Cobalt Valkyrie’s ship, which commonly hangs out in wormhole space her corporation lives in.

GDG: How did you get into playing EVE?

CV: I was playing this random flash game with a steampunk airship aesthetic.  I was the leader of a clan, and one of the people I played with told me on several occasions that I’d probably really like this game called Eve.  He didn’t play because he didn’t have time with school, but kept trying to convince me I’d love it.  Finally, I signed up for the free trial, and was immediately hooked.

GDG: Why EVE and not a different MMO?

CV: Honestly, I think it was a right time/right place sort of thing.  I’ve been into other games in the past, but stopped due to RSI problems.   Eve turned out to be a good game for me in that regard, because you don’t have to constantly clutch the mouse and button mash to accomplish things.  That allowed me to play long enough to make social connections, and get to appreciate the depth of the game.  That depth is one of the reasons I still play – there is so much to do in Eve that you don’t get bored easily.

GDG: How did you learn the ins and outs of the game?

CV: Because there are so many things you can do in Eve, I was overwhelmed by my choices at first and had no idea what I wanted to do.  I joined Eve University, which is a corporation specifically designed towards helping noobs learn about the game.  While there, I went out on a PvP fleet and immediately knew how I wanted to spend my game time.  I became friends with a tight knit group of combat pilots, and they became my mentors.  I also spent a lot of time reading wikis and forums to learn how various mechanics worked,  and, as always, I learned some things the hard way (namely, via getting exploded).

GDG: Do you consider yourself part of a particular EVE community?

CV: Several, I suppose.  There is my corporation, which is analogous to a clan in other MMOs.  This is the group of people that I’m on comms with and regularly fly with.  Additionally, I’m part of “The Sound,” which is an in-game chat channel for Seattle area Eve players.  I organize occasional RL meetups for this group.  There is also the WGoE, Women Gamers of Eve, a channel specifically for Eve’s female players.  It’s a nice place to hang out and talk with other people who know what it’s like to constantly hear “OMG, is that a GIRL on comms?!”

GDG: Can you tell me the type/model of your ship?

CV: It’s a Proteus, which is a Strategic Cruiser. There are four different strategic cruisers in the game, one corresponding to each race.  The Proteus is the Gallente Strategic Cruiser.

They’re neat because they’ve much more configurable than other ships.  Most ships, they’re set up a certain way and that’s what you have to work with.  They have set characteristics, and a certain number of slots… places to put modules such as weapons, defensive reinforcements, etc.  Strategic cruisers are very flexible, because they have different Subsystems that you plug in (for lack of a better term) to your ship hull, and each subsystem gives you different numbers of slots and abilities.  They’re especially popular with people that fly in wormhole space all the time, because they’re fairly small and lightweight (important because wormholes only allow a limited mass to pass through), but they have very strong offensive/defensive capabilities.”

GDG: Who would you recommend EVE to?

CV: Eve isn’t a game for everyone.  Some people liken it to a second job more than a game.  I frequently hear people say Eve isn’t always fun, but it’s very rewarding, and I agree with that sentiment.  It has a lot of complicated mechanics, and most people I know play Eve with multiple spreadsheets open.  That said, it’s an amazingly expansive world, with many ways to entertain yourself.  It’s a very social game – it’s not really designed for solo play. I’ve made some great friends though Eve.

Ultimately, I’d say if you like spaceships, and you like a world with a lot of depth, it’s worth checking out.

Have fond memories of your first MMO? Share them in the comments!

Note: there are probably going to be major spoilers here.  Kind of difficult to talk about where a story should go without referring to where it’s been.

The future is not the way of the future

Most ideas I’ve seen involve Portal 3 picking up just minutes after the second one ends – that is, with Chell in the outside world and the facility destroyed.  The idea is, you can incorporate novel settings and situations, and finally get out of those test chambers.

It’s a fun idea in theory.  Here’s my issue, though: It would be way too easy to, well, wind up in space, for example.  Without the contained facility you’d either have to have some artificial constraint (like a range to the Portal gun, though we’ve already seen it take us to the moon) or the limits of the game “zone” would be way too obvious.

Plus, Chell was sleeping for how many years?  Who’s to say the world even resembles anything like what we’ve seen?  Technology would either be vastly advanced or there’s none at all.  Might make for some interesting fiction, but not really a good Portal sequel.

Sweet…

In my opinion, there’s really only one direction you can go for Portal 3:  Caroline.  Either with her as the protagonist or an immediate superior, or maybe even a an earlier version of GLaDOS who feels a shred of empathy for the test subjects (we know she’s never been keen on the scientists).  I somewhat like the idea of a Caroline who was in charge of the facility in human form for awhile before they were ready to “put her in the computer,” one who might have been in charge of experiments and concepts we’ve never seen in the Portal games to date.

“But J,” you might be saying, “That means we’ll be right back at Aperture, probably even parts of Aperture we’ve already seen!”  Yes… or no.  What if Aperture weren’t the only testing location?  What if you can play through failed attempts at testing out in the open (space!)?

Or how about this: it’s unclear if Caroline was literally “put into” the computer at the cost of her own life, or if she was merely copied.  What if she attempted to co-exist with GLaDOS for some time?  What might that dynamic be like?  Would she flee to a different facility?  Would she attempt to battle GLaDOS?  Or, conversely, could Caroline then be a completely different, cold and calculating character?

Regardless, I think we’ll have to, by necessity, step at least a little into the past to get more Aperture inventions.  Since Chell in Portal 2 was in a facility that was actively decomposing, who knows what we haven’t seen yet?  I know of one possibility: Mantis Men!  Also: time travel, guys.  There’s a possibility of time travel.

Okay, it might not be perfect, it might be riddled with holes, but there’s my idea.  And yes, Valve, I’m willing to sell it to you, thanks for asking.

Now, how about you?  What would you like to see in a new Portal game, either in storyline or game play?  Let’s hear your wildest speculation! 

