Playing around with EverQuest again, I’m reminded how much I love First Person view for MMOs. I play Star Trek Online in “mostly First Person” because you can’t actually go all the way in, but you can get the camera right up behind the character’s shoulder and eliminate the ability to see behind yourself, and immediately the game gains ten times more immersion. I assume my fascination and love for First Person comes from my love of shooters, especially team based shooters.
However, if the world is going to continue to insist on 3rd person view (probably because retention studies show that people stick around longer when they can constantly see how awesome they look in their latest gear) and that games be playable solo (which I’m not going to get into an argument about), I’d love to see an MMO go full on Party Mode like the old SSI and other RPG games.
If you pressed 'Z' on the PC version you got an elemental to join your party.
And I’m not talking about playing one character and having AI controlled mercenaries. No, I mean the player creates and controls a party of 4 to 6 characters.
Assuming that each character would fill a role in the group, the UI really wouldn’t be much different from today. Instead of playing a single tank character who has a couple dozen abilities for tanking you’d have a character in your group who has a handful of tanking skills. Each character, as far as combat is concerned, is really just 3 to 6 abilities on hot-keys. And you could macro so that you can chain abilities from different group members to execute combo moves.
When traveling, you’d control the lead character and choose a formation for the others to follow.
The game wouldn’t be entirely solo (just solo in a way that makes sense), but you could still group up with another player. You’d join your groups together into raids. An odd advantage to this is that since each group is likely to be fully functional (having their own tanking, healing, DPS and other skills) it simplifies the raid interface by accident. Each player manages their own people and the game really only needs to maintain the players in a raid for chat and loot distribution purposes.
Suddenly a “5 man” raid is actually 20 to 30 characters. The raid events can feel more epic while keeping the people-complexity low – it’s easier to herd 5 people than 25 people. This would also allow events themselves to be more complex yet easier, in that the raid can involve fighting multiple targets or doing synchronous goals (2 or 3 players fight a boss while other players solve puzzles or do other tasks) but without needing to manage entire groups of players for each item.
The more I think about it, and if the MMO trend is going to continue in third person views, the more I like this idea. It definitely needs more thought, but I like the direction it is going very much.
Cthulhu Dice is another Steve Jackson Games original. Designed for 2 to 6 players, each player takes on the roll of a cultist in service to Cthulhu trying to drive the other cultists mad. The last sane cultist wins!
The game comes with a large 12 sided die, 18 glass stones, a ziplock bag and instructions. Yes, even a game about going insane has instructions, not a lot of instructions, but still enough to be very confusing if you don’t pay attention. (Wife: Great!)
In normal play, each player is given three sanity tokens. The owner of the game decides who goes first, with subsequent games starting with the winner of the previous. On your turn, you pick a target player and roll the die to attack their sanity. A Yellow Sign means they lose 1 sanity. A Tentacle means the Caster takes 1 sanity from the Victim – unless the Caster is insane, then the sanity goes to Cthulhu in the middle of the table. Elder Sign gains you 1 sanity from Cthulhu (unless he doesn’t have any). Cthulhu showing his face means everyone loses 1 sanity to the center of the table. And rolling the Eye means you get to pick which result happens. Once that is done, the Victim gets to respond to his attacker with a roll of the die. No one can pass when it’s their turn to play, they must roll the die. Once you are out of sanity stones, you are insane. You can still attack other players on your turn, but no one can attack you on their turns, and any sanity you steal (Tentacle) goes to Cthulhu. The only way to regain sanity is for you to roll Elder Sign. The game ends when there is only one sane player left at the end of a completed turn. If no one is sane Cthulhu wins! (Wife: This is confusing.) No. It’s insane! Mwa-ha-ha! (Wife: I can’t believe I married you.)
We decided to play with the two player variant Rival Cults. Each of us gets 3 cultists, but we still alternate turns back and forth between us. The twist here is that since you are playing 3 cultists, sometimes you may want to attack your own side. (Wife: What?) I know! (Wife: Why are you excited?) Because it’s Cthulhu! (Wife: I am placing my face in my palm and sighing heavily.)
We decided (Wife: I decided.) to only play one round instead of a best of three this time. (Wife: I don’t know if I could handle playing this more than once.) Then Cthulhu has already won. (Wife: Don’t make me facepalm again.)
Unlike with Zombie Dice, I’m not going to put in a play-by-play. (Wife: Good.) It really didn’t make much sense anyway, which is kind of the point. (Wife: Seriously?) But I do want to throw in a few things as they happen.
