Nefchast’s Gaming Blog

Mostly about Video Games, but boredom often breeds endless creations…

Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures…

Posted by nefchast on August 19, 2010

I don’t think this really deserves a full post, or screenshots. It’s freemium, though I don’t know why you would actually pay money to do anything in it (though there are plenty of things to blow your money on…). The game isn’t really an MMO, it’s basically a lite social platform with a bunch of mini-games. If you’ve been to a flash game site, you basically have played all these games. A few are actually pretty decent (I liked the racing game) but many are even much worse than their free, flash game cousins out on the web.

If you’re really bored, or a kid — that’s really bored, you might be able to burn an hour or two checking it out.

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Beta — Final Fantasy XIV

Posted by nefchast on August 19, 2010

The third beta phase for Final Fantasy XIV is well underway and I’ve had the chance to give it a spin. Now, I’m here to share my thoughts on it.

I should preface the meat of the post with an important bit of information: I tried Final Fantasy XI — I disliked it, greatly. I went into this beta with the same attitude I left XI with, very low expectations. Perhaps, that was a blessing.

You should know that the beta, as it is, is limited — the game world is not fully open to test, there’s limitations in place (whether temporary or not, I cannot tell) and this does effect the feel of the game. For instance, it seems there are three starting areas in the final version, but only one of the starting areas is currently playable. These types of limitations will, most likely, change from now to open beta and on to release — so I will try to update my opinions of the game later on to reflect these changes. (Get that? It means I *might* be willing to purchase this game… Should say something about it.)

Character Creation:

Simply put, it’s pretty well done. The majority (almost the only) customization that you do is done on your character’s head. There’s not a *ton* of options for each part, but there are enough options to make a unique enough character. One thing you will notice immediately is the graphics — characters look *awesome*.

Classes:

I can’t dig too deep at the moment here — I’ve only tried four classes so far: Lancer, Marauder, Fisherman, and one of the mages… I think it was a conjurer.  The two melee classes felt fairly similar, at least it does at the beginning, while the mage was different — I’d say much better, at the beginning, than the melee classes. The fisherman is one of the harvesting classes and the biggest pains in the ass I’ve seen yet. The combat classes are pretty self-explanatory — you kill stuff — so, I’ll hit on the fisherman instead. To reinstate: this doesn’t cover all the harvesting or crafting classes, I haven’t covered the real crafting classes or the other harvesting ones, this is purely my introductory experience with the fisherman. You start the class like any other, going through the tutorial. The tutorial has a combat section — fisherman don’t do combat. (You throw rocks for about 1 damage a pop, wee!) So, this tutorial and the subsequent quests are pretty much fluff, at least from my point of view. The real meat starts with the first guildleve you get to do — which involves catching fish. Now, most people likely wouldn’t have tried fishing yet (largely because they wouldn’t know how) so this is the first experience doing what your class does. Turns out, fishing isn’t simple. You get a basic tutorial to ‘help’ you through the process, but the information is only useful in getting started and doesn’t even walk you through doing it properly. The process is roughly this: At the edge of a fishing area you use your ability called Gulleye (go into action mode, hit ’2′ or so)  which finds any nearby fishing holes to use. After finding one (you’ll notice the tiny little exclamation mark pop up in the upper portion of your screen, just like you find when near the aetheryte  crystals) you open your options menu and select Fishing there. Fishing will begin and you’ll have a few new UI elements pop up (and that won’t be terribly well explained). To actually fish you set your depth (might have a bearing on what fish are caught) and select to either wait (something that might be more useful as you rank up, not sure since it isn’t explained well) or jig. Jigging is most helpful at the start, it seems, and is accomplished from a metronome type UI element. Simply click it when it passes near your desired location (what that location does? or means? no real clue) and wait for the text to tell you if you hooked anything, or not. If you do manage to hook something a little bar underneath the metronome will fill up and you’ll get one of numerous messages that will be your rough guide to how well you’re doing catching the fish (such as: “You take in a great amount of line.” “The fish takes some line.” “You take in some line.” “The fish is tired but you are unable to catch it.” Etc.) You’ll then get to play the metronome game some more, in what others have called a hot/cold sort of game, either trying to land on the place you first did or somewhere different. That’s the confusing element. Some of the messages seem really random as I’ve had taking in a great amount of line pop up once, then landing nearly on top of it again had the fish taking some line. Reading on forums, even, I only found speculation — it seems there might be a system in place but it isn’t always consistent. This can lead to a very frustrating first leve.