I looked at Decipher’s Lord of the Rings RPG, and it just didn’t wow me. It was another race/class system, married to the basic setting. If I were going to go that route, I would most likely just look at D&D and doing some adaptations in terms of setting. Its main advantage was being licensed in conjunction with the movies, so it had great photos, and it released some great looking maps.

As a result, I was a little hesitant to look at The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild, the new RPG from Cubicle 7 & Sophisticated Games. I was intrigued by the slipcover format, and the art looked good, but I held off. After seeing reviews that were declaring things like “easily the best RPG based on Tolkien’s works to date”, I finally decided to spend some of my Christmas cash and grab a copy.

“A Box Without Hinges, Key, or Lid”

The first thing that stands out about the game is the format. The game, which retails for $59.99, comes in a slipcover case. Within, you’ll find an Adventurer’s Book, primarily aimed at players, a Loremaster’s Book, for the gamemaster, 2 maps (also split between players and GMs), and a set of special dice. The books are softcover, featuring excellent art, including art by John Howe, one of the two main artists working on the Peter Jackson movies.

The dice are very well made, and they come in a plastic tray that actually holds the books and maps in the slipcover. They’re specific to the game, with Tolkien symbols on them, but you could opt to just use normal dice. There are the Success Dice, six D6s that have a Tengwar rune on the 6. Getting Tengwar runes during a skill check increases the degree of success on the roll. These D6s also have the numbers 1-3 in outline, with the 4-6 in solid black. This feeds into the mechanics of the game; characters under certain detrimental conditions don’t count the outlined numbers, making it substantially harder to succeed at even the easiest tasks.

The last die that comes with the set is a D12. Imagine! The lonely D12 getting some love. This die is the crucial Fate Die, rolled on pretty much every skill check. The 11 and 12 have been replaced with an Eye of Sauron mark and a Gandalf G rune (the rune found by Frodo, Aragorn, and the others on Weathertop…yes, I’m a Tolkien geek.) If you’re an Adventurer, rolling a Gandalf rune is always good, and rolling the Eye of Sauron can be very, very bad.

“Far O’er the Misty Mountains Cold”

The game is set, intriguingly, in the lands east of the Misty Mountains. For lack of a better way of putting it, the setting is set around the countries visited during The Hobbit, and the campaign starting point is nominally set as 5 years after the events in The Hobbit. With The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey releasing this year, could this be coincidence? I think not.

Races available to play include Elves of Mirkwood, Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain, Hobbits of the Shire, and 3 races of Men – Bardings from Laketown, Beornings who follow Beorn’s ways, and the Woodmen of Mirkwood.

The game is ostensibly the first of three One Ring games. Each game will advance the timeline and add both more locations to adventure in and more races to play. According to interviews I’ve read, the second game will add the countries west of the Misty Mountains, and the third game will add Rohan, Gondor, and Mordor into the mix.

“Like a Horrible Game of Blind-Man’s Bluff”

Actually, despite my chosen quote, I think the rule system of The One Ring is simple, fun, and very evocative of the setting.

Rather than choose a class, characters choose background elements that give them different skill levels and traits. From these elements, a character’s statistics and abilities evolve. And yes, they’re tremendously flavorful. It can actually be quite beneficial to have a trait of “Smoking” or points in the Courtesy skill.

Characters also choose their Calling, the reason they adventure in the first place. This can give them benefits, but it also dictates the way they might be influenced by the powers of the Shadow as well. A character motivated as a Slayer may know more of the enemy and be quite good at certain skills, but they may be coaxed by the shadow to seek Vengeance. A character who is a Scholar may have excellent Lore oriented abilities, but they can be drawn towards Shadow by the Lure of Secrets.

Characters making a skill check roll a certain number of Success Dice plus the Fate Die. They are trying to beat a Target Number set by the Loremaster, and, as I mentioned above, certain symbols on the dice give better or worse results than normal. What’s fantastic, however, is that a lot of the traits chosen during character creation can give successes without ever picking up the dice. A character asked to make an Awe roll who possesses the trait Lordly might point this fact out to the Loremaster. The Loremaster may agree that, since the character is dealing with deferential peasants, there’s no need for a roll.

“And he was miserable, alone, lost.”

There are some great rules around negative conditions in the game. As various things happen, players expend Endurance points, and running out has very negative consequences. A character without any Endurance becomes Weary, and they can have difficulty accomplishing even simple tasks.

All characters have a Hope score, and they can spend Hope points to bolster themselves in action. As the power of Shadow slowly grows over a character, however, and they “Lose Hope”, they can become Miserable and in danger of succumbing to the Lure of Shadow. This can have a profound effect, not only on the character’s immediate actions, but on the character’s long range behavior. Think of Denethor and Boromir. Both are noble characters who are driven to do terrible things by the power of the Shadow.

A terrible blow from an enemy’s attack can leave one Wounded. Being Wounded a second time can knock one out of a Combat.

These very flavorful concepts really bring out a lot of the Tolkien-esque feeling. I can imagine a Loremaster telling Sam’s player that he’s Weary, having spent all Stamina to climb the Tower of Cirith Ungol and defeat the various orcs along the way. Or telling Gimli’s player that he’s Wounded, following the splitting of his helm at Helm’s Deep.

“The Party Went Along Very Merrily”

While I don’t want to spoil every rule, I do want to address three places where the game succeeds admirably: Journeys, Fellowships, and the Fellowship Phase.

A Journey in The One Ring is an Encounter all its own. Each Adventurer can take on one or more roles in the party, such as Guide, or Scout, and each is responsible for certain challenges that may come about. A failed attempt at Guiding may get the Fellowship lost, while a failed Scouting might lead to a battle with a troll! Rules for encounters, how different terrains affect the challenge, and more are provided.

