Yeah, I just got my copy from Amazon. I’ve glanced through it briefly (and red through the entire quick-start guide), and I like what I see so far. The product comes in a very nice pocketed folder. The books themselves have paper similar to what you’d find in a magazine; not terribly sturdy, but if you’re careful they should hold up fine. It’s a little odd that the books have no back cover. They are in full color, though, with plenty of artwork. So far, I’m really digging 4E’s art style, as well as the new cover designs. Very nice. I also like that the adventure comes with three double-sided poster-sized battle maps, for a total of six encounter maps usable with standard 1″ minis or counters. I think I would have preferred it if Wizards had included counters for all of the creatures instead, but I’m hardly going to complain since Fiery Dragon already did that for us.

Also, while there are three pregens in the quick-start book, Wizards has released a sixth on D&D Insider. Nice.

[Edit: Five pregens. There are five pregens in the quick-start booklet.]

May 10th?! Sheesh, it sure has been a long time since I’ve posted. Bad blogger, bad! At any rate, I thought I’d post with some random stuff that’s been on my mind lately, some of it 4E-related, some not. We’ll start with the not.

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.

It occurs to me that I haven’t been posting lately, so I guess I’ll go ahead and update you all on some things.

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.

So, Paizo Publishing has decided to put out a product that will, I suppose, compete with 4th Edition. In a bold and, I think, savvy move, they have released an alpha version of The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, so that people can read it, play it, and provide them with feedback that they will use to make it better, stronger, funner. I downloaded it last night and gave it a cursory read. I’ll preface this by saying that I was excited going in. I’m generally a fan of Paizo, and I’m generally a fan of free products. Thus, I was happy to give this thing a look and see just how they plan to fix 3.5.

My overall impression, after an admittedly brief look, was a resounding “meh”. I didn’t see anything particularly revolutionary or interesting in the rules. They’ve tried to maximize compatibility with existing products wherever they could, which means that they’re pretty limited in what they can change. They want to fix things like player durability at low levels and slow combat at high levels, but many of the problems the seek to fix are problems inherent to the core of the system, not just subsystems that can be re-written. How can you fix slow play at higher levels without eliminating iterative attacks or doing something about spell bloat for magic users? How can you make lower-level PCs more durable without changing the way experience points are calculated and levels are gained? And if you change that, you’ll have to change things like magic item creation and spells with XP components, because the value of the experience point has suddenly changed.

Pathfinder seems to me more like a band-aid solution than a true repair; too many of the system’s flaws are in the middle of tangled webs of rules subsystems to be fixed while still maximizing compatibility with the basic rules system. You either fix the system, or you make a compatible product, but you have to choose one of the two.

Now, I’ll admit that maybe I’m wrong about this. Maybe future iterations of Pathfinder will provide more solutions to 3.5′s issues, and maybe they’ll be a little bit bolder with their mechanics. My main issue, though, is that I don’t understand who their target audience is. Those who, like me, are kind of tired of the current version of D&D and want something fresh and new that doesn’t get weighed down by its own body of rules will immediately switch to 4th Edition. We’re probably not going to buy Pathfinder. Those who don’t want 4th Edition, who think that the current rule set is fine, may be willing to try Pathfinder, but will they be willing to pay full retail price for an incremental upgrade? In most cases, probably not. The problem is that, while Paizo seeks to solve 3.5′s ills, Pathfinder doesn’t really do anything that new or exciting. It’s the same old 3.5, just a little bit different. Is it better? Hard to tell.

But really, don’t take my word for it. Follow the link at the top of this post, download the alpha (it’s totally free), and read it yourself. If nothing else, the artwork in the book is stellar.

When I first got my DS, my introductory game was The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. It was fantastic, in every sense of the word; one of the best games I’ve ever played. Hungry for more Zelda goodness, but knowing that that was the only title for the DS, I purchased The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap for the GameBoy Advance. At first the mechanics and gameplay were charming and fun, but it quickly become an exercise in frustration; the puzzles were obscure, the boss fights were not particularly fun, and I had to resort to walkthroughs entirely too frequently.

