Joe Gamer

With Final Fantasy XIII nearly a year old and Final Fantasy XIV struggling to keep its breath, people are understandably worried about the storied JRPG franchise.  Well, I am here to tell you, Final Fantasy fans…. don’t worry!  The Fabula Nova Crystallis series based on the mythology of Final Fantasy XIII is still in full gear with more details coming out each day.  The recent 1st Production Department event from Square released quite a bit of details about upcoming Final Fantasy games.  Agito XIII, the PSP game in the FNC series has been renamed to Type-O and is due out in Japan (and hopefully the US) sometime this year.  Even bigger is the announcement of…

Final Fantasy XIII-2!  Yeah, the most controversial of FF games is the second to get a direct, current generation sequel.  Very few details are out about it except for a picture of Lightning, the original game’s protagonist eschewing her futuristic military garb for a long dress adorned with a breastplate and armor here and there.  There’s a cool trailer out there if you want to check it out, but be careful if you haven’t beaten the game as it begins with the last of the ending.

I personally was a big fan of XIII, which puts me in a strange position on the internet, but I liked what I liked.  I can’t help but be excited about a sequel.  Anybody else excited or is Final Fantasy truly dead?

© 2011, Jeff Hollingsworth. All rights reserved.

When I get upset my character has been maimed or seriously injured in a D&D game, one of the veiled threats I sometimes get from the gang is “well, we could run Castle Ravenloft if you like”.  I promptly shut the heck up and we keep play!  That is the reputation of Castle Ravenloft and it’s ruler Strahd, at least to my group of gamers.  When Wizards started advertising a D&D board game based on Castle Ravenloft I was a little excited but mostly kind of skeptical.  It was weird they wouldn’t just make it a campaign setting, but I gave it a chance after playing a few board games I really enjoyed at Mobicon back in the day.  So when my wife bought it for me for our 1 year anniversary, I was stoked!

Castle Ravenloft is a D&D based board game for 1 to 6 players.  Yes, you can play by yourself.  Everything you need to play is in the box, including the d20!  Ravenloft is interesting in the way it presents its rules: there is a set of basic rules (movement, attacking, etc) that every game uses, but victory requirements, monster type, and other more obscure rules change literally every time you play.  There is a book that comes with the game outside of the rulebook that holds various situations the players agree on before beginning that presents the plot.  One has you waking up in Strahd’s vampiric crypt and has you trying to escape before the sun rises while another one as you hunting a kobold sorcerer deep in the catacombs of the castle.  Some are simple fights for survival while others actually have a “villain” like the kobold there, Strahd, or the horrors of the undead Dracolich.

You have some basic D&D archetypes to play as such as Eladrin Wizard, Human Ranger or Dwarf Cleric.  You can pick powers each time you play or pick a set of “basic powers” they suggest for new players.  Exploration of Ravenloft’s crypts are random, the players picking tiles at random as they approach the edge of the map each turn.  Furthermore, players each control monsters that appear on their turn, leading to the very real possibility of someone ‘accidentally’ killing another player!  It is random after all, with the d20!

I have successfully played Castle Ravenloft twice, once with my wife and I and the second time with two friends who have never touched a d20 until that night.  Both times we were successful in our missions but very barely.  Some of the monsters are super lethal but it didn’t matter; we had a ton of fun each time.  If you are looking for a game that simulates a night of D&D in about an hour or two or if you’re looking for a quick and intense board game, give Castle Ravenloft a try.

© 2010, Jeff Hollingsworth. All rights reserved.

I realize I am new to gaming and everything, but Gamma World is nuts.  Absolutely nuts.  Based on the 4th edition rules of DnD, Gamma World is a post-apocalyptic RPG that opts for a more random rule set than 4e presents.  It’s also more of a “diet-rpg” made for a couple of quick sessions of laser blasting, stop sign wielding action.  As a Yeti Cockroach.  I’m not joking.

Gamma World is essentially our world years down the line.  Something crazy happened at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland that condensed all possible realities into one single “now”.  So everything that could have ever happened has happened to someone somewhere.  To explain, here is a quick exerpt: “The Cold War went nuclear in 83 percent of the possible universes, and in 3 percent of the possible universes the French unloaded their entire nuclear  aresenal on the town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin because it had to be done.”  It’s about 150 years later and after the Big Mistake life in this new singular reality has taken a turn for the Mad Max.  Pure humans like me and you are nearly extinct, replaced with mutants, which is exactly what you play as in Gamma World.

When making a character, the PC rolls a d20 twice, the first roll coming up with your primary origin and your second roll coming up with your secondary origin.  These origins take the place of races and classes and determine your abilities in combat; that’s how you can come up with characters like the Cyborg Rat Swarm, Yeti Cockroach or Giant Pyrokinetic.  If you get the same origin twice you get “Engineered Human” as a secondary origin, which can sometimes lead to the question why someone thought implanting a human brain into a Rat Swarm was a good idea.  That’s the fun of it!

Gamma World has something for the roleplayer, the tactical combat player and even the card game player!  For the straight roleplayer it is fun to try to come up with how you are what you are.  When you roll “giant” you don’t necessarily know what kind of giant you are.  Shelly Mazzanoble from “Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress” played a Giant Telekinetic that was actually a huge pink teddy bear.  Also when you get weapons or armor you get a type, like heavy melee or light armor, instead of an idea.  So your heavy melee weapon?  Could be a car door, a I beam or a dead foe you just lug around because you’re weird like that.  Mazzanoble’s was a buckwheat pillow.