Tutorial:

The starting tutorial, for the Limsa Lominsa starting area, sees your character on a ship bound for the port city. There’s not too much explained in this early part (a recurring trend in the game, really) as it is mostly cinematic cut-scenes and a little combat tutorial. The cut-scenes are pretty epic for an MMO tutorial, though. After you leave the ship you get your first experience in the game — figuring out what to do. Quest NPCs have no real marking, from what I can tell, and you’ll just have to ask around till you find it (hint: he’s right next to the ramp) and start it. Your first quest leads you to a bar — a sort of hub for the starting area — that will have you watch another cut-scene before getting your real quest.

I found the tutorial to be interesting, story-wise, but lacking tutorial-wise. I didn’t really feel like I learned a lot. The game has tons of features, interface quirks and systems that aren’t common in other MMOs — it’s not quite as different as XI was, but still very strange to use. Having very little information on these different elements makes the game much harder to get into — in fact, it seems you have to scour forums in hopes of finding the information to learn anything (or just trial and error it to some understanding). This is a real barrier and one of the points I do not like, especially during the tutorial.

Combat:

Combat in FFXIV is pretty fun and easy enough to pick up. Hitting the ‘F’ key will put you into active/combat stance (you’ll draw your weapon) and allow you to fight. Simply select a monster, make it the active target (which will pull up the action bar) and start hitting your attacks. There is no auto-attack in this game, if you want to deal damage you have to use an ability. The camera does auto-lock during combat, so strafing around is easy — there’s not always a lot of movement involved in fighting, though. The biggest let-down I’ve had in combat, so far, is figuring out what monsters really con at. In the Guildleve’s (quests, can think of them like terminal missions in SWG) monsters can con red and still be easy, in the field green con monsters can easily kill you — I really don’t understand. I don’t want monster difficulty to change, I just want to know what the heck I’m fighting.

Questing:

There seems to be two types of quests, Quests and Guildleves (or just leves?). Quests are story driven and seem to follow some arc — they also seem to be much fewer in number and no obvious identification that they exist (apart from cut-scenes leading you to them). Guildleves are handed out by a specific NPC and involve traveling to a camp with a crystal (that acts as a teleportation device and bind point) and activating it. After activation you have 30 minutes to perform some duty (either killing or crafting, depending on what type of leve you selected) . Once completed a miniature, temporary node will appear that you can turn the quest in at and teleport back to the camp. Completed leves can be ‘turned-in’ at the leve NPC to improve the next leve you get. (As in, you turn 1-4 leves in at the leve NPC and the specific leve you turn them in on will get improved, like better rewards.) The downside to guildleves is that, currently, you can only complete 8 every 48 hours or so — real time. This means they’re all but worthless for real leveling and with unusual monster con’s you’re only real option is to group to level. (Grouping sounds good at first, but it seems XP gain is based on damage done/hits done — class not big on the damage? Too bad!) While guildleves are awesome the first run through, they are overall disappointing currently. The quests, on the other hand, I really enjoyed — even if I didn’t get to do that many. The story driven/cut-scene driven content is really well done and showcases that Final Fantasy talent.

NPCs:

There’s very little information depicted on NPCs. Apart from targets in leve quests, I haven’t found a single symbol on them. The easiest way to find an NPC you want is to either check the map and head to a general area (maps usually have some indication of what’s there, in cities at least) or look for a list on a forum. Most NPCs you’ll run into likely won’t even have anything for you except a bit of flavor text, it can be a bit frustrating.