Fellowships give every player access to more Hope, or chances to restore it. They also offer a Fellowship Focus. Every in the party may choose someone in the party to be their Focus. If they are aiding or protecting their Focus, they get extra chances to succeed. If their Focus is badly hurt or killed, it can cause them tremendous disadvantages.

A Fellowship Phase is a specific part of the game, representing the Fellowship stopping at a sanctuary of some sort, relaxing, recovering, and perhaps gaining information. This is when they spend experience to increase abilities, or gain specific rewards in the form of cultural blessings and superior equipment.

If one looks at The Fellowship of the Ring, you can break the first part down as follows: Frodo and Company travel through the Old Forest (an Adventuring Phase) and are rescued by Tom Bombadil. They stay for a few days at Bombadil’s home (a Fellowship Phase), and then set out through the Barrow Downs (an Adventuring Phase). They take respite at the Inn of the Prancing Pony in Bree (possibly a Fellowship Phase, although there’s still danger, so perhaps not), adventure to Weathertop, through the Trollshaws, and across the Ford of Bruinen. When they arrive in Rivendell, it’s most assuredly a Fellowship Phase.

“You are only a little fellow in a wide world, after all.”

Overall, I think the game is great. I have yet to actually sit down and play it, and that will go a long way towards cementing my feelings of it. In general, however, I’m impressed. This game, unlike other games based on the same source material, really seems to have a Middle-Earth feel to it.

I look forward to finally playing an RPG set in a world I’ve loved since age 8. This is a world that was directly responsible for me getting into RPGs, and it’s nice to think that I might finally come full circle.

Your Turn

Have you played The One Ring yet? What was it like? Am I right in my assessments of it? Or do you think that maybe I haven’t given earlier RPGs a fair shake? Let us all know.

Thanks be to Thor and whatever other gods are controlling the weather; we made it to Ft. Wayne this year! It’s 12:33 am and since I haven’t gone to bed yet, I’m going to say it’s Thursday. (It’s technically Friday.) I wanted to be sure to get the news out to all the folks who don’t follow me on Twitter, so here’s the excitement of the first full day of DDXP and the introduction of the new edition of D&D.

Seminar:  Charting the Course: An Edition for All Editions

Loads of folks turned out for this! Of course, everyone is excited/interested about the new edition, but part of the good attendance also is because the seminars were nicely nestled in the time slot between game slots, so you didn’t have to choose between seminar or a game. Sweet!

The panel was moderated by Greg Bilsland and featured Monte Cook, Mike Mearls, and Jeremy Crawford of Wizards of the Coast. We were told we could blog everything except if someone took of their shirt. (Nobody did. Darn.)

Goals for the New Edition

The first thing they spoke about was what they were hoping to achieve with the new edition:

Monte wants to distill down what’s best about all the editions of D&D. He also mentioned the importance of the DM/player relationship; it’s a core part of the game that the player and DM should be able to communicate and be creative together. Also, fireballs.

Mike mentioned the importance of offering a wide variety of options for players to explore the world the way they want to explore. The shared language of D&D is also vital; keeping the culture and stories of D&D alive so that everyone can understand the story of the dread gazebo.

Jeremy wants the new game to be a toolbox for creating worlds and stories and hopes to see a rebalancing of the game between story & mechanics.

How It Will Work

Regarding how the game will be designed, Monte said that they are creating an underlying foundation or core game, which is D&D distilled to its essence. The core game can be played by itself, or you can build your own game using the different modules.

If you like a tactical game with lots of maps, miniatures, attacks of opportunity and the like, you can use modules to have that game.

If you want extensive skills and ways to customize your character, you can have that game.

If you want BOTH, you can have that game.

Modules & Balance

Achieving balance in a game that is so modular and flexible is a challenge, but Jeremy said that their vision is that the core game has seeds for each module. Using the modules just builds on that seed.

Monte’s example was of a fighter.

In the core game, a fighter does more damage and takes more damage than any other class. (As a fighter tends to do!)

If you prefer the fighter of 4e, where you have different fighting powers that allow you to move monsters around, push them, etc, there will be a module that will allow you to build that kind of fighter and play him at the same table as the core fighter. And they’d be balanced.

Monte also pointed out that as a DM, you could say up front, “I’m running X kind of game,” where X is tactical or X is political intrigue or X is exploration, and your players will then be able to create characters that will interact well with the world you want to build.

3 Pillars of D&D

Mike mentioned that they see the three pillars of D&D as Roleplay/Interaction, Combat, and Exploration. That covers about 90% of what goes on in D&D, minus the rules lawyering (that last one was pointed out by someone during Q&A at the end). They think a lot about how they can incorporate all the things that people want to do at the table, without making a rule for everything.

Monte recognized that some PCs will be good at exploration and not so good at combat, and vice versa. But it’s important to have a firm role for each class. If you have a player who just wants to kick ass, you can help that person create that PC.

Continuing on the classes discussion, Mike added that you can be a stabby rogue (more combat-heavy) or a sneaky rogue (more exploration heavy). Monte added that bards can still kick ass.

High / Epic Level Play

High level play was the next subject and Monte spoke about how fans of D&D often say that the game breaks at a certain level. That level depends on the edition and whether or not the game actually breaks or just becomes drastically different is up for debate. He said that 4e did a good job of making epic level play a different experience.

After admitting they haven’t done much work yet on high level play, Monte said they want to keep the game manageable at high levels. Maybe swap a bunch of abilities from low levels for a single, high-level ability and make things a little less complex. (As someone who hates having pages and pages and pages of character sheet, I can appreciate this.)

Of course, Monte added, there are things you want to do at high levels. You want to build your own castle, you want to have followers, you want to mix with royalty. These are things they hope to include. Mike added that you can still keep going into dungeons and killing monsters, or maybe gods.

Monsters

On to monsters! A lot about monsters ties in to player advancement. Monte said they’d like to keep the iconic monsters like orcs, goblins, kobolds and the like in the game for a long time. But they don’t want a level 1 orc, level 2 orc, level 3 orc. They want a group of orcs to be really scary at level 1 but still significant at level 8, albeit in larger numbers.

