At first blush, the zombies appear like your garden-variety zombies; they shamble around aimlessly and don’t seem to intelligent. Well, the second part’s right; they really aren’t that smart (as you’d expect). But they don’t shamble around when they spot you; they charge at you, full speed ahead, like something out of 28 Days Later. Individually, they’re not that tough; a couple of shots will take one down. Trouble is you almost never run into them individually; it’s a full-on zombiepocalypse, and that means huge swarms of zombies rushing you from every direction. But that’s not even the worst part.

See, there are these boss zombies, infected that have somehow evolved beyond the rank-and-file undead. Smokers have long tongues that they use to lasso you with and then constrict you, and they blow up in a puff of smoke when you kill them. Hunters are super fast and super agile, and can pounce on you and rip you to shreds with their claws. Boomers are huge and fat, and can vomit on you; when they do this, it blurs your vision pretty severely, and attracts mobs of infected from every angle. Tanks are . . . well, they’re like the Hulk. They smash things. And they’re really, really tough. There are also witches, who sit in the dark and cry until you shoot them or shine a light on them, at which point they go absolutely batshit crazy and rip you to pieces.

I think what I like the most about the game is the sense of teamwork and camaraderie that the game fosters. Sticking together and watching each others’ backs isn’t just a good idea; it’s absolutely critical. separate from the group, and you will die a messy, painful death. Stick with the group, though, and you can watch out for each other, cover each other when you reload or heal up, and fend of the hordes of onrushing Zs with hails of bullets and shotgun shells. It’s absolutely awesome.

Now, the demo is only available for a few more days; once the game comes out, they’re turning it off. Originally I was kind of ticked about that, because I figured I probably wouldn’t be able to pick up the game until after Christmas sometime, if I didn’t get it for Christmas. But then my friends Chris and Tad decided to buy me an early Christmas present. So, when the demo runs out, zombie season officially opens. And I’ll be there, shotgun in hand.

We also picked up Wii Play (mainly for the packaged Wii Remote) and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, because I had a lot of fun playing this with my friends who got a Wii when it first came out. Wii Play is decent value for money, considering that the game-and-remote package is only $10 more retail than a remote by itself, but only a few of the games have real replay value, and there are only nine total. Super Monkey Ball, on the other hand, has a single player mode (which I haven’t played yet), and 50 multiplayer minigames that my wife and I can play together. Some of them are misses, but enough of them are fun and replayable that I feel like the $6 that we wound up spending on it (we had a gift card from buying a vacuum cleaner) was warranted.

Zombies. Who the hell doesn’t love zombies? Besides the unfortunate people who can’t outrun them and get their brains eaten, I mean. Zombies are awesome. It is for this reason precisely that Left 4 Dead looks freaking awesome. For those who know nothing about it and can’t be bothered to click on the Wikipedia link provided, let me sum it up for you. You and a band of three other survivors are miraculously immune to a new and extremely virulent form of rabies that has turned 99% of the world’s population into ravening, bloodthirsty (brainthirsty?) zombies. These zombies are fast, they’re smart enough to dodge attacks, and they’re accompanied by a number of mutated super-zombies with special powers like the ability to scale walls and jump really high, 50-foot tongues, super strength and endurance, or a belly full of gas that allows projectile vomit and the ability to explode like a grenade when shot. Not interested yet? What if the other three survivors were played by other human beings via the Internet? No? Well, that’s not all. You can also play against human-controlled boss zombies for extra challenge. Still not enough? All of the zombies are spawned procedurally, in response to the perceived stress levels of you and your compatriots, to make sure you get the optimal experience each time and to ensure that it’s never the same experience twice. Trust me, it’s made of awesome.

And speaking of zombies, I just saw 28 Days Later (yeah, I know, that’s been out for a while), and absolutely loved it. Great zombie flick, even if the infected are never actually referred to as ‘zombies’ within the film.

Oh, and games. I’ve recently downloaded GameTap, and even if you don’t want to pay for the service I suggest that you go out and download the free version and give it a whirl. Even for free, GameTap provides you with access to some pretty good games, such as Tomb Raider: Legend, Psychonauts, and the first two Hitman games. I’m currently playing through Legend and loving it, and I plan on diving into Psychonauts next. The sheer brilliance of GameTap, though, is that even though I get access to these great games completely free, I still want to sign up for a gold account and get access to even more games. And heck, a gold account is only about $60, slightly more than the cost of a brand new PC game, for an entire year’s subscription.

And finally, 4E. Ah, 4E. I don’t believe I’ve mentioned this, but I ordered the Core Rulebook Gift Set for myself a while ago, so it should arrive shortly after launch. I also recently pre-orderd Keep on the Shadowfell, and Amazon just sent me an email today letting me know that it had been shipped, and that I should expect it sometime around Saturday. Once I’ve digested that material, you can expect a review of it on this site (probably sometime in the next two weeks or so). Similarly, I’ll likely be reviewing the Core Books as I read them. I must admit that my excitement has been amped up to a fever pitch lately as the release date draws closer, in a large part because Wizards is releasing excerpts from the core books every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on D&D Insider (which is, for the moment, free). Everything I hear about the game makes me excited. I’m serious. I haven’t heard a single thing about the game that has made me want it less. Admittedly, some of this may be the novelty factor, and only time will tell if that is the case. But all signs indicate that 4E is going to be a very, very good game.

