Confessions – Escapist

I have always had a fondness for reading, even more so for fantasy novels. It fascinated me that these simple black and white words could spawn such vivid imagery in my mind; each book, each world, so different. Yet for their difference they held an underlying common thread that span throughout their existence, my thoughts. This was perhaps my first passive embrace with the ideal of passive-role-playing. It was only several year later that I would seek a more active measure to tether the world of fantasy to the everyday world we face.

I had discovered that modern technology could very well be the means to achieve this marriage of two worlds, I had discovered computer games. Here was a visualization of different world that my eyes and not just my mind could enjoy; I remember that we had one of the best computers that one could have at the time. The green and black visage that consumed a significant portion of my waking hours was an old 4×4 truck game, the name of which I have long since forgotten. It truly was a marvel to a young kid, later I would discover that cartridge console games could hold similar enjoyment and that more mundane methods could also provide a portal to the world of fantasy.

With the advancement in technology bringing a new, much broader, scope to the limitless world of fantasy, and my budget leaving me tailing along at an ever-increasing pace, I discovered a new avenue that could provide a tether. I submerged myself into a world of fire and fanaticism, of deception and disease a world of creatures, the world of Magic the Gathering. Here was a game that could challenge the mind, and not just entertain it. It was a wonder to behold, a rules-lawyer’s paradise. Here words held a lot of meaning, every single word carried immense weight and a solitary word could change everything. However with the every present evolutionary flux of the game, if felt as though I was trying keep up with the fashion trend of Hollywood. It is then that the friends that I had made during my brief flirt with the game of Magic the Gathering introduced me to a world of near infinite possibilities…

I finally found my way to a more active role-playing environment, Dungeons and Dragons. My first game was with a few of my fellow tenletter bloggers. I played a Female Halfling Rogue NE, called Kesla, who annoyed the party to no end, so the dm decided to annoy me and gave me the most opinionated intelligent item a.k.a. Talindra. This rather dogmatic item tried its best to convert me from my evil ways by spouting homilies of Yondalla. I was quite fond of this item; fond enough to pawn it off the first chance I got to some evil mastermind, who then used lovely Talindra to annoy me even more. This character was a very memorable one; she created a lot of grief and memorable moments for both player and character.

Dungeons and Dragons has provided me with the tether I sought, it along with other role-playing games have truly presented me with memorable moments and memorable company.

Confession Friday: PB

Stargazer had this up, I thought it was pretty awesome and having convinced the gang we need to do it, welcome to Confession Friday.

It all started one bright and not so distant tuesday, it was the day jatori and I started going out. Yes, lame, but seriously this is my story :p I did what any girl does when she starts going out with someone, investigate the hobbies. So after a few sunday afternoons of watching the gang hacking and slashing, came the q of  “Why don’t you play?” Co-incidentally they needed a ranged person, and thus began my fascination with Rangers, or was it cos Orlando Bloom was soo hot? * I rolled up my kick-ass elf, with the help of let’s see: jatori, foo, zen, l,e and g. Admittedly she wasn’t that cool the first session, but then my rolling got better and after a couple of frags I was hooked.

At this point I was a bright eyed 19 year old, and all I knew about gaming was The Sims. Sad, but true. So this new world opening up to me was pretty awesome. Rpging was my gateway into MtG, anime, Civilisation and more Sims The fantasy environment wasn’t all that unfamiliar, after all I am a bit of a book nerd and I’ve read Prattchet When I started playing my family and non gaming friends couldn’t understand it, at all, in fact they still don’t and it was all attributed to this strange boy introducing me to strange people and things. When I picked up MtG it was bad, I had to hide my beautiful, shiny Magic cards from my mother, actually she still doesn’t know about them. Yes, my mother is one of those hyper religious types, who think that the hobby is all bad.

Anyways back to the rpging. For the first year of playing I did the typical noob thing, playing the same race and class, pretty much the same character all the time. But then I saw that Healers could have unicorns and the experimentation began. I still played an elf,  only she was a Healer this time, but she couldn’t kick ass, so she had a sister who was a Ranger/Healer who came looking for her and joined the group.  Come to think of it I don’t think I’ve ever played a human in DnD; elves, halflings sure, but humans no way.  But I digress…the experimentation phase, ok so the unicorn thing isn’t really over, it’s just I could never manage to build a character that could have one and kick-ass in a fight, and boy do I love killing things.  I just remembered I had a pegasus once, she was awesome, until foo squished her

There is more to the tale, but this is turning into a long post. If you want to know more, drop a comment and we’ll see what happens.