So instead of the fighter’s attack bonus going up, up, up every level, maybe it goes up every few levels and he gets other things at the other levels. So you can go back to that orc and know that this is the same exact orc that nearly slaughtered you at level 1. It gives you a bar to see your character advance.

One of the big pushes for the new edition of D&D is putting out an amazing DungeonMaster’s Guide. Mike had the best quip on this (it may be a paraphrase, live-tweeting is hard!): “We don’t need rules for everything. We need good DM advice.”  The DM plays such a huge role in how the game is shaped and if the system supports the DM with advice, it empowers the DM and makes the game better without adding more rules.

Playtesting & Your Feedback

Jeremy spoke a bit about playtesting, which has been going on for about 9 months. One thing that has come up again and again is how diverse people’s tastes are about D&D. Clearly, D&D players love their game, but everyone has a different idea about what the optimal D&D game is. This is something that’s gone all the way back to 1st edition.

When playtest feedback comes back, two people at the same table might have opposite opinions. Player A wants more combat while Player B wanted more interaction.

Monte said that because of these factors they’ve been focusing on the story of D&D. What is a fighter? What is a wizard? What makes the D&D wizard different from say, Gandalf or a spellcaster in Skyrim? Figuring out whether you get a +2 or +3 is the easy part, he said. Making a D&D ranger that feels like a D&D ranger is harder. Is that class more Aragorn or more Drizzt?

Monte said that the most important feedback you can give if you’re able to playtest the new edition is “Does this feel like D&D to you?” and “Does your class feel like it should?”

What’s Your Game?

The final question before moving into the audience Q&A portion was “What kind of campaign would you play in the new D&D?”

Monte said he’d use minis, but without the super tactical stuff, mostly just to visualize where things are when needed. There’d be lots of social interaction and exploration that relies on the ingenuity of the players, not die rolls. Players should think about where to search in a room, rather than just rolling a die for Search. He likes to reward his players for being smart.

Mike would start with the core game and then introduce modules later, adding them on a session by session basis. For example, if there was a large scale war, there’d be a module to help run that particular gaming session (or series of sessions). Mike doesn’t want a lot of rules, so he’d move modules in and out depending on what was happening for that particular game.

Jeremy agreed that he’d be the same as Mike. He doesn’t want to pick one game and stick with it. One night he’d do no minis, no die rolls, all talking. The next game might be the full on tactical game with the grid, minis, and tons of dice.

Audience Q&A

Q: To what degree will multiclassing be available? Or will that be mainly about skills/feats/etc?

A (Monte): We want both to be an option. So you could be a fighter that is okay at interaction. Or you could make a bigger commitment to multiclass.

A (Mike): The rogue could learn some stuff about Arcane Lore, but he wouldn’t be able to cast spells unless he multiclassed into Wizard.

Q: How does the new edition appeal to the new player who has no attachments to a previous edition?

A (Mike): The core will be simple enough for a newbie to try out because it focuses on the story first and interacting with the DM.

(E’s note: I started with D&D 3.5 and for me, looking at stat blocks and all the numbers intimidated the crap out of me. Coming into D&D with a more streamlined system – even say, Essentials – would have been easier. Of course, that’s me. Everybody is different!)

Q: What steps are being taken to give creativity back to the players?

A (Monte): Players can be empowered to have more answers to the DM’s question: “What are you going to do?” There are limitless answers and everything is very open now. Fewer rules means that the DM is empowered to handle imaginative players, too.

Q (ChattyDM): Will there be random charts and tables to help the DM?

A (Monte): Yes, for the DM who likes the chaotic nature of rolling to see what is living in the Temperate Swamp, you’ll be able to roll to find out. We don’t need tables for everyone, but the DM who wants them will have them.

Q: Say everyone shows up to the DM’s place and they want to kill shit, but the DM had planned a RP-heavy session… is it easy to switch up?

A (Mike): On the fly, it’s pretty easy to slide in a module to change things. Use minis, don’t use minis, big fight, little fight, no fight.

Q: How are you addressing the needs of organized play?

A (Mike): We’ll have an agreed-upon standard so folks know what they’re getting into for each session. There aren’t any specifics yet, though.

Q: Will one player really have fun with the stripped down rules while another one has a more complex character if they’re at the same table?

A (Monte): I ran a game for two 4e guys, two 3e guys, and one who hadn’t played since 1982. The 1e guy didn’t want a complex character sheet; he liked it simple. He wanted to know which orc to hit and then he hit it and had fun. With this system, if that guy eventually wanted a more complex character, we could change it for him and build one.

A (Jeremy): If you have two fighters, for example, one fighter might prefer to just do a lot of damage while the other might want to do less damage but be able to slide monsters around the grid.

Q: At higher levels, won’t the complex characters take way more time to do their turn?

A (Monte): We really want to keep combat moving quickly, so it will prevent that guy from spending 10 minutes on his turn.

Q: Do you think D&D will start to take itself too seriously?

A (Mike): I think D&D needs chaos in it, whether it’s a funny moment, something totally silly, or something very serious.

A (Jeremy): Art in the new edition will have a more grounded approach and PCs that appear real, not like superheroes. We have some halflings that look like they ate a few too many muffins and adventurers that barely survived their last battle. Very diverse art.

Q: How will the 3 pillars compete in this edition?

A (Mike): Balancing each class is important. We want to be sure that everyone at the table feels useful in some way and has something to contribute to the party.

The Playtest

Immediately after the seminar, I went to my mustering station and was assigned a table for the WotC Secret Special adventure, which was a playtest of the new edition core rules. I didn’t know anybody at my table (at least until Mike of SlyFlourish sat down!) but we were all excited to try the new iteration of D&D.

