The following wall of text is a manifesto of my justification for wanting to develop a game. I might edit this a little later, but what you see here is enough of a final version to post.
Tag Archives: games
Zelda II Swordplay
The Legend of Zelda II, The Adventure of Link, has long been berated as the bastard child of the Zelda series. Many go so far as to not include it within the Zelda “genre” out of personal distaste for the game. But, I consider it one of my favorite games of all time.
There are many cases to defend the game, like unique gameplay and excellent player control, but my angle is specific: The game has the most interesting swordplay out of any I’ve played.
Forest Walk, 3 of 3
Once we stepped into the trees enough to not be spotted on the road, I lit the torch. It burned amazingly well and bright, but here’s the shocker: You can’t see much with a torch in the woods. First of all, you have to hold the torch well away from your vision or it’s too bright for your eyes. Also, you can’t see but a few trees ahead of yourself. I noticed the wood underneath the torch head started to catch fire so I spread mud over that part.
We walked and managed well. There’s a problem with many forests on Delmarva; they are mainly made up one tree type, since the forests have all been logged and these are new trees. This tree, the loblolly, is has roots that are poisonous to many other plants and make the ground unfit for many other plants, except briars. This is why it’s so hard to navagate through Delmarvan woods, with such dense thorns. And, for us, we had to be sure not to light any tall or hanging briars on fire.
Forest Walk, 2 of 3
On the Friday of the predetermined weekend, I drove Joe Galetti, Buff and myself to the predetermined starting point. We reached it around midnight. The nigth was cool, calm and clear, just as it was supposed to be. We somehow convinced Buff (cute girl from Pocomoke City with an unfortunate nickname, also one of Doc Grogan’s research students) to come along with us. Joe’s girlfriend opted out, stating that she was sure something bad would happen.
The plan was to park my car in front of one of these state forest entrances, just off of a dirt road, and then walk west/south-west until we hit this one creek (labeled as a “river” on the map), where we would rest for a little while and consume our comestables before crossing back. Below is that same map with better markings. The black shows the roads, the east road being the one dirt road, the red being where I parked the car, the blue being the creek and the yellow being the general direction of intended travel. The dotted line also shows a road, Heather Rd., marked on a state map, but of which we couldn’t find any sign during a couple laps in my car in the daytime a few days before.
Forest Walk, 1 of 3
Bear introduced me to a video game back in the early 90s which sparked my imagination. This is Ultima 7, a classic role-playing game that features an expansive map and the ability to wander it where ever you please, doing whatever you please. I found it difficult to stay focused on any storyline when it was just as fun to get lost in the game’s forests until finding the occasional random encounter. Of course, as a 12 year old, I felt compelled to bring that fantasy world to life by grabbing a walking staff and a medieval light source, such as a taper, donning a cloak and losing myself at night in the woods near my home.
d20 New Character Classes – Just These Guys
In spite of it’s many foibles I and many others very much enjoy the Dungeons & Dragons game, especially in it’s d20 system iteration. Perhaps one of the major reasons for game’s popularity both in it’s current form and historically is the evocative, tone setting, and somewhat customizable character archtypes it offers in the form of mythic races and heroic classes.
Character classes range from the simple (ie. Fighters) to the extravagantly abilitied (ie. Bards, Druids, Rangers), covering a wide range of occupational and lifestyle choices. However, one potential drawback of this sytem is that each sort of class is very much focused in a particular area of magical and/or mundane expertise. And this can be fine if you simply want warriors who kill things and magicians who sling spells about…
But what if you’re interested in playing a different sort of warrior: a cavalry man with who has studied history a bit and has better strategic, diplomatic, and leadership skills? Or a wizard who’s not just a walking toolbox of magical effects, rather a wise man who has studied up on arcane lore of all sorts, strange creatures, alchemy, poisons, spirits, and the planes beyond?
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Draconic Measures
Last night was our weekly D&D game again. Only this week it was possibly one of the most exciting sessions I’ve ever had for a character… ever. I know it’s not “real life” but I feel like bragging about my virtual/storytelling experience anyway. And since I’ve been taking a sabatical from RPG.net forum postings you guys get to be bored with the tale of how it went in that forum’s stead.
Urbandead
This follows the veins of the discussion on the Zombies!!! board game, that Bear, Loki, Grue, Megan and I played the other month (for which Loki holds a 3-for-3 winning streak) and browser games that I briefly mentioned before on the zoic.com. Out of chance, I was refered to a browser game that I can almost guarantee was partly inspired by Zombies!!!.
d20 Alternate Mechanics – Armor & Damage Reduction
As Bear and Loki pointed out in response to my last entry on the subject of D&D combat: the regular system may in some ways be strange or unrealistic, but it’s simple. There’s one die roll for attack and one set of dice rolled for damage.
There’s plenty of validity to this view. But D&D actually tries to cram alot of detail into the system with spells, combat maneuvers (at least in the 3.0 and 3.5 editions), and class abilities. My feeling is that the standard D&D/d20 system has come a long way but is stuck at a crossroads. On one hand it’s straddling a fence between the old amalgam of “sub-systems” (one set of rules for damage, one for spellcasting, one for skills, many for
other abilities) and a unified system (saving throws, skills, and attacks all work similarly). On the other hand it’s straddling a fence between a sort of simulationist attention to detail and a quicker, simpler system.
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d20 Alternate Mechanics – Injury & Consequences
Since nothing better comes to mind at the moment I thought I’d post up a couple ideas for revising the D&D/d20 roleplaying game system, or at least providing a few alternates to the standard rules.
The idea for today involves changing the system by which damage affects character abilities.
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