For the tactical player, the rules are based off 4e, so expect square based movement and the like.  I’ll leave it at that and just go straight to the card game player (they are linked, I promise).  Each player gets two decks in addition to their initial equipment, their Alpha Mutations and Omega Tech.  Alpha Mutations are similar to encounter powers in as much as you draw a new one every encounter.  However you must also discard it when you’re done (you rebuild your deck whenever you take an extended rest).  Omega Tech is what you get when you are allowed to loot.  Everything from laser rifles to x-ray goggles are found in Omega Tech, and are usable equipment you can use once per encounter but you can keep it if you roll a 10 or higher on a d20 at the end of the combat.  Both decks are shuffled, so are random, but a player can buy cards for either (but do NOT have to in order to enjoy the game).  The GM will always have a deck of his or her own in case the players do not (and there are additional rules if both the GM and the players have decks in order to decide which one they can pull from).

Gamma World is one of the cooler, weird random RPGs I’ve seen.  It’s random without the possibility of playing a one armed, one legged beggar.  It’s funny but all players will generally be useful in combat or RP situations (though it’s not as balanced as, say, 4e.  It’s meant to be fun and funny, not highly-mechanical).  The players only go up to level 10 so there it is designed for short campaigns.  I am itching for the chance to play Gamma World some time soon, so if anyone wants to take a Saturday or Sunday (or instead of the Tuesday game) let me know!

© 2010, Jeff Hollingsworth. All rights reserved.

The wife is reading on her Kindle in the bedroom while I am playing Call of Duty: Blacks Ops on my PC with my headset on. Then, the apartment starts to shake, the ceiling fan is about to drop, and it sounds like a stampede is going by. My wife and I grew up in Central America surrounded by volcanoes. So thinking that it is a small earthquake, I start running to a door frame when I realized it is very easy to walk because the ground is not moving. Now I am a bit scared because I am thinking it might be a tornado since this is common in the Southern United States where we live. I go look out the window and there are clear skies when the shaking suddenly stops.

A minute has passed now when we realized, the sounds are coming from upstairs. I go up there thinking somebody went UFC on somebody else’s ass. I knock on the door, and this thin short white college kid opens the door. I asked him if he was okay because my apartment was about to come down on me. At that moment, he apologizes saying that he and his friend were playing a new Xbox 360 game where you play by moving around. Of course, he tells me this while he points to a Kinect for the Xbox 360. However, this still did not add up though, until his 300-pound friend came back from the fridge with another beer. I told them that they should play Call of Duty instead.

I guess the Moral of the story is that you should not invite your chubby friends to play Kinect in your upstairs apartment even though you might think they need the exercise. Rather, tell them to eat a salad every now and then! I know even McDonald’s sells them now.

© 2010, Christian Rios All rights reserved.

Original @ http://www.chrisrios.com/2010/11/15/a-kinetic-experience/

© 2010, Christian Rios. All rights reserved.

Anyone who has spoken with me at any length on 4e DnD knows I have mixed feelings on the subject. On the up side of the system, things seem streamlined, the system is a little more intuitive, and some of the character classes *coughWARLORDcough* really appeal to me. On the downside I find that magic just isn’t as special as it used to be and there isn’t anything particularly special about any character class. I like the concept of rituals vs. magic abilities, but nothing wows me about magic as a whole in the system. The magic has gone out of magic, and as a player who’s loved spell casters from the first time I picked up a Red Box three decades ago, this saddens me.

So recently I have started playing in a 4e DnD campaign (my first) set in the Darksun campaign setting. Tiny King Jeff runs the show as the DM. He’s pretty new at DMing, and while the job isn’t any easier having three veteran DMs sitting at the table as players, he’s doing well. Reservations about the game aside, I have to say I’m having a blast. All of the characters have their own niche, and each has gotten a time to shine. In my mind that’s a SERIOUS plus to a gaming system. I still hold some reservations however because we haven’t advanced beyond first level. So while I can say the start of the game is strong, I really have no idea what 5th, 10th, 20th, and 30th levels may be like.

Also as a person that actually LIKES systems like RoleMaster where you spend HOURS creating a character only to have him die to a luckily rolled critical in the very first combat he encounters, or even the Stormbringer system where you have a better chance of playing a one armed beggar than anything actually useful, I have to say I already miss the struggle. What is the point in pushing on with a particular character if the hopes of seeing him finally come into his own when each character shines from day one? I know this directly conflicts my previous statement that such balance is a strength of a system, but I allow myself such contrasting opinions.

Overall I’m happy with what I’ve gotten from 4e so far. However I can’t say I’m going all in on the system yet. I’ll have a much better idea in a year or two. If I’m still playing my Warlord Trader and still discovering neat new aspects to the character, I’ll be more than pleased. If things end up becoming monotonous with each encounter pretty much seeming like the one before, then I’ll end up dropping 4e like I dropped Everquest, with a disgusted “what’s the point” attitude never to return. We’ll see (no pressure Tiny King).

© 2010, Joseph Little. All rights reserved.