While waiting on our DM to arrive, I was scrolling through my Twitter stream and saw a tweet from Baldman Games that if any table yelled “THE BALDMAN RULES” they’d get Monte Cook as their DM. Since I hadn’t heard any tables yelling, I showed the tweet to my table and we all sounded the chorus. Sure enough, Monte himself came to our table to run our game!

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed my silence for the next few hours. Here’s why:

1. Monte Cook. Srsly, do I need more reasons?
2. I couldn’t publish any crunchy details about the game, including any pics that might show character sheets. (Sorry!)
3. Our game was pretty freakin’ awesome.

Now, you don’t need your very own Monte Cook to make the new D&D great. Of course, having an awesome DM helps, but that’s true for pretty much every game out there.

Here are some of the things that struck me about this game:

There was a LOT of talk at the table. In character at times! I’ve never been at a D&D table where players were more invested in figuring out their next move.

On that topic, your next move isn’t on your character sheet. You don’t go paging through all your stuff thinking, “Well, I could Bluff this guy.” Nope. We were doing what we thought our characters should do, even if that involved our very NOT charismatic half-orc fighter trying to be a charismatic leader of a band of skeptical savage orcs.  Multiple times. In other games, it’s “Okay, who has the highest Charisma? You? Okay, you go talk to those orcs and get them to help us.”

Everything was fun and fast and fluid. I didn’t feel like the game got bogged down at any time during our session, even when we had a few rules questions for Monte. Things just happened and they flowed with the story and the story was awesome because we made it that way.

Thanks again for an awesome game Monte & friends!

…and thank you, intrepid Reader, for making it to the end of this marathon post.

Before you comment, understand this: This is my house and we play by my rules here. If you have negative things to say, they won’t make it past moderation. If you’d like to be a dick, please go do it elsewhere.

Understanding the basic structure of how a conspiracy can work enriches your ability to create a good one for your players.

To start, conspiracies come in different flavors. While we might think of the word conspiracy and picture implausible situations and baseless theories, conspiracies are by definition a coalition of people united in a common cause, most often usurping or overthrowing a political figure.

Remember, Remember, the 5^th of November

The Gunpowder Plot, which I first knew from learning the famous rhyme in childhood, was a conspiracy in 1605 to blow up the House of Lords in England. History abounds with real conspiracies, from plots to kill Caesar to American historical conspiracies to assassinate President Lincoln. Depending on your system, setting and time period, you can incorporate historic conspiracies into game play, even leaving the opportunity for player characters to be behind them.

The concept that a small group of people not having the greater good in mind, planning in secret and executing their plans according to their timetable can be terrifying to consider. In a game, conspiracies are a fantastic tool, particularly if mystery, intrigue or paranoia is part of the chronicle elements.

If you want to customize a conspiracy to your chronicle, you can retro-fit historic conspiracies, or create something more tailor-made to your game. Think that Dunkelzhan’s Last Will and Testament is ripe for internecine strife between various conspiracy groups in Shadowrun? Do the Mournlands in Eberron give you terrible ideas? Running an old school Mage game and want to expand on the Golden Chalice? Then it’s time to roll out a flow chart.

1. Who?

Conspiracies aren’t amorphous and disembodied ideas committing rogue actions out of the ether. They’re made of people. The friendly barista your mage buys coffee from, a doctor who treats your hacker’s daughter in a cheap clinic in the bad part of town, the executive in their office looking down on the city. From street to skyscraper, conspiracies can and often do span entire networks of people, many of whom have no idea they’re a cog in a nefarious machine.

2. What?

Are they a militaristic organization known by their unique gas masks? Pirated FM signal railing against rich magic users? Are they a cabal of students attempting to dismantle the dubious research of a local corporation illegally delving into new biotech? Answering the what question informs the shape your conspiracy takes.

3. When?

How long has the conspiracy existed? When was it founded? Has it always been in operation, or has it fallen out of favor for periods of time? Was it founded after a signifigant event, or did it slowly grow over time? Was there a split or fundamental shift from an organization of order, giving birth to the conspiracy?

4. Where?

Have they always stuck to a single location: a village, bustling college town, Greater Metro area, or does this conspiracy span a continent or even the globe? Where they operate from and where they were founded are important details to nail down.

5. How?

How does the conspiracy in your game accomplish its goal? Does a black market network of spies function like any other illegal group? Does a murderous conspiracy fixated on its ruthless interpretation of The Greater Good operate from behind the façade of a friendly village (hello Hot Fuzz!), or is the local farmer’s market actually a hotbed of corruption that uses its weekly morning to afternoon time slot to hide meetings of conspiracy officials? How it hides and how it accomplishes its goals is some of the must-know details to tell the story cleanly.

6. Why?

If you’ve ever watched a Bond flick, a sci-fi movie or read a mystery novel, the engine of a conspiracy is its goal. One of my favorite fictional conspiracies is the plan Ra’s Al Ghul seeks to bring about, in Batman. He seeks to greatly reduce the human population as his means to attain environmental balance. In real life, I am very anti-decimating the populace, but as an enjoyable conspiracy in fiction? It’s brilliant, because Ra’s Al Ghul satisfies the Who, What, When, Where, How and Why. He is terrifying, because he posses absolute conviction, the fuel of the conspiratorial engine.

Okay, let’s be real.  Vampires will never really die (pun intended).  They’ve been enjoying a slow, steady burn of popularity for the last 30 years at least.  The combination of sheer horror and a monster who looks normal – or attractive – has ignited our imaginations for years.  The vampire mythology is loose enough that you can make nearly any kind of vampire you like (as evidenced by Whitewolf’s Vampire: the Masquerade series).  Vampires will always be around, either in classic or reinvented form.

That being said, we’ve certainly been saturated with vampires for the last ten years.  You see, even though I can point to blips of vampire popularity in the past – The Lost Boys, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Anne Rice novels that get discovered by every generation and made into movies once a decade or so – it’s only in the past ten years that the waves have begun to pile up on one another.  Buffy and Angel ran into Blade and Underworld.  The inclusion of werewolves in Underworld was right in tune with the Laurel K. Hamilton books that were taking the beach fiction world by storm.  Then came Twilight, which drove the meter past “popular” into “fad.”

