Preview: "Dr. Who RPG" and "Starblazer Adventures" RPG from Cubicle 7 Entertianment
While wandering around the GenCon 2008 exhibit hall, one booth caught my eye: Cubicle 7 Entertainment, which had signs all over the booth advertising the upcoming Dr. Who RPG. I’m a huge fan of the new Dr. Who series, so I had to stop and ask about it. (I also remembered playing in a Dr. Who one-shot years ago at a convention run by DarthCthulhu that I really enjoyed.)
Anyway, I asked about the new Dr. Who RPG at the booth, and while it’s not yet available, they were running occasional demos and were able to describe in broad strokes what the game will be like. The idea is to allow any kind of game that you want to run, all under the same rules. While you can do the classic Doctor and companions, you can also have a group of companions, multiple Timelords, or a Timelord, Companion, and Tin Dog. All combination will be possible and balanced within the rules, through use of a FATE points system. [Read the rest of this article]
Critical Hits Podcast #9: Actual Play with James Wyatt
During GenCon 2008, Bartoneus, ChattyDM, GamingSteve, and myself had the privilege to be in a D&D session run by James Wyatt, author of the DMG (who we interviewed later on in the con- this is the game we referenced at the beginning of the interview.)
It was a straightforward dungeon delve, with Wyatt starting the game by asking us questions to let us shape our quest. Of course, being bloggers, we didn’t exactly take everything seriously. At the beginning of the game, we told him that we would easily be as funny as the Penny Arcade guys.
We managed to record the first encounter, plus some of the second. After the recorder died, we took out the hobgoblins, but then were defeated by the hag in the room. What followed was an awesome impromptu skill challenge, negotiating with the hag to save our miserable lives. And just when we had reached an agreement… we had to go. But still, the whole thing was a blast, and I hope by listening to the recording that you are able to experience part of what it’s like to play with a celebrity DM.
Critical Hits Podcast #9 (40 MB, approximiately an hour and a half long)
Memorable Death/Moments in Comics…
… done with Peeps and Bunnies.
Strange and quite clever.
My favorite after the cut. [Read the rest of this article]
Chatty's Bedtime Campaign: Bend it like Nico!
Oh yeah, he was expecting it tonight. As soon as teeth were brushed and pyjamas were worn (i.e. an old T-shirt of mine… Enjoy every second of the time when your kids hero worship you, it won’t last), my little 6 year old Laser Knight was ready to continue his adventures.
Chatty: Okay so you blasted the forest away, gave all the wood to the Lumberjacks, built the animals and birds a big farm and were made a local hero.
Nico: That’s right! Now ask me some questions again daddy!
Okay, so you have a cleared up Forest of stumps, a Village and a Mountainside filled with Caves, what do you explore?
Hmmm. Let’s go look in the forest!
Chapter 3: The Forest Friend!
Okay, well as you search the stumps, you notice a pair of tracks made by round little feet…. between those tracks you also see a furrow in the ground, like if someone/something was dragged behind (Chatty: Narrative steering attempt).
Ohhh, that must be Sandshrew! He has a tail and that furrow must be his tail! (Chatty: Nico 1, Narrative Steering 0). I follow the tracks!
Wow, you’re good! As you progress deeper in the forest of stumps, you notice something yellow, hiding and trembling behind a large stump. It’s Sandshrew, he seems scared of you.
“Don’t be scared, I’m a friend!”
“If your a friend, why did you destroy the whole forest?”‘
“I did it so I could see who was stealing my dad!”
“Ahhh, good reason then… are you Nico the Knight-Prince?”
“I am! My daddy was stolen by Polywrath”
“Oh, that bad Monster, I bet he told you that I knew where he was huh?”
“He did, he left a message!”
“Well then I can help you get there before the end of the day for sure, but first I need your help. During the storm, my favorite yellow ball was blown away into the village. I’m too scared of Humans to go and get it back. Can you do it for me please?”
“Of course!”
Chapter 4: Who broke wind?
