Chatty's Break: Game Night Report
We had fun last night playing card games and board games. I needed the distraction and it was really enjoyable.
See here for a description of the games we played.
We played two shifts of Lord of the Fries and its a fun Card game… Although when played with several players (we were 6 for the second shift) the game slowed down perceptively and several players couldn’t play their hands (The rules mention that).
In such cases, fun was saved by inter player banter and Zombie jokes.
Someone mentioned that it was a good game but that only 2 players were really playing it each shift. I’d say that’s somewhat accurate. Control of the game usually shifts between a few players with luckier hands and then later in the game it shifts to another pair.
All in all, I’d replay that game again.
The we played one game of Knock, Knock. It was cutthroat as we liked it to be (and also very crude). The game ended up being exceedingly close. I lost by one point!
Two of our friends felt like playing some Magic the Gathering so we split the group in two. The remaining four of us: Yan, Eric, Marco (Stef’s Son) and I, played a game of Red Dragon Inn. It is a cute game with several reversals of fortunes.
However, if a player gets knocked out early, there’s a significant delay where he sits out the rest of the game. Also, as I mentioned yesterday, once you’ve discovered what the game is about, its replay ability becomes limited.
We also played a game of Inn Fighting, the D&D Tavern Brawl game. I lhave played that game several times and I like that game. However, I’m starting to feel that my tactical choices (Who I attack) are made for me by the dice I play.
We then tackled the Exalted game. This game is a very rich (Settings wise) semi-cooperative Quest game. My friends say that it reminds them of the World of Warcraft Boardgame. You travel a world to get to quests and try to beat them by rolling your White Wolf patented dice Pool.
As the game progresses, rivals pop up on the map and you must face them or lose renown. Your resources also get depleted and you must seek the help of others to achieve harder and harder quests.
The game is supposed to end when a player completes the 3rd part of an Epic Quest and becomes the undisputed leader of the Sun or some such fluffy nonsense.
As we played the game, I became more and more tired and I had trouble concentrating. I still enjoyed it preety much. I had a particular pleasure in teasing my friend Yan (who owns the game) because he kept ignoring all the little fluffy tidbits of the game like quest text and the Biography of our rivals. I would of course take pains in reading each one I could find aloud…
I mean dude… that’s a White Wolf game… it demands to be read and appreciated for its fluff no? (I like to tease White Wolf games… I used to hate them, now I just accept that they don’t cater to my needs).
So I played from 5 PM to 10PM, a great evening all in all.
You have a great weekend
Chatty's Break: Board/Card Game Night
Hot on the heels of me declaring myself a burnt out DM, some of the gang has agreed to secretly meet in the depth of the Northern Suburban Jungle of Montreal tonight. As the title subtly hints at, we’re going to play some card games and Board games.
Anything but D&D and Magic the Gathering!
Here’s what we have planned for tonight:
My friend Dave the Game quoted someone saying that Chinatown was Monopoly done right! And I must agree with him. I won that game at Draconis (Montreal’s main gaming convention) and gave it to Yan’s girlfriend since its was in French.
This is a pure negotiation game whose simplicity and pace is hard to beat. The setting is set in New York in the late 60′s where laws of the city were supposedly changed to encourage immigrant commerce.
Each player gets building lots and Shop tiles randomly. Placing a tile gives you a payout at the end of one of the game’s 6 turns. Placing a tiles of the same type adjacent to one another (up to a maximum set by the shop type) gives you larger payouts.
Since everything is random, you must negotiate with others to get adjacent spots or to get the missing tiles. I played it about 3 times and its a lot of fun. I trust I will also get better at it the more I play.
This card game is a subversion of the fantasy adventure game trope. Instead of focusing on a party of adventurers killing monsters and taking loot, the game is actually about trying to get your fellow adventurers sloshed and/or broke at the Tavern after the adventure.