HBO adapted the Sookie Stackhouse books into True Blood, the cooler older sibling of Twilight.  Meanwhile, the market was scrambling through its archives, searching for more to feed ravenous teens.  Enter the re-release and TV adaptation of The Vampire Diaries.  Enter two sequels to The Lost Boys.  Enter a remake of Fright Night (which, admittedly, I found surprisingly entertaining).

The problem with fads – with over-saturation – is that people get tired of them, at least in the short term.  Eventually, you find yourself comparing vamp faces against each other instead of allowing yourself to be immersed in a story.  The latest Underworld installment is perhaps the most obvious attempt to keep the fad alive, and it’s not doing well.  I think people will still remain loyal to their current favorites, whether it’s True Blood or The Vampire Diaries, but I don’t think they’re aching for any more.

So the question becomes: what will be the next big thing?

Zombies?

Well, zombies have certainly enjoyed a parallel surge in popularity over the last decade, one even easier to track than vampires (Hint: 28 Days Later).  Still, I don’t see them getting quite as big, ultimately.  Simply put, zombies are just too horrifying.  Or gross.  Or irredeemable.  They make for perfect, chilling horror stories, but lack broader appeal.  Maybe I’m biased, because zombies actually freak me out a fair amount (unless we’re talking Plants v. Zombies, which is adorable and hilarious).  But I’d really be surprised if vampires actually scare, well, anyone.

Werewolves?

How about werewolves?  Sadly, I think their time has passed in the short-term, because they’ve been lumped together with vampires so frequently.  Plus, I’m not sure they really make for interesting long-term stories.  They can’t really control themselves (unless you’re in Twilight, where everyone is repressively in control of everything), but they can be dispatched fairly easily.  Anything interesting can be better covered in a more traditional super-power-based storyline.

Aliens?

Well, maybe.  Little green (or gray) men had a surge of popularity in the mid-90s (as my high school bedroom can attest) but they faded out in the new century.  Could the world be ready for a resurgence of flying saucers and abductions?  Possibly, but something novel will have to light that fire, rather like Alien Nation and The X-FIles did in the early 90s.  It’s also possible that it’s just too soon.

Fantasy?

Uhoh, we’re treading into that category I know very little about.  I know urban fantasy, as well as urban paranormal thrillers, have been growing in popularity over time.  Grimm and Once Upon a Time are both rooted in modern times.  Even The Secret Circle has ditched the 90′s New Age elements of the books.  Slightly different, but still related, is the gritty world of Game of Thrones – no elves or unicorns here, but it’s undoubtedly fantasy.   Speaking of elves, we haven’t seen much of that lately, but The Hobbit is coming out in the next year, so we’ll see what that stirs up.  Whatever winds up at the top of the fad heap, we seem to be pulling away from horror in general.

If there’s anything the last decade has made clear, it’s that genres like sci-fi, fantasy, and horror are no longer the sole territory of the geek – instead, they’re a rich mine of material for the mainstream.  Your favorite property might well be the next blockbuster.

What about you?  What do you think will be the Next Big Thing?  What would you like to see grow in popularity?  

One downside of doing QA in the video game industry is, of course, the slightly grueling experience of crunch time, where testers are expected to put in long hours and late nights in a rush to get the final product out the door. As I am currently in the middle of said crunch time, I sadly have not been able to give much thought to anime, manga, or the blog articles ruminating on such. Hopefully things will return to normal in a few weeks and you can all enjoy your regularly scheduled geeky musings on the best and worst anime and manga has to offer.

In the meantime, however, I thought I would share a little something that has kept me sane during the interminable commute to and from work in the mornings and late nights; a simple little game on the iPhone, more card game than video game, which was the first app I purchased and is still one of my favorite games to play on the go.

Thus, I bring you a mini-review of Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer (and its expansion, Return of the Fallen) for iOS, a remarkably faithful and enjoyable adaptation of the widely popular card game and one of the best ways to while away a long or short commute.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Like the card game I previously reviewed, Tanto Cuore, Ascension is a deck-building game in which players use their resources to buy new, better cards, defeat enemies, and win victory points. Every player starts with eight Apprentices (who provide “runes” to purchase cards with) and two Militia (who provide “battle” that can be stacked to defeat monsters). Between the players, five cards from the main deck are laid out at random in a row; these can be monsters who can be fought for victory points, or they can be heroes or constructs (“permanent” buffs to the player) which can be bought and shuffled into a player’s deck. Unlike many other deck-building games where you can often get stuck (e.g. tons of “money” to buy things with but nothing to buy), Ascension also provides a separate, endless supply of Mystics and Heavy Infantry (like super Apprentices and Militia respectively) and a poor hapless Cultist enemy to whack again and again and again if there are no other targets to take out your battle on. Game ends when the pool of victory points is empty; most victory points from battle and from purchased cards is the winner.

One of Asension’s strengths as a card game is how simple it is to grasp and how quick gameplay can progress, and the iOS version captures this flow perfectly. Once you have grasped the rules, play is quick and instinctive. The game’s fast animations and easy interface gets things moving, and rather than agonizing over each little decision, players will often find themselves smoothly improvising as they go along, experimenting with different card purchases, finding their own rhythm as the cards are laid out. Another great thing about Ascension is that it’s very rare to have a *bad* hand; while players are often left a bit short of battle or runes to do *exactly* what they wanted, there is almost always some great alternative to pick instead, and the permanent option of buying Mystics or Heavy Militia is a fantastic touch which always gives you good bang for your buck.
Dealing your hand with your finger

For people who are already fans of the card game, Ascension should be a must buy, hands down. Everything you love about the game is here, made easy and efficient thanks to some good design choices. There are plenty of complicated cards which could easily have tripped up an adaptation of the game (e.g. the numerous heroes who can banish cards in your hand or discard pile, or the card in the expansion which asks players to guess what the next card is), but everything is kept smooth and clear with very obvious pop-ups, colored outlines and so on. Cards can be played/kept/discarded/banished/etc by either dragging them to the right pile or by double tapping them, so it doesn’t matter whether you’re curled up in bed with both fingers on the iPad or standing in a crowded bus trying to play with one thumb. Better still, playing with the computer means you can have a game anywhere, anytime, and the short length of the games (10-15 minutes, sometimes slightly longer) makes it perfect for transit that’s broken up with lots of transfers etc. In fact, I’ve gotten into the habit of timing my bus and Skytrain trips by my games of Ascension!

