(no subject)
It's back to the gaming table for me this weekend, as my compatriots and I continue to "date" the new 4th Edition of D&D. I say that because we seem to be having problems with our new steady, but we're not sure if it's her (she seems to be a bit too much like her cousins "Chainmail" and "World of Warcraft") or if it's us (we all come from the days when all the strategy you needed was "marching order," "cast and swing 'till it dies," and "min/max until you get exponents"). It doesn't help that we, as a group, are probably the bad-luck sink for some high-roller who is running the craps tables in Vegas. I think I might try charting just how many ones we roll and see if we're winning the rotten luck lotto. But anyway, our frustration with our gaming lot has led me and the DM to look at some other campaign ideas: The ever-popular "Deadlands" (which has some interesting mechanics I'd like to try. Plus we all kinda dig Jonah Hex) or our "Fallout 3" inspired nostalgia for "Gamma World."
If we do "Gamma World," it'll most likely be based on a flavor of the d20 system. And frankly, from everything I've looked at, from "Metamorphosis Alpha" to the last incarnation of the rules from White Wolf, what makes GW a great or cruddy game is often not the rules: It's the setting.
The most recent versions of the game are bogged down with way too much detail and way too much complicated backstory. I know they wanted it to be more up to date, but they brought in nanotech and biotech, and whatevertech to explain all of the mutations and other weird stuff you'd see. We don't need that: "Magical Radiation" works just fine and has been a staple of the post-apocalyptic genre since before Philip K. Dick. It gave us everything from "I Am Legend" to "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." And it's simple. Sure, having a bunch of people who infused themselves with nanites and made a weird death-colony in the mountains is fine for an adventure, but if the setting gets more complicated than "bombs fell, civilization went 'Mad Max,' and a three-headed laser-eyed duck-mutant is about to eat you," then it becomes less fun.
So we're probably either going to do something like Fallout 3 ("things got bad in Popular Mechanics 1950, the Chinese and Americans nuked each other, try not to get eaten by the radscorpions") or even return to the setting as presented in the original boxed set. I loves me some radioactive role-playing, but the campaign should only become complicated on its own. Trying to explain the whole world at once just makes everyone's eyes start to cross.
Oh, and the other reason we'd like to go back to some of the old rules: 1. the exchange rate for high-powered stuff under 4e makes no sense. A sword of planet-splitting should NOT fetch only 1/4 of retail, and 2. while previous editions had vastly overpowered attacks that could take out swaths of enemies in one go, we players kind of liked having that in our arsenal. Being able to say "you go squish now" was one of the best feelings there was, making up for the thirty-seven "1" rolls you'd made the previous session.
Taking a quick turn into TV land, Battlestar Galactica continues to build towards its final episodes, and it picked now to have something happen that seemed to make no sense to me on a technical level. Without delving into spoilers, I watched the episode and wondered, "If FTL drives are so hazardous to their surrounding area, why aren't they used as bombs or weapons?" But on a nerdy note: The name of the toothpaste was awesome. And I hear it's going to be up for auction at the BattlestarProps website.
And for anyone that recalls the original BSG opening credit sequence, this 'Muppetized' version is pretty funny.
But we've got links to lay on you, and videos to watch at the end, so let's get to it:
- The art is kinda crude, but playing ragdoll bow-and-arrow golf with a cat is kinda fun in the aptly named Cat With Bow Golf 2. You can also fire while in flight, for added kitty-golf excitement.
- As if I didn't have enough reasons to be frightened of swimming in the ocean, artists have to invent new ones.
- Got a few extra dollars burning a hole in your pocket, there's a nifty comic book for sale.
- A pretty well-rounded side-scrolling platformer called Mission Borneo should test one's Mario-esque skills quite handily. There's also a comic available on the site for the backstory.
- I think even those who hate regulations on business of any kind would agree that these need to be in every building.
- What could be more perfect than the union of the Doctor Who theme and Tesla coils?
- The Dragon and the Wizard is the latest "spot the difference" game I've run across. This one is timed; find all of the differences before the clock runs down and save the town from the dragon!
- And we'll close with a lot of video concerning something I touched on in the last post's comments: "Duck's Breath Mystery Theater." I found that a few videos from this comedy troupe's history have been posted on the net, and the first one may even be familiar to a lot of you: Randee of the Redwoods (a one-time MTV Presidential Candidate) singing the closest thing he had to a hit: Either Way is Fine With Me. Another Duck's Breath character was a "commentator" named Ian Shoales. His stream-of-consciousness talks (called "sneer-rapping") always ended with "I gotta go." Here's his take on Dualism. Lastly, my favorite Duck's Breath character, "Dr. Science." Some kind soul has uploaded the entire science special he did for PBS (in VHS quality, but hey): Part 1, part 2, and part 3. And it looks like all of these and more are for sale on their site.