And speaking of 4E, I designed a 4E D&D Character Sheet in .doc format. Cute PDF does strange things with the table headers, so if someone else would like to convert it to PDF using something a little more robust, I’d gladly host it here. I’ve also been messing around with the character creation rules (those that I know at this time, at least), and I’ve created a couple of 1st-level characters: a human rogue with some warlock multiclassing, and a dwarf warlord. Both of these use the format for my character sheet. I should warn you that I’m not completely sure that all the math for attack bonuses and defenses is entirely kosher, since I don’t have access to the full rules. In particular, I think it’s a little weird that the rogue’s Reflex is higher than his AC. If someone wants to give them the old hairy eyeball and correct them for me, feel free and I’ll update the links.

Later.

Games I’ve been playing
Sadly, I haven’t really done much board/card/role-playing gaming lately since the big TPK. I did play a game of Three-Dragon Ante with my friend Dean; it was quite good. In the realm of video gaming, I’ve been playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney on my DS. It’s an interesting and somewhat goofy game, and it’s suitable for casual play, which is what I’ve been using it for. It’s a good game for playing in short bursts, but in extended sessions I usually find myself wanting to play something with a little more meat on its bones.

On my computer (my semi-new computer), I’ve been replaying Crysis and BioShock, mainly so I can ogle the improved visuals and performance. That’s not all, though. I also recently purchased Indigo Prophecy from Steam (a service which is rapidly finding a place in my heart). Indigo Prophecy is an adventure game of sorts, though it’s unlike any adventure game I’ve ever played. It’s got a lot of timing-based mini-games, a lot of investigation, and the dialog is less forgiving than that of other adventure games in that the game gives you limited time to make your responses, and you’re not sure exactly what your character is going to say when you make a dialog choice. At any rate, I highly recommend the game, particularly since it’ll run on older rigs (being an older game, itself), and you can pick it up for $10 on Steam.

4th Edition
So much has been released on 4th Ed right now that I feel it would be folly to try to cover it all. Suffice it to say, Wizards’ marketing people are earning their money right now. They released some interesting teaser information initially, then gave us a drought of information for a while to increase anticipation. Now that release is only a month and change away, they’re hitting us with a torrent of crunchy goodness that, in my case at least, is amplifying my excitement to a fever pitch. We’ve learned how many powers you get throughout your career, and at what levels; we’ve learned about paragon paths; we’ve learned about modifying monsters (and seen a few examples of monsters, as well); and we’ve seen the building blocks that make up a power. Oh, and the warlord class, too. All good stuff, and lots of information, but they’re always very careful to hold something back, so that we stay excited and continue to want more. Good stuff.

At any rate, I’ll try to post more frequently, though I can make no promises. Later.

1. Re-purposing monsters is easy. I mean, really easy. On the one hand, monsters are pretty distinct from each other, and each have unique “schticks” that differentiate them. On the other hand, it’s easy to alter those schticks a little bit, change their flavor, and leave most of the mechanics the same in order to create a monster that feels different to the PCs but takes very little work to create. Many of the creatures that my PCs fought were re-purposed in this way, largely because they were fighting a lot of ratmen, and ratmen do not appear in any of the leaked 4E monster documents. A goblin picador became a ratman lasher, complete with barbed whip. An orc raider became a ratman mutant, using claws instead of a battle-axe but attacking twice as quickly (though they never actually got to this encounter). The hobgoblin warcaster became a human mage, a cult leader of considerable oomph. I even got to use the shadar-kai chainfighter, transmogrifying it into a ratman chain-fighter and replacing one of its abilities with a chain grapple attack (which it never actually got a chance to use). I even dabbled in creating new creatures; I created a non-combatant NPC, whom the PCs were escorting. She had a weak attack with a dagger that did only 1 point of damage and she had only 10 hit points and very low defenses (she was based loosely on minion rules). She did, however, have a recharging ability that allowed her to heal allies and grant them saving throws.

2. Encounter design seems easier. Granted, I don’t know the experience point value of all of the creatures I used (and some may have been more or less powerful after modification, which may have affected their XP value), and I don’t know how much XP a level X encounter should be worth. So, I eyeballed it. I put together encounters that I thought my PCs could handle, and some of the tougher encounters I made easier by making my bad guys flee when a certain condition was met. Overall, it seemed pretty easy to create encounters by just eyeballing them, and I really think it’s going to wind up being more art than science.

Now, that’s creating an adventure. I created an adventure with six encounters total, and many of them were designed to be quite challenging. I had two players, each controlling two of the six PCs. Mike played as the cleric and the ranger, while Cary played as the paladin and the warlock. One defender, two strikers, and a leader; no controller. At first I thought this might be a problem, but my players were savvy and picked up on some of the finer points of 4E combat quickly (even Cary, who had never played 3E), and the lack of a controller didn’t seem to disrupt the balance of the game. Here are some observations on the four encounters that we got through yesterday; I’ll go encounter by encounter.