The game is at heart a card game where each player represents an archetypal Fantasy adventurer. You play cards that will either rob a player of its Fortitude points, steal their money or force them to drink (i.e. increasing your drunkenness) more than what the core rules require. If Fortitude = Drunkenness or if your money drops to zero, you are out!
I played twice and while interesting, I’m not sure how replayable this will be. I’ll tell you later tonight.
Each player is a staff member of Friedey’s, the Fast Food Restaurant of the Damned. As Zombie Fry cooks, you must build meals and combos with your cards and deliver them as called or rolled by the game’s current leader.
I have yet to play that game but it does look fun! Game play is apparently fast and the premise is humorous enough. I hope we play at least a full game tonight.
Plus, I mean Fast Food and Zombies… its like the perfect mix… no worries of dying of Coronary Failure.
Knock! Knock! (French Version)
A favorite of Eric, this little bluffing game is about getting the most monsters to join your Haunted Castle party. Each turn, a player sends one of his secret guest cards to another player’s castle. That player must then decide to open his door or not.
Interesting in itself, this game takes a whole new dimension when you play it with a bunch of semi-drunk 35-45 year old males that make lewd comments about how the Vamp (Female Vampire) sucks your best visitor away.
Exalted: Legacy of the Unconquered Sun
If we feel up to tackling a game that takes more than hour, we also have a copy of this White Wolf game based on the Exalted RPG. Having historically been allergic to White Wolf products, I’ve not been introduced to the game’s setting and I currently have no idea what the game is about.
At first glance it seems to be one of these ‘achieve quests and get loot to become the head honcho’ game like Talisman. I like those… especially during the game’s exploratory/discovery phase.
I don’t think we’ll play them all, but we have more than enough to spend a good night.
And if push comes to shove… there’s always Rock Band on the X-Box!
Looking forward to it!
Have a great weekend.
Review: "Draconomicon"
Overview: Draconomicon is the newest sourcebook for 4e DMs, focusing on the Chromatic Dragon family. The book contains background and ecology for all the chromatic dragons (including several dragons reconcepted into the chromatic family), new rules for draconic lairs, new dragon-themed artifacts and rituals, draconic encounters, new dragon monster write-ups, famous dragons (including stats for Tiamat herself), and other dragon-related monsters.
Details: Draconomicon is hardcover, 255 pages, full color. Retail price: $40. [Read the rest of this article]
Chatty's Question: Rekindling the flame
I think all GMs inevitably go through this, but I’m currently undergoing GM burnout. I just don’t feel like being at the head of the table anymore.
Don’t worry, I’m still very much a Chatty DM… This is not the first time it happened to me. Its just that I need to recharge my batteries.
There’s no one reason for it. Its a ton of little things:
- Switching to a new system (Change Management theory says that you invariably hit a wall at a certain point).
- Having an erratic play schedule (X-mas office parties are bad this year!)
- Seasonal Blues
- etc…
Suffice it to say that when I started feeling it, we completed the campaign and we decided to stop playing until January. Thus, over the next few weeks, the itch to play will re-instate itself and the bug will return… as it always does.
I’m also trying to read all adventures I can lay my hands on to get immersed in ideas and possibilities (plus it’s research for my own freelance adventure I need to write over the next month).
Finally I’m seriously thinking about giving another RPG a spin for a one shot session. Currently on my list is Mutants & Masterminds (yes Greywulf, I’m still reading it), Dread (The Jenga Horror Game) and Primetime Adventures (I’m a Troper, how can that game not work for me).
So my questions to you are thus:
- Have you ever experienced DM burnout and how did you deal with it?
- Do you have tricks and tips to prevent the onset of such condition?
Peace out friends… See you over the weekend.
P.S. If I ever end up posting less (see what I do here, I don’t say I will), its because I’m working on my D&D 4e adventure. Feel free to catch me on Gtalk (phil.a.menard) if you want to know what’s up with me… I’m still up for some GM coaching!
Happy Turkeyday!
