TableTop

It can be really overwhelming when staring at a wall of board games in a store and trying to figure out which ones are good.  It can also be a very expensive mistake to buy a game you don't like.  This is where web series like Wil Wheaton's TableTop come into play.  Every episode is the same format: different B-list celebrities play a board game with Wil Wheaton, hilarity ensues, a winner is declared, the losers mope on the loser's couch, and the winner gives a little speech.  It's very obvious that everyone involved has a lot of fun making this.

Watching the series is a great way to see how a game plays, how much story can be involved in a board game, and possibly find out about other celebrities you enjoy and should follow.  Each episode is 30 minutes or so (except for the extended ones that are an hour and a half each).  The first season is filled with games that all very shortly became available at Target (I'm not sure if they had a deal with Target or just good timing).  Of course, I'm sure all these games are available on Amazon as well.  Just keep in mind, I've noticed a number of times where they'll play the game slightly wrong.  Either a rule gets ignored or played differently.  I'm guessing this is to fit the format of the show or keep the game shorter.  During the extended episodes, you can see how the behind the scenes people make sure they're playing the game right.

Weregeek

A webcomic I discovered fairly recently was Weregeek.  The whole webcomic is a celebration of nerdiness/geeky things in all its forms.  The basic plot is about a (at first) normal guy, Mark, who stumbles into a group of geeks playing Vampire: The Masquerade and discovers the beauty of relishing in his inner geek.  It's really awesome because each chapter of the story cycles through various different games.  Sometimes they'll be playing D&D, sometimes Shadowrun, sometimes Vampire: The Masquerade, etc.  The comic will alternate between showing the people playing the games and what it looks like in those peoples' imaginations.  There's also a couple stories running throughout the entire series (some interpersonal drama, some strange fantastical mysteries, etc.) that are intriguing in their own right.

As with most webcomics, the art style has drastically improved since the beginning.  The characters are all highly amusing and unique, the hilarious puns and punchlines are well-written, and the celebration of things geeky is a thing of beauty.  It does make me a little sad that (as far as I know) I don't turn into an awesome were-beast when I really geek out, though.

Darths and Droids

Have you ever wanted to combine Dungeons and Dragons and Star Wars?  Or just very slowly make fun of all those little ridiculous logic flaws throughout the series?  That's where Darths and Droids come in.  Starting with Episode 1 and currently up to about 2/3 through Episode 4, Darths and Droids takes you through the Star Wars movie in comic book form, except all the characters are gamers playing an RPG campaign in a Star Wars setting.  But in their world, Star Wars never existed.  Basically it pokes fun at Star Wars, D&D, video gaming, and various other nerdy tropes in clever and hilarious ways.  It gets especially entertaining when they introduce new characters who haven't played D&D before (one is an actress, the other is a video gamer).  Also, the post after each comic usually has some good tips and ideas for potential or current DMs.  It's because of this webcomic that I can't help but call the Death Star the Peace Moon from now on.

PAX 2012

I didn't get back from PAX until late last night and my dog clearly missed me (indicated by his insistence that I play with him at 8 am), hence the lateness of this post.  Last year was my first PAX, so I was very distracted by the immense amounts of free stuff and ended up not really getting to do much of anything.  I made sure not to make that mistake again this year and gave myself goals to achieve every day.  Here are the results in my favorite form, a list:

• My card game was successfully play tested twice (which doesn't sound like much, but trying to wrangle a group of 5-10 people to play a game by yourself is quite difficult)
• Result - I'm going to finish the rule book of my game and make a print to play version for people around the world to try out in the very near future.
• I tried 10 new board games I have never played before
• Result - Disappearance of a lot of money and future money will disappear for the games I couldn't find
• I met, took a picture with, and got a signature from Ali Hillis, the voice behind Liara in the Mass Effect series

• Result - 
• I got to watch the fourth, fifth, and most of the final round of the Omegathon
• Result - I had to leave before seeing who won the Omegathon and missed my flight to San Jose, so I had to switch to a flight to San Francisco and got home even later...but it was fun to watch.  :)
• I met some other people who are making games of their own and got to try out some of their prototypes
• You can check out their print to play games yourself and see what you think of them

All in all, it was a very fun and successful trip.  I will admit I'm a little afraid that next year's PAX is going to be 4 days...hopefully I'll survive it.  I'll leave you with the only other two pictures I took while I was there (I'm not even sure why I have a camera if I never use it...):

Mario and Star cookies from the Cookie Brigade, fancy 20-sided
die acquired for buying said cookies in the D&D area and an
awesome figurine from the D&D Legend of Drizzt board game

My favorite cosplay of the weekend and pretty much the
only female cosplay I could take pictures of without
feeling like a creepy perv...for non-Godzilla fans, that is
Anguirus and King Ghidora

Extra Credits

I was recently introduce to a web series called Extra Credits.  For the most part, this is a show that breaks down video games and game design with the intent of bettering gaming as a whole.  I almost immediately got hooked because that's the point of this blog (even though I may not be as articulate as they are or have as many funny pictures).  One big difference is they want to improve games as an art form, whereas I just want to make games more fun, so I identify things that are not fun in games and things that are fun whereas they delve a little more into topics I really don't care too much about.