I suppose, in a way, Phantom Hourglass probably spoiled me a little; it was innovative and intuitive at the same time, and the puzzles were challenging in a way that was fun rather than frustrating. The game also had that secret ingredient, that extra special bit of personality that made it more than the sum of its parts. The Minish Cap, while not a bad game, lacked many of these traits, and so disappointed me. I’m finished with it now (after a boss fight that was, you guessed it, frustrating and not particularly fun), and I think I’m going to play Phantom Hourglass again. It’s been a few months since I played it, so it’s no longer fresh in my mind, and I’d like to remind myself what a Zelda game should really be like.

I’ve been on the fence about Crysis for a while. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. I knew there was a fence, I was aware of it. I knew that you could, theoretically, be on it. But I didn’t pay much attention to it. I just assumed that it wouldn’t run on my computer, and that it would be too much like Far Cry (I played the demo for that game, and was pretty underwhelmed by it). So Crysis and I existed in the same world, but were content to exist separately, aware of each other but not actually interacting.

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.

For those who have been reading this blog with any regularity, it should be no secret that I’m a fan of the HeroCard series of games that TableStar Games publishes. I enjoy the basic card battle system mechanics, and I’ve liked each of the five HeroCard games that have come out so far. It is with some trepidation, therefore, that I write this review, for their latest game, HeroCard Nightmare.

Nightmare is a bit of a departure from previous HeroCard games in a number of different ways. Like Cyberspace, there are no expansion packs; all four Hero decks come in the core box, and it’s playable for one to four players right out of the box. It’s also a deduction game at heart. The premise of the game is that you and your fellow players have been trapped inside somebody’s nightmare by a magic camera, along with five killers. Each player knows which killer will be his killer, and in which scene of the dream he will die. The goal is to find out who’s going to kill everyone else and where they’ll die, then arrange things so that their deaths come to pass. The last one standing gets to escape from the dream (though, thematically, it’s never really clear why this is).

The mechanics of the board game, itself, are fairly simple and, I think, fairly solid. There are seven scene tiles and five killer figures, along with a Dreamer figure which represents all of the players. During your turn you can move any of these things, reshaping the dream, moving the Dreamer, and moving the killers so that you can create the combination you want. When the Dreamer occupies the scene you want to know about, and is with any killers you want to know about, you can attack to scare. This is resolved using the basic HeroCard rules, with a twist: your attack is not directed at anyone in particular. As such, anyone can choose to defend, and the other players can choose to join in on either the attacking side or the defending side, provided they choose the side currently losing. If your attack succeeds, if anyone has either the scene card for the appropriate scene or an appropriate killer card, those players have to announce that they are scared. By paying attention to who is scared when, and who blocks or attacks when, you can use process of elimination to figure out what combinations will prove lethal for your fellow players. At this point you can attack to kill–a more straightforward HeroCard duel–with success removing the other player from the game. Last man standing wins.

As I’ve said, I think that the basic mechanics are sound. I like the theme and the way you re-arrange the dream to your liking, and I like the cutthroat deduction mechanic. My main problem is with the way the HeroCard system is implemented in the game, particularly in regards to attacking to scare.

Problem number one: attacks to scare tend to take a while, as each player deliberates on whether or not they want to contribute, and how much. Each player has to pass in succession for an attack to end and, in my experience, attacks can take as long as five minutes (as compared to the speedy, forty-second affairs of other HeroCard games). When each player’s turn takes five minutes (and players will be attacking to scare a lot), the game tends to drag.