Last year I had written a huge post about something and then I was wondering why no one was commenting. Then it dawned on me that a huge chunk of my readers were away from thier computer screens.
As many posts point out already on the RPG blogsphere today, the US celebrates Thanksgiving today.
Even though I’m not American (we celebrated our Thanksgiving back in October) I want to piggyback on Berin Kinsman’s meme from yesterday and discuss what I’m thankful about in my gaming life (and my personal one).
I’m thankful that I live the kind of life that allows me to think about games, write about them and play them on a regular basis.
I’m thankful that I’ve got long standing friends that come back time after time, through the good game sessions and the less stellar ones.
Yan, Math, Franky, Eric, Stef and Mike: Thanks guys!
I’m thankful that I got noticed on the interweb shortly after I started blogging. I did this this partly to heal from depression and it ended being one of my greatest achievements.
I’m thankful that writing so much about GMing RPGs has made me a better writer AND a better GM.
I’m thankful to be part of an online community where helpfulness, polite arguments and general camaraderie rule the day.
I’m thankful that I was able to go to Gen Con last year even though it cost a bundle. I got to meet incredible people and made new friendship that have enriched my life.
I’m thankful that I have such a supportive gamer/writer-friendly wife that accompanies me through the good periods and supports me through the darker ones. Every morning I thank life to find her still sleeping besides me.
I’m thankful to have such marvelously creative and engaging children. Playing with them is the highlight of any day.
I’m a lucky bastard, I acknowledge it! For all of this, I’m sincerely and deeply thankful.
Have a great long weekend my American friends. For the rest of the planet, happy Thursday, the weekend is near!
YouTube Tuesday: 20XX Edition
The first trailer for a fanmade Mega Man movie, to be released in its entirety on the Internet. It reminds me in some ways of Grayson, which is one of my favorite fanmade trailers.
Online Game Wrap Up: Status Ailments and Saving Throws
Our first RPG bloggers adventure is in the books, and despite a TPK it was a really fun time. The party was thrown into a CR: 6 encounter followed up by a rolling skirmish into CR: 9 encounter. Considering our healer had mostly blown his surge wad, that the party was riddled with wounds, that I forgot one of my better magic items, and the lingering status ailments, the fact that we had the big bad Dragon down to his last 20 hit points wasn’t bad. However, this brings up a 4E mechanic that I have decidedly mixed feelings about: saving throws and ongoing conditions (which I’ll just refer to as status ailments.) [Read the rest of this article]
Bedtime Campaign: The Sword of Dreams
This post is part of a series where I made the going to bed story of my son into a free form roleplaying game. See the first post here and the whole series here.
While I’ve been doing Interactive stories with my son since I came back from Gen Con, not all of them were worthy of being blogged about. As my creative surge of last summer ebbed in the gray doldrums of Autumn, my drive for these stories abated somewhat and I mostly went through the motions. The stories became less interactive and often less inspiring.
Nico is also a somewhat conservative player who likes to stay within well defined bounds after the initial discovery of something he likes. Thus, many of our stories revolved around ‘fetch this’ or ‘help so and so’ with the same cast of characters.
We did have a Indiana Jones period where the stories were entertaining, but we ended up mostly retelling the movies and changing Indy for Nico.
Although i must confess that having Nico’s plane crash whenever he took one (and having the character survive unscathed) was hilarious.
Anyhoo, all this just to say that last night, when Nico asked for an interactive story, I decided to push the enveloppe and try to get my brain out of its DMing funk. Play acting with my son is the perfect occasion!
So here’s how this experiment turned out:
A friend’s Dream
Chatty: All right, what are you doing now?
Nico: Daaad! You know I don’t like when it starts like that!
(Yeah I noticed, I was just confirming… Adult players hate that too.)
Chatty: All right, I was just kidding. You are playing in your castle’s courtyard when a friend of yours comes to you. Who do you think that is?
Nico: That’s probably Sandshrew!
