Archive for the “Role Playing Game” Category

I see that my decision to get the D&D4 manuals was the right one:

As far as D&D worlds are concerned, I found Forgotten Realms horribly “generic”, while I can not deny that video games in this world like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights are good.

However, Planescape and Dark Sun did it to me.

One had to play Planescape Torment to start grasping how rich the Planescape universe was.
I was really sad when I knew that Dark Sun was not in 3.5. Dark Sun is as one could say a post-apocalypse survival fantasy, lovingly brought to life in the books by Brom.

This is an universe that needs a good DM to make the players feel the harshness of the climate and Athas’ people. Slavers, gladiators, dictator-like Sorcerer Kings, raiding elves and cannibal halfling, Dark Sun brilliantly takes fantasy tropes and run them through the blender of the post-apocalyptic and survival genre. Mad Max + Dune + Conan the Barbarian could describe the atmosphere of Dark Sun.

This is why I love Dark Sun and is more than happy to see it coming back with D&D4.

As I have told my friends a long time ago, I am a huge fantasy nerd. Give me dragons, barbarians, hot babes in skimpy suits they calls armor, hot babes that are dignified with full suit of armor, princesses, enormous horsemen, a journey and I am set. However, I am also quite demanding toward my favorite genre. Therefore, while I have read, watched a lot of fantasy works, too few of them ended up as my favorites.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yup, you heard it right.

International Ragnarok Online server, known under the acronym “iRO”, have opened a free server.

However, a lot of things in this free server are nerfed. Halved EXP (not really a problem for the veterans), more severe penalty on death. BUT, if one is willing to pay, they gain access to exclusive kafra shop item, alterated exp rate and monster drop, and many more. Gravity is aiming to attract more players, but they also expect some people to pay for the extras. This was already tested on Korea Ragnorok Online “Baphomet” server. And last time I heard about it, it scored a nice success.

Now, with the Ragnarok Online Renewal that aim to remake the game mechanisms and rebalance things, one can hope a renewed life in an outdated game. And no, I don’t like WoW.

Japan kicked it to the curb!

I mean, come on, a table-top role playing game where you rolepay maids. I like them, but I am just so used to play brainless brutes (mercenary or barbarian) or cowardly rogues that I cannot mentally picture my near-30 self calling one of my fellow rolepayers “Ojou-sama”.

I am frankly doubting the maturity of the players. From my personal experience, the majority of the gaming tables can’t properly role play court intrigues like in Legend of the Five Rings or police investigations like in The Call of Cthuluh. Not to say it is a bad thing tho. It’s only bad if you are one of these “SERIOUS BUSINESS” game masters.

As far as my personal scope goes, I can’t see how a game can go nice and dandy without my players joking about “office affairs” or “cigars”. Maybe it is one of these games you would properly enjoy with a boatload of whisky, coca cola, beer and weed. Maybe that is it, the secret of happiness in a tabletop rpg, loose expectations and lot of “artificial paradises” devices.

EDIT:

krisslanza, the girl who showed me the link, had gotten her hands on a pdf of the book and rolled Sheba meido for the lol:

Sheba meido is:

- A pure lolita
- Nekomimi Mermaid
- Low athletic and affection stats.
- Kinda low in Cunning stat.
- Kinda low in Luck.
- Average Will
- Had a tragic love story where lover have died.
- Have learnt Necromancy.
- Act like a spoiled brat when under stress.
- Have a hammer as a signature weapon.
- Her dress is a hammer space as long as she is in the mansion.
- Can be tenacious.
- is a part of a shadow clan.

If I spin it well, she is a loli with poor battle skills, but compensate it with necromancy and hammer space. And she can be right at home in Gensokyo or Seto no Hanayome.

Since July 28th, a new server has opened on kRO. It then filtered from the mentioned server that they are actually testing new effects of the stats on various parameters of the game.

With the third classes that will be coming later, people knew that the 99 level cap would be removed, moreover, this also applies to stats. I know that 120 were going to be the new level cap, but I forgot what would be the new stat cap. 120? 130? 150? Ok, likely 120.