Encounter 1: Ambush!
The PCs had been hired by a local lord to escort a healer, Illyria Jeren, to the town of Amber, where a plague was killing off the townsfolk. On their way to Amber, the party was ambushed by bandits hiding in the trees on either side of the road. The PCs were not surprised, however; the ranger spotted two of them and alerted everyone else–in elven–to their presence (thank you Passive Perception). This allowed everyone to make a Perception check to scan the area, and the cleric wound up spotting three more bandits. All told, there were two bandits with maces, two archers, and a bandit leader with a hand crossbow and a rapier (based on the defiant rake). Two level 1s, two level 2s, and a level 5.

The ranger managed to get the highest initiative roll, and promptly fired an arrow at the closest archer. The paladin wasn’t so lucky; a bandit charged him and got in a good hit with his mace, both dealing damage and causing the poor paladin to be dazed for one round. The other melee bandit charged the warlock, but ended up missing. The cleric moved to protect Illyria while the warlock cursed his foe and fired an eldritch blast, dealing significant damage. The two bandit archers took shots at the paladin and the ranger, while the bandit leader came out of the trees and advanced, firing his hand crossbow at the paladin. The battle continued in a similar manner; the closest archer was eventually bloodied, at which point he turned tail and ran. Next down was one of the bandits, also bloodied, and also fleeing. In the third round of combat, an unseen ally began firing arrows at the bandit leader from hiding; nobody managed to spot him during the combat. One of the bandits was killed, while the rest fled, but not before the leader took some significant damage: a critical hit from the ranger that almost took him from full hit points to bloodied in a single shot (1 more hit point would have done it), and a well-placed witchfire from the warlock.

Afterward, the unseen ally revealed himself and introduced himself as Erik, a local hunter. A few Diplomacy and Insight checks revealed information about the bandits, and their ties to the plague and the ratmen that had begun appearing in the area.

Observations: The paladin makes a really good defender. His marking ability is pretty potent in that it deals 8 points of damage when the enemy attacks someone else, so it provides a pretty good incentive for people to focus on the paladin. Combine that with the fact that the paladin had a really high AC and plenty of hit points, and it makes him a really good defender. The ranger and the warlock both did significant damage during the fight, and were probably most directly responsible for defeating most of the enemies. The cleric, unfortunately, wasn’t rolling very well and continually missed his targets. He did get in a Healing Word, which helped the injured ranger out.

From the bandits’ side, there was some unintentional teamwork built into the group. The mace-wielding bandits had the ability to daze opponents with their charge attacks, granting all of their allies Combat Advantage against the dazed character. Every single bandit present dealt extra damage, either 1d6 or 2d6, when they had Combat Advantage. A nasty combination that never actually wound up working, because only the paladin was dazed, and only once, and only for one round, and was never hit by anyone else during that time.

Encounter 2: Abduction
The PCs made their way to Amber and were let in despite the quarantine through a combination of Erik’s vouching for them and a letter produced by Illyria proclaiming what they were there to do. They stayed at a local inn, the Traveler’s Rest, for the night, allowing them to recover fully from the bandit attack. However, during the night, they suffered another surprise attack. This time, there were four melee bandits, one bandit mage, and two ratman lashers. So, four level 1s, two level 2s, and a level 3.

The ranger, being an eladrin, had only had to enter trance for four hours in order to rest fully, so he was awake and unsurprised. Everyone else had to take time to wake up. Had I know the specific values granted by armor and shields, I would have ruled that nobody was wearing their armor; lacking those things, and for the sake of simplicity, I allowed everyone to use their armor instead. The ranger was attacked by a lasher while everyone else was assaulted in their beds by bandits. The second lasher went after Illyria, binding her with his whip and pulling her toward the stairs down. The ranger bloodied the lasher he was facing, but as soon as he saw Illyria being taken away, he used his Fey Step ability to teleport out of the room he was trapped in by the lasher. Unfortunately, the lasher escaped with Illyria while a bandit pushed the unfortunate ranger back into a corner from which he could not escape without suffering an opportunity attack.

Meanwhile, the cleric rushed out into the hallway, ignoring the bandit that had engaged him, only to be knocked prone by a spell cast by the bandit mage. The paladin did a good job keeping one of the bandits focused on him, while the warlock used Eyebite and a curse to damage her bandit and vanish from his sight. That bandit, confused, went after the paladin (suffering an opportunity attack from the warlock in the process), unknowingly increasing the paladin’s AC in the process because of his Lost in the Crowd feat.

Once the lasher escaped with Illyria, the mage made a tactical retreat, his objective accomplished, and ordered the bandits and remaining lasher to stay behind and deal with the PCs. Through some clever positioning and good teamwork, the PCs were able to make quick work of the bad guys, and pursued the kidnappers. They found out from a witness that the kidnappers had fled to the west, and had been allowed to pass by the guard manning the gate. The PCs interrogated the guard (at arrow-point), and found out that he had been bribed, and that the villains were likely heading for an abandoned temple half an hour outside of town.

Observations: Teamwork and clever positioning can grant the PCs a healthy advantage. A defender in tight quarters is a dangerous thing. Eyebite is an extremely useful power to have when you’re cornered. The ranger’s Split the Tree daily power is extremely effective when it hits. The ability to teleport is very, very useful, but not unbalancing at low levels. Cornering a ranger is pretty darned effective.

Encounter 3: The Old Temple
The PCs followed tracks in the fresh mud to the old temple, and kicked the door in. Inside the found a bandit, the bandit mage they had faced in the inn, and a ratman with a vicious-looking spiked chain. One level 1, one level 3, and a level 6.

