Tunnels & Trolls Deluxe at 400% with 25 Hours to Go

It's at 400% and growing with one day to go. I upped my bid to include all the print versions of the various solitaires as well as the "Ya Missed My Vital Spot" tee. If I don't wear it I know my wife will. Also, given how much of a compulsive collector I've been for official Flying Buffalo T&T products, having a complete set of all the books about to be reprinted/revised is just a big old plus, so what the hell, why not (not to mention my tax return is already on its way).

Digging into Amazing Adventures: Pulp Characters

Amazing Adventures is the latest SIEGE Engine to spin off from Castles & Crusades. Prior to this release we have StarSIEGE, Tainted Lands (more of a C&C campaign setting but with a slim mini-rulebook included), and a kid's game called "Harvest" -something (no longer up on their storefront) involving anthropomorphic animals.

The core conceit of the SIEGE mechanics is as follows:

1. It's based on the D20 OGL (so roll a D20 and add something to resolve all tasks)
2. Characters get their six stats, each of which provides a modifier.
3. You designate certain stats as "primes" which means you get a bonus on your skill, save or action checks (which have a target number called a challenge class) related to those particular attributes designated as primes. In Amazing Adventures, you get three primes, and each prime gives you a +5 modifier to challenges. Challenge classes are a base DC 15. This goes up or down based on character level (added when using a class skill/ability), the challenge level (CL), and other factors. Most of the time these are pretty swift calculations.

Got that? Okay that's the SIEGE Engine in a nutshell. Everything else is crusty detritus surrounding the chewy inner core.

Amazing Adventures (AA) provides a pulp toolkit rule book using these mechanics to let players and gamemasters design pulp action adventures based on the serial films and fiction of the 20's, 30's and 40's. It's heavy on the rocket packs and light on the dragons and maidens....although it is fully compatible with C&C, so you can mix and match if you so desire.

Perhaps as a caveat to the author's tastes, or perhaps because its a product derived from a fantasy RPG  that is in turn the bastard child of yet another fantasy RPG, AA has a lot of magic in the book. The first two classes in AA are the arcanist and the gadgeteer. The arcanist is a triple class-in-one, a sorcerer supreme, or a mad cultist, or an illusionist maestro. It's the basic concept of the cleric, illusionist and wizard all rolled into one, depending on which prime stat you pick to govern your magical talent.

Arcanists

Arcanists get a resource called Manna Energy Points (MEP) which are used to power spells. As is traditional for retroclones and retro-inspirationals, characters don't just pay points and cast from an arsenal of spells, they have to memorize them in slots; rather than using slots to "pay" for spells like in C&C and D&D, the slots for AA are what's "in mind" and the expenditure of power is tracked with MEP. MEP is also gained at each level, albeit with a random D10 roll, so an unlucky arcanist could have a very low range of MEP over time. A GM who wants a low-magic setting without excluding it could arbitrarily raise or lower the min/max MEP gained per level, too.

Arcanists are a basic class, the core conceit of which is that he's able to cast magic, but the exact flavor depends on what the player wants or the campaign demands. Choosing the prime attribute (intelligence, wisdom or charisma) changes the flavor of the character as well. Beyond that, the only other real class detail is a familiarity with arcane lore. Customizing the class comes later, in the second section of AA, where we learn about generic class abilities.

Gadgeteers

Gadgeteer as a class is a catch-all for the guy with a lot of equipment that he seems able to pull out at a moment's notice. There are two flavors of gadgeteer: the guy who has someone else provide him with stuff (Batman, the Rocketeer) and the guy who does it all himself on the fly (The Shadow or The Green Hornet, maybe).

Gadgeteers get a number of build points that they spend on and tie up in their gadgetry. The first oddball "glitch" I ran into with AA was here, although its not a big one, necessarily; a player spends gadget points to buy "spells" which he then defines as a physical object (description left up to player and GM to hash out). Sometimes they are temporary (spent on the fly) and sometimes they are permanent. You recover gadget points spent on temporary devices.

A gadgeteer can only ever make on the fly gadgets that emulate zero level spells. There's not a lot of guidance on how, say, a prestidigitation gadget might work, or a mage hand gadget....is it literally functioning like the spell, or just mechanically? This is, admittedly, an old-school territory where such interpretations are up to the GM and the player to negotiate, but I personally would have been very happy if each spell entry had included a short description of what its gadget equivalent might look like.