UI/Controls:

This was the big hurdle for me in FFXI — I could not stand the UI or controls on the PC. Thankfully, FFXIV is a bit improved. But just a bit, really. The biggest problem with the UI is everything seems to be server side — even the mouse pointer. Yup, mouse pointer. What does that mean? The UI lags. A lot. Using the keyboard is much quicker right now, but the game really doesn’t play all that well with only the keyboard since tab-targeting is a bit cumbersome — it can take a bit of tab spamming to get your intended target. Also, to access a lot of things, you have to use the menu — sort of like an options menu when you hit escape (only it’s less intrusive) but you can open it by hitting ‘-’ on the numpad. Opening that menu is how you access various other game menus and even initiate some actions in the world (like the aforementioned fishing and crystals). There doesn’t seem to be nearly as many menus to go through as in XI, but there’s still plenty of them. Many of those menus are not explained well, or at all, either. Lastly, there seems to be no chance for custom UI mods. (Or I’m just blind.)

Graphics/Art/Story:

These three elements are what make Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy to me. The graphics are great, the art is great, the quests that depict stories are great (though when the stories complete or continue, I have no clue) and much of it is shown through cut-scenes — which are also well done. What isn’t very well done about all of them is the optimization. The game really runs like roadkill. I’ve tried adjusting setting numerous times and, really, couldn’t even see much of a difference in FPS with high settings versus low settings. The only graphical element I could see that was truly different in the low version was the *UI*. (Yeah, the UI gets to look like crap while the rest of the game doesn’t really change much… that really helps the lag. Not.) I can’t say if the PS3 version is any better, but if it is… Well, it would be cheaper to just buy one of them than upgrade a PC to handle the game. (Which is sad.)

Would I Buy It?:

The answer — yes. Eventually. This is a question that will only truly be answered during open beta, when the game gets closer to the finished product. As it stands, the game has tons of promise and many more frustrations. As always, it’s up to the developers to make a game great. (And to not only listen to the feedback, but see how it might be implemented.)

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The iPhone and D&D.

Posted by nefchast on April 13, 2010

I’ve been busy lately, what with writing and work, and I haven’t had time to try getting into Dungeons and Dragons. I choose this time to start getting into it for two reasons: Dark Sun and Gamma World coming for 4e later this year. I’ve been interested in getting into those settings since I first learned about them (admittedly, not too very long ago) and want to get comfortable with 4e before they come out. This means I’ve got to brush up on my rules knowledge and find a group… online. I know of no-one around my area that plays D&D or any tabletop RPG, which makes getting into the game a bit harder. In preparation (OK, while I was surfing the app store for cool games) I decided to find some apps that might help a session of D&D. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

D&D Compendium:

This app provides a tap into Wizard’s own D&D Compendium.

It’s easy enough to use. For the first launch make sure you click

on ‘Settings’ and input your ddi user-name and password. After that

You just click on the search bar and enter the text you want to look

up. It’ll bring up a list similar to what’s pictured. Click one of the results

and you’ll pull up the info. It’s simple and easy. Price: Free.

Dicenomicon:

The Dicenomicon is a dice roller app with some bonus features.

It has several pre-programmed scripts that allow for various

rolls to be performed quickly — like the full stat rolls pictured

(4d6 per stat, drop lowest). It seems to support several different

popular RPGs (4e and the WoD branches of Mage, Werewolf and

Vampire) with some pre-built functions. It’ll serve your dice-

rolling needs, whatever they are, at a cost. Price: 4.99

DMs Tracker:

This app is quite useful for tracking initiative, health, and effects during combat.

When you first open it up you’ll find a screen that lets you add an encounter

situation and add characters to it (the characters you have to set up yourself,

on the ‘Characters’ tab — it’s easy). Once you’ve got the encounter set up you’ll

click on the dice icon under each character’s screen (like the image below) and

the different characters will take their places in queue. Simply open up the character

screen for each player in the encounter — you’ll have the basic character info pictured –

and click ‘Save and end turn’ when they’re finished. If any damage or effects are applied

to other characters — open up their windows and edit it in, then hit ‘Save’. Once everyone

has had a turn, the order will reset and you can go through again. If someone or something

dies and needs to be removed — hit the shiny, red ‘remove’ button. One thing you will want to

remember: each encounter should only be used once with each created Group.

