Describing PC Levels or Weapon with Pluses in-game

 In-game trying to find a way to describe to somebody a weapon or other item with bonuses, or a character level, was always weird. There were not many ways around it. You just meta-described out of game and that was that. At least it's what I did. 

As far as character levels it seemed easier to describe a magic-users. And I don't mean using the dumb names for levels like prestidigitator and charlatan or whatever. I would just have the mages guild use designations for members such as "Ah yes, Peldifferous is a "mage of the 7th circle" or something like that. Spell ability is a good in-world judging gimmick for MU's. For example the Mages Guild in my main city of Tanmoor restricts even the lowest tiers of membership to 4th level or higher (there can be some exceptions for third level, such as a glowing recommendation from a high-level member). Easy enough to test them by having them show proof of appropriate spell ability. I remember having to do this in a Skyrim quest and it was pretty cool.

Of course, some old school classes, such as druids and monks, had some non-spell ability level requirements there probably had to be martial tests for at later levels. 

For most other classes; fighters, thief/rogue or whatever, you had to abstract it a bit. How they perform their craft out in the field or what not. Reputation. 

Mr. Satan is an example of how 
imperfect the system can be.

But for weapons and items that give pluses I no longer sweat it. I've recently started just letting characters understand what the numbers mean. An amulet of Extra AC that is +1 is almost useless. But a +5 one is certainly something you want to count on in a big battle. A shield with such even more. A plus 1 sword is about the same as an exceptionally crafted one, but a +3 is decent magic. It makes a difference.

A character only needs experiment a little to understand its magical quality. "Hey, I think this dagger is +2." 

Any other abilites the item may have is another matter. However its done, identify spell or what not, I don't really like to spend a lot of time on more minor items. If they have some kind of meaning beyond a little help in battle, I spend more time on it. But "hey, it seems like it is maybe a +3 axe" and getting on with the game is usually good enough for my players. And a little metagaming sneaking in never hurt anybody. YMMV.

Cheers

Nintendo Switch and Breath of the Wild part 2

 

Last post I was talking about pushing the button on buying a Nintendo Switch. And like a lot of people a large part of why I got it was to play Zelda: Breath of the Wild, an exclusive to the portable console. 

Is it worth over 400 bucks (including two games and two years of Geek Squad coverage, because there is a good chance you are going to drop the thing at some point) for Zelda alone? Of course not. I imagine there will be times I will want to play it on the road somewhere, or just lazing in bed playing it in travel mode after getting the coffee brewed. 

There is a wealth of games you can get on it. But the two games I got was Breath of the Wild and Cuphead. Cuphead is a simple side scroller that is the kind of thing I think works best on this gimmick. 

Breath is another story altogether. It's a huge open world. Lush and vibrant. Well, it's not as bright and colorful as something like Elder Scrolls Online. It's a very little bit washed out in appearance. Almost kind of like the type of cell shading animation in the Borderlands games. But there is a lot to see, up close and on the horizon. A big screen TV helps with the experience. It's a massive open world, and at times kind of empty. Lonely, in a good way. You really want to take it all in, and that is hard on a small screen. When combat gets hectic, or you are working big moving puzzles in the shrines, it just feels kind of tight on the small screen. I think games like Skyrim are available, so this will be a common decision. Should I play this in handheld mode or save it for the TV?

Still, there is plenty that works on the console screen. Resource collecting in an area with uncomplicated enemy types is fine. So lazing in bed on the weekend with the small screen might require a bit of timing. But it would only be a few minutes before something epic is going on and you'll want to be in front of the TV. 

One of the things that really tickles me is all the nods to old Zeldas. I only ever played the original Zelda game (not just in the dark past but there is a copy on my old Wii). But most of the monster types, and sound cues, harken right back to the old days. But of course updated. Such as the Zora. In old Zelda they were basically big ugly demon fish heads that came up out of the water to spit a rock at you. But here they are dolphin people. And they are strangely attractive in some ways (maybe just in my sick mind). At one point they will give you dolphin armor that lets you zip up tall waterfalls. It won't help you from drowning during swimming moments. 

