You might have noticed that the last couple of weeks have been filled with half-hearted posts and automated reposts of things I’ve tweeted. Â Sometimes I just can’t think of anything worth saying, and other times if I think of something worth saying I just can’t find the energy to say it.
Still, at other times, I have something I think is worth saying, but I’ve said it so many times before that I’m running out of new ways to say it without repeating myself. Â This has been pretty much the reason for my lack of posting lately.
When it comes to game design, I’ve pretty much said the same thing over and over for years now.  Games like World of Warcraft are fun, but they do not excite or engage me.  I want more story (and by that I mean more put into the world for me to discover and use in my story, not to be confused with clicking through a story someone else wrote – or worse, sitting and watching cut scenes of stories where I don’t even get to participate – in my view EverQuest had more story that most current games), and I want grouping, and I want less focus on levels and gear and racing to the “endgame”, and I want a slower pace that allows me time to interact with other players while playing as opposed to button mashing extravaganzas where I have to stop playing in order to talk to people.  And if a game needs to have voice chat it should be in the game, not a 3rd party tool (or ffs integrate some damn controls through your game’s UI so that I don’t have to alt-tab out to join chat with people).
At this point, my gaming talk will probably fizzle out and just be the random post now and again about a game I’m playing or something I’m doing (or if I win the lottery, the game I’m building), so I apologize in advance if the posts I do make don’t interest you. Â Since I’m no longer motivated to ramble on about game design, I’ve got to seek out other motivations…
As I have returned to World of Warcraft, I have become taken by the daily quest. Â To many, this is an old mechanic, but when I quit the game these were just called “repeatable quests” because you could do the exact same quest over and over again. Â But the daily quest mechanic has evolved and now, for example, the fishing guy in Stormwind actually has several quests which rotate. Â You get to do one per day, and the one available changes from day to day.
Imagine if we took that design a step further. Â What if, instead of entering a town and finding the same five quests every player finds every day, you were to just find five quests? Â If you entered town on Monday, the baker, the weapon smith, the bartender, the fisherman and the captain of the guard would have quests. Â But if you came in on Tuesday, the baker and the captain of the guard would have the same quests, but now the other three available quests would be the potion master, the stable boy and the inn keeper. Â And by “quests” I mean “tasks” because that’s what they are anyway. Â The majority of quests in a game aren’t the type they expect you to hold on to and work on for months, weeks, or even just days. Â They expect you to take the quest and then finish it within a single play session, maybe two.
And not just quests for single players. Â Quests for duos and groups, even daily raid content. Â Call it a midway point between current quest design and Rift’s “abandon quests to fight random events” design. Â I think it is worth further thought.
The weather begins to warm up and that means yard work. Â Last year we plowed up a large chunk of the back yard and planted grass since previous actions had ruined most of it. Â (Pro tip: putting a large tarp on a section of your yard for a couple of weeks actually kills all the grass under it.) Â The grass has done very well and I look forward to doing a bit of reseeding to fill in the few patches here and there that exist. Â With the chunk of grass out of the way, the next phase begins, which is tree removal.
Now, I like trees. Â I hate pine trees and sweetgum trees. Â The reasons I hate those two sorts of trees is as follows. Â Pine trees are very tall, provide no useful shade, and shed pine straw and pine cones, neither of which I want in my yard. Â Leaves are fairly easy to clean up with a rake or a blower. Â Pine straw is a pain in the ass to clean up, which is probably why people use it for ground cover, since it sticks to the ground so well. Â Sweetgums, on the other hand, have these little tiny smaller-than-a-golf-ball sized pine cones which I prefer to think of as booby traps. Â They drop off the tree, hide in the grass, waiting for you to come along barefoot and cripple you. Â These nefarious trees bring us to our topic: chainsaws.
Cutting down trees with a chainsaw is awesome… as long as you judge the height of the tree properly and you don’t destroy your fence. Â I haven’t destroyed my fence yet, and don’t plan to, but I am fully aware that it could happen. Â Eventually I’ll have to pay someone to come get the big pines because I’m not about to scale a hundred foot or taller tree and begin taking it down in sections. Â For now though, I’m taking down all the little ones. Â But I’ve come to realize that despite being in decent shape and actually working out daily, managing a chainsaw requires a completely different set of muscles than pretty much everything else in my live. Â After a short period of cutting, my arms feel like jello from the strain and vibration. Â The yard is getting clear, however, so the price is worth it.
I can’t wait to borrow the neighbor’s chipper to cut up all these branches. Â Also, since we’ll have so much wood we can’t chip, I’m thinking we’ll need to have a whole bunch of bonfire parties.
