Some of you may have read the Gizmodo post that has become infamous in geek circles on the Internets. I won’t link to it here, because I don’t want to feed the nerd-baiting any more than I already have. Here’s the thing, though: something good has come of it. Namely, Speak Out with your Geek Out. The idea is simple: rather than turning to nerd rage and negativity, let’s light up the Internet for a week with positivity, and talk about all the things we love about our nerdy hobbies. I think this is a great idea. So, without further ado, and in no particular order, here are some things I love about my chosen flavors of geekitude.

Social Acceptance
This may not be a universal, but in my experience, geeks are really friendly, accepting people. All of my best friends are geeks (which shouldn’t really surprise you), and many of us are friends because of that common ground. When I finally found a game store in my area, they welcomed me with open arms, and now it’s a place where everybody knows my name (as the saying goes). GenCon, too, was a revelation; here was a place with 35,000 nerds all converging to revel in our shared passtimes. Everyone I met was friendly, helpful, and accepting of the people around them. It was a place where you could really be yourself, which was awesome.

Going along with this, I recently made a new friend via Twitter, through this shared culture of ours. He’s a really cool guy who is fun to hang out with and seems to like a lot of the same kinds of games that I do. What realy flabbergasted me (in a good way) was his willingness (and his wife’s) to come and help me and my wife out of a tight spot, after only knowing us for a few weeks. I’m not saying that something like that is specific to geeks, but I think it’s a great geek meets geek story that illustrates what I like about being a geek.

Shared Culture
Admit it: you love making obscure references to nerdy media and having other people laugh. It’s fun and energizing when that happens, and it’s unlikely to happen anwyere but around other geeks. I make these same jokes at work, and get blank stares back. I walk into my FLGS with a new nerd shirt on, and everyone applauds. It’s awesome.

Creativity
It seems like all of my friends are aspiring game designers (or game designers for real) these days. Everyone in the hobby wants to contribute back to the hobby, to make it better, richer, fuller for everyone else. That’s incredibly energizing and encouraging.

The Games
This list would be incomplete without mentioning the games, themselves. I love playing board games, role-playing games, video games; I’ll expand this to watching nerdy TV shows and movies, too, because it’s all part of the same culture. Withou these trappings of geekdom, I would likely feel out of place in this world; these things give me a subculture to belong to, they give me something to be passionate about. These things are why I do a lot of what I do.

So what about the rest of you? What do you love about gaming and beeing a geek? Sound off! Let’s see how much positivity we can get out there!

It’s been a little while since I posted, so I figured I’d do one of those “random things on my mind” posts.

The Demolished Ones is humming along nicely. We’ve got a Kickstarter going up on September 1st, so be sure to check that out; if you’re interested in the game, it could really use your support. In the mean time, if you’d like to learn about it, there’s a teaser page on Rite Publishing’s website. This features some basic information, some teaser text by yours truly, and some artwork by Hugo Solis and the final logo by Claudia Burgos. It’s all very cool.

Seeing this project develop has been kind of a surreal experience for me. I’ve been freelancing for a while, so I’ve gotten a little bit used to seeing my words in a finished product, but The Demolished Ones is the first project that I’ve had so much creative control over. I’m normally the guy writing the stuff that someone else wants me to write, but with this project, I’m choosing the direction the project goes in, I’m telling the artists what the art should look like, and so forth. It’s bizarre, but in a good way. I’m really excited about this project and I hope it gets green-lit so we can actually publish. I think it’s going to be a pretty awesome game.

On the electronic side of things, I’ve been playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution lately. I was a big fan of the first Deus Ex, and I even liked Deus Ex: Invisible War enough to play it all the way through (though I readily admit that it wasn’t as good as the first). Human Revolution feels very much like the first game, but so much of it is better from a mechanical standpoint. The stealth and gunplay is better, the augmentation system offers more freedom to customize your playstyle, the environments are more complex and convincing, and the hacking minigame blows the original Deus Ex’s hacking system out of the water.

My avatar in the game is a sneaky special ops type who kills when necessary, can cloak himself, and is great at hacking through obstacles. My friend Chris is playing the game non-lethally, and seems to be focusing more on augs that give him access to interesting locations. I like that there’s enough game there to support both of us. Highly recommended.

Finally, Bulldogs! is doing really, really well. It’s been in the top 15 on a number of sites where it’s sold since its release, and I’m hearing nothing but good things about it. Unfortunately, Hurricane Irene prevented me from running my planned demo of it this past Sunday, but I plan on rescheduling it. This is a game that I am really proud to be associated with; it does so many things well, and running it is a crazy amount of fun.

Lately, I’ve been playing a couple of games on Steam.