So, Link in this game awakes from a 100-year slumber to find himself on a big plateau area. Naked and unarmed, he soon finds at least a shirt and pants, and very early on in this game you will be using branches to fight monsters with. 

The Great Plateau from afar

Unable to leave the plateau, even though at points you will see the vast lands below, you wander around getting your adventure legs going. You spend several hours exploring the area. Turns out its the games brilliant way of getting you to practice all the skills you will rely heavily on later. Weapons, combat, running, climbing, foraging, using cooking fires, etc. And this is where you first learn of the shrines. 

The shrines are one of the most important locations in the game. There is no grinding for XP in this. Instead, Hearts (health/HP) and Stamina are mostly gained through completing shrines. There are around 120 scattered around the lands, and often you can be alerted to one being nearby by the Slate you get early iun the game. It's basically an iPhone that has various functions, including shrine detection. 

Once in a shrine, you will usually have to face some challenge, either an elaborate puzzle, or a fight with mechanical guardians of various power levels. Finish the shrine and you will be awarded a Spirit orb. Get 4 of these and you can gain a heart or a stamina.

It turns out stamina is about as important as hearts. You use stamina to run, swim, and climb. And you will climb A LOT in this game. Cliffs and mountain areas are abundant, and some areas will not be accessible until you have gotten enough stamina to climb them. Items, such as a climb-bonus head rag will assist. 

Towers also have an importance. There are several big land areas, each with a tower more or less centrally located within it. There are times you can look around and see up to 3 or 4 towers in the distance. They are very tall. And much like the shrines, they glow at night, so they are easy to see.  In order to reveal a land area on your map, you need to climb one of these towers. Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes there are guards or other things to hinder you. It always feels like an accomplishment to get to the top of one of these. 

One of the most outstanding items in the game is the Glider. You will get this from an old hermit a few short hours into the game on the plateau, and it's how you can finally leave that area. 

It's an amzaing experience to use it, and it becomes part of your character. You will be gliding all over the place. You can fly off a tower and soar over the land or get to a high mountain top to sail over to another peak. It has its limits though. It uses stamina, so you need to look for a landing area before too long. 

I won't get into spoiler territory, but there is a story behind all this, and a main quest. But I'm pretty much still in land exploring mode. After some two dozen hours into this, I'm nowhere near powerful enough to take on main quest challenges. 

So, off the top of my head here are things I love and hate about the game.

Love

The huge open world. It is fairly sparsely populated. There are villages scattered around the lands, where you can see a merchant or lodge a horse. But most of the land is unpopulated, other than monsters. Hills, meadows, woods, lakes, gulley's. But there are always resources to gather. Fruits, vegetables, wild game. Dozens of ingredients you can combine in a cooking fire to make a variety of restorative meals, often with special protections. The higher mountains are cold and you can freeze to death prior to gaining resistant clothing. But combing peppers with other foods can give you limited resistance. Cooking and discovering new meals are one of the simple joys of the game. Can make you hungry too. I'm usually already doing something while gaming that gives me the munchies but cooking up a hearty meal with things like crab, apple, acorns, and bananas can make you head for the kitchen real fast. 

Hunting for shrines. A new shrine is never too far. Sometimes they are hidden behind a hill or on a mountain side, and seeking them out, maybe using your glider, is a total joy. 

The combat. Simple and intuitive. Once you get to the point you can take on multiple foes' things get really good. 

Day and night cycles. Days and nights pass quickly, maybe in about 10 minutes of real time. But they are distinct from each other. At night you can see less in the distance, but things like Shrines and Towers are lit up like Xmas trees. And at night there are more dangers. Things like Skeletons pop out to attack fairly often. If you don't want to waste valuable resources on that, you will try to find a village to lodge in, or to use a fire, to pass the time instantly to early morning. Every few nights this even called Blood Moon happens. It darts across the sky like a red eyeball, and in its wake all the monsters you have cleared out from places will return. Another nice touch, and something to be fearful of. 