Gumshoes

The gumshoe is a bag of messy tricks, including climbing, investigation, revolver tricks, punchy take-downs, and an attitude. The gumshoe is the first of several more conventional classes, with a standard suite of C&C style class skills. The gumshoe eventually earns a built-in adversary, a certitude that his daring deeds will earn the emnity of someone, regardless of how many ventilated hooligans he leaves in his wake.

If I were to equate this class to one from C&C, I'd identify it with the ranger.

Hooligans

Speaking of hooligans, here's the actual class. The counterpart to the gumshoe, the hooligan is the rogue of AA, a rough and tumble medley of all the grifters, thugs, mafia men and tough guys you see in the era of the pulps. His main distinguishing trait isn't really even a class feature, being that this class doesn't usually lend itself to a lawful nature. Hooligans are another conventional "class skill" style C&C build, with a range of features that include dirty fighting take-downs, sneak attacks, casing joints and other tropes of the archetype. Yes, they are the modernized iteration of the C&C rogue.

Mentalists

This is the first unique class to the game, one which looks nothing like what has come before in C&C. The mentalist earns psionic powers, which are gained at specific levels, and can function very much like class skills. The entire concept is a great use of the SIEGE style class building process, with some extremely customizable options. Forget pulp adventures for a second....this class has within it the nuggest of a great Psiworld style campaign, something really cool and unusual. I would feel strongly tempted to eliminate the arcanist class entirely in a pulp era setting, directing players instead to the mentalist (and getting rid of the arcanist will make the gadgeteer that much more useful and distinct, too).

The mentalist is a concept that I hope future C&C books also seek to explot; it's something that could work well in a number of genres and contexts.

Pugilists

The pugilist class is what happens when you rename the monk class. I mean, its not an exact translation, but fairly close. The pugilist might work well in some capacity to model the fist fighting pulp warriors of old....I'd throw some levels of this class on the Phantom and the Shadow, for example (and Batman circa 1938 definitely) so as you might imagine this class is useful for that part of the venn diagram where comics and pulps merge. That said, its a strong, focused build class aimed at making the pugilist better with his fists than anyone else.

Raiders

After the Mentalist we have raiders, those daring adventurers writ large by the likes of Doc Savage and Indiana Jones. The raider class is distinctly "pulp," not that the others aren't....it's a class that primarily exists in a specific frame of time and within the even more specific context of adventure fiction and film. Real world pot hunters and archaeologists are not nearly this exciting. Raiders have a medley of odd skills (cryptolinguist, disguise, climb, survival, traps, and a favored weapon) that just screams "Indiana Jones!"

Socialite

The bard...er....the socialite is a clever manipulator and inspirational cheerleader. It's basically a reskinned bard, but with a tone and feel aimed more for a saucy socialite madame than a guy with a lyre and sword.

Now for a few other points to address about how AA works:

Class/Level Mechanics: in case it wasn't already obvious, this is one of those games where you start at level 1 and accrue XP until you hit level 2 and so on. This means that the classes dole out abilities and perks (like better hit points, attack bonuses and such) by level. A system such as this will feel uncomfortable to someone used to a more organic system like Hero or GURPS. As an example, under these mechanics if you did, say, want to build a gadgeteer who was emulating the Rocketeer, you'd need to get him to at least high enough level to build a gadget that emulates the fly spell. Then you'd need to argue with the GM about whether or not "fly" properly models the kind of gadget you have in mind.

(correction! Per Jason, and as I will point out next article, you ignore level restrictions on gadgets at character creation)

Alignments: Yes, alignments are baked in, albeit they could be rendered optional for the most part if you so desired. The alignments feel out of place to me, so I admit I'd have preferred a more modernized morality/personality mechanic, but YMMV on this.

Class Customization Options: A lot of the core class concept gets modified by additional optional class skills that you can swap out (or even spell slots/gadget points). One could be forgiven for overlooking this when studying the class options, but its actually the "meat and potatoes" of what makes the book really interesting. There are a huge variety of class abilities, detached from the classes themselves, which you pay for in ability swaps. Your range of options are more diverse than just feats; you can take the pugilist, for example, add the myriad animal related feats to get a Tarzan-like dude. You can (unfortunately) take the arcanist or gadgeteer classes and decide you don't really want to be an arcanist or gadgeteer and use their spell slots and gadget points respectively to bulk up on all sorts of optional class abilities. It's a weird and cool system all at once, but like with gadgeteers earlier, there's going to be a necessary give-and-take between player and gamemaster to insure that this system is not abused.