It is important to know that during a turn, for both the attack and the response, the initial attacker is the Caster and the other person is the Victim for both rolls. This is important because Tentacle specifies that the Caster takes 1 sanity from the Victim, so if the responder/Victim rolls Tentacle the attacker/Caster is the one who steals the sanity. (Wife: I guess that makes sense… Maybe.) That happened a few times during play, so it’s not uncommon at all.
I rolled a Cthulhu during the game. (Wife: Is that good?) Everyone lost a sanity stone, and I had my first insane cultist… which I used to attack on subsequent rounds. (Wife: What? Shouldn’t being insane mean he’s out?) Nope. Insane people continue to fight. (Wife: Just like real life!) Exactly! Though, post game I admit it was a mistake. (Wife: Just like playing this game.) I didn’t get to keep any sanity that I stole. If we played again, I’d do it differently. (Wife: But we aren’t playing again.) Well, if I play with someone else then.
She plays very well and all my cultists go insane. (Wife: I win!) Not yet. (Wife: Huh?) We play until there is only one sane cultist. (Wife: But only I have sane people.) Right. (Wife: And I can’t attack insane people.) Correct. (Wife: So, who do I attack?) Your own people. (Wife: Insanity!) Exactly! (Wife: What?) Just roll.
Essentially at this point, I’m attacking her people because I have to and praying to get an Elder Sign to regain a sanity from Cthulhu. (Wife: And I’m attacking myself, watching all my sanity slowly trickle to the middle of the table. Goodbye sanity!) It takes a few rounds, but eventually, she defeats herself. (Wife: I… win?) Yes. (Wife: I win!) Again. (Wife: Always!)
Despite the confusion, I like the game. It plays quickly once you know the rules, and would be much clearer if we had more people and weren’t playing the variant rules. (Wife: Really?) Probably. (Wife: Well, maybe we could play again, with more people.) Really? (Wife: I said maybe. Don’t push it.) Dragon*Con? (Wife: Perhaps.)
As with any dice game, there is math. (Wife: I don’t care what Danica McKellar says, math sucks.) Math is your Cthulhu. (Wife: What? … I don’t … oh. I think I finally understand.) You don’t. (Wife: Are you sure?) No. (Wife: Stop it.) Stop what? (Wife: Stop this insanity!) I can’t! You took all mine. Anyway, back to the math…
The die has 12 sides, 5 of which are Yellow Sign, so on any given roll you’ve got a 42% chance of rolling it. And there are 4 Tentacles, so 33% chance of that. That makes of 75% of the possibilities, so the bulk of any game is going to be a player losing a sanity to Cthulhu or a player stealing a sanity from another player. The remaining sides – Cthulhu, Elder Sign, Eye – each have only an 8 and 1/3 percent chance of showing up, so don’t count on them. In our play, only 1 Cthulhu was rolled, and no Elder Signs or Eyes. It’s only post game that I truly understand the flaw of my attacking with an insane cultist. I shouldn’t have done that. (Wife: It probably wouldn’t have mattered.) Probably not.
Anyway…
Man, 0. Wife, 3.
(Wife: I win! Forever and ever!)
One 12 sided die and eighteen stones.
Tentacles and Wings, no one escapes the madness!
The mark of the old ones.
It sees all.
I’m pretty sure if you play this way you… aaaaaaAAAAAHAHHHHHHH!!!!
I don’t get angry. Okay, I do, but I don’t get mad. Well, sometimes, but… what’s a word for being really super white-hot angry for an extremely short period of time and then flaring out? Because that’s what I do.
But one thing I definitely don’t do, not really, is hold grudges. I’ve never seen the point of continuing to be angry with someone for something they did, especially if they aren’t continuing to do it. If someone steps on your foot every time they see you, that’s not a grudge, that’s a response to expected behavior. If someone steps on your foot one time, and then five years later you exclude that person from your wedding because of that time they stepped on your foot, that’s a grudge and you’ve been hauling that around for five years.