Chatty: Right you are! He’s got something to tell you. He had a dream he wants to tell you about, Interested?
Sure!
Well, he tells you that last night he had a dream where was told by a strange voice that he had to find a friend and go to the Highest Place, the Lowest Place and the Wettest Place to get 3 pieces of a secret. Only when brought together would the secret be uncovered.
Nico the Dream Reader
Chatty: What do you think that dream means?
Nico: Hmmm. I guess I’m the friend!
That would make sense. What about the 3 places Sandshrew was told to visit?
(Notice here how I try to find a way to give Nico narrative control without him going defensive? That was the breakthrough I was seeking… )
Nico: I think the highest place is the Palace’s roof.
Chatty: Sure, that works.
Nico: And the lowest place is definitively the Castle’s Basement, its one kilometer deep (yeah, my kid has gone metric… I’m so proud!)
Chatty: Whoa! That’s deep and by the way, a Castle’s basement is called a dungeon!
Nico: Oh and for the wettest place… (Pause as he thinks), its the Mountain of Weight!
Chatty: The Mountain of Weight?
Nico: Yeah, the mountain is so heavy that huge, heavy clouds gather around it, like it was a cloud magnet!
(Hey, who told my 6 year old son about gravity? I’m gonna have to start going scientific soon it seems)
Chatty: And its wet because?
Nico: Well the clouds are so heavy that when birds fly through them, it creates a hole and water gushes out of it and pours on the mountain, creating a huge lake around it!
(I’m so making this little man my writing protegé later! Hey did I tell you that he’s almost French literate now? He’s even reading a few English words! )
Chatty: That’s just a great idea!
The High Place
Chatty: So, do you want to help Sandshrew explore what his dream means?
Nico (Getting excited): Yeah!
All right! So you start by…?
The roof!
Okay, so you start climbing the roof and it’s very slippery…
No its not, it’s got pieces of wood all over the place and we can climb those easily!
(I guess he meant shingles, and I guess he really wants narrative control today… “hey let’s roll with this” I told myself)
Chatty: Sure, okay so you see one of those metal birds that indicate the direction where the wind blows, its called a Weather Vane (Girouette in French) and on top of it you see a shining piece of metal… it looks to be a piece of a blade.
Nico: I take it and then i go in the Castle’s basement!
The Low Place
Okay, well, you spend a long time climbing down the stairs…
Well, I take out my sword and I melt the stairs with my fire Gem!
(Yeah, for those new to the series, Nico has a Laser sword that also shoots fire…)
You what? Why do you want to break the stairs?
I don’t want to break them. I just want to melt them a little.
Why? (I was completely baffled but I tried to resist the urge to go paternal and let him follow his idea through… Say “Yes” and all that stuff.)
Because when its melted, Sandshrew and I can slide to the bottom like it was snow! We’ll get down there real fast!
(My jaw dropped! That guy is amazing!)
Chatty: Okay so you grab a shield that hangs on a wall and you guys start sliding down the spiraling stairs down to the bottom.
Nico: Yay! What do I see?
(He was really into it, more than I have seen him in weeks! This is what drives a GM to keep coming back at the table!)
Chatty: You see an ancient suit of armour standing alone in a round room. It has another piece of the sword in his hands.
Nico: I take it!
Before you can grab it, the suit animates and says in an empty voice “WHO DARES TAKE WHAT BELONGS TO THE OWNERS OF THIS CASTLE! ONLY THE OWNER CAN TAKE IT”
I’m the Owner’s son!
PROVE IT
Well, my father is the King and I yield the laser sword, I have power Diamonds and I wear the Magic Armour of Weather Control!
VERY WELL, TAKE IT!
Yay!
All right, Nico, time for bed!
Come on Daddy, we’re almost done…
Oh no, the mountain will take a long time to explore!
Daaaaaadddy!
(I love it when he does that!)
Chatty: He He! Okay, one last scene!
Getting to the Mountain of Weight
Chatty: The mountain is far away, many many days by foot.