-pb

*Yip I started playing the year the LOTR movies were all the craze.

u > b; u >w

The South African general elections draw even closer and so myself and several friends and aquaintances were trying to capture the political spirit of the country in Magic: the Gathering card format. However, since South Africa has a habit of dragging its political commentators through the mud (and occassional lawsuit), I don’t think I’ll be posting them up here. Reasons behind my decision include the fact that certain standard M:tG terminology may not sit well in a country that is still very race sensitive. For example, within the context of the game, nobody would think twice about a white card that had protection from black cards (or black with protection from white), but, even if used to parody things, such a card based on South African politics would probably get us into a lot of trouble. Even though we would be using the M:tG colours in terms of the game, rather than in terms of real-life race groups, there would still be enough misunderstanding to cause enough hassle for us.

Anyway, after that drawn out introduction, it’s time to get down to what I really want to talk about. Thinking about politically charged cards got me thinking about my understanding of the M:tG colour wheel. So I’m going to try and explain how I see the colours of white and black (within terms of the game) even though I’ve been out of the game for more than a year.

Black – This colour represents self-interest. Black is not necessarily evil, it’s just that most of self-interested behaviour is viewed quite negatively in polite society. Also, at times, WotC does make cards based on the extremes of such behaviour (or perhaps the extremes just fit better into black than they would in any of the other colours). Black is the colour of promoting the self, sparing no cost in order to achieve victory, whether that cost be your own health, friends and allies, or, in fact, exploiting any resources you have at hand.

White – This colour focuses on the needs of the many over the needs of the few. White is not necessarily good, it’s just that most community-focused behaviour is viewed favourably in polite society. In fact, I think white has a greater capacity for evil on the micro-level than black does. At least black doesn’t hide behind the mantra of ‘for the greater good’. White is the colour of teamwork, where every piece has its own role to play, with a focus on making the collective whole stronger than the sum of its parts. Victory is shared and so is defeat. If things aren’t working, destroy everything and start from the beginning again.

Role Playing (Roleplaying? RPing?) – It’s Kinda Magical

As you may have noticed, I’ve been fiddling with the look and feel of the blog again. I’ll probably never be happy with the free options on WordPress (Note to self: Don’t be so cheap.), but at least this theme allows for author attribution, which was a big issue (for me) with the previous theme.

Anyway, we’ll be adding some other features to the blog (hopefully soon) to help manage the growing volume of content (beyond simple tags and categories… like cleaned up and organized tags and categories). Also, I’ve fallen in love with MSE and so will be tweaking our About Us page, using M:tG cards to tell a bit about ourselves. Here are few early drafts of the fantasy cards. Still a bit unsure about the artwork – perhaps I’ll pick up a sketchpad or browbeat my brother into producing something awesome.

Rolery 1

Rolery 2

TrashCondor

Jatori

More Politics and Gaming (Magic Edition)

Should I have made the creature type Helenzilla instead?

I recently stumbled across Magic Set Editor, or MSE for short. MSE allows you to create your own cards (and thus set)s for various popular trading card games, including Magic: the Gathering. Now, at last, I too can also create those lovely cards with the pretty pictures and funny ability and flavour text (and scathing political commentary or movie/TV spoilers).

- jatori

Battlemage Jaes Walks Alone

It’s RPG Blog Carnival time again. Uncle Bear is hosting it this month and the topic is: New Year’s Gaming Goals and Resolutions. Of course, my primary resolution requires some sort of brief introduction:

Not too long ago (Sunday), I was involved in a game of Runebound and I was trailing far behind the other players in terms of xp, gold, equipment and allies. Never one to back down from a challenge though, I boldly declared that, unlike my cowardly opponents (which were hiding behind their hired minions at the time), Battlemage Jaes walks alone. Even though Battlemage Jaes got beaten to a pulp on several occassions and lost the game (and you just did too) after that declaration, the game reminded me of something I had been wanting to try with pen and paper role playing: a solo game.

Battlemage Jaes

By solo game, I’m referring to a game in which you still have a GM, but only one player. Sometimes this type of game is referred to as a duet. I have tried this twice before (me as GM, PB as player), but it never really worked out well. Previously, I had not quite got a handle on the differences between a solo game and a more typical group game. I have since discovered that I tend to let my players do a lot of the work when it comes to playing a game. When running a solo game, PB didn’t have any other supporting players and I didn’t prepare well enough to take on that load. Hopefully, we’ll get it right this time around. We’ll be having our first session tonight and I shall report on the progress made later in the week.

Until next time, I leave you with the following link. It is this thread that first drew my attention to the solo form of the game.