Powers. Early on in the game you will gain powers from your Slate to help you in various situations. You can use magnetism to bring a chest to you or make ice blocks on top of water to help you cross a river. And the bomb power is just so useful. From scattering enemies to revealing a hidden area behind rocks. It's just plain funso to blow shit up. Especially because those damn Bokoblins (a Zelda staple since the first game) like to store up barrels of explosives in their lairs. Even without the bomb a well places fire arrow will set them off. 

Korok Seeds. Every now and again when you pick up a stone or explore a secluded mountain top, a little Seed creature will pop out of nowhere and give you a Seed. These can be traded in for more inventory space. This really adds another element to the exploring. After a while you will explore a secluded mountain peak or tall treetop because you feel it's a good place for a seed creature to hide. 

I very truly love the open-ended nature of everything in this game. A true and fully realized sandbox. After the Plateau (and even during it) you are free to go in any direction. There are hints at first, but you are not at all required to explore any areas in any order. You find you own way. And your Slate powers can come in handy to perform a myriad of tasks. 5 years in and I understand people are still finding new ways to overcome challenges and exploration methods. 

Hate

Swimming. Early on you find that you do not have enough stamina to be in the water for more than a few seconds before you die. At first, I thought I was allergic to water or it was acid or something. Later when you build up your stamina it gets better, but at first, it's ridiculous. Even having gained more stamina a few times, I still drown it less than a minute in water. 

Weapons breaking. You find weapons very often, even if it's just a branch or something. But all weapons are fragile as hell. They break constantly. Even magical seeming ones are good for around 5 hits. So, your weapon inventory will be constantly changing. You get sort of used to it, but I can't help feeling like everything is made of bronze or something. 

The rain. All the fucking rain. It seems to rain about 60% of the time in this world. It adds a great atmosphere, but it really sucks when you are climbing. Rain makes you slip and slide down mountains and boulders. When its not raining you know it will be in a couple minutes. At the worst times, like you are high up on a cliff and a storm comes through and down you tumble. Its more annoying than challenging. You may find yourself on a ledge somewhere waiting 10 minutes in real time for the sun to come out. 

There is a sequel coming out, and though I may be a year away from finishing this one, I hope they tighten up some of these annoyances. But despite them, I am fully all in on this. It can be a really relaxing experience, outside of those crazy combat moments. It for sure is going to remain in my top ten all-time favorites for a long time.

Cheers

Elder Scrolls games and Elder Scrolls Online - part 2

 

In my last post I described how I was on the search a few months ago for an online multiplayer game to enjoy with my friend "T", from back in my hometown, on our XBOX's. That search had lead me to broach the possibility of delving into Elder Scrolls Online, an MMO I was only marginally aware of. I have a history with several Elder Scrolls games, and T loved Skyrim. Like, LOVED. I liked it as well, despite not having anywhere near the crunchy character development stuff and depth of the previous titles. But making an Elder Scrolls game more accessible to less hard core gamers lead to Skyrim's popularity while maintaining most of the things true fans loved about the games. 

So we bought the download and on the following weekend dove in. We both independently created out characters and they both turned out to be Dragon Knights. Great fighters who eventually breath fire and stuff. Both were female. Mine a Redguard, hers a Nord. The Nord is tall. My Redguard is a good bit shorter though I thought I had made her tall. But I think T went with max height. Like 6'5" or something. 

I was going for a nice tanned Rachel Welch look, and I think I captured it to some degree. She's dotted with tribal temporary tattoos (the fact that they have a drippy look gives the impression she paints the dots and lines on her body every morning). Meanwhile the Nord is pale as a ghost. I jokingly called them "Salt and Pepper" when we first started, but in the long run we started referring to them as the "Fire Sisters." 

The Fire Sisters fish. A lot. 