HUGE GRIPE: unrelated to the system, but as I was writing this the pages of my brand new book started to fall out. What The Hell. This  isn't Mongoose publishing, guys! Grrrrrrr. In their defense I have never had a Troll Lord Games book come apart before, but....grrrrr. Just. GRRRRRR!

Next: The rest of the game, some example character roll ups, and more. Unless the rest of the book completely comes apart on me.









  

Three Days Left on the Tunnels & Trolls Kickstarter

If you haven't jumped in, but like the broader old school revolution in all its facets, now is the time to get in on a chunk of the second fantasy RPG to come into existence and help T&T Deluxe hit a $100,000 stretch goal. (barring Empire of the Petal Throne....anyone know if T&T or EPT came first? I have no idea.)

Friday Meanderings - Amazing Adventures, Mass Effect Leviathan, Dead Space 3 and More

I haven't gotten my act together with regards to reporting/discussing some of the numerous RPGs I am reading through right now, but I'm working on it. Amazing Adventures is on the top of the list, as I plow through Jason Vey's take on the pulp genre, as powered by the SIEGE Engine. While the core conceit of the C&C-powered D20 mechanics are here at the heart of it all, AA has enough changes to make it stand out on its own. It's got some interesting design choices. I'm hoping to have some more detailed analysis of the system next week.

After a hiatus from Mass Effect 3 I have resumed the Leviathan DLC and picked up the Omega DLC. I've enjoyed Leviathan, despite two distinct hang-ups early on. Sometimes putting something aside for a while and coming back to it later lends clarity of vision to what needs to be done. Anyway, it's  fun resuming the adventures of poor doomed Shepard once more. Still interested in seeing what Bioware Montreal's vision for the next Mass Effect is going to be...I enjoy being a non-toxic fan who actually appreciates the level of work it took to make these games, can you tell?

I also picked up Strike Suit Zero and the preorder for Skyrim Dragonborn DLC as birthday presents for myself. You know you're getting entrenched when two out of three of your purchases are just expansion content for existing games! As it is, Strike Suit Zero looks potentially interesting but the controls were terrible (for me, YMMV). I'm going to give it another shot when I feel the urge to experiment with customizing them to taste, but right now, despite the fact that SSZ harkens back to a day when we all loved Colony Wars and Free Lancer, it's control scheme feels nothing like them. I'm not someone who normally uses a joystick and traditional flight control schematics, though...and am also left handed, so maybe those are where my issues are coming from.

Skyrim is probably the game I really need to sink myself into next. I've only played a few hours of it according to Steam, and the game has been out for over a year, as well as the source of a great many internet memes. I'd like to have the campaign under my belt in time for the Elder Scrolls Online to arrive, as well (even if there's a thousand year gap between the two games).

I also picked up "Map Pack B" for Resident Evil 6. Not sure why, to be completionist, I guess (it was 160 Microsoft Points...$2, so cheap). I've played some RE6 multiplayer now, and while I enjoyed it (and was actually fairly engaged and even doing well) it didn't strike me as having the sort of legs the ME3 multiplayer (or even Max Payne 3 MP) has.

Outside of the above DLC packs and one indie game (SSZ) that got greenlighted, there's the looming specter of Dead Space 3. Some noise has been circulating about the in-game cash shop it apparently comes with. I may wait a few days until after the reviews are out to see just how much of an impact this cash shop feature has. It's yet another unwelcome boogie man from the EA monetization process, but one I'll happily ignore if its not "in your face" or built around a tedious in-game mechanic designed to encourage you to buy coins or items from them to avoid being punished by the game.

Dead Space 3 doesn't arrive until February 12th, so maybe I'll change my mind by then and grab it. We'll see. Two other games are on the horizon which I must get: Crysis 3 and Gears of War: Judgement. Man, I am such a mainstream gamer, aren't I? Dissing in the indies, buying into the big fully-monetized triple-A titles. Defending Bioware. Sigh.

I have Zero hipster cred!

Deathwatch: The Ark of Lost Souls

Fantasy Flight Games has found my weakness: Deathwatch - The Ark of Lost Souls, is what appears to be a campaign/scenario book for the Deathwatch Warhammer 40K RPG (of which there seem to be many with different themes). But this one is about the deathwatch marines, I guess, and it's latest scenario book sounds like the Space Hulk game properly translated into an RPG environment. Space Hulk was one of my all-time favorite minis/board games twenty years ago. Damnit....I may be buying both soon....