The first, and arguably the better of the two, is Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012. I played the first Duels game and liked it quite a bit. The second surpasses the first in just about every way. There are more decks available (and some of them are just plain awesome), lots of unlocks to get, and three separate campaigns to play. One of them, the Revenge campaign, is just a harder version of the main campaign, where your enemies have better cards available. The third, though, is the Archenemy campaign, which allows you to play with a whole new, cooperative style of Magic. In addition to the campaigns, you can also play custom games. I haven’t experimented with that yet, but I would imagine that’s where a lot of my time will go once I’m done with the campaigns. If you like M:TG, I highly recommend this game; it’s only $10.

The second is Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale, an awkward name if ever there was one. This is not what I’d call a particularly good game. The graphics are ugly, the gameplay is repetitive, there are a number of bugs and balance issues (the most glaring of which is that the rogue kills more stuff and therefore levels up faster than anyone else), there’s no real voice work to speak of (the NPCs talk with text boxes accompanied by grunts). Despite all this, I’m having a great time playing it with my friend Mike, and I’m enjoying it for what it is: stupid, cheap fun. So, while I can’t really recommend the game, if you have friends keen on playing it, there are worse ways to spend $15.

Games, whether you’re talking about electronic games, role-playing games, or tabletop games, are generally thought of as products. That is, a boxed product or book is put on a shelf, you buy it, and that’s more or less the end of it. There are indications within some of these industries, though, that things are shifting toward a service-based model rather than a product-based model.

Wizards of the Coast has already partially converted to this system with D&D Insider, a system whereby you pay a monthly (or yearly) fee and gain access to new content on a regular (and frequent) basis, as well as online tools and updates for the physical products they sell. Similarly, Valve has shown leanings toward this model with many of their games; games like Team Fortress 2 or Left 4 Dead are discreet products, but once you buy them you become the recipient of various content updates throughout the life of the product that keep you coming back, and keep you happy with your purchase (Valve provides these mostly free of charge, which is nice).

Things could go further, though, and current trends indicate that they might, at least in some cases. Valve would very much like video games to go service-based, I’m sure. Imagine if, instead of buying Half-Life 3 for $60, you paid $5 or $10 per month for it. This might give you access to the full game, as well as gauranteed content updates for the game throughout its life. It would be a shift, to be sure, but it might be a welcome one. Taking it further, what if you subscribed to a particular developer or publisher, or simply paid a subscription to Steam, in order to get games and game updates on a regular basis. Instead of games being an item that you had to splurge on from time to time, they would become a service you pay for like your cable or your Internet, or Netflix.

I can similarly imagine a future where Wizards of the Coast does away with physical books altogether, instead integrating their Insider service into devices like the iPad, Nook, and other tablets and e-readers. You pay your monthly fee, and any D&D content that comes out that month is yours. Download articles, get access to full books in electronic format, get digital tools; best of all, as long as you keep your subscription current, all of your content remains current, too.

It’s likely that not everyone sees this with the same rose-colored glasses that I view this possible future with. Many people would likely resist such a model, afraid of what would happen when they stopped paying, or if the service ceased to exist at some point. There are ways around these fears, but that’s not really within the scope of this post.

I’d very much like to hear what you think about all of this. Is this a trend that should continue? Is it something you’d be open to? Why or why not?

My wife sent me a link to a little indie game called Desktop Dungeons, and I’ve been obsessed with it since I downloaded it.

Let me back up and explain what it is. Desktop Dungeons is a Rogue-like game, for those of you who know what that is. For those who don’t, the idea is that you pick a race and class and fight your way through a randomly generated dungeon for treasure and XPs. Rogue-likes tend toward the difficult side, and most games will end with your character’s death; also, you can’t save your game. However, completing an entire dungeon takes maybe ten minutes, and it’s pretty easy to get caught up in it and just play a new dungeon once you’ve finished (or been finished by) the current one.

There is a sense of progress in the game, despite the disposable nature of your characters. Whenever you successfully complete a dungeon (which I’ve done exactly once so far), you are rewarded with unlocks in the form of new classes, new races, and new types of dungeons to explore. Stores within the game will also start stocking better items, and different monsters will start showing up.

The game is a turn-based affair, with an almost puzzle-like quality as you decide what order to tackle your opponents in and what parts of the dungeon to explore, and to leave unexplored. That actually brings me to one of the more interesting elements of the game: exploration. The entire dungeon is covered by a fog of war-style darkness that recedes as you progress through it. The interesting thing is that every tile of the dungeon you explore restores some of your health and mana. This leads to an interesting dynamic where you want to explore the dungeon to find monsters you can kill and loot you can pick up, but you want to leave sections of it unexplored dungeon so you can heal and get back mana.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the best part: it’s free. Sort of. You can download the alpha of the game (which is extremely polished and complete, for an alpha) for free, and you’ll always be able to. However, QCFDesign, the people behind Desktop Dungeons, do plan to release this game for pay, on Steam as well as iOS and Android. My suggestion: go download the alpha and give it a whirl. If you like it, buy the game when it comes out (or pay for it now, to help fund the project). That’s my plan, at least.

