We don’t want anything overly complex that requires a black belt in rule book fu to create a playable character, but I’d like to see a class, which can easily be built as a fast and nimble striker or strong and hulking, limb-breaking, joint-dislocator.

A certain measure of realism, but still being able to fight fantastic creatures such as giants and dragons, without sucking or being absurd (Figure 4 locked on the dragon! Tap out!)

Right now, I’m thinking of a character that focuses on applying negative conditions (rather than raw damage) to enemies. This idea was borrowed from Paizo’s forums. Most martial arts have their own means of applying these conditions, be it from striking physiological weak points or devastating locks and grapples. Here are some conditions that I consider applicable:

Dazed; Dazzled; Blinded; Stunned; Confused; Prone; Fatigued; Nauseated; Sickened; Unconscious; Dead (Yes, you can apply the negative condition of death); Ability Damage; Movement Speed Damage; Staggered; Deafened

Pathfinder Alpha 3 out.

In case you didn’t know, yesterday, Paizo released the 3rd version of their Pathfinder RPG alpha. I really like what they’re doing with it. Perhaps I’ll write a review about it another day. Go check it out so long.

Welcome to the island

Germans know how to make their board games. This todays board game was designed by a Klaus. Carcassonne was designed by a Klaus. Not the same Klaus. Maybe all Klauses have an innate ability to create great board games. Or maybe Klaus is a common german name. This requires more investigation. Moving on to the board game then.

Settlers of Catan is great if you like friendly resource gathering or very competitive resource gathering or just resource gathering. And don’t forget building. But first resource gathering. This is what makes the game great, innovative and fun (unless you don’t get any resources). Resources are lumber (logs), ore (rock), wheat, clay and SHEEP. At the beginning of each players turn they roll two six-sided dice (gamers call ‘em d6’s (pronounced “D six” or “D sixes” for plural)). All players who have a settlement (or city) next to a hex that is marked with the number rolled (2-12), gets the resource produced by that hex (double resources for a city). Ignore settlement placement rules for the moment, the point is that on every turn all players could get some resources. Great.

Settlers of Catan has four editions. The latest one looks the best (purdy pictures (and its not the one in the pic above, but there are similarities, it is the same game after all)) unless you want to custom design your own hexes. It also has two game changing expansions and then a 5 to 6 player add-on for the base game and both expansions (thats 5 extra boxes you can buy). I leave the game changing expansions for later, but I will say something about the 5 to 6 player addons: The island is too darn big. You need a 7th person just to keep track of where resources are going. And at the end of each persons turn, everyone can build something (normally you can only build in your own turn). Confusion.

But what do you do with your resources? Build, build and build some more. The person who gets to 10 points first wins. Points are awarded one per settlement and two per city (which is an upgraded settlement) and then there are other less likely and random things that give points such as the longest road card which gives you points for having the, well, longest road. The base game has some badly thought out “development” cards which cost more resources than they are worth, luckily these are not used in at least one of the expansions.

Next time, I will give a quick look at one of the expansions.

Until next time: Watch out for the coconuts.

println(“foo”)

to solitaire or to spider solitaire

It is i :0

As this is a blog about games, i’ll keep to the peer pressure and post about games. When you wait for something to load or start on your pc do you: play hearts; solitaire; spider solitaire or freecell? Me, i opt for hearts or solitaire, but i’ve known people to play freecell or *gasp horror* spider solitaire on its most difficult setting. I ask you – random stranger person, passing by – why when you’re just killing time would you invite such stress into your day? The frustration of not getting more than one line down, why oh why, play that game? As you can probably tell i like my games easy and fun….much like butchering peasants.

:p

Incursion of diversions

Recently I’ve been playing with Incursion, the playable test bed for an upcoming and highly awesome roguelike that you’ll find over here. It makes use of the OSG DnD rules along with a healthy dose of creativity and very obviously takes itself seriously.

The engine is very complete (albeit still a bit crash prone) – and includes all major combat and adventuring options you can dream off: grapple, bull rush, cleaving sunder, … – heck, you can even intimidate dungeon dwellers into providing services like identifying your loot.

A nice set of core classes – along with a small albeit growing set of prestige classes is currently implemented – along with a very very tough early game. Expect to die frequently, and arbitrarily.