I'm really not into Warhammer 40K, but the idea of space marines exploring derelict, haunted vessels filled with gene stealers has always intrigued me. Thus why I snagged MaschineZeit recently (about which I plan to write more on, soon).

Neverwinter Nights Stick-Em-Up

I just received an email which points me to the splash page for early buy-in on the Neverwinter Nights MMORPG looming close on the horizon. Neverwinter Nights is being developed by Cryptic, which in turn was purchased by Perfect World Entertainment, one of the more successful MMO-focused companies out of Korea. No one has accused Perfect World of being out of touch with how to market a F2P experience that generates income, although I seem to recall that buy-in on some of their games can get quite expensive.

My primary experience with the monetization process of PW games comes from Blacklight: Retribution, a very fun game with a crappy store which sells you overpriced and mostly very temporary items with an eye toward encouraging random equipment packs that are often far less useful than you'd think. Blacklight: Retribution also encourages purchases in a sort of "pay to win" feel although it can take many hours playing it before you begin to realize this is going on.

I also of course have played a fair amount of Champions: Online since it went F2P, though the majority of my purchases in that game were during the opening weeks when they converted to F2P and had massive sales, all of which was before PW's ownership. Since PW took over Champions has had some overall improvements, but a massive increase in the volume of "things you'd really like to buy" in the store as well. I can't fault this approach, however, because I can still more or less enjoy Champions without buying all that stuff; it's all prestige, coolness and looks you're buying into there, with (so far as I can tell) very little or no buy-to-win content. I may be wrong, I don't play it often enough, but for a casual drop-in the game feels pretty robust.

Neverwinter Nights was on the fast track to a rush-job and shoddy finish in true Cryptic style when Perfect World bought them whole cloth and forced the studio to slow down and do a good job of it all (i.e. not like Star Trek Online). This was a good thing. Now, however, we finally get to see some opening pricing on the game. Bear in mind that Neverwinter Nights will be F2P as its core model, but I think looking at the pricing structure for people who opt to buy-in to the game's prepackaged goodies is telling as to just how much money PW and Cryptic is hoping you will spend:

The Founder's Pack "Hero of the North" is $199.99 for the chance to play a drow renegade (which sounds suspiciously to me like the characters in NN will be packaged similarly to the prebuilt options in Champions), a spider mount, panther companion, costume set and 13 other items and features ,including 750,000 astral diamonds which....assuming that's cash shop currency...might be a lot if the pricing structure is similar to Champions: Online's system. All of PW's other games were converted to a "Zen" currency so I don't know if in fact these astral diamonds mean anything.

$200 for all of the above sounds like a lot to me, but according to the web page its actually a discount down from a $549 value. No kidding.

The cheaper package is the "Guardians of Neverwinter" pack is for people who still believe that $60 is a maximum value buy-in point for video games, and comes with a medley of ten more conventional non-drow-themed stuff, along with 125,000 astral diamonds.

FInally, for the cheap end of the pool they've got a $19.99 "let me on the bus" package with three items that don't really seem worth twenty bucks and no astral diamonds.

It seems to me that Perfect World is staking a lot on the expectation that gamers who are willing to buy in to Neverwinter Nights are just exploding with cash and a desperate need to spend it. This is probably true of the "whales" in the F2P monetization process, and while I might have questioned just how many of them actually exist out there, the truth is that F2P seems to be a viable market (ergo why everyone is doing it) and then you have things like the Pathfinder Online Kickstarters, proving people will dump tons of cash into pipe dreams. At least PW is offering genuine virtual goods for a sure thing to come this year.

Right now these packages seem seriously overpriced for a game no one's even played yet, and worse yet you get a paid-beta access as part of this buy in, so the only way to try before you buy is to wait until the game pops out and the special founder prices presumably set to the crazily more expensive defaults.

Another theory I have: this founder approach with a big ticket entry price is actually the F2P model's way of trying to figure out how to get those "Lifetime Subscribers" to keep giving big bucks. I know of a few people who saw a game....say, Champions or DDO, and bought lifetime subs when the games were still subscription based. PW must know those people continue to exist, and is trying to figure out how to snag them.