Nico: Do we have a vehicle at the castle?
Sure, your father has a Royal Coach (French: Carosse).
What’s that?
It’s a fancy word for a Horse-Drawn Car.
Okay, let’s go!
Sure thing! Sometime later, while traveling down a road crossing a big forest, you see a fallen tree across the road with a man standing behind it, signaling you to stop.
Okay. (Sounding unsure)
As you look outside the Coach, you see 2 more men pop out from behind the tree and wearing Red Bandannas to hide their features. They’re Bandits and they want to steal from you!
I get out and I draw my sword.
The Bandits aren’t as brave as they initially were but they stand their ground.
I tell them “Do you want me to do this with you?” and I use my lasers to chop the whole tree in pieces and use my wind power to sweep the firewood back in the forest!
(Nico has Badass blood I swear! Must be from his mom because I’m a total wuss)
The bandits scream in panic and run away, promising never to do this again!
Yay!
Okay boy, sleep time!
Daaad!
You had your extension, we’ll finish this one another night! Good night kiddo!
As I write these lines, I realize that in my 25 years of gaming, all my great games were the ones where I shared narrative control with the players. I want to reconnect with that and make this like a second nature to me.
Not as easy as it sounds for this old Crunch Overlord.
Stay Tuned for part 2.
Credit: Nicolas Ménard (Story), Costume Kingdom (Picture)
Chatty's D&D Online Game: Trial game report
I took a day off from work and blogging today to relax a bit and fiddle with an actual computer game called Portal. I’m way behind in the ‘dude you must play that game’ thing and while my buddies are out playing Fallout 3 I finally shelled out for that awesome game.
As I was playing, I kept seeing emails, blog comments and trackbacks piling on about the online D&D game I played last Friday and it slowly dawned on me…
Dude, people are actually looking forward to know about this project and you’re screwing around trying to get the Cake joke?
Yeah… well maybe I should get right on it then.
Last Friday at 19h00 PM (EST) we had agreed to meet through the power of Skype, champion of cheap long distance communication solutions. With geeks spread over 2 countries from Montreal, to Miami and Seattle, we were eager to try to play our favorite roleplaying game without actually seeing each other.
Present were all original members of the project: Dave: The Game, TheMainEvent, Asmor, Graham, Don and myself. All of us a combination of bloggers, contributors, coders and one of us was even a Wizard working somewhere on the Coast.
Getting Connected
I was expecting that technical glitches would prevent us from actually getting to play that evening and I was happily surprised to see just how easy it was to connect!
Skype as a ‘start Conference Call’ options that allows a user who has all players in his contact list to start the call with a few clicks. Within seconds we were all awkwardly greeting each other and trying to memorize each others’ voices. Having spent some time with Dave and having spoken (and gamed) quite a few times with Graham I was rapidly able to differentiate each member of the group.
That’s where I was struck at how crucial visual communication is to me as a DM. I’ll touch on this later, but my confidence was somewhat shaken by having to deal with people, many of whom I only knew through some chatting and emails.
Setting Up
As mentioned here, we had settled to using the simplest, most basic Virtual tabletop application we had found which was Gametable.
The application features a ‘host/join’ game option that’s really easy to setup. The DM clicks on “Network” and then “Host…”, you enter your player name and character name (in the case of the DM, that’s somewhat irrelevant) and choose an optional password and a Port.
Now here’s where it gets a bit more complicated. The application needs to have other players have access to that ‘port’. There’s a good chance that you’ll have to set your router (and maybe your firewall) to allow access through it. I know I had to with my Router. Look for something called “port forwarding” or ask help from someone who’s savvier in these things. (Thanks Graham!)
Once the port is opened/forwarded or whatever, and once you have started hosting the game, Gametable will show you a link where you can get your IP address. You give that info to all your players and they can all connect to your game easily.
At least it was done easily for us. We were ready to play by 7h10PM!