The ranger moved to attack the mage while the paladin quickly marked the chainfighter. This turned out to be an extremely effective tactic, because the chainfighter used an ability shortly afterward that allowed him to shift six squares and attack three different targets. One of these was the paladin, but the other two attacks, against the warlock and the cleric, both missed and caused the chainfighter a total of 16 points of damage. Combine that with a well-placed curse by the warlock, as well as a very effective witchfire, and the chainfighter only lasted until the second round. Once the chainfighter was down, the bandit and the mage soon followed. This fight could have been very difficult, but some good teamwork and clever tactics made it probably the easiest fight so far.

Once the fight was over, the PCs interrogated the dying mage and learned that Illyria was being held below the temple, beyond the crypt. They also learned that the cult was known as the Children of Pestilence, and that Amber’s plague was their way of offering up the town as a ritual sacrifice to their god, Ualath the Diseased One. They also learned about the cult’s leader, the Vermin King. After the interrogation, they searched the area and found some useful magic items that they took with them, as well as some healing potions. They also used a magic circle on the floor to regenerate their wounds, rather than using up their precious healing surges.

Observations: The paladin’s Divine Challenge is extremely effective when used against an enemy that can make multiple attacks against different people.

Encounter 4: The Crypt
The PCs then descended some spiral stairs into a darkened crypt. They had a sunrod that they used for light, but the skeletons waiting within had an advantage with their darkvision. There were three skeletons and a boneshard skeleton. Three level 3s and a level 5.

The cleric used his Turn Undead power and missed, but even the miss allowed him to do half damage, and since that damage was radiant, the skeleton that he affected with it took additional damage. The skeletons weren’t all that dangerous to the PCs, just hard to hit with their high defenses. At one point the warlock provoked an opportunity attack from a skeleton, and its Speed of the Dead ability allowed it to do some extra damage.

During the second round of combat, though, the boneshard skeleton came out and did a massive amount of damage to the ranger, dropping him to -1. A little while later, a skeleton attacked the warlock and dropped her to 0. Both of these situations were quickly remedied by the cleric’s Healing Word, but the crypt was extremely confined and the skeletons definitely had some advantages on their side.

The PCs wound up winning the day, but the boneshard skeleton’s boneshard burst hit them twice in the process, once when it was bloodied and once when it finally died. Because it did necrotic damage, the PCs took full damage while the skeletons were unscathed.

Observations: The paladin and the cleric were the stars in this fight, mainly because they both had abilities that did radiant damage, which the undead creatures were vulnerable to. This seemed to be a difficult fight, not simply because the creatures themselves were challenging, but because the close quarters made it very difficult to move around, and skeletons get some nice bonuses when they make opportunity attacks.

General observations: Overall, I think it went really well. PCs are clearly capable of taking on foes several levels higher than their own level, which opens up a wide array of enemy possibilities to the DM. This also means that fights can be big, and you shouldn’t be afraid to outnumber the PCs. It also means that you can have several relatively weak enemies and a single “boss” enemy in a fight three or for levels above the PCs’ level. Terrain is both more important in 4E and easier to adjudicate than it used to be. Simple conditions like Combat Advantage, Cover, and Difficult Terrain make it easy to deal with most types of terrain, and those conditions make good yardsticks for coming up with other things, as well. It’s not difficult to run an encounter with multiple different types of creatures. From the PCs side, Healing Surges are a great addition to the game. They make healing simplified and reliable, and they allow the PCs to recover from a difficult fight in a few minutes so that they can easily go into another difficult fight relatively fresh. Overall, this, and the previous proto-4E session that I ran, have both served to make me even more excited about the actual release.

1. Armor Training: Leather. At first blush, this seems pretty restricted; they’re only trained with leather armor? However, the Classes and Races book makes mention of the fact that terms that used to represent a single suit of armor, like padded, leather, or chain, are now entire categories of armor. Thus, the rogue is proficient with all types of leather armor.

2. Weapon proficiencies. Again, it seems restrictive to only be proficient with five weapons. It makes me wonder, though, of these weapons are categories or descriptors rather than individual weapons, much like leather armor. Perhaps there are several different kinds of daggers, several different kinds of shuriken, several different kinds of hand crossbow. Who can say at this point?

3. Hit points and healing surges. So now we see how starting hit points are calculated: a base number (12 in this case) plus the character’s Constitution score. Assuming an average Constitution of 10, that means the rogue starts with 22 hit points, significantly more than a 3rd Edition rogue with the same Constitution score, who starts at 6. Also, we now see that characters get a flat hit point increase at every level (5 per level, in this case). This eliminates the possibility of rolling a 1 on your hit die and being screwed, effectively, which is nice. It’s interesting to note, however, that Constitution apparently has no bearing on hit points per level. It does, however, have a bearing on healing surges. 6 + Constitution modifier. I’d assume that that’s a per day number, because 6+ healing surges per encounter seems excessive. Now, how do healing surges work? It’s been mentioned that the second wind ability, introduced in Star Wars Saga Edition, simply triggers a healing surge, presumably when you’re bloodied (1/2 hit points). It’s also been mentioned that many leader abilities allow you to use healing surges, so it would seem that healing surges are not something that you can just use whenever you want. Finally, it’s been mentioned that the fighter has the most self-healing ability of any class. Now that we see that healing surges are tied to class, we can probably assume that the fighter has a much higher base number of surges, and probably has a number of powers that trigger them.