I suspect that this deal would actually look good if they could do two things first: 1. show us a sample of the cash shop pricing, and 2. confirm that astral diamonds are in fact cash shop zen currency. If I knew that information, I'd be more inclined to take the founder packages seriously.

Exploring Kicktraq as a form of Haruspicy

Sabtastic

I can't help but notice some interesting figures parked over on Kicktraq, the site which thrives on analyzing Kickstarters to death. For the remainder of today's post I shall pretend that each Kicktraq report is like a scrumptious divinatory liver and I am the haruspex portending their weal or woe...

For the top example, the one I am presently invested in, Tunnels & Trolls Deluxe, is sitting comfortably at $81K right now, about 314% of goal today according to Kicktraqs. It's trending toward a 400% hit. T&T Deluxe is a niche game by RPG standards, but a persistent one which I know from personal experience has held a long time fan base that has remained dedicated to it through thick and thin. I also think it benefits a bit from overlap with the more traditional D&D-focused OSR crowd, because T&T is a venerable member of that club, even if it isn't a D&D-like, precisely--it has, more specifically, remained true to its roots and has deviated little over the decades from the original T&T.

So T&T has 7 days to go, but its trending at $81K with 1219 backers as of today. The buy-in for a decent return is $60, and everything on top of that is gravy.

Next we have the recently completed Razor Coast campaign, which is Frog God's latest deluxe hardcover set of modules designed for either Pathfinder of Swords & Wizardry Complete. We have a piracy-themed setting that looks pretty fun, actually, but the buy-in for a decent print set is $150.00. The KS did finish successful, at $164% of goal with $123K and 709 backers. At $174 per backer, that's pretty impressive. It makes me wonder what they would have earned if the books offered had included a more budget-minded lower price break (i.e. a $60-$80 price just for the two books in soft cover or something). As it was this was too rich for me, but a lower price point would have snagged my money. The ones offered were, alas, for pricey PDFs instead. I have enough PDFs I haven't read yet, no need to add some very, very expensive ones to the virtual pile!

Then there's FATE Core which is basically dynamite fishing toward success. It's got 7 hours to go as of this writing (which means it will be done by the time the blog sees print), with 9,584 backers and a ridiculous success rate so far thanks to $413K in contributions. On the other hand, they started asking for a meager $3,000 and clearly underestimated the interest for their product. At nine-and-a-half thousand backers, with the basic buy-in for a print copy at $30, and the average backer pledging at $43? Yeah, I have to say FATE as a system is clearly a Big Thing in gaming. It may not be for me, but clearly there's a large interest in it.

Of a far more niche nature we have Codex Celtarum, which I sure would like to back (conditional to some tax return money showing up before the KS closes). It's a new book for Castles & Crusades from Troll Lord, with a Celtic focus. It's at 171% of goal today with almost $7K in contributions and 109 backers. C&C is apparently very niche compared to some other more venerable products out there (or bigger name affairs tied to Pathfinder like Razor Coast) but its fanbase is hardcore about keeping up with it.

It looks like the Vampire 20th Anniversary Edition is getting more books, specifically The Hunters Hunted II, a revision of an older book that is apparently quite popular with 501 backers and $31K having just met its goal. I wouldn't know...I've never been that into the White Wolf games, and even when I tried recently my wife, who once was so into them that she got a tattoo of Sasha Vykos on her left arm, asked me not to. That was a bandwagon she didn't want to get back on, apparently (or fall of of, not sure which). So I remain curious at a distance.

So are there any other big hits out there? Browsing through what Kicktraq is following there are some apparently doomed projects, either faltering due to a drying of the RPG money well, or obscurity, or perhaps their pitch just doesn't resonate. For example:

The Endless Blue  is an RPG of a water world. It sounds interesting, but there's little to go on outside of the KS page, and the author's prior writing credits boil down to "lots of internet blogging." Which really might be a decent qualification but it's not something which serves as a good benchmark for a production-to-publication process. Actually, his credits mention several other minor works, but its nothing unusual in this hobby...we've all got a few writing credits rolling around in obscure RPG publications.



That's a problem with RPGs, unfortunately; our corner of the hobby world is top-heavy with people who all aspire to be game designers and writers, but very weak on professional oversight. That said, I sort of like the concept he's got going here, but maybe tone down the music just a tiny bit in the video?