As far as I can see, there are only two reasonable responses to being angry:
Get even
Get over it
If someone has done something to hurt you, immediately decide if you want to hurt them back. If you do, then make a plan, put it in a motion and do it. Soon. If you wait too long, they won’t understand the link between the two, and really that is the goal, making that link. “I’m hurting you because you hurt me.” If you wait five years, chances are they won’t even remember what they did, because the big downside of a grudge is that most of the time you were hurt, which isn’t the same as they hurt you – the former is a result, the latter implies an intent. However, since the link, the message, is what is important, why not just do that instead? “Hey man, you stepped on my foot.” “Sorry.” Done. And if they keep doing it even after being told, then it because a pattern of behavior, to which responding is normal and expected – not a grudge. “He’s not invited to the wedding because he stepped on my foot one time five years ago!” sounds insane. “He’s not invited to the wedding because he steps on my foot every time I see him despite being told repeatedly not to do it, and I would prefer not to have my foot stepped on at my wedding.” is a reasonable* response to long-term behavior.
So, your foot has been stepped on. You decide not to do anything about it right now, no action and no words, what do you do? Let it go. If you can’t be bothered to act in some fashion about something when it happens, why carry that around waiting for a time to spring it one someone? Too much effort, and it’ll affect your interactions in the meantime. That person will be part of your bowling league and because they stepped on your foot that one time, you give them only short answers to direct questions and otherwise ignore them. The only person who knows the reason is you, and it wouldn’t make sense if you explained it, and now everyone just thinks you’re a jerk or something because you are pointedly leaving that one person out of conversations. Or worse, other people start giving that a guy the cold shoulder in solidarity (or something) and you push him slowly out of your circle of friends, all because he scuffed your Pumas. Was it worth it?
For me, it is never worth it. Carrying around anger and resentment just makes me tired and frustrated.
It isn’t often that I get excited for a game before it releases. Well, unless that game has zombies in it. I’m always excited for zombie games. But I have been such a huge fan of Minecraft, and as a graduate of a Computer Science degree program when they still required us to know bit processing, registers, assembly and all that stuff that plenty of developers don’t concern themselves with, the announcement for Notch’s next game, called 0x10c, has me excited.
From his site, the back story is this:
In a parallel universe where the space race never ended, space travel was gaining popularity amongst corporations and rich individuals.
In 1988, a brand new deep sleep cell was released, compatible with all popular 16 bit computers. Unfortunately, it used big endian, whereas the DCPU-16 specifications called for little endian. This led to a severe bug in the included drivers, causing a requested sleep of 0x0000 0000 0000 0001 years to last for 0x0001 0000 0000 0000 years.
It’s now the year 281 474 976 712 644 AD, and the first lost people are starting to wake up to a universe on the brink of extinction, with all remote galaxies forever lost to red shift, star formation long since ended, and massive black holes dominating the galaxy.
He gives a few other details, like the game being similar to EVE Online in that you pilot a ship, and that ship has a generator with limited power, and everything on the ship draws power. And you’ll actually have to program the 16 bit CPU of your ship yourself, though I expect rather quickly people will begin trading code. And it’s going to have both a single player mode and an MMO-type mode with a monthly fee.
Being that it is Notch and the model worked so well for Minecraft, he plans on having an early release paid alpha where players can help him quickly iterate the design. The minute that becomes available, I’m in as this looks like another platform for emergent game play.
I’ll close with a screenshot of the in-game CPU running a simple program.
Eagleheart – Season One : This Cartoon Network show is actually better when you never ever watch it.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy : The original BBC mini-series is probably the slowest paced spy thriller you’ll ever see.
And that’s it for the last month or so. Some gems, some turds, some in between. All movies and TV, no music and thus far more pleasurable to review, even when it isn’t particularly good.
Zombie Dice is the award-winning dice game from Steve Jackson Games. In it, you play a zombie and try to collect (eat) the most brains. The game comes with a cup (cardboard with two plastic lids for each end) and thirteen dice (and instructions – because selling games without instructions would be very silly – that said, if anyone put out a game with no instructions, it would probably be Steve Jackson Games).
The game is played as follows. The winner of the previous game, or the person who can most convincingly moan “BRAAAAAAAINS!”, goes first, they shake the 13 dice in the cup, then (without looking) they select and roll 3 of those dice. Dice that show brains or shotgun blasts stay on the board, while dice that show footprints go back in the cup. The player can stop at any time to end their turn and collect their points (brains), but if they get a total of 3 shotgun blasts their turn ends with zero points collected for the round. Put all the dice in the cup and pass it to the next player. When a player reaches thirteen (or more) brains at the end of their turn, finish the round and whoever has the most brains wins. If there is a tie for first, then those players play one more tiebreaker round.
Braaaaaains!
