Dwarf Fortress.
I was trying to introduce one of my friends(Friar. Everyone say "Hi, Friar.") to Dwarf Fortress last night before I passed out and it's a tough tough game to try to sum up and explain.
"Ok, the most important button is 'd', it allows you to.."
How do I tell what things are what?
"Oh, right... the most important button is 'k' to see what things are..."
Is everything just this flat plain?
"Oh, right... the most important buttons are '<' and '>' because they change the elevation you are looking at..."
etc etc...
Everything adds on top of each other. If you don't know what the little symbol means, how can you know where to mine? If you don't know which creatures are your dwarves and which are rampaging goblins, which do you kill? If you haven't mined, you don't have stone to build with.
I'm not really sure there is a quick way to explain in. The tutorials on the wiki are very useful for trying to kind of introduce you to things over time. But they basically lead you by the nose to building your first fortress. From there you can diverge.
Doesn't help that d13 is slightly buggy and not showing the menus correctly.
Honestly, I haven't been playing many video games other than Dwarf Fortress in a couple days.
Roleplaying:
I have been playing online roleplaying games using OpenRPG. I'm not sure I'm happy with the client. But, it could definitely be worse. Our first real game involving combat went pretty well once we started getting a map and using the mini's to move around.
The players in the two groups will be interesting to see how things go. It looks like we've got three "front" liners, an arcane caster and a druid in the one night. The arcane caster is David Falcon. The player has decided that his character is a Lord(meaning noble and everyone else are peasants) and a dickhead(meaning the head of a dick).
Ok, I can deal with the uppity noble. But a dickhead... Yeesh, There is NO reason(ok, other than the one I'm currently using) that my guy would deal with this person for very long. Honestly, I can't imagine him having lived to the age that his character is with the way that he treats people.
Our druid is a filthy street urchin that grew up dealing with the animals of the gutter. He companion is a dire rate. She described it as about 3ft long and the size of a good sized dog. David's familiar is a falcon, he sends the falcon to eat her rat. She says something about whiskers enjoying looking around the area and he has his falcon go to eat her rat. He missed out on the fact that the rat is probably 10x the weight of the falcon and took back the action once he realized that the rat might just fight back. But he still, for reasons only he likely understands, was going to kill the pet of another PC. HELLO!
Urg. *grin* I'm still a little annoyed at the guy. The rest of the group is so far fine. One is a wishywashy(so far) half-elven ranger. Another is a human fighter who seems reserved. Keela, our druid, is pretty interesting so far. Hadn't ever thought about the idea of a "street" druid before. Interesting though.
My character, the monk, is kind of just following him to see what he does next. "Quick, lets follow the trained monkey and see what other trouble he gets into." At one point, we're in the keep of the Protector of the town trying to talk to the treasurer. He tries to convince the party to assault the guards and ransack the treasury. AT 3RD LEVEL! With Friar GMing?!?! INSANITY!! Not to mention, I'm playing a good monk.
Anyway, it was a fun session and I'm looking forward to next week. Although, at some level my character will just be done with him and walk away. Likely, AFTER he's given Thelvion the part of his treasure that he deserves.
"Ok, the most important button is 'd', it allows you to.."
How do I tell what things are what?
"Oh, right... the most important button is 'k' to see what things are..."
Is everything just this flat plain?
"Oh, right... the most important buttons are '<' and '>' because they change the elevation you are looking at..."
etc etc...
Everything adds on top of each other. If you don't know what the little symbol means, how can you know where to mine? If you don't know which creatures are your dwarves and which are rampaging goblins, which do you kill? If you haven't mined, you don't have stone to build with.
I'm not really sure there is a quick way to explain in. The tutorials on the wiki are very useful for trying to kind of introduce you to things over time. But they basically lead you by the nose to building your first fortress. From there you can diverge.
Doesn't help that d13 is slightly buggy and not showing the menus correctly.
Honestly, I haven't been playing many video games other than Dwarf Fortress in a couple days.
Roleplaying:
I have been playing online roleplaying games using OpenRPG. I'm not sure I'm happy with the client. But, it could definitely be worse. Our first real game involving combat went pretty well once we started getting a map and using the mini's to move around.
The players in the two groups will be interesting to see how things go. It looks like we've got three "front" liners, an arcane caster and a druid in the one night. The arcane caster is David Falcon. The player has decided that his character is a Lord(meaning noble and everyone else are peasants) and a dickhead(meaning the head of a dick).
Ok, I can deal with the uppity noble. But a dickhead... Yeesh, There is NO reason(ok, other than the one I'm currently using) that my guy would deal with this person for very long. Honestly, I can't imagine him having lived to the age that his character is with the way that he treats people.
Our druid is a filthy street urchin that grew up dealing with the animals of the gutter. He companion is a dire rate. She described it as about 3ft long and the size of a good sized dog. David's familiar is a falcon, he sends the falcon to eat her rat. She says something about whiskers enjoying looking around the area and he has his falcon go to eat her rat. He missed out on the fact that the rat is probably 10x the weight of the falcon and took back the action once he realized that the rat might just fight back. But he still, for reasons only he likely understands, was going to kill the pet of another PC. HELLO!
Urg. *grin* I'm still a little annoyed at the guy. The rest of the group is so far fine. One is a wishywashy(so far) half-elven ranger. Another is a human fighter who seems reserved. Keela, our druid, is pretty interesting so far. Hadn't ever thought about the idea of a "street" druid before. Interesting though.
My character, the monk, is kind of just following him to see what he does next. "Quick, lets follow the trained monkey and see what other trouble he gets into." At one point, we're in the keep of the Protector of the town trying to talk to the treasurer. He tries to convince the party to assault the guards and ransack the treasury. AT 3RD LEVEL! With Friar GMing?!?! INSANITY!! Not to mention, I'm playing a good monk.
Anyway, it was a fun session and I'm looking forward to next week. Although, at some level my character will just be done with him and walk away. Likely, AFTER he's given Thelvion the part of his treasure that he deserves.