Articles by Mike Shea
Mike Shea is a writer, dungeon master, video gamer, husband, and son of Robert J. Shea, co-author of the cult science fiction novel, Illuminatus. Mike is the author of Sly Flourish, a website focused on improving D&D 4e Dungeon Masters, and his daily 4e DM tips on Twitter. You can check out Mike's personal weblog or email him.
How the iPad Changes D&D
Don’t worry, this article isn’t a review of the iPad. There are about a million reviews out there if that’s what your looking for, but I’d be guessing you’ve had your fill of it. Mainstream news seems to love it. Some techie groups love it. Some think its not particularly interesting. Some think its the end of freedom. You can read any or all of these yourself and writing more words about it won’t really change anyone’s mind. If I had to guess, I’d guess that you either already love it or already hate it, and another 2000 words won’t change that. If you hate it, you might want to move on. I don’t think this article will make you any happier.
What I do want to focus on are the short-term ways the iPad could potentially change our D&D games. I’m primarily a D&D 4th Edition dungeon master so this article is likely to focus on that as well.
So now that all I have left are the D&D 4th Edition players who don’t hate the iPad (perhaps all two of you), I can begin. [Read the rest of this article]
D&D Tips from Mass Effect 2
We live in wonderful times. Three of the best computer / console roleplaying games have all been released in the last 15 months. I speak, of course, of Dragon Age, Fallout 3, and Mass Effect 2. All three of these are wonderful games with great action, powerful stories, deep character dynamics, and fun tweakable character building. Beyond just giving us some wonderful electronic gaming, we tabletop roleplayers can pick up quite a few tips to make our own game more fun.
Back in early February, I wrote about Three D&D Tips I Learned from Dragon Age. Today we’re going to take a look how the action RPG Mass Effect 2 can make our games better as well.
I will warn that, while I don’t plan on any direct spoilers in this review (omg, I can’t believe they blew up the Citadel!) I might step into the story just a little bit. If you want to be 100% spoiler free (Woo! You sleep with Miranda) you may want to read this when you’ve finished getting most of your crew killed by giant Aardvarks.
Let’s dive right into the tips. [Read the rest of this article]
Review: “Uncharted 2″
Before I put on my toga and begin pontificating about the ruination of cinematic gaming, let me give you a quick “oh-shit-my-boss-is-coming” summary of Uncharted 2:
Uncharted 2 is a great game that takes a bit of time to get its legs but delivers strong after the first couple of hours. It has the best writing and acting I’ve seen in a video game thus far and is the first time I remember enjoying cut scenes. In Uncharted 2, they learned how to keep such cut-scenes thankfully brief. The controls are a bit loose and sometimes frustrating but the puzzles aren’t bad and the combat is great fun up until the last boss who is an annoying controller-throwing pain in the ass. Uncharted 2 is likely to drop to $30 or $40 in the next couple of months at which point it will be a great bargain. At $30 or $40, I highly recommend it. [Read the rest of this article]
Five Things I Would Like WotC to Do With D&D in 2011
I generally try to avoid business speculation about Wizards of the Coast. It would seem that a large vocal group of D&D players like to second-guess and pontificate about what is and isn’t good for the Dungeons & Dragons business. I don’t care. I’m in this hobby to play the game, not get my MBA. WotC’s business is their own concern, not mine. While the direction of a lot of computer and video games matters quite a bit – we all want the games we play to be something we enjoy – this isn’t as much of a concern for D&D. The game is flexible and modular; I can build the game I want out of the material they provide.
Elitism aside, I still pay attention to what WotC does with Dungeons & Dragons and I still have a desire to see them head in certain directions. I’m just not pompous enough to assume that my ideas are best for their business.
With all of the 2010 predictions going on, I thought it might be fun to look at the five things I’d like to see WotC do with Dungeons & Dragons in 2011. Why 2011 instead of 2010? It’s very likely the WotC production schedule has already fully planned out their line for 2010. Any desires I have will likely have to wait until 2011 to become reality. So I’m skipping 2010, a year filled with Dark Sun, the third set of core books, and lots of other interesting products to focus on the year after.
I will warn you now that these are likely to be contested opinions. I’m guessing every D&D player has a 3×5 note card in their back pocket with things they want WotC to do. But today we’ll simply have to suffer through mine.
Let us begin. [Read the rest of this article]
Review: "Assassin's Creed 2"
This holiday season I had the opportunity to play through all of Assassin’s Creed 2. Dave gave me the unique opportunity to talk about the game here on Critical Hits and it was an opportunity I could not refuse.
First, a short bit about me. I’ve been playing console games since E.T. came out on the Atari 2600 and though my life has changed much over the years, I’m still a big console gamer at heart.
In short, Assassin’s Creed 2 is a wonderful open-world game that feels a lot like Grand Theft Auto in 15th century Italy. While the story is almost incomprehensible, especially at the end, the action and gameplay more than make up for it. It took me about 25 hours to complete it over a two-week period, though there are many more hours I could have spent on the variety of entertaining side missions. It’s a great time and worth the price and your time to play it. [Read the rest of this article]