Price: 2.99

i4e:

i4e is a character sheet app that you can upload sheets created in Wizard’s Character Builder

to. It’s easy to get them on — there’s a web-address you can go to, upload the sheet, have the

device check for, and retrieve, them. The app isn’t perfect — keep that in mind — and the data

won’t be all there or correct. Most of mine was, with the exception of Powers not being detailed

and, if I remember correctly, some of the values like AC not having all the bonuses, or correct

bonuses, being applied. I had to go back and manually edit all that in, but it was pretty well

worth it, I think. If you notice on the bottom picture, Infernal Wrath is grayed out — meaning

it has been used. The character sheet is pretty interactive, as you might expect, and it helps

to keep track of the various things players use regularly. Also nice is the inclusion of short rest

and extended rest buttons under the ‘Combat’ tab — letting you use them and automatically

resetting the appropriate stats and powers. All with one click. This app is likely going to be more

useful for players than DMs (I don’t know if the DMs want to go through the process of editing

every character in their campaign), so keep that in mind. Price: 3.99

GMToolKit:

This app has a few useful features for a GM, though not all of them are as high

a quality as can be found elsewhere. You can tell, by the tabs, that it has built-in

dice rollers (for small numbers and large numbers of dice), a name generator,

room generator (pictured right) and place generator (pictured below). I like it for

the random rooms — as a warning, it can spout out the same items over and over

so you’ll just want to use it as an influence to what you really want in the room. It

can give some decent tips or influences. The place generator is pretty self-explanatory

with the picture — you take two English root words and get some fancy-looking

fantasy-esque variations of them. It, like the room generator and most in this app,

you’ll want to take lightly — I wouldn’t just copy directly. It’s all great material for

inspiration. Taking the place gen example here — isolated stream — you can imagine

a small village in the middle of a forest/mountain setting where a single stream provides

their sustenance. Perhaps being isolated from the rest of civilization gives them unique

quirks. Perhaps they isolated themselves for a reason — religious, magical, supernatural?

I think I’ll have to use that for an adventure… Price: Free.

GoodReader:

This isn’t solely a gaming app, it’s a document reader. It is, however, the best

PDF reader I’ve seen on the iPhone (and on the iPad, so I’ve heard). It’s fast,

has numerous means to upload files (Dropbox is my favorite) and it’s cheap.

To the right you can see  the first page of a Dungeon magazine adventure. While

small in the original setting, you can zoom in and move all over the document

which makes reading easy. Storing your entire rulebook and sourcebook

collection in GoodReader is very possible and very nice. As you can see in the

bottom picture, the app supports bookmarks that are apart of the PDF. That particular

PDF is the Player’s Handbook — something used quite often, I’m sure — with full bookmarks

that allow for very fast information gathering. I’d say it may even be faster than using

a desktop or laptop PC. In conjunction with the D&D Compendium, you can easily

look up information on something, find the page number and book it’s in, then flip

over to GoodReader and look it up. All in just a few minutes. Time saver? I think so.

Price: .99.

There’s more apps out there, some that I can think of right now, that I haven’t covered but need to. I’ll get to those another day.

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Revelation.

Posted by nefchast on March 29, 2010

This past weekend I finally got around to trying out the new content added to Champions Online (had to gain a couple levels first). For those that don’t know, Revelation is the first free expansion to CO which adds a new zone, enemies, missions, costume pieces and tier 4 powers. There’s a good bit of meat to this expansion, and I’ve only gotten my teeth into the skin of it so far.

To access the zone you must first complete the crisis map. This map is unlike the crisis maps for Lemuria or Monster Island — it’s like the Canada/Southwest Desert crisis maps you complete right after the tutorial with numerous quests and other players around. I’m not going to go into detail here, there’s a pretty good storyline that should be experienced and not spoiled, just know that it’s the apocalypse and pretty grimdark. For a time reference — my first run through at level 36, solo, (the quests are for level 37) took me a Sunday afternoon to complete. I almost gained the full level to 37 doing the missions there, was about 1-2 bubbles off.