And how about Broken Earth, a post-apoclayptic RPG that's just starting (34 days to go) but looks to be trending to success (thanks in part to a very modest $3,000 goal). It's a Pathfinder-compatible book, and in glancing through the description it looks Matt Hanson has done some work before, although nothing huge. Still....I may back this. I'd like to finally see someone produce a post-apocalyptic game powered by Pathfinder, maybe he can do it where others have continued to fail.



Aside from that, Kicktraq's listing has a lot of board games, but the RPG listings are a bit on the lite side.

So is there some means of prediction about the way the RPG hobby is trending? In a sense I suppose that yes, you can spot a few interesting trends. Obviously there is an interest for the hot and new (FATE Core) and there is also a dedicated fanbase for the classics (T&T Deluxe), while other games appear to have found their audience and can rely on them to garner support (Razor Coast, Codex Celtarum, Hunters Hunted II). Meanwhile a game with an entirely new concept, system and pitch from untested authors and artists languishes in obscurity (Endless Blue).

Personally, I think that every success on Kickstarter is a boon to the hobby (at least for now) for the simple fact that it shows that there is a dedicated core following for each game, one which is able to  stave off immediate gratification for a long term prospect. If our hobby was suffering for health, this might not be so typical. In fact, I'd suggest that a weak hobby might lead to plenty of KS failures right out the door, but that's clearly not the case. The only real failures appear to be the untested and the unknown.

The problem, unfortunately, will arise if too many past Kickstarters fail to deliver over time...or if the quality fails to match the hype (also known as the "great videographer, terrible writer" conundrum). Too many failures, broken promises or undelivered goods will lead to shaky confidence in the process.

Any Kickstarters you know about that I don't? I'd be interested in hearing about them.




(And now for my obligatory semi-weekly rant about old age, an aging hobby, and the lamentations of lost youth: Yessshhhh, we're all getting really long in the tooth in this hobby, aren't we? I know it's probably "just me" feeling this way, because I'm A: a very late father in life, B: still in the middle of a mid-life crisis, and C: my nostalgia for the old days is also strongly embedded in my memory of youth (i.e. being young at the time) and therefore I experience a persistent disconnect between my "sense" of the hobby and the reality of it each time I see yet another oddball forty-something (or older!) dude pitching his lifetime pet project. Gaaaaahhhh what the hell happened to me. Frickin' old age.)

Dungeon of the Bear and a T&T GM Screen

Tunnels & Trolls Deluxe has ripped on past the $80K mark and two new stretch goals are available, which I am buying into both of: The GM's Screen ($5 add on) and the reprinted Dungeon of the Bear ($6 add on). I happen to have a couple copies of the original Dungeon of the Bear, a module I'd actually love to run again one day, but a new one is always a good thing. The GM's Screen is just a "thing"....I like getting game screens (just got the Labyrinth Lord GM Screen the other day, actually) so its a no-brainer for me. Also, I'm curious to see what would go on one, since T&T is a game that is remarkably easy to run  sans-screen. Not a lot of charts in this system.

I'm hoping the Kickstarter passes the $100K mark, which would be cool. Kicktraq thinks its trending that way, so who knows? I mean, if Pathfinder Online can scrape past the finish line, maybe the Trolls can jump the chasm and keep on running...

Either way, I think I need to break out some 5.5 or 7.5 T&T soon and run a few adventures. 2013: a good year for classic gaming so far!

MMOnday: The Grind Problem

It's been a few weeks since I talked MMOs, but since I need something for Monday...why not!

In the world of MMO land I've found a nebulous stand-off in my personal interest between Rift and ...of all things!... World of Warcraft. I recently fell back off the wagon, caving in and buying my wife a collector's edition copy of Mists of Pandaria and resubbing for a month myself. I didn't snag MoP for my account....I left my human warrior at level 82 and my horde warrior at 83, with the former stuck in the fishbowl world of Vasj'ir and the latter at the tail end of Mount Hyjal's never-ending quest chain. I'd love to see what an actual 3D topographical map of Azeroth looks like now....it must be rather ominously deep and tall in two distinct regions.

That said, I've apparently been playing Rift for so long that in a weird turnabout, WoW actually feels a bit "weird" to me. It also hammers home the subtle but persistent change in play style and feel over time in WoW, something made sharp in contrast with Rift, which for all its innovations still rests squarely in an older style of play....an older, slightly more brutal style which demands just a bit more of its players. Even when Rift shifts toward more "friendly" mechanics (or lack thereof) it still maintains a slightly more dangerous, sometimes grindy approach to play, something WoW only really embraces at the endgame level now.