We both had created out characters and played them solo for a couple hours or so before we actually played together. So just like every Elder Scrolls game, ever, you start in some slave/captive scenario, escape it, and end up before a city official. And just like that you are turned out onto the streets in your ratty slave garb and sandals to start your life in this weirdo land of ugly elves. 

And that was my first impression. The mushroomy, pandora-ish flaura and fauna of Morrowind. You see, the original ES Morrowind was my first experience with Elder Scrolls. And the land is still weird, the elves still sort of beat-up looking. I played Oblivion second and Skyrim third, and after those pretty normal fantasy lands Morrowind once again is striking. After many hours of play its still unique. You almost never get used to it. And its more beautiful at this graphics level. In old Morrowind everything seemed so dark and muddy.

Impression numero two. The cantons. This cool multi pyramid city were like run down old tenements in the original Morrowind.  And off the beaten path you start the game on. Here they are a thousand years younger, and part of them still actually under construction. And you spend a TON of time there. 

Impression three. The other players characters. Oh my god. And I thought the people watching in major Las Vegas casinos was amazing. But the main gathering places such as Vivic City, are crawling with them. Especially on a Saturday night. They are visiting the bank, the Argonian shop, the crafting tables, and often just milling around. 

You will end up doing a lot of repetitive stuff, though there is a lot of it to do so variety abounds. Want to level up blacksmithing? Do as much of that as you can. Want to be a master tailor? Get to using the clothing crafting table. And get yourself out into the world for the materials needed for all this fun.

And did I mention fishing? We do a lot of fishing.

So that is how you spend your early levels. Going out to search the land for various materials to harvest and mine. Fighting the monsters lurking in such areas. And of course stumbling across the earliest quests. The game does a pretty good job of levelling with you, and as you go from 1st to 6th or 7th not only do you evolve in all you do, but the world around you does as well. Chests and Runestones to get resources from start showing up. More monsters and tougher ones. You can really feel that change, in what seems like a natural way. And of course as in any ES game, you collect the quests. Better start doing them! Deliver this message, find this person, fight those bandits, locate that Skooma stash. 

 Quest quest quest. Mine mine mine. Craft craft craft. That is a lot of your life in Morrowind. Lots of hours. Its all good fun, though the questing is what I'm about. You see, I didn't craft much in the other games. None at all in Morrowind. In Oblivion maybe a little. It wasn't until Skyrim I embraced it, at least the blacksmithing. There is some importance to it, thought just like the older games I think you can play the game fine without ever raising your crafting past half a dozen points. Its just that there is experience for doing it so I devote some game time to it. Its all fairly repetitive so far (have yet to learn a lot of crafting items in different racial styles). But like a lot of little activities in the game you do get that small tinge of satisfaction at completing these crafting mini-quests. Watching those abilities slowly level up. 

But T has gone coo coo for Cocoa Puffs for the crafting. For all of it. She's all in. She spends as much time as she can. That was the thing that blew me away the most. Its the "unexpected" thing I mentioned at the end of my last post. She is devoted to it. Well, maybe devote is too strong, since she has sworn to god she will never pay for the subscription. At something like 15 bucks a month I can understand. Who needs another monthly subscription money hit. 

She plays so much, she started another main character. We play "The Fire Sisters" together on the weekend. But in order to maintain a similar character level with our Dragon Girls she started another guy to solo with during allllllllll those hours playing during the week (weekends). The Sisters are around level 29. Her other dude is 40th, and has moved on from the main island Morrowind to Daggerfell and other outer areas in the expansion. Always a bunch of steps ahead. 

And here's the real kicker. All your personal characters you create share the same bank account and storage boxes. That means that a high level character can find greater stuff and leave it in storage for one of the lower level characters to be stronger from stuff they didn't even find themselves. And there are other cheats/hacks for this character item-share. You can create one or two extra characters you won't really play. Just exist in their own reality in the city from the other characters of this player, and act as item storage by dipping into the shared bank etc to take less needed items to leave room for the main characters. You just switch to that character, do your banking and stocking, and shift back to a main character who gets to enjoy that extra space. And let me tell you; without a subscription your space is very limited and you are always trying to shift things around to make room. Selling at the shop helps with this. 

