Sunday, November 25, 2007
MMORPGS...
Friday, November 10, 2006
Grishna Rex
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Medieval Dead
If you play Neverwinter Nights, allow me to recommend the module Medieval Dead, created by an old gaming buddy of mine. It's sort of George Romero meets Gary Gygax, an homage to various zombie movies and games. Very heavy on atmosphere, probably best played at night, alone, with the lights dimmed. I don't even particularly like zombie movies and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Labels: Neverwinter Nights
Monday, April 24, 2006
Neverwinter Nights After Action Report
Last night, we continued Legacy of Oslan. Some observations:
1) Every square inch of this world is covered in approximately 300 feet of fire beetles.
2) It is generally a VERY bad idea to go stumbling around in the woods after dark. Stopping for the night? Posting guards? Yeah. We figured that out about fourteen deaths later.
3) The DM rigged us a portable resurrection device because a bug in the game was preventing us from raising the dead. We only discovered this only AFTER lugging dead bodies all the way back to the "community center." I'm not sure why it's a "community center" and not a temple, since it has a priest. Maybe it's like Catholic Charities.
4) This game seems to have only two spawn settings--constant and none. We were either literally having fire beetles constantly and endlessly appear right up our asses, or we were spending endless hours running hither and yon, finding nothing, and bitching at each other.
5) And speaking of endless hours, the magical maze is a good idea. Especially if it's cool-looking, and this one was. But the thing was frickin' ginormous and there were, maybe, a dozen monsters total in the entire thing. Needless to say, it got boring after awhile.
6) At third level, trolls are seriously mean mother-fuckers. I nearly soiled me armor when three of the giant bastards came lumbering down the mine shaft after me.
7) My pet peeve about NWN? DM's who put realistic lighting in all their caverns. I only have so many damn Light spells per day and you can't fight and hold a torch at the same time. Sure, pitch darkness is more "realistic" but c'mon! How "realistic" is it that caverns are packed to the walls with hundreds of vicious, giant, hungry predators and NO prey? Give us the damn glowing lichen or whatever plot device we need to justify being able to see underground.
8) A bug in the game kept randomly taking people's armor or primary weapons. Nothing like a bunch of guys running around half-naked to maintain that underlying tone of homo-eroticism role-playing games are famous for. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
9) By the time you get to be my age, doing ANYTHING for nine straight hours is probably not a good idea.
1) Every square inch of this world is covered in approximately 300 feet of fire beetles.
2) It is generally a VERY bad idea to go stumbling around in the woods after dark. Stopping for the night? Posting guards? Yeah. We figured that out about fourteen deaths later.
3) The DM rigged us a portable resurrection device because a bug in the game was preventing us from raising the dead. We only discovered this only AFTER lugging dead bodies all the way back to the "community center." I'm not sure why it's a "community center" and not a temple, since it has a priest. Maybe it's like Catholic Charities.
4) This game seems to have only two spawn settings--constant and none. We were either literally having fire beetles constantly and endlessly appear right up our asses, or we were spending endless hours running hither and yon, finding nothing, and bitching at each other.
5) And speaking of endless hours, the magical maze is a good idea. Especially if it's cool-looking, and this one was. But the thing was frickin' ginormous and there were, maybe, a dozen monsters total in the entire thing. Needless to say, it got boring after awhile.
6) At third level, trolls are seriously mean mother-fuckers. I nearly soiled me armor when three of the giant bastards came lumbering down the mine shaft after me.
7) My pet peeve about NWN? DM's who put realistic lighting in all their caverns. I only have so many damn Light spells per day and you can't fight and hold a torch at the same time. Sure, pitch darkness is more "realistic" but c'mon! How "realistic" is it that caverns are packed to the walls with hundreds of vicious, giant, hungry predators and NO prey? Give us the damn glowing lichen or whatever plot device we need to justify being able to see underground.
8) A bug in the game kept randomly taking people's armor or primary weapons. Nothing like a bunch of guys running around half-naked to maintain that underlying tone of homo-eroticism role-playing games are famous for. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
9) By the time you get to be my age, doing ANYTHING for nine straight hours is probably not a good idea.
Labels: Neverwinter Nights
Monday, March 27, 2006
Neverwinter Knights
This weekend, after a LONG intermission, part of our old group was able to start a new Neverwinter Nights campaign, with one member (thanks to the miracle of the internets) logging on from Kosovo where his National Guard unit is currently deployed. We're currently running Oslan Legacy, a wilderness module. I had a bit of a hard time adjusting to NWN controls, which now seem kind of clunky in comparison to WoW or CoH.