With such new limits, rebalance were in demand, the removal of the cap would mean to open new paths for non-mainstream builds.

This also mean that veterans will have to throw away their knowledge of the game and adapt to whatever change will come to them.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the 1980s, I was drooling over the boardgame Space Crusade, a game from the Warhammer 40k franchise. But in the 1990s, when the trading card games like Magic: The Gathering were all the rage, a card game has drawn my attention. Its name? Doomtrooper. It’s a trading card game from the Mutant Chronicles franchise. Then snowball effect came along. I have gotten my hands on the RPG sourcebook. I have fallen in love, and Mutant Chronicles turned out to be the RPG I played the most along with Dungeons & Dragons and Legend of the Five Rings.

Then the franchise slipped off the radars because of the misfortune of its publishers (the cancellation of its MMORPG just did not help). However, a strong community of players (especially those from Europe) refused to let it die and kept the flame burning. The internet helped the communities to provide help for each other, then a new edition of the game, along with a movie has been announced.

The new Mutant Chronicles. Less BIG shoulderpads. MORE grit.

For those who will go see the movie, I’ll tell you this: If you were a player, don’t expect too much and take it as a separate entity, just like how Burton’s Batman is so different in flair and style from Nolan’s Batman. If you never played the game, just know that beneath the shallow B-movie shell lies an ambitious universe that hold strokes of genius that set it apart from its concurrent, Warhammer 40k.

So how Mutant Chronicles has come out as 40k clone but has managed to get an identity on its own? Why do I like it more than Warhammer 40k?

Read the rest of this entry »

… and discussing with friends or acquaintances about D&D4.

I have come to the conclusion that a rather large portion of wizard players are whiny little bitches.

When your fighter do that in D&D, wizards WILL accuse you of trying to steal the limelight

Read the rest of this entry »

As a dungeon master, player or very occasional writer of short stories, I have known, and sometimes made, all kinds of characters. And some of those were too good, too handsome, too strong to be true, at the point of stealing the limelight from protagonists.

I didn’t know this kind of character has a name until a drop into my usual irc chatroom, at a time when Testy was talking about them.

When exposed to them, I learned to fear them, hate them and was more uncomfortable into making more characters, struck by the fear I could make one.

Arguably one example of Canon Sue

Now, I am more confident into my own characters, since I have pretty much designed an universe with its cosmology. And I toned down some common tropes usually found in Sues.

So, what are the common Sue traits?

Read the rest of this entry »

… I was eight, before this year, reading was a chore, nothing could interest me or retain my attention. It was until I grabbed the dictionnary, a day of 1988, some weeks after my second suster’s birth. I was bored and decided to copy, handwritten, the name of all countries that existed as we knew at the time (the time of Cold War). My hands slipped and the dictionary fell. Then as I picked up the dictionary, I read this:

Ixion: *has done this thing and that thing that upset the Gods*, as a punishement, he was bound to a burning wheel for eternity.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Crom! He is back!

As I write now, in direct live on Game One from the WWI in Paris, Diablo 3 has been announced!!!

Right now the Blizzard guys are showing a demo, featuring the barbarian. In term of graphic feeling, it is close to Guild War, but more gorgeous!

Clicky for full image

ABOUT FUCKING TIME!!!

Edit:

Some fluffs:

* It seems that some mobs will be tougher, skeletons can shield themselves and characters will have to find a way to get through it. i.e: The barbarian can use a stunning stomp that force the skeletons to lower their shields, and are therefore open to retaliation.

* Necromancer has a zombie wall. Don’t laugh, it’s like ice walls, firewalls, but with zombie.

* One of the bosses or mini-bosses looks like a Lictor for the Kult RPG, or the Baron Harkonnen. Only bigger and swinging two maces.

EDIT 2:

Before you ask. No, I has no means to capture Diablo 3 footage as I was watching TV, unprepared. Wait for the videos online to pop up.