4. Skills. Skills seem to be handled in much the same manner as Star Wars Saga Edition, with a simple trained/untrained differentiation. I’m actually quite happy about this; I like that system better because of its simplicity. The rogue class skill list is considerably shorter than it used to be, but the skills are, I’d imagine, considerably broader in application. It’s interesting to see that Bluff and Intimidate are still individual skills, rather than being rolled into a single social über-skill. The Knowledge skill seems to have been deconstructed into individual skills like Dungeoneering and Streetwise, and these skills probably have more application than the aforementioned skill did. And what does Insight do?

5. Builds. Probably a good idea to include these, for new players, but it’s nice to know that you can feel free to ignore them completely. It is nice to see that diversity of concept is being build right into the class description. Also, you still get a feat at first level, and you still get a bonus feat if you’re a human. You also apparently get to choose two at will powers, one encounter power, and one per day power, all at first level. That’s a lot of choice right out of the gate.

8. Class Features and Powers. It’s interesting to see that these are two different things. Class Features are things that all members of a class share in common, while Powers are more specific to the individual, and are up to player choice. I was wondering how they’d handle this, and the solution is pretty simple.

7. First Strike. So the rogue gets combat advantage over people who haven’t acted yet, which strongly implies that other people do not. It makes me wonder what other things grant combat advantage. Flanking? Attacking from the shadows? Feinting?

8. Rogue Tactics. These are both very cool and useful abilities. I wonder if we’re missing a few abilities here that will actually be in the PHB. Two doesn’t seem like all that many, so I wonder if they held a few back because they weren’t necessary to the preview.

9. Rogue Weapon Talent. This seems like a nice way to make choices that appear sub-optimal a little bit better. The rogue has three ranged weapons and two melee weapons available. Both the hand crossbow and the sling do more damage than do shuriken, so this ability helps to bring the shuriken up to par and make them a little more attractive. The short sword does more damage than the dagger, and both can be used for Sneak Attacks (assuming they’re both considered light blades, which I’d imagine they are), but now the dagger is a little more accurate. Not a bad idea.

10. Sneak Attack. These numbers are considerably lower at higher levels than I expected. 2d6 is a lot at first level in comparison to the current scale, but 3d6 at paragon and 5d6 at epic seems low. I guess you have to factor in the fact that you get this damage whenever you have combat advantage and are using the appropriate weapon, and that Sneak Attack can be used in conjunction with Powers that deal extra damage. There may even be Powers or Feats that increase Sneak Attack damage, or even weapons that do so.

11. Deft Strike. This appears to be a pretty vanilla attack (though it should be noted that rogue powers apparently allow the rogue to use Dexterity for both the attack and damage bonuses on both melee and ranged attacks; nice), with the exception that you can move two squares before the attack. This is a standard action, which means that you’d presumably get a move action as well, which means that this is extra movement, which is nice. It’s a little like Spring Attack in that you can move two squares to your opponent, attack, and then use your move action to get out of melee range. Or you could simply use those as two extra squares of movement when you’re trying to reach someone far away. Interesting, though, that this power can be used with every rogue weapon except for the shuriken, unless the shuriken is considered a light blade. Also, the power scales with level to some extent, doubling your weapon damage at epic levels.

12. Piercing Strike. A melee attack that ignores armor. On the one hand, that’s pretty nasty. On the other, you have to be in melee range to use it.

13. Positioning Strike. An attack against Will that moves your opponent. So not only does it ignore armor, it also can move someone into flanking position (or out of it), or away from an ally. A defender’s worst nightmare. It can only be used once per encounter, though.

14. Torturous Strike. A per-encounter attack that deals double weapon damage. Not too bad. Also, if you chose the Brutal Scoundrel tactic, you get to add your Dexterity modifier and your Strength modifier to your damage. Pretty nasty.

15. Tumble. So, not only do we now see a rogue power that isn’t an attack, we also see that the Tumble skill has been turned into a rogue power. You get to shift half your speed, which I believe means you get to move without provoking opportunity attacks. Not too shabby, and it doesn’t even require an extra roll. Only once per encounter, though.

16. Crimson Edge. So this is what a 9th-level daily rogue power looks like. Ouch. It ignores armor, deals double weapon damage, causes 5+ ongoing damage every round, and causes the target to grant you combat advantage, opening him up to sneak attacks. Nasty stuff. And, even if you miss you wind up dealing normal attack damage. An interesting note is that a save ends both the ongoing damage and the combat advantage. How do saves work, I wonder, and what is there relationship to defenses?

All in all, I’m very pleased with this preview. I think 4th Edition is going to do a lot of cool things for the game, and this clearly isn’t D&D 3.75.

