Joe Gamer

For those of you in my “A Hero Restored” campaign, I wish a Merry Christmas with the gift of free magic items. Please spend 25,000 gp on any magic items from the DMG that the party desires.

How you distribute is up to you.

© 2009, Joseph Little. All rights reserved.

My newest addiction is Dragon Age: Origins. I have no idea the number of hours that I’ve poured into this lovely game for the X-Box 360, PS3, and PC, but I do know that my wife doesn’t speak to me anymore while I play and my child is noticeably taller. My sleep is suffering and my recliner has a permanent mold of my rear firmly implanted in it. That said let me actually speak about the game itself.

Dragon Age: Origins is a dark fantasy RPG. The player has control of up to four characters that form his or her party. And your primary character has six possible origin stories spanning three races and three classes. The remaining party is comprised of NPCs that you meet along the way. Interaction between your primary and secondary characters is more dynamic than many other games. Each character class has several possible combinations of skills, abilities, and specializations to give the game some replay value.

The game leads you down a road of violence, betrayal, lust, and violence. Yes I know I said violence twice. When you see how gory our characters get after their first real fight, you’ll understand. The game isn’t for little kids. If you’re the kind of parent that gets your teenager anything, expect your teenage boys to be begging for this one. The Desire Demons are some of the hottest monsters I’ve ever slain in game. Some of the subject matter out side of the violence and almost partial nudity isn’t for kids either, but then again I’m not your kid’s parent so do what you want.

© 2009, Joseph Little. All rights reserved.

It has been over a year since the last time I purchased any Magic: The Gathering cards. Other than that brief respite, it had been even longer since I had previously purchased M:TG cards. I was beginning to think I was completely over this game.

Tonight however, while picking out packs of Bella Serra II Miniatures for the littlest Little, I broke down and purchased the black theme deck for M10 (Wizard of the Coast’s latest base set for Magic). I told my wife that I would buy her a deck as well if she would play with me … and she took the bait.

Three surprises awaited us when we opened the decks. First my black deck was in fact black and green. My very first M:TG deck was a custom built deck of Revised cards that was black and green. The color combination has been a favorite ever since. Second was that one of the cards in the booster that came with the preconstructed deck was of a completely new type and rarity than I had ever seen before. The card was a Planeswalker and the rarity was Mythic Rare. Planeswalkers are a special, powerful form of card that represents an ally rather than a creature. Mythic Rares are apparently half as common (or twice as rare) as a regular rare. Finally, my wife got as one of her rares a rare that sells on eBay for a little more than we paid for all of the cards. Very nice.

Upon opening the cards I took a big whiff with my nose pressed to the edge of the preconstructed deck. Nothing smells quite the same. Very few smells spark an inner glow quite like freshly opened Magic: The Gathering cards. I hope my wife realizes quite what we’re in for. Wait … she lived through about ten years of this before so I guess she does.

© 2009, Joseph Little. All rights reserved.

I really hate it but I have done VERY little gaming the past month. My own campaign has fallen to the way side as things have gotten busy. I was able to attend an L5R seal tournament for Path of the Destroyer. I won the tournament playing Spider against 2 Scorpions, 1 Unicorn, and 1 other Spider player. In similar news I also win again as I expect two boxes of PotD in tomorrow. Time for a half day at work!

In other news, I subscribe to the Pathfinder Adventure Path service that Paizo provides and have considered writing reviews of each. So don’t be surprised to NOT see that here any time soon.

© 2009, Joseph Little. All rights reserved.

I don’t know what other names this game has, but on Facebook Apps, it’s FARKLE and I’m addicted.

Basically this is a dice game, similar to Yatzee where you attempt to score the most points off of a certain number of dice rolls. Here however you have six dice (d6′s for those of you wondering). There are ten rounds to score points. With each roll you may score points by setting aside dice. The more dice you set aside, the more points you score, but the fewer dice you have to score additional points as well. Points for a round are accumulated until they are banked or lost. So if your first roll results in 200 points, and your second roll results in 300 points, your points for the round becomes 500 points which you may bank and save or risk for morepoints.

If at any point during a round you cannot score any points,for instance you have scored two dice and are rolling four, the result of which is 6 – 6 – 4 – 2, all accumulated points for the round are lost; this is called a Farkle. I have another word I like to use. Intrestingly enough it also starts with the letter ‘F’.

On your first roll during a round you roll all six dice. Every die scored is removed from the pool to roll. Only certain dice combinations score points. You must score at least one die each roll during a round. Scoring is as follows:

• Ones and Fives score you 100 and 50 respectively.
• Three of a kind scores you 100 times the die value except for three ones which scores you 1000 (instead of 100).
• If you roll a three of a kind and additional dice of that same value, such as five 4′s, then you add the three of a kind score again for each additional die with the matching value. So in our case of five 4′s you would score 1200 points (400 for the three of a kind and 400 for EACH of the additional 4′s).
• Three unique pairs scores 750 and a full straight (1-6 no repeats) scores 1500 points. Of course these last two can only be scored on a roll of six dice.
• If you end up scoring all six dice in any number of rolls with no Farkles, you get to roll all six dice again keeping your accumalated score for all prior rolls.
• At any point in a round in which you have 300 or more points, you may bank all of your points for this round. This ends the round, all dice are returned to the cup, and the points for the round are added to your total.
• If you Farkle three times in a row, you loose 500 points.

The game is simple once you understand all of the rules and highly addictive.

My stratagy is to go for three of a kinds, especially with ones, fives, and sixes. If I do not get a three of a kind, I keep a single 1 or 5 and roll again. This maximizes the number of dice in my cup which significantly increases my chances for a three of a kind or at least another 1 or 5. I save anything over 450 points if I have less than 4 dice to roll, or anything over 300 if I have Farkled twice in a row prior.

~JoeGamer

© 2009, Joseph Little. All rights reserved.