As an unexpected bonus, each player was able to import their own ‘pogs’, a little jpg token they generated for the game (see how to here). It was like having your friends set their Miniature on the table to signify they are ready to start.
How it went: The Interface!
Gametable is a fast Java application (making it cross platform, Dave played from his Mac). Changes people make to the map, like moving pogs and rolling dice are instantaneous. No noticeable lags or map update issues were seen.
Also, a cool feature is that when a player wants to show something to other players, they just have to put their mouse where they want to point and press ‘space’. This makes a cartoon hand appear for all others to see exactly where the mouse is pointing.
However, handling the private/public map is not always easy and I’ve managed to rob the whole Dragon Cave from underneath the players’ feet when I accidentally sent the whole map from public to private view a few times.
Furthermore, as a DM, I quickly found myself bogged down by all the things I had to manage. Dealing with the application, my adventure notes (also on my laptop) and my Paizo Combat Pad all at the same time created confusion and unneeded delays in gameplay. For example, I ended up skipping Dave’s turn several times and he needed to tell me so after 2 turns at one point.
As Don mentioned at the end of the session, an initiative tracker would have been a good feature to have in this game. It would have made my job a bit easier for sure.
With hindsight, next time I’ll play with 2 screens: The Virtual Tabletop on one screen and my game notes on the other. Also, I might ask a player to handle initiative if the next application we use does not have one.
So all in all, I’m satisfied with the interface. I’m curious to see the other ones and we’ll likely try MapTool next time.
How it went: The Adventure
As written, the adventure was to be a combat encounter in 2 waves. The first one was a level 5-6 skirmish with a team of Kobolds: 2 Dragonshields (Soldiers) and a Slyblade (Skirmisher) from the Monster Manual and a Chieftain (Soldier Leader), a Warpriest (Controller) and a Wildmage (controller) from Mike Mearls’ Dragon Magazine article (#364).
The second encounter was to be a level 9 fight with the Red Dragon patron of these kobolds and its retinue of Glowing Tattoo-wearing Minions:
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| HP 1; a missed attack never damages a minion. | ||||||
| AC 17; Fortitude 13, Reflex 15, Will 13 | ||||||
| Speed 6 | ||||||
| R/M Javelin (Standard; at-will) | ||||||
| Ranged 10/20, +7 vs AC, 4 Damage | ||||||
| r Fiery Vengeance (Immediate Reaction) ? Fire | ||||||
| When a zealot of Tiamat dies by fire damage, it ignites and flies toward the closest enemy within range exploding on contact. Ranged 10, +7 vs Reflex, Hit: 1d10+4 Fire Damage. | ||||||
| Shifty (Minor; at-will) | ||||||
| The Zealot shifts 1 square | ||||||
| Draconic Healing (Minor) | ||||||
| A Dragon adjacent to a Zealot can eat the Zealot as a minor action and spend a healing surge | ||||||
| Trap Sense | ||||||
| The Zealot gains a +2 defense bonus to all defenses against traps | ||||||
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| Skills Stealth +6, Thievery +6 | ||||||
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| Equipment Hide Armor, 3 javelins |
To bring the adventure to life, I attempted to use a shtick I had used quite successfully with my friends a few weeks ago. I had tackled Kobold Hall (the adventure in the Dungeon Master Guide) as some sort of reality show where adventurers were tricked in participating. It was a blast when I played with my friends.
In this virtual game… not so much. Most of that attraction of that concept was built around the visual gags one does in emulating a fantasy reality show. Looking at the ‘camera’, making poses, etc. That’s kinda hard when you are using voice chat only.
I also discovered that its a lot harder to roleplay when you don’t see your players! Now I understand when a reader told me virtual tabletop gaming was like a video game. This became a huge barrier to me as I found myself unable to properly do descriptions of the area or the moves in the fights.