Here’s some stuff I gleaned from the entry, in no particular order:

1. The Pit Fiend is worth 18,000 XP. No more referencing the CR chart; just a flat 18,000. Nice.
2. He has a teleport speed of 10. They’ve said that short-range teleports would be more common, and apparently (at least for more powerful characters and monsters), it’s just another method of locomotion, usable whenever you want to use it.
3. Action types for the Pit Fiend’s abilities are either standard, minor, and minor 1/round. I’m guessing that minor actions are similar to free or swift actions, probably a combination of the two, with minor 1/round being only somewhat more limited.
4. The Pit Fiend can summon some allies once per encounter, then effectively use them as short-range missiles. Very cool. Even cooler, there’s no roll required to summon, and no save required on the part of the devil/missile, which should speed things up.
5. There are Fortitude, Reflex, and Will defenses, as well as an entry for Saves, with only a +2 listed. I wonder what Saves do now.
6. The Pit Fiend has to use an Action Point to use his per-encounter power. I had originally wondered if taking the same per-encounter power more than once would allow you to use it multiple times per encounter. Now I’m wondering if you have X number of per-encounter powers, each usable by spending an Action Point. I wonder how quickly Action Points refresh.
7. One of the Pit Fiend’s powers, instead of being at-will or encounter, is listed as ‘recharge 4 5 6′. I wonder what that means. Presumably there’s some form of requirement for it to recharge.

That’s all for now. Peace.

1. A Garmin GPS unit for my car. Extremely useful.
2. A Nintendo DS, along with two games (The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and Age of Empires: The Age of Kings). I’ve finished Zelda already, due primarily to extremely heavy play, rather than brevity of content. The game is decidedly not brief; it’s exactly the right length, and is highly satisfying and challenging from start to finish. Not only that, but it’s got a very clever and well-implemented multiplayer mode, which I enjoy immensely. AoE I’ve just started, and I’m currently working my way through the tutorial campaign (Joan of Arc’s campaign). It’s a lot of fun and very addicting, and I love having a turn-based strategy game that I can keep in my pocket.
3. A fancy new chess board, wooden, with Asian-themed pieces. I can’t wait to use it.
4. Dungeon Twister, an excellent little two-player strategic board game with some cool mechanics and interesting gameplay.
5. Arkham Horror. ‘Nuff said.
6. The first of the 4th Edition preview books, Races and Classes, which I’ve already read and enjoyed thoroughly. I am somewhat sad to say, however, that (according to that book, at least), the ranger is indeed a striker, and not a controller. It makes me wonder whether or not there will be more than eight classes in the Player’s Handbook, for it would seem that they’d need another controller.
7. Lots of other great stuff!

Happy holidays, happy new year, etc.!

About a week ago I downloaded the demo, just out of idle curiosity. And didn’t install it. Forgot about it, in fact. Then, two days ago, I was listening to the PC Gamer Podcast (which I highly recommend for any fans of PC gaming and/or game-related humor), and was privy to a lively debate about said game. It was fun to listen to, mainly because of the dialog rather than the content. The discussion boiled down to this: Norm, Logan, Dan, and Chuck all liked Crysis, and were hailing it as the Second Coming of PC Gaming (though not in those exact words). Jeremy and Garry, on the other hand, had each played the demo and had not been impressed. Their arguments were primarily that the “future-proofing” of the game was a gimmick, a sort of bait-and-switch tactic, that it was sluggish and unresponsive, that the system requirements were too high, that it was, effectively, Far Cry 2. Such comments did not make me any more likely to play the game, or the demo I had downloaded, and the arguments to the contrary sounded too much like simple evangelism to sway me in any other direction.

Still, the discussion had planted a seed. Something was percolating in my mind, growing legs and running about, messing with the silverware and knocking the pictures askew. Because of all these and other mediocre metaphors, I decided, when I got home, to install the demo and try it out, for no other reason than to see what all the fuss was about. I installed the demo, and it took a very long time. So far I was unimpressed. It finally finished and I loaded up the game, and was immediately assaulted by no fewer than four (!) advertisements for various sponsors. An unfortunate necessity, I know, but it rubbed me the wrong way none the less. I went in and fiddled with the options, clicked the button that would detect the optimal settings for my machine, and was told that everything had been set to ‘Low’. Not surprising, but still disappointing. Then I started playing.

And everything changed. The opening sequence was eye-catching and memorable, as my avatar and four other soldiers in nano-suits parachuted out of an airplane onto a tropical island in the dead of night. The graphics, despite being on the absolute lowest setting possible, were sharp and crisp and not at all disappointing. I had reared myself on sneakers like Thief and its ilk, so the slightly lower movement speed felt not at all uncomfortable, and encouraged the stealthy play that I prefer (a play style that, I’m glad to say, Crysis fully supports). I met my first pair of enemies, quickly dispatched them, and became engrossed in the game.

The environment is wide-open and allows for multiple solutions to problems. The enemies, while not always brilliant, try to do things like outflank you, flush you out with grenades, and take cover. The weapons are satisfying and effective. And the nano-suit, the game’s central mechanic, is well-realized and integral to play. While I rarely used the Maximum Speed or Maximum Strength settings, I could not possibly have traversed the demo without Maximum Armor and Stealth Mode, upon which I relied heavily. The suit, and the tactical options that it grants you, allow you to take on forces which are both numerically superior and better-armed than you, provided you think your way through the battle rather than charging in, guns blazing.