When (probably a certainty) I do get Mists of Pandaria, it may be with the intent of powering through the newer game content once all of the grindy elements have been lifted by Blizzard in the wake of a new expansion. I've noticed that its with an absolute certainty that Blizzard will revamp the leveling pace of the previous expansion to accomodate getting people more quickly to the next new thing on the horizon. A person like me, who hates grinding and maximizes rest state health, finds it almost punishing to buy into a new expansion on day one, where the leveling process becomes a tedious lesson in slogging through what should be fun content, but instead is tainted by the need to pad it as much as possible. The irony of this padding process to slow players is it never, ever seems to work. There's always that French guy and his guild doing it in 24 hours, or my wife, who usually does it in one week (and even with a child to slow her down probably pulls it off in two).

Rift's Storm Legion expansion has the same problem, but lacks a certainty that Trion will, like Blizzard, eventually make the leveling process quicker. They actually did something akin to this prior to Storm Legion's release: they ramped up world events and instant adventures tied to the Storm Legion invasion, which in turn provided insane levels of XP, allowing for a fairly quick progression for most through level 30 at least.....probably beyond, although by then it was too mind numbing for me to want to keep up with. It's a tough issue for MMOs, where they can have plenty of great content that's fun and interesting, but is subsequently ruined by its own level and pacing mechanics.



I experienced a level of frustration of an entirely different sort in Champions Online Sunday morning as well. First, something I knew was a bad idea and still tried to attempt due to the eagerness of my wife to get me involved: a run through the Serpent Lantern Adventure Packs. My highest level character in Champions is 15th, because my experience with Champions is broad (12 characters) but shallow (all level 10-15ish). Champions is a lot of fun for me, but after a point it's combat mechanics and style start to feel weirdly button-mashing. There's a strategy and approach to it, I am aware....but the jargon and style of the game turns me off, becoming an impenetrable wash of gobbledigook mixed with quests that contain some of the most insultingly (albeit amusingly) retarded nonsense you'll ever see in an MMO.

Ummm....anyway, so the point was this:

1. Don't try to run an instance with a 14 month old in the house, especially one who's primary fascination right now is with Taking Things From Dad.

2. Don't try to run Serpent's Lantern unless you're unemployed and have no life. We were three hours in, I was getting ready to fake a D/C and tell my wife my computer had croaked...anything!...to get out of this endless grindy attack on a jungle base run by the incrdibly inept and near-sighted Venom organization when one of her guildies informed me that we were at the half way mark and maybe we should call it, restart again next week. "Restart?" one of the other players who, like me, may have been unwittingly suckered into this experience asked. "We can't pick up where we left off? How much is left?" We were just at the halfway mark, he was informed....and nope, the instance resets itself. No progress on this one.

Egads!

So I'm feeling a bit annoyed with Champions right now. Such a lovely character generator attached to such a weird and awkward game engine. Still, I've enjoyed it more than poor dead City of Heroes.

But back to Rift and WoW! I've been enjoying my return to WoW, but who knows for how long. It seems like they've cleaned up the graphics a bit more recently. Still ass-ugly an cartoony, but at least now it looks like an ugly ass in hi-def 1080p. Playing WoW made me realize just how much Blizzard keeps the older content on "speed run" mode, to both get players up in level as quickly as they can, and also I imagine to cater to the endless wave of slow casuals like myself who spend 95% of their play experience below level cap.

It has made me appreciate Rift (pre level 50 Rift, anyway) all the more. It has also made me wish Rift didn't employ the same grindy slow-pacing level process in its expansion. Here's some advice I learned, though: if you are in Storm Legion, avoid Pelladane unless grouping is your thing. Cape Jules is much friendlier to the solo player, I discovered.

Meanwhile, The Secret World languishes in its own darkness, a game with fascinating levels of content that do not belong in an MMO shell, thus delegating it to the backburner once more. Likewise with Guild Wars 2, which for all of its innovation and impressive graphics still feels to me like  a game about running around and filling up hearts on maps.

Anyway.....more later....

Voice Over

Vimeo constantly amazes me with the awesome stuff hosted there. Voice Over is a serious treat....enjoy:


VOICE OVER (English subtitles) from Kamel Films on Vimeo.