MMO Funtime with Dad

So I've figured out (so far) how to get some game time in here and there, which is good. Sometimes I can get some game time in with Marcus present, sometimes mom and dad swap duties to give each other a break, and sometimes I get lucky and he passes out for a few hours, giving me some uniterrupted time to blast geth, locusts, zombies, Covenant, or what-not.

One thing I've found really hard to do lately is keep up with MMOs. Part of it is that with limited time I think I prefer shorter normal games that offer a sense of direction, resolution, reward and progress over a tighter span of time. I really want to love Star Wars: The Old Republic, for example, and it wants me to as well, but its a MMO disguised as a CRPG, and I have a hard enough time finding the timeblocks necessary to play Skyrim or Mass Effect, let alone the insanely time-demanding environment of an MMO.

I'm also terrible with repetition, and when a game has me doing too much of the same thing over too long a period, I can burn out much more quickly than your typical hardcore modern MMOer (i.e. my wife). I don't know why, it's just that way for me. So thus am I stalled in Guild Wars and Dungeons & Dragons Online, where the ability to finish a character to max level (or end of story in GW's case) seems like a nigh impossible task due to the unending grind.

But I did notice one thing, which might explain some of the long term success of World of Warcraft: that game lets you play the entire thing one handed with a mouse. A few years ago I might have cracked jokes about one-handed gameplay on FeatherMoon server and the proliferation of stripper night elf chicks. No more! Today I realize that being able to play one handed while you bounce a baby on your lap and keep him propped up is a distinct "game play advantage" that WoW offers, and a pretty compelling one.

I'm tired of WoW, have been for a long time, but getting my character to level 85 seems like a laudable goal if I want a bit of random gametime that also lets me entertain the kid (who appears to be fascinated with WoW's simple but elegant cartoon graphics).

Speaking of Three Months! Guess who's 3 Months Old???

Yep, Marcus turned 3 months this weekend! Yay. Dad proud.

Home! And then there were three (plus a lot of cats and fishes)

We're home. This was quite the ordeal but it went surprisingly well. Marcus is a real trooper, and his mom even more so. I'm not sure who had it worse: the person who had to push a football through a golf-ball sized exit, or the person who got to be a football, but they have both come out ahead and are now sleeping soundly (or chewing on binkies) upstairs.

Despite being busy with family, my blog has many episodes programmed ahead, so you shouldn't see any interruption of this for some time....part of the advantage of having so much content already worked up!

Anyway, just wanted to provide that family update. Hope you all have as good a holiday season as my family is.

Legend Previews

Head Injury Theatre!

They've actually been up for a little while now, but Mongoose has posted a character sheet, preview, and packet describing any adjustments between the RQII edition and the Legend edition of the core rules (all available here).

I'm getting progressively more excited as Legend gets closer. I like the concept of the core RQII mechanics, but effectively divorced from the Glorantha setting. It's not that Glorantha is a problem; rather, its that any game system which ties itself to a setting (specially and in particular fantasy systems) necessarily limits its audience and functionality, even if the core rules are sufficiently robust and stretchable as to make the tether sufficiently ephemeral. I also admit that this isn't necessarily a weakness....many, many people enjoy having a system which provides that sort of content straight up, of course....but not being one of them, instead falling into the camp of gamers who like to take the rules and wed them to my own creations, means I much prefer these things when they do not contain any implicit assumptions about the "where" of it all.

Yes, I'm one of those guys who thought that having the Greyhawk pantheon in the core rules of 3rd edition D&D was a mark against it. And while I like the core setting assumptions of D&D 4th edition, I also feel it of necessity created boundaries and limits that have also hurt that edition more than helped it. It's only fortuitous that the core assumptions for 4E were carefully thought out and integrated with the core expectations of D&D in general. From a certain point of view, of course! I know I like them, and I know I have found that the 4E approach meshes more closely to fantasy as I enjoy it, but that is certainly not the case for all people...which is exactly my point; the increased focus of 4E necessarily cost the game some of its versamilitude from earlier editions, especially the chunky-weird mechanical era of 2nd edition, which for all its lumpiness could still somehow manage to provide for non-western cultures, exotic non-standard fantasy locales and outright strangeness better than any successive edition could. From a certain point of view.

Baby Front! Just a quick update, as well as an explanation of why I might not post much at some point soon. Jody is days away from due date and all progressing along just fine. Marcus should be here ideally between 5 minutes from now and sometime around the tenth according to the midwife nurse. He could run late, but it seems unlikely. Personally, I'll be surprised if we're not in the hospital by this Sunday.

Okay....that's it for now.....as usual, I have preloaded blogs for the "Ages of Lingusia" column through the 13th, so there will be no interruption of that until then. I have plenty of additional material that I could load for future Ages columns, just need to find a couple hours to set them up....so even if I'm absent from the blog due to imminent fatherhood issues, there will still be some material for a while.