In our play, being only two players, we decided that simply the first player to 13 won, that way we wouldn’t have to keep track of which one of us went first so we’d know if the other person got another turn. Also, I totally forgot that rule when we played. (Wife: Cheater!) I didn’t cheat. (Wife: But we played without you telling me all the rules!) And? (Wife: Just sayin’…)
Anyway, we settled on playing a best-of-three series. We used the results of playing Life last time to determine who went first. (Wife: And I won at Life.) She went first. (Wife: Yay me!) On her first turn, she rolled three dice five times, ending her round after getting a second shotgun blast and scoring 4 points. I then rolled twice, getting 2 brains the first time and then two blasts on the second and quitting. Her second turn netted 2 more brains in four rolls, quitting when she got her second shotgun blast. For my second turn, I got 1 brain, one shotgun blast and one footprints on the first roll; on the second roll I got 3 brains (Wife: You suck!); on the third roll I got 3 brains again (Wife: You really suck!) and then I quit, scoring seven points for the round – more on why I quit despite only having one shotgun blast later. 2 brains and two blasts on her third turn. 2 brains and two blasts on my third turn as well. On her fourth turn she rolled twice, 2 brains on the first and 3 brains on the second, bringing her total to 13. (Wife: I win!) Only if you stop. You can keep going. (Wife: Nope. I like winning.) I know.
Round two… Despite her winning the last game, she let me go first (Wife: It’s because I’m awesome.) just so that I could see what it’s like to go first (Wife: And because I’m awesome.) and to shake things up. (Wife: Because if I went first, I’d just win.) That too. For my first turn, I got myself two brains and one blast on the first roll, then one brain and two feet on the second, and finally one brain and two blasts on the third. (Wife: Score for the human race!) I exit the round with no points. (Wife: Ha ha!) Laugh it up. (Wife: I will!) For her first turn, she rolls three shotgun blasts, and stops laughing. (Wife: I hate the humans.) Not so funny now, huh? (Wife: Just take your turn.) My second turn is looking good, I’ve got five brains and one shotgun blast, I’m about to stop when I decide to chance it, and get two more blasts. (Wife: The human race strikes again! Ha ha!) So, it’s only funny when it happens to me? (Wife: Yes.) Noted. She racks up 4 brains and stops when she gets two blasts. (Wife: 4 to nothing! I am winning!) Then on my turn I get 6 brains before stopping with two blasts. (Wife: I am not winning.) She gets 2 brains, then I get 2 brains. She gets 1 brain, then I get 3. She gets 2 more brains, and so do I, but my 2 brains happen to be the two I need to get 13 and win the round. (Wife: Come on, humans, kill that zombie!)
Round 3… You see, in a best-of-three series it’s always nice when the first two rounds are split because then you get to play the third round. (Wife: Duh.) Well, it’s better than someone winning the first two rounds and just trouncing the other person into the dirt. (Wife: Unless I win, in which case it is awesome.) And when you lose? (Wife: I don’t, because I win.) Round three goes like this: 2 brains for her, 1 brain for me, 3 for her, 4 for me, 2 for her, 4 for me, 3 for her, 1 for me, and then 3 for her. (Wife: I win!) She wins. (Wife: I win two out of three!) The match goes to her. (Wife: And I rub it in your face!) And I glare at you. (Wife: And I smile.) And I cave. (Wife: And I do a victory dance!)
I love the simplicity of this game. The rules are uncomplicated, and scoring is easy. You can pass the cup around while still having conversations. In that way, it is a very social game. I plan to take this with us to Dragon*Con this year to have available for random games. I also might pick up the expansion, Zombie Dice 2, and a Zombie Dice Bag.
Another reason I like this game is that as simple as it is, there is also deep strategy if you pay attention. (Wife: You paid attention?) Yes. (Wife: But you lost.) Yes. (Wife: I’m going to go grab a nap while you get into boring math stuff. See ya!) As I was saying, there is a little more to the game than just rolling dice. Back up there in round one, I had a turn where I got 7 brains, 6 of which came from rolling 3 brains two separate times, and then I stopped. Here’s why. The game has 13 dice, each of them with brains, blasts and footprints on their sides, but they are also colored green, yellow and red. The green dice, of which there are 6, have three brains, two footprints and one shotgun blast, so a 50% chance of rolling a brain and a total 83% chance of not rolling a blast. The yellow, of which there are 4, have two brains, two feet and two blasts, so 33% brains and 66% not-blast. And the red, of which there are 3, have one brain, two feet and three blasts, so a 17% chance of a brain and a 50% not-blast. That means a red die also has a 50% chance to roll a shotgun blast. On my 7 brain turn, I had 8 dice on the table, 7 brains and 1 blast, and none of them red. That left 5 dice in the cup, 3 red and 2 yellow. I stopped because I felt that as awesome as it was to roll three brains twice in a row, there was a pretty high chance I might roll two more shotgun blasts and lose all those points.