The actual zone is flavored in the dark modern fantasy meets New Orleans style. There’s voodoo, werewolves, vampires and cultists abound. The zone is (seemingly) encased in perpetual night. I rather enjoy it, but I’m sure it’s not going to be everyone’s favorite theme. From a size stand point I’d say (completely uneducated guess) that it’s similar in size to Monster Island — it’s not the biggest zone, but it’s got enough to eat away at your time for awhile. The new missions (I’ve only done a few, mind) seem focused on the various gangs of Vibora Bay (the name of the new zone, by the way) and looking into what they’re doing or how to stop them. In this regard I guess the zone is somewhat similar to Millennium City’s poor district. Only the gangs aren’t simple thugs but supernatural beings. To make this grind a bit easier, the different factions of enemies drop costume pieces that unlock some of the special new parts — all themed according to the enemies that drop them, of course, and so you can tailor your character to look like a vampire or lycan or voodoo priest. Cool stuff.

I haven’t checked out the new costume parts that are supposed to arrive to the C-Store; I might get them since they’re pretty interesting and different from what’s been done. I haven’t checked out the post-apocalyptic set that was supposed to come with the expansion, either, because I couldn’t find it — perhaps it isn’t out yet, or I’m just blind. (As a note, I just looked into it and it seems the post-apocalyptic stuff is variations on existing pieces; I just haven’t looked deep enough into the costumes to find them.)

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Global Agenda Trial.

Posted by nefchast on March 26, 2010

Unlimited free trials are wonderful things in the MMO genre, they give you time to really try the game out and get a feel for whether you enjoy it or not. Global Agenda (the sci-fi-ish third person shooter) just started theirs and I’m sure you’ve heard about it and thought about giving it a try. I sure did.

I’ll be frank with this post, I downloaded and played GA for a few hours last night — haven’t paid a cent or given any credit card info to do so. I’ve played through the tutorial, several low security PvE missions (low level ones, essentially) and one mercenary map (what seems to be the biggest PvP combat you’ll go through, think point capture game type) while playing a medic class character. For those that don’t have any clue what GA is about, you’re in a futuristic society where an oppressive world government is trying to take over the last remnants of free society — so you must fight them in instances, or something. The storyline isn’t really what this game is about and it doesn’t really matter — you’re here to shoot things and blow stuff up. There are four classes to choose from: Assault is your tanker/heavy weapons guy, Recon is your stealthy assassin/sniper, Robotic is your defensive support guy with force field walls and robots (think Engineer from Team Fortress 2, sorta like them), and the Medic is your healer. Each class has some skill trees and numerous pieces of equipment to use as you level up. Should give some variety. There is crafting that involves buying (possibly finding?) blueprints and crafting it at stations with scraps that you pick up (possibly just from PvE missions). It’s pretty simple. You can purchase different looking pieces of armor from NPC merchants (the crafting might just be for upgrade items that you slot, without cosmetic differences). That’s about it for the general stuff, I think.

The game play in GA is pretty simple, it’s a third person shooter — use your hotkey row to swap between weapons, use items, etc. All the weapons have primary and alternate fire modes, so look at those and get used to them. (For instance, my melee weapon has a shield that blocks melee attacks as the alt fire, my rifle has a scope for alt fire, my healing beam gun thingy has primary fire that heals my target and myself for a little bit while alt fire just heals the target for a lot more — the healing is done just like the medic in TF2.) Everyone has a jet pack which they can use for short bursts of speed or to get to higher areas, you can’t use weapons while using it and it drains energy pretty fast. Speaking of energy, your weapons don’t use bullets and there’s no clips or reloading to worry about — you just have an energy bar that gets drained when you use stuff. It’ll charge over time.

PvE, for low security missions at least, was a random mission from a small batch of pre-made missions (I remember doing about three different ones, then repeating those over a few times) which consisted of NPC bots that you have to blast through till you reach an end boss and kill it. There’s a checkpoint about half-way through the map that let’s you re-spawn there. Players dying a lot (total of 4 deaths possible) will lower your score and overall rewards. Having a balanced team and competent players makes the experience easier but isn’t necessary.