A few things I learned the hard way:
1) when in danger or in doubt, do NOT run in circles, scream and shout;
2) badgers, contrary to appearances, are actually mean mother-fuckers;
3) While a loin cloth (or more accurately a breech-clout) may LOOK cool, it has little practical value in combat;
4) Wolves do not care that your culture honors their spirits;
5) Pixies, contrary to appearances, are actually mean mother-fuckers;
6) Always use the buddy system. In particular, do not strand your buddy in the wilderness surrounded by a horde of ravening badgers while he is levelling-up;
7) Remember your Boy Scout training: if you find yourself dead in the forest, stay where you are and wait for help;
8) Contrary to negative representations in the Mainstream Media, most medieval villages are actually quite advanced and progressive and have "community centers."
9) When attempting to have fallen colleagues Raised from the Dead, as always, caveat emptor. Shop around and get figures from several clerics and ask for references before deciding on the priest (or priestess) that is right for you;
10) Print out these handy tips and tape them to your Bag of Holding to increase your enjoyment of wilderness adventures.
A few things I learned the hard way:
1) when in danger or in doubt, do NOT run in circles, scream and shout;
2) badgers, contrary to appearances, are actually mean mother-fuckers;
3) While a loin cloth (or more accurately a breech-clout) may LOOK cool, it has little practical value in combat;
4) Wolves do not care that your culture honors their spirits;
5) Pixies, contrary to appearances, are actually mean mother-fuckers;
6) Always use the buddy system. In particular, do not strand your buddy in the wilderness surrounded by a horde of ravening badgers while he is levelling-up;
7) Remember your Boy Scout training: if you find yourself dead in the forest, stay where you are and wait for help;
8) Contrary to negative representations in the Mainstream Media, most medieval villages are actually quite advanced and progressive and have "community centers."
9) When attempting to have fallen colleagues Raised from the Dead, as always, caveat emptor. Shop around and get figures from several clerics and ask for references before deciding on the priest (or priestess) that is right for you;
10) Print out these handy tips and tape them to your Bag of Holding to increase your enjoyment of wilderness adventures.
Labels: Neverwinter Nights
Monday, January 23, 2006
MMORPG Lore
As I mentioned in a previous post, Neverwinter Nights was my first MMORPG, and still my favorite. Okay, yes, in some ways in suffers in comparison to World of Warcraft, especially in terms of graphics, and the fact that in WoW, you can actually swim, climb, ride animals and jump over small chairs. Same thing goes for City of Heroes. Okay, I admit it, it suffers A LOT. But NWN still gets the edge for one reason and one reason only: module play. The ability to make your own scenarios (which I lack the skill to do) or just running someone else's adventures with just your own little crew is essential for RPG snobs like myself who really have no burning desire to share some PW with noobs and munchkins who speak only internet-gibberish and wouldn't know role-playing if you jammed a red-hot poker into their eye sockets. Take City of Heroes, for example. Citizens run up to you gasping, "I've never met a hero before!" Huh? How? Heroes outnumber citizens like 100-1! And most of the heroes are, frankly, stupid; typically either monstrosities created by rules lawyers or Japanese schoolgirl types with huge...tracts of land. And can NO ONE ELSE be bothered to come up with a background for their character? How much frickin' effort does it take to put just a micron of originality or thought into your creation? I hoped against hope that City of Villains would siphon off the munchkins, and to some extent it has, but of course that only ruins the PvP areas for heroes, since A) you never know just how lonely the hero business is until it's just you and three other guys forming the Thin Spandex Line against a living wall of lame villains and B) it's no fun fighting lame villains. An old friend of mine once said, "Being a villain is always harder than being a hero because a hero merely rights the wrong while the villain must create them." Truer words were never spoken.
World of Warcraft suffers from the same glut of idiots who mock the very idea of role-playing and seem bound and determined to suck all the enjoyment out of the experience for everyone else. Could I be in town for just one frickin' minute without 257 morons challenging me to a duel? Eh, sigh.
Sadly, I'm probably swimming against the tide on this. PW games like WoW and CoH are probably just as much the wave of the future as pay-to-play. The loss of the ability to create modules is just one more example of an industry leeching all creativity out of players who are becoming increasingly passive cyber-potatoes. Seriously, though, folks, if you aren't interested in any kind of RP experience, couldn't you just stick to your FPS and leave the rest of us alone?
World of Warcraft suffers from the same glut of idiots who mock the very idea of role-playing and seem bound and determined to suck all the enjoyment out of the experience for everyone else. Could I be in town for just one frickin' minute without 257 morons challenging me to a duel? Eh, sigh.
Sadly, I'm probably swimming against the tide on this. PW games like WoW and CoH are probably just as much the wave of the future as pay-to-play. The loss of the ability to create modules is just one more example of an industry leeching all creativity out of players who are becoming increasingly passive cyber-potatoes. Seriously, though, folks, if you aren't interested in any kind of RP experience, couldn't you just stick to your FPS and leave the rest of us alone?
Labels: City of Heroes, Neverwinter Nights, World of Warcraft