This is my one-thousand three-hundred thirteenth post on this blog. Â My name is Jason, also the name of the star of the Friday the 13th series of movies. Â My wife was born on the 13th of March. Â Back in the days when I managed a video store, my own personal account listed my address as “1313 Mockingbird Lane”, an address made famous by the Munsters. Â My favorite holiday is Halloween, which is on the 31st, which is 13 in reverse. Â And if you are into that sort of thing, you might know that we are currently living in the 13th b’ak’tun, which will draw to a close toward the end of 2012, which may or may not be a significant thing. Â Thirteen has always been a good and lucky number for me.
I don’t believe in signs, though I see them everywhere. Â The fact is, you can do it with any number. Â If you decide that 27 is your lucky number, you’ll suddenly begin noticing all the 27s that appear in your life. Â You’ll even being doing things that force 27s into your life. Â I know a person whose lucky number is 14, and while 14s do randomly appear in her life she also makes a number of decisions based on 14s. Â If offered two options, one that contains a 14 and one that does not, she’ll choose the 14 and see it as being a sign when she could easily have chosen the other. Â Personally, I try not to make decisions based on 13s, and yet, here I am, rambling about 13s in post 1313 on my blog.
3" by 3" by 3" of literal inspiration
Borders is closing a bunch of book stores. Â (Yeah, I’m done with 13s and moving along with no segue at all.) Â Of all the brick and mortar stores around they’ve been my favorite because of their finer separation of categories, specifically in having a horror section as opposed to splitting up horror between mystery, sci-fi/fantasy and general fiction. Â They also have a location that shares a building with a movie theater I frequent. Â When we go to a movie, we always end up browsing before and sometimes after, and often end up buying a book or two (or five or ten). Â The only good thing about the store closings are the discounts. Â Lately, paperback books haven’t been seeing much of a discount on Amazon. Â A $6.99 mass market paperback will be $6.99 on Amazon, so picking them up in a store can actually be better, especially if you have the store discount card and get 10% off everything. Â With the store closings, most stuff is 25% off already, and they are still honoring the store discount card, so it makes picking up a few paperbacks a good deal. Â And of course, a sale means more serious browsing, looking for books you might not normally buy at all but will if it’s 50% off. Â I bought The Writer’s Block (pictured). Â I promise to use it and post the results. Â Despite my good fortune with the sale, the closing Borders locations will be missed, and since the only remaining Atlanta locations are the ones that are too far away for a casual visit, Borders may have lost me as a customer for good, and that is a shame.
A few weeks ago I went to a place called Hemingway’s down at the Marietta Square to see a band called 7 sharp 9. Â With no expectations at all, I was fairly well blown away by their performance. Â Being a band playing in a bar, they primarily stuck to playing great bar band music, rock favorites from various decades. Â They played well and even threw in a few twists, the biggest surprise being a mash up of Prince’s Kiss and Sir Mix-a-lot’s Baby Got Back. Â Even the smattering of original tunes they played (just one per set) were good enough that we picked up copies of all three of their albums. Â They made a fan out of me in just one night. Â It looks like they’ll be back at Hemingway’s in April and I plan to be there to see them again. Â To the right is a very short video of them playing a cover of Blister in the Sun at a bar in Destin, FL.
I’ve been writing for Shakefire for a bit over a month now and I’m enjoying it. Â Links to what I’ve written can be found each week in my A Week of Tweets posts on Sundays. Â So far I’ve had the good fortune of enjoying everything I’ve reviewed for one reason or another, but I fear that is going to end this week as the next two CDs I’ve been listening to for review have been uninspiring and borderline awful. Â I don’t like giving bad reviews but I like being dishonest less, so I’ll probably be lambasting a couple of artists and then maybe I can get back to stuff I enjoy.
And finally, is you have a few dollars you can spare, or even if you have a few dollars you think you can’t spare, consider tossing them toward the Red Cross for their efforts in Japan. Â Every dollar helps, and with the earthquake, the tsunami, the nuclear power plant, the aftershocks, the volcano… they can use all the help they can get right now.
In my quest to fill time on the odd occasion the wife has to work on the weekend, I browse Netflix in search of movies that I know she has no interest in watching.  This past weekend I stumbled on Aaah! Zombies!!  Take a look…
As you can see in the trailer, the movie takes a unique approach to the genre. Â When the film is in color the main characters appear alive and everyone around them is infected by something that makes them act funny and move rapidly. Â When the film goes black & white we see things as they really are with the characters being zombies that are moving slowly while everyone else moves at a normal pace.
Overall the movie isn’t great, but it was good enough. Â I enjoyed the hour and a half I spent watching it. Â It’s available on Netflix Instant, so if you have the time and the inclination, check it out.