The mercenary map was a bit more interesting, but it wasn’t anything new. It consisted of two teams, roughly 6-8 players per team, fighting over control points on a map. Holding a point gave you victory points and after accumulating enough of those you’d win. I’m sure you’ve done this before. While it certainly wasn’t anything new, the game was pretty fun. The classes act a lot like those in TF2 in many ways, so if you enjoyed that you should have some fun with GA. The only downside was the polish — TF2 is simply better at this stuff than GA in almost every way. Which makes paying money for GA a lot harder. AvA is certainly the point that could make a difference, but I haven’t tried that yet and I’m not sure if it’s even available to trial members.

From a trialer’s stand point, the game was fairly fun but lacking.

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World of Darkness — Mini-Review.

Posted by nefchast on March 12, 2010

If you’ve checked out the earlier post this week about World of Darkness, you’d know it was free this week in celebration of Read an Ebook Week. If, for some reason, you still don’t have it — either before it was free or since it was — you still have till tomorrow to grab a copy. It’s free, why not?

I’ve gone over most of the book this week, not getting to read everything due to a certain beta popping up and the release of the Dawn of War 2 expansion, so I’ve gotten a pretty good gist of what everything is about. To be honest, more so than many rulebooks, you’ll want to read through the entire thing at least once. Player or Storyteller. (WoD’s GM/DM) I’ll explain why in a second.

The ebook itself is fairly well done, of course, since it’s basically the second edition of the game rules. My biggest complaints are the lack of bookmarks and printer friendly options — it’s a PDF copy of the print book. This is easier to accept seeing the original rulebook came out in 2004 — it’s getting close to a decade old now. Most of the art is quite good, the layout is fine, and there is an index and table of contents to help with the lack of bookmarks. If you were going to use this book a lot, I’d recommend getting the print version, too. (should be easier to navigate)

The game’s core mechanic is very simple, using d10s you build a dice pool based on: Attribute + Skill + Equipment +/- Modifiers, roll versus 8 and count successes — if any. A roll of 10 explodes allowing for more successes to be rolled. Simplicity is all around in this game, even if the above mechanic seems slightly complicated.

You have a 3 groups of attributes and 3 groups of skills, broken down into Mental, Physical, and Social. During character creation you choose your Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary groups for both sets and apply points as seen fit. There’s also Virtues, Vices, Merits, Flaws, and Equipment to go through. After you’ve finished reading everything — the longest part of the process — actual character creation shouldn’t take that long.

Practically every action you could possibly need to take during play can be found in the rules and is usually well detailed with all the information needed to use it — this is why you’ll want to really read through and familiarize yourself with the rules, Player or Storyteller. (you might find something you hadn’t thought of doing before)

The setting, for those not familiar with the game at all, is based heavily on dark conspiracy and supernatural elements. Horror to some. (not a particularly scary genre to me) There’s tons of sourcebooks out already for the general game world and the other WoD branches (Werewolf: the Forsaken, Vampire: the Requiem, Promethean: the Created, Mage: the Awakening… basically, if it has a Name: the Something and is from White Wolf, you could probably use it) to help flesh out campaigns even more. I also tend to enjoy the fiction that’s written in the books, helps get you into the mood.

If you’ve never really thought about tabletop RPGs before but wouldn’t mind trying one — I’d recommend this one especially. It’s got plenty of detailed information for players and GMs, including what looked like a bunch of beginner tips. For those that have plenty of RPG experience, but simply never cared to check into WoD before — if you want a pretty crunch light horror/supernatural game, this should work well. (though you’ll likely want some of the supplements, too)

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Dawn of War II — Chaos Rising.

Posted by nefchast on March 11, 2010

Relic’s Dawn of War II (that fun tactical RTS game for PCs) just launched its first expansion — Chaos Rising. I’ve gotten to play through a chunk of it this morning before work and really enjoyed what I saw thus far.

There’s new a new campaign for single players (or co-op, I presume, haven’t tried that) and new maps, units and army (Chaos, of course) to use in multiplayer. For 30 bucks, it’s not too shabby. (I wouldn’t of minded a second new army, of course…) I can’t remember if there were Imperial Guardsmen in the original campaign, but they do make an appearance in this one — meaning they’re probably coming in a future expansion.