Problem number two: Relief. There is a mechanic in this game when there are three or more players termed ‘Relief’. In effect, after an attack sequence is resolved, the winning side gets to either draw three cards or clear three cards. I understand why this mechanic is in place; since there’s a chance that everyone will be either attacking or blocking on everyone else’s turn, players need lots of cards and need to keep their Attribute Stacks fairly clear. The problem is that this mechanic destroys the balance of the system. Each HeroCard game has had at least one ‘basic deck’, a Hero who has few complicated abilities and relies primarily on one or two high-value attacks and blocks that use up an entire Attribute Stack (or nearly that, at least). As the system is designed this is balanced, because throwing yourself wholly into an attack like that leaves you open to an opponent’s attack, and using a high-cost block could make it more difficult to attack. There are trade-offs. In Nightmare, the Relief mechanic allows you to disregard these trade-offs. Will, the basic deck of Nightmare can spend his entire allotment of Body on a single, 9-point base attack, and add on some attack mods, and it’s very difficult for any of the other characters to block. When Will blocks, the same is true in reverse; nobody can get through his defenses. Because he’s likely to win most battles, assuming clear attribute stacks and at least one of these cards (or one of his lesser, but still potent, cards), he’ll almost always get Relief after attacking or blocking, meaning that he can simply clear those cards away (which is easier, since he’s playing only a couple of large cards, rather than several smaller ones like the other characters). Within the Nightmare game, Heroes like Will (or To’a King from Champion of New Olympia, or the Paladin from Orc Wars) are far more powerful than most other characters.

What I Liked: The basic mechanics of the game seem sound, and I like the idea of the game. The tiles and pieces are also of good quality and, viewed in isolation, the characters seem well-designed.

What I Didn’t Like: The HeroCard system just doesn’t work that well in this game. The game feels long and bloated, and not that much fun. I also wasn’t that crazy about the artwork on the cards; they look suspiciously like people from the office were photographed in costume, and then the photographs were Photoshopped later.

The Bottom Line:As I mentioned all the way at the top, I like the HeroCard system. I also like the premise of this game, and the core mechanics. The problem is that they just don’t fit together that well, as written. I’ve liked every HeroCard game that came my way up until this point, but I just can’t get behind this one. The game could be a quick-playing, light deduction game if a different resolution system were used, or if the existing system were simplified somewhat (perhaps by making attacks to scare more like standard HeroCard duels, and by eliminating Relief). As it is, though, it just wasn’t that much fun to play. I really, really hate to say this, but I just can’t recommend this game.

Ok, two things have been dominating my geek radar currently. Really, three things if you count 4th Edition, but the initial excitement has passed and my geek-out-itude about 4E has subsided into a general ambient hum of anticipation.

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?

Yesterday, I played a three-player game of HeroCard Orc Wars. If you’ve read my review, you’ll note that I assess it strictly as a two-player game; this is because I didn’t own the expansion packs at the time of the review, and I still don’t. When I played with my friends Tad and Chris yesterday, Chris played as the orcs, Tad played the Paladin, and I played as the Ranger, using the Ninja deck from Rise of the Shogun. I still plan on posting a second part to my review, assessing it as a multiplayer game with the decks that it’s meant to be played with, but I thought I’d post some preliminary thoughts based off of the game I played yesterday. In no particular order:

• As a multiplayer game, Orc Wars is something of a mixed bag. I enjoyed it, and I think there’s a lot of potential fun there, but my problem is with the player elimination mechanic. As a rule, I’m not generally a big fan of player elimination in multiplayer games. In a two-player game, it’s fine; once a player is eliminated, the game ends. Yesterday, though, Tad was eliminated twenty minutes or so into the game, and had to watch me and Chris play what had effectively become a two-player game for another thirty or forty minutes. How is that fun for Tad? I’ve always thought that, regardless of whether you win or lose, a good game should be fun for every player as much as possible. The other issue with the player elimination mechanic is that, once a player is eliminated, the orcs are at a huge advantage. Once Tad was eliminated, Chris and I were effectively playing a two-player game; however, he was able to reinforce his armies based on the number of elves at the start of the game, and he got a bonus draw whenever I drew cards based on the same thing. This puts the remaining elves at a pretty severe disadvantage, and it almost makes it feel like you’re just trying to delay defeat as long as possible, rather than trying to really win. Of course, this may vary based on scenario. To combat these problems, I’d like to try Orc Wars with a modified multiplayer system, one that eliminates the player elimination aspect of the game. Some possibilities:
  • A mechanic similar to the one used in Descent: Journeys in the Dark could be used. Instead of each elf having a wound track that results in elimination when it’s filled, perhaps the elves have a collective pool of tokens equal to their total wounds. Each time an elf suffers a successful attack, they discard a wound counter; when they have no more left, the game ends and the orcs win.