When I finished the demo, I had come to the conclusion that this is exactly the kind of game I enjoy playing. It has the right combination of verisimilitude and science fiction weirdness, the right amount of brains-over-brawn philosophy, the right degree of player freedom. I immediately went online afterward and added it to my Amazon wishlist. For those who are still on the fence (or otherwise), I suggest you download the demo and let it make up your mind for you. If you are like me, you will likely enjoy it and want more. If you don’t like the demo, chances are the game holds nothing that will change your mind.

Update: Thinking to tide myself over until I get Crysis, I went ahead and gave Far Cry another try. It’s like night and day. Where Crysis rewards tactical thinking and a stealthy approach, Far Cry seems to both require and punish such things. You cannot stand toe-to-toe with a large group of enemies, and most groups are large. Thus, you have to try to sneak up on them and take them out one by one, much as in Crysis. However, Far Cry (at least, up until the point where I got frustrated and gave up) gives you no tools for doing such. It’s very, very difficult to take out a single enemy without alerting the rest of them if you don’t have a silencer, and the lack of any reliable way to hide yourself exacerbates this. Combine this with the fact that the enemies are hyper-aware, capable of hearing a man walking slowly and quietly on grass, thirty feet below, and above the ambient jungle noises, and it makes a stealth-based approach stupidly difficult to affect. Oh, and the enemies are apparently psychically connected; once you alert one, they all know where you are. Finally, the checkpoint save system is a bad fit for this style of game. Twice I whittled down an enemy base to one or two mercenaries, only to be killed by those last one or two. The fact that I don’t get to choose when I save my game means that, when that happens, I have to start back at square one. Not fun. I have no idea why Far Cry was ever as popular as it was; it’s simply not a well-designed game.

Update, Part 2: I have now finished the full game of Crysis. While its system requirements were such that my computer often begged to run something else, it was fantastic from start to finish. I’ve rarely played a game that felt completely different at the end than it felt at the beginning, managing to stay fresh and provide new obstacles constantly. It kept me interested and engaged every second, and there’s very little about it that I wouldn’t recommend. Whenever I manage to score a new rig, I’m going to install it and play it with the settings cranked up higher. I hear it’s almost like a brand new experience, and the gameplay is such that replayability is high.

Now, I’m not trying to imply that spellbooks are going away. I doubt they are; they are so intrinsic to the idea of wizard in D&D that I can’t see the designers extricating the one from the other. However, this idea that wizards use orbs, staves, and wands to focus their magic is intriguing in its implications. Further, wizards have divergent traditions. One thinks of rules in the eventual 4E Eberron book that provides new wizardly traditions, perhaps complete with new wizardly implements, specific to that realm. Perhaps there will be something fundamental to differentiate a wizard devotee of the Silver Flame from an Emerald Claw necromancer, or even an Emerald Claw necromancer from an Aereni necromancer. One thinks of Aereni necromancers brandishing ancestral skulls adorned with gold and jewels, while those of the Emerald Claw fling magical vitriol from wands made of the finger-bones of their enemies. Chilling.

Monte Cook’s World of Darkness: I’m currently about halfway through this book, and I have mixed feelings veering more toward positive than negative. I’ll start with the negative and move on to the positive. First, the mechanics are seemingly designed to be compatible with 3.5, presumably so that you can use Monster Manual N to introduce all kinds of weirdness to the game. Granted, the “class/race” system is different and there are some interesting elements to the mechanical side of things, but a lot of the book seems sort of conservative for Mr. Cook. I expected more interesting things to be done with skills and feats, particularly after books like Arcana Unearthed and Iron Heroes (though the latter was, admittedly, designed primarily by Mike Mearls and not by Monte Cook). Skills and feats are more-or-less as they appear in D&D (with a few additions to account for the modern setting), and supernatural powers, while interesting in some cases, some to be mechanically sort of “blah”. One big caveat about this statement: I’ve only just now started reading about the magic system, and it seems pretty good. In fact, so far it seems like the magic system that should have been in Iron Heroes. I haven’t read anything about equipment, the changes to combat and such, or enemies, so there is a lot that I’m not yet qualified to comment on.

That said, there’s a lot to recommend in this book. Mechanically, the concept of “types” as a combination of race and class, combined with a “focus” to grant you skills purchasable at reduced cost each level is kind of cool. Some of the supernatural powers are also quite cool, especially demonic cants. The primary thing to recommend this book, though, is the setting. It is, in a word, awesome. A warning, though, to World of Darkness purists who think that the new line of WoD products is too much of a departure from canon: this is not the World of Darkness you’re used to. There are superficial similarities. There are vampires, werewolves, demons, and mages. Vampires are organized into clans and can get disciplines to grant them supernatural abilities. Mages cast spells. Werewolves rip things to shit. Most of the similarities end there. None of the supernatural creatures have a society that has existed on earth for thousands of years. In fact, vampires, werewolves, and demons have only existed on Earth for a single year.