Recovering health normally requires you to sleep for a few hours. Sleeping in Incursion is *very* risky business; lots of monsters are quite fond of creeping up to you and providing a swift coup-de-grac to take the burden of living off your shoulders.

Gods are very powerful in the game – and take an active delight in influencing its progress; and trying to abide to a particular god can be very difficult to do. The goodier gods even look down upon you chasing down fleeing enemies; and getting on the bad side of your (or any) god is something left only to the foolish and the dead.

Try it out some time, Incursion is promising to be a monster of a roguelike.

-trashy

the misadventures of willow, lia and, um, raistlin

Ah, DnD. Here’s a brief prequel to the summary of Saturday’s game:

In the end, we decided not to follow the Pathfinder rules, but rather core 3.5. We chose to do this a) 67% of the players are completely green, b) the other 33% wanted 3.5 plus she and I are very familiar and comfortable with it and c) Paizo hasn’t released the rules for bards yet.

Character generation always takes the longest, 150 minutes in this case. In the end, the cast looks like this:

• Willow, a green-eyed, red-haired beauty (at least in comparison to the rest of the party) fills the role of unofficial leader of the party. She’s an elven ranger.
• Lia, a pale, dark-haired, semi-perma-scowling half-elf is a rogue.
• Raistlin, a physically weak and rather uncharismatic human, is also a rogue.

This is a brief description of the setting I gave them before we met on Saturday:

It was some 300 years ago since the world ended, at least that’s according to the group’s elder. You see no reason to argue with him on the matter, as just yesterday he celebrated his 352nd birthday.

Your characters have grown up amongst a small group of refugees. The group leads a nomadic existence, constantly on the move in an attempt to avoid danger, spending more nights under the open sky than under a roof. Most of your life has involved hunger and hardship. However, the group valued the young highly, and those that could, made sure to educate and train you. And now, as you enter adulthood, it’s up to you to secure the safety of your people.

We managed to get about 2 actual hours of play. I’ll post about that later as my laptop battery is about to die and I can’t quite get to a power outlet right now.

Very scary solstice…

Cooperative board games are made of much win. Everyone against the board game. You all win or you all lose. Brilliant. More kiwis with that. And there are very few board games that are fully cooperative. Why? Because its easier to face off against human players than to make up rules that will keep the players entertained for as long. Lord of the Rings (one of the many) and Shadows over Camelot are two cooperative games. I played one and havn’t played the other. The one I played, I wasn’t impressed with much and the other seems very linear. But that’s for some other time.

Today is about: Arkham Horror the Call of Cthulhu board game. Players each control an investigator that face off against a random ancient one that will surely devour them if it wakes up. Investigators scramble around the board, dodging, fighting and/or fleeing monsters as they close gates to the other worlds in a weak attempt at curbing the ancient ones power over Arkham. Sometimes players win, but mostly they lose. Which makes ‘em come back for more. (No really. I have seen this. It baffles me too.)

Arkham Horror is best with four players but can play from one (singleplayer board game? sweet) to eight players. Six to eight players makes the game last a long long long long long long time. But for any number of players, it’s a great game with lots of bits and pieces and some complex (and sometimes cryptic) rules. How do flying creatures work again? ‘Course the different rule versions don’t help. The FAQ is a must for explaining those annoying cryptic rules.

But once you get past the rules part and get four players and actually get down to playing (with some knowledgable rules-lawyer to run the monsters) the game is loads of fun. The game has two parts: The investigation and fighting the ancient one. The investigation part is everyone pretty much running around Arkham trying to close a gate as three more appear. If the players don’t win in this part (by closing all the gates or sealing six) the second part happens: fighting the ancient one. Which is all investigators smack the ancient one and then it smacks all of them. Some players enjoy the investigation part, others enjoy smacking around the ancient one. I prefer the first, since the ancient one usually ends up smacking you around unless you are fighting against a weenie like Yig. (Yig is a tough fight…its just easier to beat than the others.)

Course, I love the whole Cthulhu methos so I might be a teenie tiny bit biased.

And to prove that even ancient ones have a lighter side of life (and their own call line) try: Calls for Cthulhu.

Until next time: Have a very scary solstice. (I know its not anywhere near any kind of solstice but it fits with todays game.)

println(“foo”);