If I had to pick one big problem with the game, it would be one that really only affects new players and those unfamiliar with the game, and even then it’s mostly an iPhone issue. It can be extremely difficult to read the cards and see what they actually do; on an iPhone screen, the text appears extremely small, and while long-time fans can probably recognize all the card art and play accordingly, newbies will be a lot slower to register exactly what is going on and what cards are available. The game does allow players to double-tap a card to read it and see what it does, but it slows gameplay down, and I suspect things would be much more comfortable on an iPad screen where the cards are more visible.

The Grand Design

Don’t let the $4.99 price point (+$2.99 for the excellent expansion pack) turn you off at all; this is one game that is definitely worth the purchase. If you’re a fan of the original card game, you definitely need to pick this up; even if you may feel like the game should be played with friends with the original cards, the convenience and fun of having your own pocket game can’t be overstated. If you have never played Ascension before, I would still recommend it, but try the iPad version if possible over the iPhone; the cards take a bit of getting used to before you can recognize them by sight. Either that, or pick up the card game itself and give it a shot; it’s a great geeky classic and always deserving of more love!

Are you a fan of Ascension? What other geeky card games do you like to play on your phone or other device?

So we did it.

Lobster Stuffed With Taco Cake

Our inspiration came from these two sites:

• Lobster Cake
• Candy Tacos - we used chopped maraschino cherries for the tomatoes

We gathered up all the necessary ingredients and went to work making our delicious masterpiece. Enjoy the photos!

Completed Candy Tacos

Funny story. The middle of the cake didn't cook through, but turns out, that left a great hole for the taco.

All the cake parts assembled

A redonkulous amount of frosting hides all sins. (Book of Cake 3:14)

Of course, he needed a fondant hat and Twizzler antennae.

A close-up of the taco in his claw. Delicioso!

"Excellent, Sir. Lobster stuffed with tacos."

Love my crazy cake? Please pass it on to a friend!

Being an avowed HPL fan, and having seen much of the cinema-related twaddle in question adapted from his stories, I have to concur that he would not generally be pleased. But I do think there are some great films out there that bear his name…and some that don’t, but that are so clearly in homage to his work that they deserve a mention. Likewise, there are some movies that are…well…dreadful, and worthy of mention if only to avoid them. And there are still others which are absolutely terrible adaptations of Lovecraft…but that are, nonetheless, rather fun in and of themselves.

Here then, for your consideration, are eight movies, in salute to the octopoid nature of great Cthulhu himself. Some I love, some I hate, some I love that I’m quite sure Lovecraft would’ve hated. Oh, and, fair warning, there’s a bit of swearing later in the article. But it’s a quote, so that’s okay, right?

“Burn them all!”

I start in all seriousness with what may be the best adaptation of a Lovecraft movie ever, and one that will be hard to top. In 2005, the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society released a 47 minute long adaptation of “The Call of Cthulhu” which is stunningly faithful to the original. The brilliant idea was to make a movie as if it had been filmed in 1926, when Lovecraft wrote the story. It’s a silent, black-and-white film, and most of the effects are techniques that were quite possible in 1926, with only a few cheats. For all that it’s silent, the acting is excellent, and the costumes and props are as authentic as they come. It actually manages to be pretty creepy at times, and the whole piece feels like a love-letter to HPL. You may have to purchase it to see it, but it’s well worth the price to an HPL enthusiast.

“Let me whisper it to you…”

The inspiration for this article comes from the fact that the HPL Historical Society finally released their second film, an adaptation of “The Whisperer in Darkness”. While this one plays a little more fast and loose with HPL’s original story, it’s still far more faithful than the average Hollywood adaptation. It’s a talking film, this time, and a full length feature, but still in black-and-white, and still using mostly effects possible in the 1920s and 30s. Some actors from the first film are back (including Matt Foyer, who played the “narrator” of the first film and who’s absolutely fantastic when you can hear him speak), and the opening shot alone shows that they’ve learned a lot in 6 years…impressive considering how polished The Call of Cthulhu was. While their first film will always be special to me, this is still an amazing accomplishment.

“They’re all gonna die without you!”

When I heard that Tori Spelling was going to be in a movie called just “Cthulhu”, I rolled my eyes and completely put the idea of seeing it aside. Another cinema cash grab with a famous Lovecraft name. Whatever. Much to my surprise, when it was finally released, it was getting critical acclaim. Curious, we rented it, and we were pleasantly surprised. It’s actually a fairly decent adaptation of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, transplanting the setting to the Pacific Northwest. The main character is gay, which piqued my interest, and the screenwriter suggested this was done to symbolize the horror of a gay man having to come home and face the scrutiny of family and neighbors. Tori Spelling is actually only a very small role, and she doesn’t manage to derail the film. I don’t think HPL would’ve loved it, but it’s a decent film none the less.

“You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me!”

The HPL-lineage of John Carpenter’s “The Thing” is an easy trace. HPL’s Antarctic opus, “At the Mountains of Madness” inspired John W. Campbell to write the novella “Who Goes There?” This story inspired both the 1951 movie and Carpenter’s 1982 remake, which is both truer to the original story and more Lovecraftian. Lovecraftian? Oh, indeed. Just try and tell me that highly-mutable Thing isn’t a sort of shoggoth. Just try.