 I have other games I like to play so I will never catch up in ESO.  Jedi Fallen Order (it came with my XBOX), Mad Max (kind of a hard game in spots, but a cool sort of fantasy version of Max), GTA 5, and a couple oldies like Dead Rising (nabbed it free in the XBOX store) take up some of my solo Mio Time. Playing with another person online is kind of a secondary thing to enjoy for me as far as my video games go. I still love my alone time with my precious consoles. 

And so for my solo time in ESO of course there is my Khajiit, "Zebra". A cool albino catman with dreadlocks and zebra stripes  (I sort of imagined his people evolved alongside zebra herds they preyed on). 

Zebra Kahn putting on a little performance.

 Zebra is currently around 17th level. And that has been a lot of work. I don't play him more than an hour or so here and there. I do a lot of levelling up activities with him. But I have to be honest, I kind of get bored after an hour or so. I really do like the two player experience more in this version of Elder Scrolls. It's way less about solo immersion, though its clearly a way to to go. Though you see a lot of solo characters running around, like most MMO's its designed so you need the multiplayer to experience everything it has to offer.  One thing for sure is that I learn things better on my own though; taking my time to sample the world and experience it when I'm alone in it.  Playing with somebody who knows it so much more means you are getting your hand held a lot so as to not slow things down. So I do need to spend more time alone in the that world. 

So anyway the Fire Sisters go out questing and just wandering and grinding, but also like to spend time in town stripping off our armor and playing music and taking turns dancing. Sometimes other characters join in from time to time, and it can be hilarious.

And other player characters are fun to just watch. Mostly very high level (800+ is common), they have had the experiences and gained the skills and items to look amazing. The variety is out of this world. Sometimes I just just sit back, play the flute, and watch the world go by in front of me. All the other characters going about their business, and sometimes taking a few seconds to check out the two Dragon Knights doing suggestive dances. Yeah, everything is so beautiful to look at. So much more so than cartoony Warcraft. 

Can you wait in line at the bank in Warcraft? Not as far as I know.

And we have slowly gotten some experience doing instanced dungeons with other players. Some you just encounter in a public dungeon, or if you have the right item that lets you get in a que for a special dungeon to wait for a couple of other players to que up, and when the number is there (usually 4 players total) you all meet in the dungeon and grind it and fight the boss together. 

They have done a great job with this game. There is so much. But of course things are left out I miss. I remember just sitting around in the woods in the original Morrowind, or on the porch of my house in Balmora, watching the moon and the stars move above the spotty clouds. You see, in those original games there was a fictional heavens and constellations that meant something, and moved in life like cosmic patterns. It was so cool. But it does not seem to exist like that in ESO. Also as was the pattern started by Skyrim, character development upon creation, deep astrological stuff etc, was softened up for more mass appeal in the general game play. Goodbye character gen crunch. 

Other things are minor. You cannot collect books, and the ones you  read don't often do anything for you. You also cannot dive underwater. But its an MMO, and a lot of things just are hard to replicate from what is available from a solo game. But man, do they do a great job with this. All this gameplay, so far, for just around 20 bucks. But they do try to temp you at all times with greater possibilities if you are willing to open that wallet. 

So we plug away. Me for my maybe 4 or 5 hours a week, T with her 15-20 (or more?). ESO has really been a game changer even for me. And after a couple beers or cocktails the role play comes easy for me. Yes, even this. No, we don't talk over the headphones in character (sometimes semi-in character), but I differentiate my Dragon Knight and My Khajiit Nightblade in terms of what they do. My Redguard is tough and abrasive, but also fairly noble of character. Nightblades are kind of assassins so yeah I'm a stone cold killer with Zebra. Doesn't matter in the long run though. If you steal, trespass, or even kill somebody you just have to go on the lam for a half hour or so till the bounty on your head goes away. I like to hang out in secluded beach areas fishing and looking for chests while I wait till I'm legal again. 