There is nothing stopping games from being art and being fun (they had a whole episode on that topic), but from my experience, most games I've played that are "artsy games" are generally no fun whatsoever.  I have no problem with having games make me find out stuff about myself even though I haven't really delved into why I love collecting, stealing, helping, etc.  But I do have a problem with something call itself a game when there are zero game elements.  Just because something is interactive, does not make it a game.  Anyway, that's a different rant to go on and not my intention.

If you have any interest in breaking down games with silly pictures and an emphasis on the depth of games versus just the fun factor, then go check them out.

James Hance

I'm usually not very big on art, that's what my bothers, Adam and Andrew, are for.  But, I was introduced to one other artist that I really can't help but love and that's James Hance.  It's like he takes every nerdy thing I love and combines them into ways that somehow makes me love them even more!  I didn't know my heart had room for this much love!  Currently, I own three of his prints and the only reason I don't own more is that I'm trying to give other artists a chance to clutter up my walls.  It really doesn't help that the prints are only $10 each.  I really have nothing else to say, so I'm just going to display some of my other favorites of his.

Review: Prometheus

Prometheus is a prequel (of sorts) to the Aliens series of movies.  Although it takes place before the other Alien movies, it's more of a side branch of that story.  In many ways, however, this movie mirrors the original Alien.  There are a group of people aboard a spaceship that don't know each other previously that each have specific jobs, people get separated and killed, and by the end the main female character grows a backbone and learns how to fight to survive.  At least I think that was the idea.  Instead, the main female character constantly looks freaked out and panicky and among many plot holes, the reason the initial redshirts get separated makes absolutely no sense.

Some things (like that) I can forgive because I know the trope and I know someone has to get separated to get the ball rolling with the aliens.  However, it's much harder to forgive the movie when you stop caring about everything for the last 30 minutes of the movie.  Not to mention when at the end of the movie, you realize Charlize Theron's character was completely pointless and therefore the only reason she was there was to add Charlize Theron to the list of cast to try to get more people to watch it.  This was no fault of Charlize herself by any means, she was fantastic at her role.  The role itself was just unnecessary.  On the positive side, this movie does add some very interesting things to the lore of the Aliens series and it is entertaining for the most part.  Ultimately, I would say watch it if you're a big fan of the Alien series, otherwise you can skip it.

Viewing Life Through Alignment Grids

I don't know if it's because I just started playing my very first D&D game a few weeks ago or if I saw a bunch of versions of alignment charts posted on Facebook, but I have started to view many shows and movies lately trying to figure out what D&D alignment grid characters belong to.

If you don't know what a D&D alignment grid is, it is a 3x3 grid that classifies characters' behavior and attitudes. Essentially, it dictates how a character will react in any given situation. The table looks like this:

Lawful Good	Neutral Good	Chaotic Good
Lawful Neutral	Neutral	Chaotic Neutral
Lawful Evil	Neutral Evil	Chaotic Evil

Growing up with D&D computer games, I got used to these terms, but never really understood them in great detail. Although, the first one I remember where it really affected anything was Planescape Torment because your alignment could change based on your actions. The more I play games with moral choices, the more I notice patterns of mine. I almost always play as a character that will save as many lives as possible, but then rob everyone blind if they let me. I'm still not really sure where that puts me. Other than the robbing, I definitely play Neutral Good because I won't blindly obey the law if it means harming innocents. But if I'm robbing you blind so I can buy better equipment to fight larger monsters and save more towns, that's still Good...right?

But besides the introspection, I've also noticed I've been making similar observations while watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and Bleach. I haven't tried to classify everyone, but there are definitely some characters that I keep focusing on. For example, I argue Captain Picard is Lawful Neutral. There have been a number of episodes where he chooses not to aid people because it would break the Prime Directive. Dr. Pulaski is Chaotic Good since aiding people comes above all else. I'm still trying to figure out what Kenpachi would be. All he cares about is fighting the strongest person, nothing else matters. I feel like that's some form of evil, but I'm not sure if it's Lawful or Neutral...

What alignments are your characters? What alignment are you?

