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Monday, September 29, 2003
Sort of an Age of Mythology Playtest Report (but really more like bragging)
I offered some more thoughts on AoM in the comments on this Slashdot Games link.
We shall bounce off each other and make a sport of it
This is the perfect online multiplayer Flash game, of the sort that I would make if I had all the time in the world. Utterly simple to learn, a good amount of tactical depth, and more cute than you can handle. (Thanks to Eric for the tip.)
Artifacts of even more Ages
Green Ronin has announced a special web enhancement for Artifacts of the Ages, the supplement from the Game Mechanics that brought us magic items which grow with your characters (“I’m just a tiny dagger now, but I’ve been drinking milk…”). In the free download, psionics are brought into the Artifacts equation, by way of the mind scion prestige class and two psionic legendary weapons.
Friday, September 26, 2003
Age of Mythology First Look: how to outsource game development to a small island nation
No, not really. But it’s laughable how similar Eagle’s board game adaptation of Microsoft’s RTS hit is to the much-lauded German game Puerto Rico. It’s a very similar board, similar turn structure in which you choose a role from a (mostly) fixed set and all players (sometimes) then play that role, similar resource production, they even talk about “spoilage” the same way. Given how much people talked about Puerto Rico’s similarity to real-time strategy games when it came out, it just seems a little… strange to me that it and its designer aren’t mentioned here. There aren’t patents or anything to worry about, but still.
That said, it looks like it’ll be a blast to play. I like a lot of the ways Eagle has souped up the Puerto template here. I wouldn’t call them improvements, exactly, just examples of what Puerto could have been like had its designers wanted something different from it. AoM looks like Puerto Rico with car chases, sex scenes and explosions. I happen to like the amount of luck in this game (some of your role cards are drawn from a larger deck instead of a small fixed set, and combat involves dice), and of course, you can make your guys go over and beat on the other guys, which is always a plus in my book.
One of the touches I really like here is that every few rounds of play, you effectively decide, along with your fellow players, how much certain goals will be worth in victory points. I have a feeling this will set up some very entertaining situations when I test it, hopefully this weekend.
(Eagle Games is also shipping a new PC version of War! Age of Imperialism, complete with single-player and online play.)
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
Classic H.G. Wells novel reprinted - with rules
If you’re like me, and therefore have an unhealthy interest in the meta-game of how RPG publishers are licensing their rules and content, you might be tickled by this: Gold Rush Games is doing what has the markings of a series of Action! Classics, the first of which is H.G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds, in its entirety, with new illustrations, and rules material for the D20 and Action! systems. This is, of course, possible because TWotW was published in 1898 and has entered the public domain, which, incidentally, very few things are ever going to do again. (The irony of what that link asks of you is not lost on me, thanks.) This is not only a great extension of the notion of Open Game Content, but a great example of how reusing other people’s works enables innovation and creativity. Just ask Disney… but I don’t want to get all political on you. Gold Rush’s edition of TWotW will also include rules for using giant Martian robots in the Action!-enabled Monster Island combat game from Firefly. [Addendum: how cool would it be if Gold Rush also included as an appendix Wells’ manuscript for Little Wars, in which he literally invented the modern wargame, which is of course the progenitor of RPGs?]
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Other shoe falls: Book of Erotic Fantasy has D20 license revoked
That’s how they announced it - not that they’d decided to go OGL instead of D20, but that their D20 license has been revoked. The product will be published as OGL, in November rather than October. Full press release below.
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Paranoia creator on My Life With Master
Tabletop RPG designer emeritus Greg Costikyan has posted a lengthy, incisive review of alterna-RPGers’ GenCon fave My Life With Master on his (essential) weblog. He notes that he can no longer be sure how innovative this game really is; I’m not that well qualified either but I do see things reminiscent of Sorceror and Puppetland. Costikyan is doing criticism here in the highest sense, and people who want to understand RPGs better should read this without delay. (And check out his commercial speculations!)
Underworld director reveals plans for future
In an interview at SciFi.com, Underworld director and co-author Len Wiseman mentions a sequel and prequel that may come to pass (or at least, they may have before the White Wolf lawsuit; the interview was completed before the suit was filed). Wiseman is quoted as saying “I’m obsessed with seeing this medieval battle between werewolves and vampires in black shiny armor.” So, time to file a suit about Vampire: Dark Ages, then? Wiseman also goes on to describe his next project, Black Chapter: “We pitched it as The Sixth Sense meets La Femme Nikita. We’ve never seen a ghost movie done as a high-energy action movie. We’ve seen ghost movies as suspense and horror and comedy. But imagine if in the Sixth Sense, you saw Bruce Willis pick up a gun and shoot a human being—and the CIA got wind of it.” So, the plan’s to go for Orpheus as well? Or maybe branching out into Delta Green territory?
Monday, September 22, 2003
When news is slow, buy something and start reporting on it: 1999 First Look
How does Cell Entertainment stay in business, despite having pushed all that plastic into the US market and watching it flop? Well, they’re evidently saving a little money on their web hosting. Anyway, their new (at least I’ve never seen it on shelves before) fantasy/sci-fi skirmish game, the perplexingly titled 1999, is interestingly packaged and seems to have fewer user-interface issues than their prior products. They’re standard scale metal figs this time - mine is from the Demonic faction and looks kinda like a Tuskan Raider with a two-handed table saw - packaged in Chainmail-ish boxes with color game cards showing an assembled and painted lead. The cards are pretty key, though; no more rulebooks filled with dense catalogs of tiny, almost-distinguishable pics of gear next to the relevant stats and special rules. Good for Cell!
Now, what about the game?
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Friday, September 19, 2003
George Bush kicks Cthulhu’s ass
” ‘This hypothesis is far from being proven,’ Gallard told Reuters from on board the Hesperides. ‘We use this technique because of its minimal environmental impact…the changes in pressure are very slight.’ ” And yet they are enough to drive men MAD!
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