I go talk to the lumberjacks daddy! (Man, I want this little man in my campaign now! He actually cares about NPCs!)
Okay, well they tell you that they didn’t see the ball. You should go talk to thier children who play all day long in the village square.
What’s a village square?
It’s like a big park in the middle of a village, usually between a church and a market.
Ahhh okay! I go there then.
As you come up the square, you see a large group of children play with a big yellow ball. They seem to be having a lot of fun!
I go talk to them, ask them if the ball fell from the sky?
They tell you that it did fall from the sky earlier today during a scary storm and that it was the bestest ball ever!
“Maybe it belongs to someone else that misses it?”
“That may be so, but we’re having so much fun with it”
“I’d really like to take it back to it’s owner”
As Nico says this, a large kid, a bit like Billy in Toy Story, comes to him and says “you want this ball? How about we play for it?”
Hmm, okay?
This boy’s name is Biff, he’s the strongest kid in the village. While others are a bit afraid of him, he’s not all that bad. He proposes that you both kick the ball real hard and whoever kicks it the farthest keeps the ball, do you agree?
Yes!
Okay, well Biff goes first and kicks it from one side of the square up to the other side, right up to the church’s steps. All the kids cheer real loud and Biff looks satisfied. Your turn.
Okay. Hmmm. I don’t know if I should use my armour’s power to create wind to push the ball further or just use me? (He phrased it like that in French, it’s grammatically incorrect but oh so ‘right’)
Well it depends, do you feel like you are stronger than Biff?
No I’m not, I’ll use my wind powers then.
Well then, you kick the ball really far and it goes across the square, over the church, past the street, over a home and into the pool of someone! All kids break out in a huge cheer! The ball is yours.
Yay! I go pick up the ball and return it to Sandshrew.
Okay, Sandshrew is real happy and is ready to tell you where Polywrath’s cave is. He tells you that you have to count your Age up and your Age right to know which Cave entrance to use…
Huh?
The caves are arranged like an apartment building, the caves are arranged in a Grid…
Ah so I count up for 6 and then toward the right for 6?
That’s it! You’re smart! You see a ladder going up to that cave.
I climb it.
A sign says: Welcome to Polywrath’s Super Secret Cave.
Yay!
All right Nico time for bed!
Daaaaaaaad!
All right all right. One more scene.
Chapter 5: The Not so Unfriendly Cave
You enter the Cave and see a smaller, less scary version of Polywrath.
Oh! That must be a Polywag, he’s an unevolved version of Polywrath!
Is he now? Cool! Well Polywag can’t let you pass because he’s a guard and he tells you that you must have your daddy’s crown to go in!
Do I have the crown on me daddy?
Hmmm, I don’t think so, you told me you took your armour and sword only when you left (Ohhh! Chatty pulls an Evil GM on his own son! That’s cold!)
Oh yeah, I remember. Well then I give him one of my spare sword diamonds! That one can blast light beams that blind people and can stun them for a long time!
Post Game aside: After the story, Nico explained to me that his diamonds have limited ammo and that he carries a lot of them to recharge/replace them when they run out.
Polliwag says “You’re giving me this gift? For real?”
“Of course!”
“Wow! That’s so nice of you… you can come in, I’ll go play with my diamond now! If you ever need help, just call me!”
Yay!
We’re done for the night Nico, good night.
Good Night Daddy. Are you going to tell your Internet friends about this story?
Do you want me too?
Yes! I hope they like it too.
I’m sure they will.
Good Night.
Credits: Nicolas Menard (Story), Nintendo (Image)
One-Sentence NPC contest winners
Way back in late June, Johnn Four and I launched a big contest to get readers from both sites to submit one sentence long NPC descriptions. Summer vacations and Gen Con interfered and the results have been long coming.
Well, I’m back and tonight’s post will be to announce the winners and prizes for the readers of Musings of the ChattyDM (all winners were determined by random draw). There were more than 700 entries!