Just for fun, here are some alignment charts:

Motion/voice controlled gaming

Ever since the Wii was announced, there's been a trend of motion control technologies released.  Two of these were just announced at this year's E3 and the technology isn't finished, so I'll try not to judge them on how glitchy they may look.  My big concern with this trend is that a lot of games do not work with motion controls.  At least not without losing precision or feeling gimmicky.  Project Natal specifically has this video of a family very happily playing a bunch of really dumb looking mini-games together.  Let's assume for a second that anything shown in that video is possible (a big assumption in my opinion), sure that's great for like a 10 minute gameplay session with a bunch of people, but I don't see how that entertainment would last at all or be any fun when I'm playing a game by myself.

You've got a racing game where three people sit there and watch one person play for a very very rare moment of "Now I get to play!"  If I were that dad, I'd tell my daughter to go to the pit stop every lap just so I could get to play.  You've got a Godzilla game that looks like a glorified EyeToy game, which had the same problem of no games for it besides lame mini-games.  You've got a game show game where the motion is hitting the buzzer.  Didn't they sell that game only with an actual buzzer so you can't complain about it not registering your hand movement in time?

Maybe I'm just jaded because of the Wii's waggle-rificly inaccurate motion controls and constant stream of shovelware mini-games.  Speaking of the Wii, they've released some new technology to make their motion sensing more accurate.  If that works then that helps one problem, but developers still have the problem of slapping in motion controls in games just because.  Like Wario Land: Shake It!, which would have been a fantastic old-school platforming game save for the fact that every half a minute or so you'd have to violently shake your controller to get money out of bags or get enemies out of their armor.  This completely broke me out of the enjoyment I was having playing the game every time I had to do it.  That's not the goal in my opinion.

Some games did manage to do the motion controls incredibly well without feeling gimmicky.  Mostly because it wasn't shaking or waggling the controller to do things.  It was pointing the controller like a gun to fire my in-game gun at people or making a motion like I was tossing a garrote around someone's neck to choke them (violent I know, but it is a game based on the Godfather).

So I guess my problem is two-fold.  I really don't trust Project Natal for most games because I think it's important to have the feel of something in your hands while playing a game.  Imagine playing Rock Band with no instruments.  Air Rock Band Hero.  Closets around the world would love that because they wouldn't have to hold so many plastic peripherals, but the controls would have to be so dumbed down to feel at all accurate, which would just ruin the experience.

The other problem I have is that for most games, I play at home to relax sitting on the couch.  I can't do that if you're making me stand up and punch the air or run in place to get across the land of Azeroth or some such thing.  If I had to run around as much as I make my virtual counterparts run around in games, I'd be the world's fittest marathon runner in existence.  I don't see that being fun.

On the other hand, I do see Project Natal being great for workout games or line dancing or something related.  My biggest complaint about working out is that it's mind-numbingly boring.  I'm sitting there doing a repetitive motion staring at nothing, trying to get my mind wandering so it can be happy, but at the same time trying not to lose count of how many sit ups or push ups I've done.  If I could be running on a treadmill while my TV is in front of me displaying a hiking trail I'm "running" on, that would be awesome!  Or having a virtual personal trainer.  Or even if I just had a simple progress bar above a virtual me that counted my reps for me and kept track of my stats so I could level up (ie turn working out into an RPG) then I'd buy that no questions asked.

So I'm wary of the future.  If developers just cram in motion controls everywhere just to try and make a quick buck with "casual gamers", then I fear for the future of gaming.  If developers are smart and use motion controls as a clever tool for more interactive gaming that makes sense and isn't a lot of work for the player, then I'm all for it.

Star Treknology

Star Trek has a lot of technology that I really look forward to enjoying (whether that's a realistic hope or not).  Teleporters to eliminate traffic jams, car pollution, and long distances.  Replicators to eliminate hunger, lack of food variation, and bad cooking.  Holodecks to see what it's like to pilot a Gundam, to travel to Ireland without going anywhere, and to play in a jazz club without fear of being booed off the stage.  But after this week, the technology I want most from any series of Star Trek is the Borg alcove.  I had to look up the name for this thing and I am incredibly underwhelmed.  The purpose of the alcove is a place for a Borg drone to go for 6 hours for their regeneration cycles (basically sleep).  What I would love is if every night, I could go into a device and just turn it on and not worry about having to fall asleep or being woken up by stuff in the middle of the night or getting the right amount of sleep.

The quality of my sleep seems to come in cycles and I am currently in the "constantly being woken up in the middle of the night" cycle.  Whether it's because I didn't drink enough water that day and wake up at 4, 5, or 6 with a very dry throat, because I'm overheated, or because of a bad dream, something keeps waking up in the middle of the night and then my brain thinks it's morning, so it starts going off thinking about what I want to/have to/get to do that day and I can't get back to sleep even though I need it.  Even if I can get back to sleep, it never seems to be as useful as a full 8 hours of unconciousness.