Along with other things mentioned in the last few posts, ESO is part of a parcel of things that are making up for my lessening interest in running tabletop RPG games like D&D right now, in person or online on Roll20. This game, Talisman online, and my beloved handful of boardgames are taking up my play-with-others time. In person or on tha' internets. 

Elder Scrolls games and Elder Scrolls Online - part 1

 

I'm usually about 5-7 years behind on video games and consoles. I guess that makes me not an avid gamer, but I never put more than an 2-4 hours of play into a video game a week. OK, there were exceptions. The oldest being Super Mario Bros 3. In the late 80's when I was in my first decent job (clerking in the MGM/UA studios legal department) I truly fell in love with what home video gaming could offer. I would come home and play it for a couple of hours every night. On the weekend it took up a ton of my time, that was only slowed down by me discovering my life time love of Renaissance Faire. 

"itsa me! Flying Squirrel Mario!"

A lot of my weekends were suddenly full during the year, but I played it fairly often for a couple of years. One of my older brothers, no longer living at home then, would come over to play it when he knew I wasn't around. I would come home occasionally on a lunchbreak to play (my drive to the house from Culver City was at least 15 minutes, but it was worth it for a half hour extra play) and he'd be there on it. I'd go out to the big den on a Saturday morning to play and he'd be there. At one point I just took the small connector cable and said it was broken. He immediately bought his own Nintendo. But that is the power of a great game like SMB 3 that you love. My brother coveted it and I became like Gollum with the ring of power. 

my precious

But there were also Silent Hill games, Castlevania games, Final Fantasy 7 (the first game I actually logged my hours...I put just under 100 hours into that one), Fallout 3, Knights of The Old Republic (one of very few games I actually played more than once all the way through...a total of 4 times). 

I love you, Bastila Shan. Especially in the dark side ending...

And then there were the Elder Scrolls games. Whoa. I discovered Morrowind at least a year or two after it came out. What a game. A new level. The type of play that had become famous for "see that mountain in the distance? Walk to it through lakes and forests and find a dungeon on it to delve into" swept me off my feet. In many ways I was overwhelmed. There was just too much to unpack. Just deciding on all your characters ability scores, aspects, and astrological signs could take a couple hours. So many quests. There was so much to do and I was so often blown away by everything I didn't even try blacksmithing and other crafting. My eventual home in Balmora was strewn with hundreds of alchemy and enchanting ingredients. I didn't know what to do with them, but I'd be damned if I was going to throw them away. I even loved the massive glitches. They were never game breaking. But you would come across a town you had visited before and all the people in it were now suddenly floating up in the sky. Another town suddenly was full of water like a great flood had happened, and the townspeople were swimming about their business instead of walking around. I always looked on such as huge curses or something from a mage. It was part of the fun. 

Oblivion was my next step up, and another level. Instead of ignoring the main quest like I usually do for a good while as I went about step and fetch quests, I dove right into trying to close all the Oblivion gates that were popping up all over. 

Again and again going through that portal and into that fiery realm of hell to fight the demons and get the Mcguffin. I was really playing it like a true role playing game. I would do things as I perceived my character would. My Redguard went to the amazing Imperial City, and worked his way up the gladiator ranks (I spent hours just betting and watching other matches from the stands before deciding on a gladiator career). The grand champion had to be killed in order for me to become champ, but I liked him (I helped the orcish champ with vampire trouble his family home was having) so I gave up on my championship dreams.  

Imperial City

Then of course came Skyrim. An amazing entry into the series. It was dumbed down and lost a ton of the character creation possibilities and depth of play, but the trade off was a beautiful looking setting with epic things to do, including the dragon related main quest. Again, I was a bit late to this game by a year or two, but when I started I was hooked. Another wonderful living world. I created a nord character and got him looking very much like Sean Bean. Fitting, as I had become a Game of Thrones fan by then. Skyrim was hella GoT in flavor. And by now I had started experimenting more with blacksmithing and other crafting. 