Well, we got a whopping three entries in the Mass Effect 2 contest. Presumably most of you already own it, or hate fun. Either or.

In any case, I’ve decided that the song lyric that seemed the most apropos to me came from mbeacom, though the Firefly theme was a close second (though ultimately passed up because, well, I kind of expected someone to use it).

Mbeacom, expect a download code for Mass Effect 2 in your email shortly.

This will be my first ever contest on this blog, to my recollection.

I’ve been given a download code for BioWare’s Mass Effect 2 (an excellent game if ever there was one), and though this would normally overjoy me, since I’ve already purchased, played, and finished the game, the code does me little good.

That’s where you come in, good reader. I’m going to be giving this code away to one lucky reader tomorrow, Wednesday the 6th, at 7:30pm, Eastern Standard Time.

If you want the download code, here’s what you have to do:

1. Comment on this post.
2. Include a song lyric that you think is particularly appropriate to this contest and the game being given away.
3. Remember to credit the artist!
4. Do so before 7:30 pm on Wednesday, April 6th, 2011 (Eastern Standard Time).
5. If you’re feeling generous, and you haven’t already, subscribe to the blog!
6. Whichever song lyric strikes me as the funniest, most poignant, most apropos, or whatever other arcane criteria I decide to use, will win.

If you win, I’ll ask for your email address, if I don’t already have it. Once you give it to me, I’ll email you the code.

Disclaimer
It’s entirely possible that this code won’t work for you. As far as I know, it will; however, it might be somehow tied to my EA account, and non-transferable. If that’s the case, you’ll get a public apology on this blog, but not much else. Sorry. I suspect that it will work just fine, though.

Let the competition begin!

Did I get your attention? That’s the trifecta, right? D&D (devil worship, of course), video games (creating the violent youth of tomorrow), and prostitution. Only ‘prostitution’ isn’t what I meant by ‘solicitation’. No, sadly this is just a post where I talk about a few things that I’ve been playing, reading, and/or thinking about lately. To wit:

D&D Essentials
I’ve read the Red Box and played the character creation adventure that comes with it. I liked it. The adventure does a good job of introducing the mechanics of the game and getting your character started, and it comes with virtually everything you need to play, except for maybe some pregenerated characters, or a method of character creation besides playing through the adventure. There’s a full-on adventure in the box that can be played with first-level characters, and with all the other stuff in there, dropping some pregens in makes it a ready-made DM kit for introducing new players to the game. Here’s what I did to solve that problem.

I’ve also started reading through Heroes of the Fallen Lands, which I’m really liking. I like the mechanics of Essentials; they’re streamlined and simple for the new players, but they’re different and interesting for the existing players. What really excites me about the whole thing is that it’s another indication that WotC is not planning on resting on their laurels. They consistently demonstrate that they’re not afraid to mix things up, that they’re not going to do things a certain way just because it’s the way they’ve been doing them up to this point. This willingness to switch things up mid-game is what’s going to keep D&D growing as a game, and will likely keep it from going stale. A side-effect might be that 4th Edition, because it continues to evolve without obsoleting existing mechanics, will likely have a longer life than 3rd Edition did.

Video Games
There are a few video games I’d like to talk about. First, I’d like to highly recommend a little independent title called Delve Deeper. If you like D&D, board games, or dwarves, you owe it to yourself to try this game out; heck, it’s only $5. You can get it on Steam; I believe you can also get it on Xbox Live (though I can’t confirm that, as I don’t own a 360). The game is a turn-based strategy game with a very board-gamey feel, and tons of references to various elements of geek culture. You take control of a band of five dwarves, and you are competing to mine more riches and plunder more relics than the other teams of five dwarves. You can play competitively on the same computer, with up to four players. It’s great fun.

I’ve also been playing Civilization V, and it’s been dominating my gaming time. I’m not going to talk about it at length; if you really want to read about the game, you can do that almost anywhere else on the Internets, I imagine. Suffice it to say that it’s very good, and I’ll likely boot it up as soon as I’m done with this post.

Solicitations
Finally, I’d like to officially state that I am soliciting guest posts at this time. If you have something to say about games and you want a forum to do it on, send me an email (engard at gmail dot com), or post a comment on this thread. If you have something you want to talk about, let me know, and I’ll let you know if I’m interested. There’s not a lot I won’t say yes to, provided that it’s about games and more-or-less meets the standards of this website.