So without any further ado, here be winners:
The_Gun_Nut: A Senior Patron Open Design account
greywulf: Pathfinder #9: Escape from Old Korvosa
Felonius: Pathfinder #7: Edge of Anarchy
Zelgar: Kobold Quarterly #4
Ben Overmyer: Kobold Quarterly #4
Kavonde: Hero Lab 2.0
Milarky: GM Gems book
Kaeltik: GM Gems book
Dave T. Game: 1 on 1 Adventures #9: Legacy of Darkness
Dadamh: 1 on 1 Adventures #10: Vengeance of Olindor
Congratulations to all! We’ll contact you through email to send you your prize.
As soon as Johnn and I meet again online, we’ll put up the combined entries PDF here and on his website. Thank you for your patience.
Speaking of contest, Gnome Stew is running one just now with one of the most original prizes I have ever heard of! You get to win your choice of professionally recorded Sound Effect/scenes for your games!
Register on their masterfully written blog and leave one comment on this post and you’re in!
All right, I’m off, have a nice weekend all.
The Defense of Laser Clerics and Infinite Wizards
We take a short break from our GenCon writeups to bring you some commentary…
ChattyDM likes laser clerics. Tommi does not.
There’s one unaddressed tangent to the issue that I really like in relation to 4e.
In previous editions, magic was a limited resource, and it was restricted. Wizards memorized spells that did specific things, and they could run out of spells. Sorcerers were a bit more flexible, but at some point, they’re going to run out of spells (barring obscure late-game feats and whatnot.) Clerics were the same way, which was always kind of funny to me: “nope, sorry, your god only can give you so much power per day.”
Enter fourth edition. Wizards and Clerics can channel magic energy all day long, as much as they want. They might not always be able to do anything useful with it, but it does imply that they have a steady source of magic/divine power floating around at all times. So why not use it? [Read the rest of this article]
Epic Laundry Basket: Console Music Games
I finally Bought Rock Band for the PS2.
Start playing Guitar Hero and Rockband at Medium.
You’ll thank me later.
21 words.
Interview: Randall Bills from Catalyst Game Labs, Publisher of Classic Battletech
As Dave and I roamed around the exhibition hall at GenCon 2008, we had some interview set up but we also took it upon ourselves to do a few interviews and talk to a few developers about games that we really like. For me, one of the first games / booths I gravitated towards was Catalyst Game Labs and all of the new Battletech material they’re releasing.
I was very lucky to sit down for a few minutes with Randall Bills from Catalyst and ask him a few questions about what they’ve been doing lately.
Critical Hits: Tell us a bit about who you are, and what you do!
Randall Bills: I was the Battletech line developer for more years than I’d like to admit. Last year I switched over to Managing Developer, but I’m still fairly heavy into Battletech as the new developer transitions over. We have a lot of new gamelines, obviously Shadowrun is one of our other staple lines. We have Eclipse Phase which is new, a post apocalyptic conspiracy and horror RPG that’s going to be coming out at the end of the year, and we just picked up CthulhuTech. So I’ve taken over the managing development side for the whole company. [Read the rest of this article]
Gen Con 2008, Lessons Learned
I started Gen Con 2008 with some doubts about my ability to go up to designers and say hi.
I’m an extroverted, exceedingly chatty person.. but when I’m not introduced to someone, I clamp up real good.
Except, something happened to me somewhere during the second day. Probably during the 126 players chaosfest that was the Ascension of the Drow mega game. All my inhibitions fled, I didn’t give a fuck what people thought about me anymore. I stopped being afraid of being blown off.
It really paid off!
Here’s a post about what I learned about gaming, people, and myself at Gen Con.
Day 1
- Gamers don’t care about Bloggers…yet. Most don’t know what it is.
- Industry people, on the other hand, care about bloggers very much!
- Industry professionals are turning to the Blogging community to tap in on the more constructive debate than those found in Forums.
- Always be ready to change your plans if others don’t depend on you being somewhere at a given time. That’s how I ended up playing D&D with James Wyatt.
- Making silly voices is fun!
- Sparing PC’s lives to put them in a hard position to roleplay out of is a staple of a legendary game master.