Around a year or so ago my friend "T" from my home town and long time player in my tabletop before I moved had gotten the gift of gaming head phones, and suggested to me that we start doing a little multiplayer online on weekends. Smashing idea! I had been playing my old XBOX 360 forever, and this was a good excuse to trade up to the latest. And the virus was just getting out of control so this seemed like a good time for it (even though since I now worked in health care I still had a job). T is a bit of a Hollywood socialite (former actress) and is usually out at big parties on weekends, but now she was stuck in like a lot of people. So I ordered a pair of gaming head phones from Amazon, picked up my new nifty XBOX at Best Buy curbside, and it was a go. 

So the search was on for a game I knew we could both like to play. My choice ended up being an indie game called Necropolis. It had a great, goth cartoony look I liked, and the play was based off the Dark Souls engine I think. It was only 6 bucks or so, so it wasn't a big gamble or anything. 

 It was fun, with your alien fighter or assassin slashing and bashing their way through a terrifying alien mega dungeon full of undead. 

A world so alien people don't even have feet

But in the end it was a frustrating experience. Not the game play, though there were glitches here and there. Often you might find yourself falling through the floor and plummeting down through the levels to your death, or get perma stuck on a ladder. But the killer was just trying to get together in multi player. It was hard as hell. It would often take up 20 minutes to log in together. And you more often than not did not restart with your gear from the last save. After a few weeks, with hat in hand I told T I was done with it. It was a waste of time if you could barely even get the game going. 

So the search for a new game was on. T wasn't really into looking at the games in the XBOX online store, so it was really on me. And I had to pick something good that would not be a controller throwing experience like Necropolis ended up being. So I looked at the reviews, and even games that looked amazing had lots of bad reviews, especially about the multiplayer experience. But then it struck me.

I had known about Elder Scrolls Online since it had come out. Years ago. But never heard much about it. World of Warcraft was the 800 lb. gorilla in the room. They even made a movie about it. But hey, T was a big Skyrim fan. I was an Elder Scrolls fan in general. So that simple math added up. Was an MMO the way to go?

My doubts were many. This was a higher level of multiplayer. What if one of us had internet that wasn't strong enough? Though T runs an office, she can be a bit of a non-techie. Would this require a lot just to get up and running? Plus games like this tried to constantly sell you on expansions. How intrusive would that be? Also in an MMO you had to play with people you didn't know. Not sure T would appreciate dumbshit, horny 14 year olds doing what they do in games. This might have been especially problematic in the MMO I was considering besides ESO. I loved stuff I saw of the game play of a game called Sea of Thieves, where you and friends pilot ships around various islands looking for treasure and chickens or whatever. But this game was automatically player v. player. Beginners usually end up being attacked by pirate gangs who kill you and sink your ship. No, this game was out. 

Female characters are a thing on
the seas (80% run by 13 year old boys)

As a fan of Red Dead Redemption I also considered Red Dead Online. But I knew T would probably prefer something with magic and spell casing. 

Is a boomstick magic?

So I went ahead and pitched T on Elder Scrolls Online. The basic game (that currently comes with the Morrowind expansion) was only around 20 bucks. She was intrigued. We decided to give it a shot, download it, and play it the following weekend. 

My worries remained till then. Also, I thought that there was not way they could have anywhere near the deep experience of the solo releases I had come to know and love. 

What happened next was totally unexpected.

to be continued...

Gygax Memorial - Raiding pocketbooks of the Faithful?

Only recently found out they are trying to get it together to get a memorial built representing Gygax and D&D. Although it seems to be more about Gary himself, I guess it is going to be a dragon with an inscription (yawn). I can see the children in the park now “Oh mommy, look! Skyrim!”