I’ve been playing a lot of different games this week, and I’ve got some stuff coming up; I figured I’d give little capsule reviews of what I’ve been doing, and talk a little about some stuff that’s upcoming. In no particular order:

Dead Space: I’m possibly a bit late to the party on this one, but I picked up Dead Space for a really good price around Christmas and just now got around to playing it. I’m not finished with it yet, but I’m eight hours or so into it and I’m really enjoying it. The atmosphere is suitably creepy, and while it doesn’t really create fear (what video game does, really?), it does succeed in creating an awful lot of tension. The fact that the main character, Isaac Clarke, doesn’t speak is a little bit strange considering how much he gets spoken to, especially when you take into account that there’s a character in the game who is supposed to be personally important to Isaac. The game spins a good yarn, though, and the combat is pretty good.

The Humble Indie Bundle: This is a group of indie PC games, for which you can name any price you want, pay it, and get them all. You can choose how much of your money goes toward the developers, and how much goes toward Child’s Play. There are some worthwhile games in the bundle, and while I haven’t liked all of them, I like enough of them that I’m happy I paid for the bundle. Plus, it’s for charity. Go buy it.

Of the games in the bundle, I’ve played World of Goo, which is excellent (I own this on Wii, too). It’s got a great Tim Burton-esque aesthetic, and even has Danny Elfman-esque music, and the puzzling is very, very good. I’ve played about twenty minutes of Aquaria, and I really like what I’ve played. Simple controls but apparently deep gameplay, and the music and art style are fantastic. Gish is sort of a mixed bag; it’s got a really neat premise and some cool mechanics, but the controls are frequently fiddly and annoying, and I feel that the game gets in its own way a lot. Samorost 2 is a Flash-based adventure game that is visually very charming. The problem is that there are a lot of pixel hunts in the game, and some of the puzzles are a little obtuse. Worse, there are puzzles that you can bring almost to completion over the course of a few minutes, screw up one thing (without realizing that you’re doing anything wrong), and have to do the whole thing again, from the beginning. It is very short, though, so you should at least give it a try. The other two, Lugaru and Penumbra: Overture I have yet to spend any real time with.

D&D Encounters: I got to play in Encounters again, and had a blast. I’ve played two different characters so far, both from the Player’s Handbook 3. First I played a human monk, which was very satisfying. I like the monk class quite a lot; very mobile and capable of some pretty spectacular stuff on the battlefield. Flurry of blows is also one of my favorite striker damage-spikes because of its versatility. The second character I played was a longtooth shifter seeker, which was also a lot of fun. I didn’t do a whole lot of damage (I was using a javelin, meaning that all of my attacks dealt 1d6+4 damage, even encounters and dailies), but I really felt like I was effective at controlling the battlefield, and my daily power made a significant difference in how the encounter played out.

My Home Game: My friend Dean isn’t going to be able to DM his mini-campaign for a while, so the campaign I’m DMing is resuming. I’m very excited to get back into the DM’s seat, and I’ve got some stuff planned. I’ll be updating the wiki as we play, as usual, and I’ll probably post some of the more exciting encounters on this blog, for your own use. Game day is the 23rd, which is only a week away!

So I’ve been playing Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift for the DS lately. It’s a good game with a lot of cool mechanics at work, but I just turned off my DS in the middle of a fight, without saving, in disgust. Why? Healing effects.

Healing effects are great when the PCs have them. They help keep the PCs in the fight, and increase the chances that the PCs will see more of the game, whether you’re talking about a video game or an RPG. But when monsters have access to healing effects, watch out. There’s a very good reason why there aren’t that many monsters in D&D who have access to things like regeneration, or powers that heal themselves and other monsters.

See, in this fight, one of the bad guys was a bishop. Apparently, as a bishop, this guy can cast Cura (a fairly potent healing spell) with alarming regularity. This means that, every couple of rounds, he completely undoes any progress I’ve made toward finishing the fight. When this makes the fight harder in a fun way, that’s fine. The problem is, the only thing it’s succeeding in doing is frustrating me.

If you’re DMing a game of D&D, or any other game that has a similar structure, bear this in mind. It’s okay to give the occasional monster regeneration. It’s even okay to give the occasional monster the ability to heal his allies. These things should be limited, though. If a monster has regeneration, you should make sure that the PCs have some way to counter it. If a monster can heal its allies, you should make sure that it can only do so once or twice in the encounter. If you’re healing your monsters willy-nilly, you’re increasing the length of the fight while simultaneously making it more frustrating and, as a result, less fun.