Because of that, the game ended up being mostly a long boardgamey fight. On top of it all, while I had planned to make both fight separated and allow PCs to rest for their full five minutes (with some sort of ill defined skill challenge), I somewhat forgot about all that and sent the dragon to help out his dying kobold buddies, making this into a fight that level 5 PCs had almost no chance to survive… and none ultimately did.
The Warforged Fighter and Gith Ranger played several bad rolls, making them miss often. The Orc Barbarian and Genasi Swordmage got a taste of prolonged status effects. In fact the Swordmage (played by TheMainEvent) spent most of combat immobilized and/or stunned, failing saving throw after saving throw. That can’t have been fun!
When the players dispatched the first kobold group and moved on to the second part of the room where the dragon was deploying its minions, the Barbarian charged headlong… only to taste the little surprise I had for the group.
At one point, surrounded with Kobold minions, the dragon breathed fire catching the Barbarian and 3 of its four minions in the blast… The Barbarian was singed and pounded by 3 koboldy missiles, launched by the Divine energies of Tiamat to explode recalcitrant infidels!
The players all converged on the dragon and started falling one by one. The last PC (Dave’s fighter IIRC) fell when the dragon only had 26 hp left.
I think what ended up making the fight impossible was that the dragon was able to heal itself of the first 50 or so HP of damage by eating the last Zealot. Since a Red Dragon has 332 hp, spending a healing surge basically amount to giving the Dragon an extra 80+ hp. Way to powerful. I’d suggest making the walking potion on healing worth about 15-20 hp next time.
Yes I could have fudged the dice… no one would have noticed or cared. I could also have stopped the fight and allow the PCs to live. I decided to see it through and I assume the consequences.
So the scaly six… now the Scaly one, remains undefeated.
How did They like it?
One of the hard things to do in a virtual game is to gauge the players enjoyment of the game. Some players are more expressive and it was easy to see how it went. It was clear that TheMainEvent, while annoyed at the status effect was being a good sport about it. Graham seemd to enjoy trying out all the cool Bard Moves. Dave was also preety much into it and was a good sport.
Others were more introverted and a lot harder to gauge.
All in all, I think each players liked parts of the session but that the overall feeling basically translates in that gem of the English language:
Meh.
And how did YOU like it Chatty?
I think my feeling mirrors the others. When I did the rounds of the players I knew most, we all had the same thing to say. We all agreed that while a virtual tabletop RPG sure beats not playing at all… it remains a weak replacement for the real thing. At least, if our experiment is an indication of how such games are played… and my gut feeling tells me that they are.
We agreed that the next session, planned for mid January, should explore other types of encounters than combat to see if Role playing is possible and enjoyable in this medium.
Until then, I’ll look into the other tools and start writing my Escape Monster Asylum adventure!
Thanks for reading.
Update: See TheMainEvent’s comments on the game here.
Inq. of the Week: 4th Edition Settings?
Dave certainly tried to frighten us with the haunting image of a live-action Monopoly movie on his poll last week, but it looks like you are even more scared by the concept of a serious Yahtzee movie. Checkers came in at a close second place, with Scrabble in further behind at third scariest game-to-movie adaptation. Monopoly actually came out tied for the lowest numbers with the “other” option, which is surprising because it is probably the movie from our poll that is closest to becoming a reality. I suppose we have all accepted the inevitable, or maybe Yahtzee is just THAT scary.
This week what I’d like to ask everyone relates back to Dave’s Friday post about Wizard’s December playtest articles, where he noticed the Mercykiller listed and mentioned his favorite D&D campaign setting Planescape. While it’s fairly common knowledge that Wizards is publishing the Eberron setting for 4th Edition in spring of 2009, I believe there have been no announcements as to which settings may follow. At GenCon Dave and I attended a panel with most of the D&D developers and almost every single one of them listed Dark Sun as the next setting they’d like to see. This brings me to our Inquisition of the Week:
Loading ...Clearly we can’t include every D&D campaign setting or the poll would become insanely long, so if your favorite has been left out please let us know which one you’d like to see in the comments.