So there is this website you can go to for the information on this. Also, I understand the widow of Gary, Gail Gygax, shows up on convention floors with a money jar looking for contributions to this project. I can understand her wanting something like a memorial to Gary’s works, but the cash jar strikes me as kind of sad. I can’t say if Gail was left a hefty estate when Gary passed. It’s not like Gary produced a bunch of films or something. Royalties from the old D&D cartoon, and his books, can’t really be supporting a South Fork Ranch type lifestyle, could they? But anyway, the very wife of the man roaming game rooms looking for fivers from gamers just seems kind of cruddy. Are things that bad?

See, I think the memorial will be in part an ad for the current producers of D&D and their product whether they mean it to or not (plus the new reprints being sold by WOTC are tied in with this). Why is that bad? Well, I think the makers of the game, with their storied history and all, pretty much abandoned their own fanbase. That is what a lot of the voices of the OSR are about. There are a lot of older folk who stuck with the product throughout it’s various incarnations. I'm thinking the people who are the most passionate about this are the people who supported the game and it's companies, decade in and decade out, both monetarily and by bringing new people into it. I feel these are the people who have a right to ask that their voices be heard. It's a niche hobby where people come and go, but many seemed to have been buying the product for a good part of their lives. The product no longer seems to represent the game people have loved. I mean, even modern players of 3rd edition were gob smacked by 4th edition, which was just a head scratching departure from 3rd much in the way 3rd was from older editions. They don’t just want entirely new task resolution – they want support for the game they love. Many supported 3rd despite it’s differences from the old. They had faith in the company and the game, and then the company once again changed the entire game on them. You can see how the faithful would take issue with them.
Me? I'm not one of the faithful. I don't give a rats ass. I haven't bought a new TSR product brand new off the shelves of the local game jobber since around 1987. Despite ol' Gaz telling me since the earliest days of D&D that the "other" product out there was inferior and should be avoided, I started giving my money to other companies product that interested me. Hero Systems and Chaosium seemed to reward their fans by giving them what they wanted - for hearing their voices and actually having an understanding of their fanbase. I still play 1st edition, using my tore up old books. And I have props for Gary. But as far as I'm concearned I'd have more interest in Sandy Peterson or Greg Stafford getting a statue when they pass. They represented a company and product that DELIVERED.

Actually, no knock at Gary by any means, but if a memorial was going to in part represent the D&D that I play, then that memorial would be for Dave Arneson. He most represents the game I love, even though when I was young I had no idea of his contribution. When I was a little kid eagerly buying the first Blackmoor book, I had no idea who the man was or what he meant. Gary was the face of the game. I didn’t know there was this heart and soul named “Dave Arneson.”

Hey, skip the dragon and make it statues of both Gary and Dave doing a fist bump and I’ll crack open my dusty wallet in a heartbeat. But you can keep your 120 dollar memorial set, WOTC. My tore-ass old books are still workable for my games.

R.I.P. - ADAM ADAMOWITZ OF FALLOUT 3

What with my love of post apocalypse settings, including game ones such as Gamma World and Metamorphosis Alpha, I had meant to post about my Fallout 3 experiences for a long time. I’m sad that the passing of the concept designer for the game, Adam Adamowitz, has been the catalyst.

I love this game, and am still playing it after several months. My character, Mac, left the safety and comfort (well, except for the occasional Radroach) of Vault 101 to search for his father (voiced by Liam Neeson), and has spent his countless hours in the wasteland exploring, helping people, and building up good karma. His rewards for his being good instead of evil have been many, including a spiffy shanty house in the town of Megaton that he long ago saved from the eventual explosion of the atom bomb worshipped in the town square. Mac continues to adventure, and with my purchase of the add-on Broken Steel hopes to soon bring pure, radiation-free water to the Capitol Wasteland through completing Project Purity.

Adam also worked on the current huge hit, Skyrim.

I did not know much about Adam, but I know I loved his work. He had everything to do with that world, from the raggedy human survivors, to the terrifying super-mutants. This weekend, I’m to play a couple extra hours for Adam.