See, a year ago these inscrutable, extraplanar beings called the Iconnu tried to destroy are reality and failed. Something about certain people (the Awakened) held our reality together, but the side effect of the Iconnu’s attack was an event called the Intrusion, accompanied by the Nightmare Wave. Strange things started appearing all over the place, and a large chunk the middle of the US was simply destroyed. The Iconnu knew that something had gone wrong, so they created servants to help correct the problem (the problem being us). They summoned the long-dead souls of evil human beings, which possessed living human beings to become vampires, creatures with two souls vying for dominance of one body, and a constant thirst for blood. They summoned feral spirits of rage from another dimension; these spirits also possessed human bodies to become werewolves, creatures of alien rage and violence. Finally, they summoned ancient beings of cosmic malevolence, who created bodies for themselves out of Earthly materials that they could shape at will. These beings are known as demons, and they are the physical incarnations of the Nightmare Wave in more ways than one. The fabric of reality was also screwed up a bit, which allowed certain people to become mages and work real magic with ages-old rituals. Finally, there are the Awakened: humans who hold reality together on an unconscious level, and who are blessed (or cursed) with the ability and resolve to detect and destroy supernatural beings.

So, pretty different, right? What I like about this approach is that the different types allow for very interesting roleplaying opportunities. Vampires are cool to play because you get to effectively make up two personalities for your character, one of which is evil. Werewolves are interesting because you get to play a sort of “stranger in a strange land” character who just wants to destroy everything in sight, but knows that doing so would be pretty stupid, from a survival standpoint. Demons are interesting because they are all irredeemably evil by human standards, and any demonic protagonists will be opposing the Iconnu for their own selfish reasons, and will still be irredeemably evil. Mages are fun because they’re wild cards, and because they’re capable of a wide variety of supernatural effects. The Awakened are necessary from a metaplot standpoint, but exist to sort of be a “default human” character for people who don’t want to be overtly supernatural. The GM gets some fun toys, too. The Nightmare Wave did all kinds of weird things, and effectively gives the GM carte blanche to drop whatever creepiness he wants into the game. It’s all pretty good, in my opinion, and I dig the idea that the apocalypse is happening now.

Bioshock: I’ve been playing this game on my PC for the last week. Again, there’s good and bad, but this time I’m pretty firmly on the side of loving it. The load times are ridiculously long, being a minute or more (though they are, thankfully, infrequent). The game experiences some lock-ups occasionally, simply hanging for fifteen to twenty seconds before starting up again. Not only that, but this game is easily capable of bringing my computer, screaming, to its knees if I play for a long period of time. It’s not without its issues. Despite this, I love this game. It’s easily one of my top five games of all time, it’s that good. I love the nonlinearity, the character development, the engrossing story and atmosphere, the combat, the moments of pure dread when I’m staring down a corridor and can see a splicer’s shadow cast on the opposite wall. The hacking mini-game is fun, and hacking comes with a number of rewards. I love that I’ve learned to scavenge a room from top to bottom once I’ve deemed it safe. It’s really just a fantastic game in every sense of the word, even with the performance issues that I have (and some of these, I suspect, stem from the fact that my laptop is now more than a year old, and that the video card, while still very good, does not get frequent driver updates and cannot make use of nVidia’s Bioshock-optimized drivers, despite being a GeForce card).

Zombies: Are you prepared for the invasion?

• Paladins no longer have to be Lawful Good. It never made sense to me that only the good-aligned deities got divine champions. Wouldn’t a deity like the Mockery or Bane see the sense in having a living conduit of serious beat-down, and imbue someone thus? Now they can.
• I have a hunch that attacks of opportunity are being replaced by immediate actions, which allow you to react to certain stimuli in a variety of ways. I hope to see a number of feats and class abilities that grant you a great deal of flexibility in how you use your immediate actions and what triggers them. I have heard mention of rogues being able to wait for an opening and launch a counter-attack, a maneuver that was, mechanically, difficult to pull of in 3.x.
• Clerics can now heal while they do other things. Huzzah!
• The old, Vancian spell slot system of magic is (mostly) gone apparently, replaced by something that is presumably more balanced for an individual encounter rather than a full day. Also, you can have 25th-level spells (though I’m unclear as to why spell levels don’t go all the way up to 30, like class levels). Further, fighter/mage hybrid characters will apparently be far more viable at lower levels.
• Along those lines, the multiclassing system is evidently seeing a bit of a re-haul.
• Iterative attacks are, I believe, being eliminated or, at the very least, minimized in a Saga-esque way, which should speed up combat, particularly at higher levels.
• Fighters are weapon specialists now, and rogues are skill specialists. Fighters can do more with weapons than other classes can, and rogues can do more with skills.
• The designers are trying to design the classes such that everyone always has something interesting to do. By extension, this implies more options for the fighter (rather than merely, “I attack the orc.”) and less “Crap, I’m out of spells” for the wizard/cleric/sorcerer.

That’s all I can think of right now. The geeky part of my brain has been set a-tingling.

The above post gives a number of tantalizing details, doesn’t it. Character classes go up to 30th level? Racial abilities beyond 1st level? Racial class powers? And what’s all this about new power sources and a change in resource management? I can only hope that they’re revamping spellcasting to make low-level casters more viable after their first fight of the day. All this, and it even says that a lot of the changes were tested in Star Wars Saga Edition and The Book of Nine Swords. Now, I can’t speak to Nine Swords since I haven’t read it yet, but you all know, I’m sure, how I feel about Saga Edition.

Like I said, I couldn’t be more excited. Unfortunately, the official site (previously 4venture) is currently down, probably due to the glut of curious and excited D&D fans rushing Wizards’ virtual doors in hopes of discovering some hitherto unknown tidbit of information. I guess I’ll have to wait to see it.