As to the new campaign — it’s pretty much what you expect out of the campaign. More stuff, of course, and a Corruption mechanic that is pretty cool — let’s you slip closer to Chaos, but rewards you with really nice equipment. To recover from corruption you have to use gear that basically nerfs you or harms your characters — probably not a mechanic that is going to be enjoyed by all but is fairly fitting to the setting.

The multiplayer setting is where this expansion seems to shine the most for me, as you get to play Chaos. The original four get an additional unit type each (Tyranids getting 2) which helps spice them up a bit. I glanced over the units a bit, spent most of my time on the campaign, so I only know a bit about the new ones for the old armies. The Librarian for the Space Marines is a Psyker — basically a caster type that can do some impressive stuffs. The Weirdboy for the Orkz — didn’t get to try him. The Wrathguard for the Eldar — think about a trio of smaller Wrathlords, with lasers. (fought them a good bit, haven’t used them yet) And the Tyranids get a Tyrant Guard — basically a tank — and Genestealer Brood — seem to be stealthy melee units. (saw the ‘nids in action during multiplayer, the Guard was holding his own while assaulting the enemy base…)

The Chaos introduce several new units, many of which are really cool. The first thing you should know is that choosing a Chaos Space Marine Hero will change the type of shrine your Heretics can build — they can be pretty useful. The next thing you should know is Heretics have the ability to worship — this has in-game factors like buffing your units or healing them. There’s a range on worshiping and the Heretics won’t be able to do anything while it’s toggled, so remember to place them somewhere secure — they’re quite useful and there’s not sense letting them die easily.

I tried most of the units for Chaos at least some, and there’s plenty of units that have familiar mechanics — Chaos Space Marines are sort of Tactical Marine-ish, Chaos Havocs are your suppression machines like the Devastator squads. Heretics are… numerous and easily killed, but they can build shrines and worship. Plague Marines also fall into that Tactical Marine squad-ish of the Chaos Space Marines, but they are anti-vehicle spec’d and a bit tougher — no real customization here but when they die they do heal any friendlies in the area. Dreadnaught and Predator are both pretty simple to figure out — a bit of variation for Chaos but still somewhat similar to their Space Marine counterparts. Bloodletters are your assault troops — they can teleport and phase shift (don’t take and don’t deal damage) and do melee damage — fairly tough. The Bloodcrusher is quite tough — it’s a vehicle that’s melee based and has a fun charge ability — it’s the thing you send charging into a group of ranged enemies to cause… chaos. Lastly — the Great Unclean One. Nurgle is my favorite Chaos God and the inclusion of a lot of Nurgle themed troops and abilities is really great to me. The GUO is huge, costly, and powerful — it’s about the size of a Carnifex and has a huge, crude sword — create it, send it toward your enemies, watch them perish. That’s about all that needs saying. (ok, maybe not, but you get the gist of it)

I should mention — all of the new units for the old armies are on the second tier for manufacture, you’ll need to unlock the first base upgrade to get them. Not too difficult.

Posted in Warhammer 40k | 1 Comment »

World of Darkness

Posted by nefchast on March 9, 2010

So, last week was GM’s Day and this week is Read an E-Book Week, apparently. ‘What’s this have to do with me?’, you ask, well, White Wolf is offering the World of Darkness rulebook for free. I think that could be important, yes? Yes. They also have starter bundles for all the various WoD branches 20% off this week — worth checking out if you’re interested.

I’ll give it a read through as fast as I can and throw my opinions of it up here. (hopefully before the offer is over)

Posted in Free, Tabletop Gaming | Leave a Comment »

Weird War II

Posted by nefchast on March 6, 2010

Taking advantage of GM day sales (Paizo, RPG Drivethru and possibly others have them — lasting till the 8th or 9th) I grabbed a PDF copy of Weird War II from Pinnacle Entertainment, which uses the Savage Worlds system. The PDF has a nice little feature using layers that allow you to disable different parts — like background graphic, pictures, etc. — to make it more printer-friendly. That’s a pretty big bonus to me. The PDF is also bookmarked for every section and chapter — getting around is quick and easy. (if it matters, the book does include a table of contents and appendix, like all good books should) I find the layout to be good, there’s not too many grammatical or spelling errors, and the art is pretty well done.