- We are bad roleplayers because we are scared to look silly in front of people, even those we’d trust with our lives.
- Alcohol lowers those barriers… but it is not necessary.. it did help me understand the last lesson.
- Drunken D&D was the best D&D game I ever played (no offense James, you had the best techniques ever!).
Day 2
- Never underestimate the power of networking. I met a God of Networking and all I could do was bask in his glow.
- D&D 3.5 is still an astoundingly fun role playing game.
- Never, ever let your 3.5 Sorcerer pick the Mount spell unless you make sure that all your scenes can handle a few large terrified animals!
- I channeled Kevin Smith for 15 minutes in a scene where a Guard blocks access to an office. The players managed to go around him to the office, insulting him a bit. They found find it locked with a ‘Back in 10′ sign, only to have the guard say “Hmm, break is over”, saunter to the office, unlock the door and put the Official’s cap on and smile at the PCs. Seeing the players face slowly absorb the trope and still get hit by the punchline was freaking gold! What’s the point of this lesson? Do this more often!
- When you GM for large events, Industry professionals will sneak up on you… Always be your best! Heck do better!
- When you talk to someone you know, introduce them rapidly to all those around you. That’s, like, basic networking man… took me 35 years to realize it.
- Facebook is where your future clients currently are, come and meet me there (Philippe-Antoine Menard), we’ll think of something to grab our future audience early.
Day 3:
- Cursing at 8 am (FUCK the Rules!) to wake up people at a seminar works.
- Getting blown off by an industry representative does not hurt after all.
- Geeks are inherently shy and hate business, they distrust it like the plague. That’s why so many are starving and/or living in the halo of other, gutsier, business savvy writers.
- Gen Con is for playing games. Don’t spend too much time networking and doing seminars/panels.
- Magic: The Gathering Drafts still rocks after 15 years!
- Dave Chalker is one mean player and a very talented Game Designer… hire him before I do or he starts his own thing! It took my 10 years of intense Magic experience (and a bit of top decking) to beat him in round 2.
- Two words: BattleCruiser Magic!
- Magic the Gathering and D&D R&D employee don’t seem to realize how similar both games are!
Day 4:
- Off the pants, crazy insane funny D&D with incompetent PCs (which is actually nearly impossible in 4e, we tried hard) is a lot of fun!
- I have to accept it, I’m an Instigator player. I’m also a Storyteller and a Psychodramatist…
- I therefore concede to Wolfgang Baur, the Crunch Overlord died forever on day 4 of Gen Con, I’m now a Fluff and Crunch yielding Rockstar! Ha!
- Industry people are so nice, a lot nicer than the clients they serve.
- People, don’t talk about your Characters unless asked to, ever! It’s Standard Social Imperative.
- Stop hating other games and go play yours, I need the fresh air this will save us.
- Never underestimate the Epic power of just being Nice.
I left Gen Con feeling like I could take on the whole RPG world… Maybe I should just give it a try.
See you next year… Now I’ll start looking at PAX, trying to score a media invite.
Inq. of the Week: YouTube of the Year?
Sorry for the delay, between site issues (which unfortunately might not be solved yet) and our massive GenCon coverage, i was delayed in announcing the nominees for YouTube of the Year! Doing a YouTube every week is what really knocked me into doing a schedule for Critical Hits and (I think) a key part of our success from turning the site into just another blog to something much more. Plus, I really like watching YouTubes, and didn’t feel as though anyone was doing something like this.
So, without further ado, here’s the nominees for the Best YouTube of the Year!
What is the best YouTube of the year?
- Are You Still There? Edition (24%, 17 Votes)
- Lost an Evil, Floating Head Edition (3%, 2 Votes)
- Spokesmonster Edition (second one) (33%, 23 Votes)
- Racing Boxes, Tables, and Chairs Edition (7%, 5 Votes)
- Dead Fantasy (33%, 23 Votes)
Total Voters: 70
Loading ...The voting will run for a full week! Please check them all out and vote today!