Of course, knowing probabilities doesn’t always help that much. Smart people will sit at a craps table in Vegas losing all day long, or slowly winning small amounts, but then someone will come along who doesn’t know any of the math and will take the house for thousands. A case could be made that I lost round one because I thought myself out of taking the chance and getting more than 7 brains on that particular round.
Due to poor quality of my photos, the blog post I was going to put up today will be delayed. In the interim, I’d like to take just a second to talk about something else. YouTube, a while back, put together an initiative to try to launch channels, less like their normal “someone posts videos” channels and more like a TV channel with programming and schedules and such.
Out of this have come two channels which launched today that I am very interested in. The first is from the Nerdist. I’ve been enjoying their podcasts, and much of the Nerdist podcast network, for some time now. Their new channel is going to feature a few awesome things, like Weird Al doing interviews and a show with the Muppets and cartoons. Here is a sneak peek at their line-up:
The second channel, and the one I am much more excited for comes from Felicia Day and it’s called Geek & Sundry. The channel has Dark Horse providing motion comics, Wil Wheaton’s Table Top, a book club, The Guild, Felicia’s own Flog, Written by a Kid and more. I am currently annoyed to be at work today where I can’t be watching the episodes they’ve already released. Check out this set of previews (it’s a playlist):
Given the level of awesome of previous music videos from Felicia & the Gang, I’m chomping at the bit to get home so I can properly watch this:
Until now, I’ve subscribed to few channels on YouTube, trusting that the best things would find their way to me on their own, but this new direction will have me actually going to YouTube on purpose to watch shows regularly and subscribing to channels so that I don’t miss a thing.
I really enjoy cover songs. Especially when an artist can take an original and put a spin on it, often by changing the speed of the song, and give the song almost an entirely new meaning. First, the original, “Last Friday Night” by Katy Perry (forgive the format, it’s the entire mini-movie):
Now, the cover, “Last Friday Night” by Julia Nunes:
The first song feels like a party, a celebration of debauchery. The second is the exact same song, the same lyrics, but at this speed and played in this way, now it feels like a song of regrets. To me, it is just so awesome that two very different sounding songs that convey such different moods can actually be the same song.
Anyway, this musical interlude was brought to you by my not participating in April Fool’s Day shenanigans.
The motto of the Lottery is simple: You have to play to win.
It is flawless in its logic, because you can’t win if you do not have a ticket. I have a ticket. I have several, in fact. The wife and I have a few, and I chipped in $5 to the office pool. I mean, it’s (as of this writing) a $640,000,000 jackpot. As a former math junkie – Okay, fine, not really former, I just hide it better these days – I know that the odd of willing are hilariously small. 1 in 175,711,536 to be exact. However, the entertainment value really can’t be beat.
See, for the low price of a single dollar, you can daydream about how you would spend your winnings (a $462 million payout if you take the lump sum, and you should, because winnings are non-transferable, so if you take the annuity and then die, your family gets nothing). You can share your dreams with other people and plan out how you are going to get the life you want – the life you deserve – if you manage to be holding on to the winning pick. Just in the last three days (including today), that single dollar (okay, $10) has given me at least a dozen hours of joy. Day dreams and fantasies, all with just the remotest of chances of becoming real.
By comparison, it costs $10 or more to see a movie and be entertained for a couple of hours, maybe more if your friends also see the movie and you talk about it, but really, how many movies are worth spending lots of time talking about it? Usually it’s just 2 hours and done.
“Couldn’t you daydream without spending the dollar though?” It’s the question lots of people pose when they object to the Lottery. “It’s a tax on stupid people and poor people.” they might say, or some other way to degrade the people who buy a ticket. And they are right. You can daydream without buying a ticket. Daydreams are free. But the one thing you can’t do without a ticket: win. If you don’t spend the dollar, your daydreams are just daydreams and nothing more, but for the cost of just $1 those daydreams become potential plans.
What are my dreams? What would I do if I won? Well, a lot. I mean, even if the government took half in taxes you’re still talking about $231 million. All at once. If you put it in the bank at just 1% interest, you’d earn $2.3 million a year. That’s a lot of money. But I have tickets, so I have plans. I have lots of plans…