  • Perhaps an elf whose wound track is full could suffer a sort of ‘disabled’ condition. Upon receiving his final wound, that elf skips his next action phase, but then plays as normal afterward. Any time the elf takes another wound, he suffers the same effect, skipping his action phase. The elf might also suffer some constant debilitating effect, like the value of any attack sequence he plays being one or two points lower for as long as his wound track is full. When all elves have full wound tracks, the orcs win.
• The more elves there are, the more it is to the elves’ advantage to accomplish their objectives quickly. Tad and I spent a couple of rounds trying to kill off a squad of orcs, but because Chris could reinforce his armies more effectively in a three-player game than in a two-player game, the orcs were reappearing almost as quickly as we could kill them. By the time the game had ended, Chris had four full squads of orcs on the board; that’s twenty orcs against my lone elf! We were playing The Relics, and if we had been trying to get the treasures on the board a little more quickly, we might have stood more of a chance.
• If you don’t own the expansions for this game but you do own other HeroCard games, the ones from Rise of the Shogun make good thematic approximations of the Ranger and Sorceress. Thematically, the Ninja is a pretty good match for the Ranger, and either the Prince or the Miko would work well for the Sorceress. For me, playing as the Ninja helped to minimize the thematic disconnect that I would have felt had I played, say, the Cosmic Cult from Galaxy or the Cryptomancer from Cyberspace.

In all, I feel like Orc Wars is really optimized for two players as it is, though I think I need a few more multiplayer play-throughs to truly get a good sense of the game. The game scales well on the orc side, allowing the orc to still be a viable player, but the player elimination aspect has some problems.

It’s been a little while since my last post. I’d like to blame it on our impending move and, in truth, that might have something to do with my motivation issues, but truthfully I think that lack of stuff to post is the prime culprit. Things have been a little slow, gaming wise. I will post on a few gaming-related things, as usual, in no particular order.

1. I played Arkham Horror last weekend with some friends. We normally play with the Curse of the Dark Pharaoh and Dunwich Horror expansions, but last weekend we also got the chance to play with the King in Yellow expansion, too. We lost, and I think that expansion had something to do with it. It certainly adds some cool new toys to the mix; one of the players got a spell that granted him a sort of controllable lycanthropy, which was useful. I also got a journal that allowed me to reduce the Terror Track once. However, the expansion does ramp up the difficulty somewhat, and it succeeds in adding an extra level of tension to the game.

2. I’ve been playing Dungeon Siege 2 lately; picked it up cheap along with its expansion pack, and I have not regretted that decision. DS2 does all the same things right that the first did, but it adds more depth and a somewhat more interesting storyline (though it’s still pretty generic and somewhat predictable so far). The game is not, by any stretch of the imagination, realistic. It is, however, extremely fun, providing that combination of mindless combat, party management, and carrot-on-a-stick character advancement that makes it so appealing.

3. Lately, I’ve been reading Secrets of Xen’drik a campaign supplement for the Eberron setting that deals with that mysterious continent. It’s not like other campaign supplements I’ve read. When I first found out about it, I viewed it with some trepidation. Kieth Baker, the setting’s creator, had always been very clear that he didn’t want to detail Xen’drik too fully, that he wanted to leave it mostly open for individual DMs to fill in with their own imagination. Would a supplement pull back that curtain too much, reveal too much of what should remain hidden? Thankfully, it doesn’t. The supplement is a sort of campaign toolbox, with a variety of settings, encounters, and even adventure frameworks that are flavorful, but generic enough to be easy to place anywhere on the continent. The book stays away from specifics and metaplots, allowing the DM to create his or her own plots and mysteries.