The quote prefacing this section is, of course, one of the greatest reaction comments to any sort of alien menace ever, as well as being both laugh-out-loud funny and a bit chilling. If you’ve never seen “The Thing”, I will not spoil the movie at all, but I can say that, you’ll likely be feeling exactly as MacReady does when he utters this quote.

“Yog-Sothoth! Yog-Sothoth!”

Moving away from movies I love into the realm of movies I love to hate, we have “The Dunwich Horror”. No, not the recent one (though the few scenes I’ve seen of that were dreadful), but the 1970 Roger Corman-produced movie with Dean Stockwell and Sandra Dee. The story certainly starts out sort of on the right track. Wilbur Whateley, from Dunwich, wants to borrow Miskatonic University’s copy of the Necronomicon. When he can’t get it from Henry Armitage, he takes Armitage’s library assistant instead, and tries to sacrifice her to the Old Ones. He gets struck by lightning and fails, and we get a dun-dun-DUN! ending as an X-ray cam shows us that Sandra Dee is now carrying Wilbur’s child. I think it actually ends with one of those “The End” credits that then gets a question mark after it. Kind of “The End…or is it? Nyah-ha-ha!”

Everything in this movie is translated just a bit into something less scary. Goatish, monstrous Wilbur in the original is transformed into the handsome Dean Stockwell who can hypnotize Sandra Dee. The Old Ones appear as a bunch of groovy nudist hippies. Oh, and Wilbur’s monstrous brother is basically a doll-face in the middle of a rubber sea-anemone. That is all.

“Rather like peeling a large orange…”

If you recognized that I was quoting Dr. Carl Hill describing removing the scalp of a corpse to a bunch of medical students, then you probably know that I’m talking about Stuart Gordon’s “Re-Animator”, the movie that pretty much launched a deluge of HPL adaptations in the 80s. This movie, based on the serial story “Herbert West: Re-Animator”, would absolutely appall HPL. It has naked women, sex (really kinky, wacky sex, at that), gore, and is generally silly. Despite this, I happen to love this movie in spite of myself. Jeffrey Coombs is absolutely brilliant as West, and this is what really carries the film, along with its sly sense of humor at adapting the original stories. Even some of the most outlandish things from the movie actually happen in the original stories (sans the naked women). If nothing else, this movie brought Coombs to the attention of people making Lovecraft films, and his performances grace lots of other, lesser films. This one, however, along with Gordon’s even more sexually kinky and wacky “From Beyond”, are rather delightful in their own ways. Does including “From Beyond” mean I’m talking about nine films, rather than eight? Fine. It’s non-Euclidian list building. Deal with it.

“This town has been on the goddamn dinner menu for 20 years.”

When Lovecraft talked about “flat, infantile twaddle,” I’m pretty sure he was having a vision of “The Lurking Fear”, a 1994 movie based on the story of the same name. Dubbed “The explodinest HPL movie ever,” but my friends and I, this movie is almost completely, irredeemably bad. When I mentioned Coombs being in lesser HPL films, this is what I’m talking about. He plays a character named Dr. Haggis. Dr. Haggis! The character is always drunk, and I suspect Coombs may have been method acting, trying to figure out why he’s in this piece of crap film. Or maybe the booze was the paycheck. I don’t know. Anyway, dreadful, and full of explosions, and nothing else memorable.

“No one leave Imboca. People come, but no one leave.”

The movie “Dagon” has seemed to me to be a bit controversial and polarizing to HPL fans. It has comparatively little to do with the HPL story Dagon and is much more an adaptation of the story “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”. It compounds the isolation and fear of the narrator of “Shadow” by having him be unable to communicate with the locals very well (the film is set in Spain) and worrying for his missing friends and fiancée. There’s some nudity and some gore, as there are in the other Stuart Gordon HPL films, but here, again, a lot of the movie is carried by a great performance from a fine, relatively unknown actor. In this case, it’s Ezra Godden, who also plays in the TV movie version of HPL’s “The Dreams in the Witch House” (which I won’t bother mentioning…except right there when I did.)

I actually really enjoy this film, though it’s helpful to turn on the subtitles during Francisco Rabal’s narrations of the flashback scenes. Godden does a fine job of displaying terror, determination, desperation, and despair. And there are some really wonderful moments in this film. How Gordon got Francisco Rabal, who had numerous awards under his belt when he made this, is beyond me. My only real falling down moment? The actual appearance of Dagon. While I love everything around it, I just feel it was thrown in as “Well, we named the movie Dagon…better have Dagon in it.” Dagon’s on screen for a heartbeat, really, and his unlikely look is rendered in cheap CG graphics. Oh well. I can forgive that heartbeat.

Your Turn

Well, I’ve named what I think are some of the best and the worst, but this list is hardly comprehensive. I didn’t mention Boris Karloff’s terrible turn in “Die, Monster! Die!” or Wil Wheaton in “The Curse”…both of which are somehow based on “The Colour Out of Space”. I didn’t mention the semi-animated “Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, which I really enjoyed, or the wonderful amateur film of “Cool Air”, starring veteran actor Jack Donner. And there are films still waiting to be made, like Guillermo Del Toro’s long-awaited, long hoped-for “At the Mountains of Madness”, which was thought to be dead, but which he recently said he intends to push for after his new movie “Pacific Rim” opens in 2013.

But I want to hear from other folks about their Cheers and Jeers for HPL adaptations. Is there a film you love or hate that I didn’t mention? Did I list a movie that you disagree or particularly agree with me on? Let us all know.

(Sorry, Dave.)

I love Dungeon Bastard. His videos are well-written, impeccably done, and downright hilarious. If you don’t subscribe to his channel on YouTube, go do that now.

His newest “Ask The Bastard” is on Edition Wars and he echoes my feelings on the subject:

“Does it have dragons? Does it have dungeons? I want to play it!”