-j

P.S. Some other things I’d like to see happen this year:

• Start an online RP game with my ol’ university gaming buddies. Growing up and getting jobs has scattered us across the globe and it’d be great to play with them again.
• Mark Rosewater visits the blog and leaves a comment. (I should start writing a bit more about Magic then).
• Get more involved with the greater gaming community – both local (dependant on relocations) and online (maybe start contributing to one of those open source/content projects I love so much).

deck suggestion? homura!

I thought I’d ask the tenletter crowd what deck they’d build around this card:

Preferably I’d like to hear Kamigawa Block suggestions – but I’m open to hear other thoughts too.

I’ll post my thoughts in comments in a week or so – but I don’t want to influence other people’s choices until then

Quest Completed: Looking For Group

It’s been a long 9 months since we relocated to Durban. In that time, We had a few false start gaming sessions that never led to anything concrete (Lia, Willow and Raistlin have unfortunately passed onto the unfinished campaign PC heaven in the sky). This past Saturday, however, I think that Peasantbutcher and I found a gaming group that we can roll some serious dice with (in between the role-playing, of course).

I’ll be playing a 4th level 4e half-elf paladin this coming weekend (thesis workload allowing). I’m going to try and build the character (mechanically) without looking at the builds floating on the internet and see what I can come up with. I’ll report on my character’s performance (both roll and role) after the event.

PB is playing an Eladrin ranger and I’m sure she’ll be posting a few stories too.

The group is an interesting ensemble of individuals and I’m sure a few stories will creep onto this blog in the near future, especially since we have one of those players. Placing players into player archetype boxes is a horrible habit of mine, which I picked up from Mark Rosewater during my Magic days, but still a somewhat necessary habit when it comes to GMing (at least I think it helps me). When I refer to those players, I am referring to the ones that always place the rest of the players into a bit of a pickle when ever the opportunity arises, because they tend to shoot first, loot later.

Till later, remember that hacking up the corpses nets you more expees.

-j

P.S. For those interested, I’m a Johnny-Spike Magic player (more Johnny than Spike), favouring a blue-green approach to the game.

Daring Apprentice

Today we have guest post from Kestell, sharing his views on Magic: the Gathering and Reenen’s Daring Apprentice, an open-source, 3D, Apprentice-like M:tG tabletop.

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I’ll address some questions that I think people may have about Daring Apprentice.(DA)

1. What is Daring Apprentice?

Well, it’s for playing Magic: the Gathering on a PC. Currently, only for playing against yourself.

2. Why do I want to play Magic on a PC at all?

Assuming that you do want to play Magic at all, you fairly quickly run into a couple of bridges. Firstly there is the issue of MONEY… Magic cards costs money, and you can play with virtual cards without paying money .(unless of course you WANT to pay for virtual cards, then you can go to Magic Online)

Secondly, playing on a PC saves you a lot of time in sleeving, desleeving and, of course, shuffling your deck.

3. What makes DA better than the alternatives (Apprentice or Magic Workstation(MWS))?

To be honest, for 2 player play, it is not (yet) better. Because it cannot play 2 player yet.

But the deck editor is far superior to that of Apprentice or MWS. The deck editor is a SEARCH ENGINE, it is not a deck editor. It is perfect if you want to search out a combo piece, or all the elves that are standard legal and costs less than 3.

If you are building a Standard red deck that burns, you just want red, artifact and land cards. (So, i filter on Format “Standard”, Colors: Red, Artifact and land)

But the deck needs to have a low curve, so in DA, I can say only cards with converted mana cost 0-4. (change mana cost to converted, 0 to 4)
Now I filter on cards that have the word “damage” on. DA will pick up gold cards that are red unless you tick the “mono-colored” button.

Then DA is VERY good at decktesting.

I am currently testing for nationals 2008. I need to determine which deck is best. So I put the 1 netdeck in the one player’s hands, and another deck (netdeck or maybe a deck of my own) in the other player’s. Then i start playing for both players. MOST plays in magic are fairly obvious and don’t depend on what the other guy is holding. Obviously I continuously try to make the best play for both players. I actually prefer testing in this way, because this gives me a fair indication of which deck is better in the matchup; there are not as many playskill related issues that you can get if playtesting against a buddy. Also, when decktesting, you want to get in as many games as possible, you don’t want to sit and wait for an opponent thinking for several minutes when the game is effectively won by one player.

NEITHER APPRENTICE NOR MWS can do decktesting in this way. MWS can possibly do this if you have a registered (paid for) version.

Daring apprentice is a good midway between the simplicity of Apprentice and the cumbersome MWS with its bad shortcut keys.