So, now that you know the quality is good (I wouldn’t mind getting a copy of this in print, if I knew I’d be able to play it), what of the content? For those that don’t know, Weird War II is supernatural horror and dark conspiracy set in World War II, mostly focusing on the Allies as player characters. (there are enough rules and information, though, that it could easily be run from the Axis point of view) I’m not going to do a step-by-step review of the chapters, or everything in the book (there’s a lot that only GM’s should know about, anyway), but I will say that this book is packed with information — especially equipment and vehicles used by all sides and branches of military. If you simply want a WW2 RPG without any supernatural bits, you can run that with this. There are roles and equipment for practically every occupation you could think of on the front lines of WW2, and even roles for civilians or resistance fighters. The book literally covers every theater of operation and everything you could want to do. (well, mostly — gamers are highly creative)

For GM’s, the book has a pretty good overview of the war and many adventure hooks based on battles and events throughout the time period. (I think I even remember reading through 3 or 4 campaigns worth of notes) A mission generator is also included and can be used for land, air and naval missions. (there’s different generators for each, using the same basic system) What else, that might not give away too much… There’s plenty of new beasts, all the aforementioned equipment and vehicles, and some new/changed edges and hindrances. Plenty of stuff to rip from and use elsewhere.

Oh, one thing I should mention — the military roles that most players will have to fill are basically classes. This doesn’t mean they can’t take various skills that they might want, but it does mean that they will have some skills required to fit into a role. From what I’ve seen, it usually isn’t more than one attribute at a certain point and two or three specific skills. The players should have plenty of points left over to customize their characters however they want, but it would be good for them to stick to a role they prefer. (this combat will likely be squad based and tactical) Also, Officers and NCOs play a large part in the game — one player will need to be one and it will be likely that the other players will need to listen and follow orders. (not always a good thing for some groups) Since this is a military based setting, rank will play a big part.

And that’s that. I don’t know if I’ll ever have a chance of playing the setting, but I found the book to be quite enjoyable and well done. If you enjoy Savage Worlds, World War II, and horror/conspiracy themes — this is a great book for you.

Posted in Tabletop Gaming | Leave a Comment »

Mythic. (No, Not That One)

Posted by nefchast on February 26, 2010

Well, in an effort to get more posting done (something I really need to do, yeah?) I’ll be adding more Tabletop RPG type material instead of the usual computer gaming. (and so the title)

Today’s post comes about after I purchased and read (most) of the Mythic Game Master Emulator from Word Mill Games. This product comes via PDF or print (Lulu) and is pretty cheap — around $7. (PDF) The book claims to be able to emulate a GM for any roleplaying game, whether you have one player or several. It can also be used to aid a GM to create and run an adventure with the absolute minimum of effort. (create a starting scene) It does these wondrous actions through a few tables, some player logic, and interpretation.

Need something more tangible to get an idea of how it works? Ok. First, start off with your characters and a basic opening scene; then, ask a yes or no question based on the scene and roll on the main chart (taking the two modifiers into account) to see what happens (yes/no, exceptional yes/exceptional no) and apply it to the scene. So, as an example — Your thief character is creeping through his mark’s house, he’s entering a dark room and you ask, “is anyone in the room besides me?” and roll — a ‘no’. You could then go on to ask further questions, as detailed as you want to flesh out the scene until you have a good idea of what you want to do. It may be a bit slower than a normal GM, but it’s soloable — which is important.

I’ve gotten some trial adventure time done with the system so far, testing out my homebrew rules and setting. It works quite well — far better than I thought it might — and has helped me with the testing I need. I could see it easily being used to create some one-shot adventures for/or trying out different systems and settings that you or your players might want to use.

Posted in Tabletop Gaming | Leave a Comment »

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