Eventually this loss of sleep catches up and then I start sleeping well again.  This is very tedious and overall I find sleep to be very stressful and not a pleasant thing.  As Q put it in the episode Deja Q (I had to look this all up, I'm not THAT much of a Star Trek geek):

Q: [Captain Picard visits Q in the brig] Truthfully, Jean-Luc, I've been entirely preoccupied by a most frightening experience of my own. A couple of hours ago, I've realized that my body was no longer functioning properly. I felt weak, I could no longer stand, the life was oozing out of me, I lost consciousness... 
Capt. Picard: You fell asleep.

Pandora's Box of Groovesharks

At some point when working at Liquid, I started listening to music nearly every day. Partly because everything at Liquid was open (ie no cubicles), so occasionally I needed a way to shut out everything else so I could focus on work. Partly because I saw the lead programmer listening to music, so I figured it must be okay. The IT guys had specifically said no internet radio streaming was allowed, so I had to rely on what music I had or what a co-worker was sharing.

Listening to the same songs day and and day out got kind of tiring, so for the first time in a long time, my CD collection started growing. I've never really been into the music scene, so I never know who I would like. I'd listen to the radio on the way to work and could sing along with songs, but have absolutely no idea who sang the song (still true). So I'd have to trust recommendations from peers (which brought me such wonders as Gaelic Storm and the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack) or hope to find something good through the websites I check (which brought me The OneUps).

Then when I started working at NPS, I discovered we had free reign to stream whatever we wanted to at work (hooray for the government and their large bandwidth!). At some point at Liquid, someone told me about a website called Pandora. This is exactly the sort of thing I had been looking for. You give it a song or artist that you like and it will create a radio station for you based on that style. What this means is that you will occasionally hear songs from the artist you told (or the actual song the station is based on), but mostly you hear other artists playing similar styles. For example, today I wanted to hear some good banjo music, so I created a radio station based on Foggy Mountain Breakdown. Hoo boy did I hear a lot of great bluegrass all day! Other radio stations that have been incredibly successful include The Fray, Gaelic Storm, Nobuo Uematsu, The Insyderz, and Squirrel Nut Zippers. If you want to see my whole list, you can add me as a friend on it with my junkmail e-mail address (first initial last name AT hotmail DOT com).

The one downside of Pandora is that if you really like a particular song and want to hear it again, you have to wait until it decides to play it again (which it will relatively often if you give it a thumbs up on that song). Apparently this is due to how they license their music. You also can't skip too many songs or play the exact song you want. For this, there is the other good music site, Grooveshark. Grooveshark lets you search for an artist, album, song, genre, playlist, or people and play the exact song you want to hear at that moment.

My experience with Grooveshark has not been that great however. I don't think I've heard a completely uninterrupted song (ie it can't stream the song fast enough) and that's assuming I actually found the song I'm looking for. Granted, I've been searching for some newer (and thus less known) names, so it's fairly likely they won't be on this site yet.

So if you find yourself in need of music at a computer and have the ability to stream music, I would recommend Grooveshark (if you know what you want) and Pandora (if you don't). Happy listening!

Dish scrubber +1

One of the things that came from the aforementioned house meetings is the use of a site called Chore Wars. Chores are a common cause of arguments in households larger than 1 person so Chore Wars is a way to make doing chores more rewarding.

You start off by making a character with a certain class (really only the character's name matters as the class changes when leveling up) for each person in the house. Then one of you creates a party and invites the other members of the house into that party. Everytime one of you does a chore, you claim an adventure associated with that chore. The default adventure list has things like paying bills, grocery shopping, cleaning dishes, etc. You can add, remove, or edit adventures at your leisure.

Everytime you claim an adventure, you get an amount of experience defined by the adventure (hopefully these amounts are proportional to the task, so taking the garbage out gets less experience than doing the dishes). You also have a chance of getting items, gold, or fighting monsters on your adventure (all of these are defined as possibilities in the adventure). We have an adventure for cleaning the stove top and one of the potential monsters to fight is a Crusted Cheese Goo.

The enemy fights serve no purpose other than to keep the RPG feel the site has going. The items and gold are used based on what the house agrees to. My house hasn't decided anything, so I just keep stockpiling gold and alley cat hair. Some possibilities are to "spend" some gold so you don't have to do a particular chore one week.

What I find useful about this (and really the only reason I do it anymore) is it's a good way to track who overall is not doing their share of the chores. In theory, everyone should be getting about the same experience per week and so if someone is a lower level character (you level up after reaching certain amounts of experience, which adds stats based on the chores you did and changes your class to match your stats) then you know they are slacking. You can also track who did a particular chore for the past six months, so you can tell if one chore tends to be done by one person or the whole group more often.

If you live with other people and haven't settled on a way to deal with chore distribution, I would highly recommend Chore Wars. Especially if you also happen to like fantasy RPG settings.