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bateleur and I celebrated twenty years together by going to a rather fine restaurant called Roganic. As bateleur has already provided an extensive write-up, I don't propose to say anything more about the food. However, I would add that the service was excellent - we were offered water when we arrived (still, sparkling or tap), every course arrived promptly and was described in detail and they brought the menu, wine list and bill to the person who asked for them. And chrestomancy was the hero of the occasion for providing the babysitting.
Roleplaying
GMing
I finished Meteor last night. It was a two year fantasy campaign for which I designed a world. The features were a pantheon of gods (the game featured just over a hundred) and a magic system with six types of magic - form, movement, energy, mind, disruption and displacement. When I set it up, I decided to try out running two different parties within it.
Having completed a campaign, I'm now thinking about one-off plans for the next Con. Also, I can finally read Dark Heresy without worrying about it influencing my Meteor campaign.
Playing
Seventh Sea re-started on Tuesday and this time we set off across the land ofGermany Eisen and promptly found a ghost inn. The resulting interactions were creepy, strange and - I think - a little bit helpful. Most characters have been contacted by people asking for them to come home (to different places) and the party is going to have to figure out where to go as soon as we complete our business in Eisen.
Computer Games
I promised a write-up of the two Darkness Within mystery/horror point-and-click games when I finished them. The short version is that the story was interesting (inspired by Lovecraft), the atmosphere tense/scary in places but that the gameplay was awkward and I constantly needed a FAQ. For a longer version:
There were originally supposed to be three games in this series, but the company finished the story in two games (which can be bought together) and, as far as I can tell, then stopped being a company. The two games they produced had some good elements, but I could also see why they hadn't get excellent reviews.
On the plus side, the story was genuinely interesting and there were a number of unexpected developments and scenes. The first of the two games (In Pursuit of Loath Nolder) in particular had some great surprise moments - such as the appearance of the poet (I won’t say more). Also, the inclusion of nightmares along with the day-to-day world was a nice touch. Every time I moved to a new night or day I was very keen to see where I now was.
I liked the two main characters - Harold (the protagonist) and Loath Nolder (who mainly appears in the second game, The Dark Lineage) - which particularly brought home the rather gruesome fates they suffer. Perhaps it's in keeping with the genre, but one thing that stuck out is that the main character does seem to make what Bea would call "poor choices". Example: Exploring the house of the murder victim? Go alone and do some rope climbing in the dark! Howard never told his friends anything and never asked for help. Perhaps that’s a mark of a bookish police detective, but it left me scratching my head and blinking at the screen several times. That said, his friends didn’t seem that bothered about him either.
The big problem with the two games was the gameplay. The main part of the game is usual for the genre - wandering around the environment reading things and interacting with objects. However, the game also has a couple of other elements - the first is a process for examining documents and the second is about combining items or ideas - both are nice concepts, but rather irritating in practical terms. The process of examining documents is that when faced with a new paper, letter or book the game gives you the option of underlining key words and sentences. Trouble is, some key sentences are really obvious and others are not. I found I wanted to underline everything, a few lines at a time, to process a document into clues. The combining items feature appears in many games in the point and click genre. What makes Darkness Within different is that this is also used for ideas. This is a lovely thing in theory - you combine some of the thoughts your character has and then reach new conclusions. However, in practice, you need all the associated thoughts to be able to use the mechanic and this is frustrating when you have only some of those needed. Also, in the second game, I’m not sure there were many places where the combination feature could be used for ideas (I don’t recall finding any).
Outside these two features, the game has other problems. The main ones being missing hotspots, huge areas and needing scenes to activate objects. The missing hotspots issue is caused in part by the screens scrolling up and down as well as right and left. There were several occasions when I missed something on the ground and it was really annoying. The huge areas were just painful. Whenever I was stuck, the next thing or stage could be anywhere in a huge range of locations as the character was almost never restricted in movement and the resulting plodding around was extremely frustrating. Finally, the inactivated objects were a nuisance because it meant I wandering around looking for things only to discover what I needed was something I had already examined, but could not previously pick up.
The overall result of the system was that the game had some nice ideas, but these were somewhat drowned in the inevitable plodding from place to place re-examining everything. So, I found it was just about worth playing - with a FAQ to hand.
Films
We've seen two more films - Fire Walk With Me and The Raid. The former was rather disappointing, but the latter was excellent.
bateleur and I celebrated twenty years together by going to a rather fine restaurant called Roganic. As bateleur has already provided an extensive write-up, I don't propose to say anything more about the food. However, I would add that the service was excellent - we were offered water when we arrived (still, sparkling or tap), every course arrived promptly and was described in detail and they brought the menu, wine list and bill to the person who asked for them. And chrestomancy was the hero of the occasion for providing the babysitting.Roleplaying
GMing
I finished Meteor last night. It was a two year fantasy campaign for which I designed a world. The features were a pantheon of gods (the game featured just over a hundred) and a magic system with six types of magic - form, movement, energy, mind, disruption and displacement. When I set it up, I decided to try out running two different parties within it.
- The Good - Both parties worked and had different dynamics and somewhat different goals. It meant I could run with more players than I usually do (seven - I don't like having more than five people in a party these days). It made more use of a background I had put a lot of thought and effort into. All the characters were good and worked (although it turned out that some magic paths were more interesting / easier to progress through than others).
- The Bad - The parties were both on six week (ish) cycles while I was on a three week cycle and the players would have liked to run more often. The two occasions when the parties met up involved playing in somewhat overcrowded conditions (our lounge is fairly short of seating anyway) although no-one complained. I'd had a cunning plan for bateleur to play in both games - to NPC in one of the two, but it didn't work that well and he was constantly trying to remember which character knew what.
- The interesting - The parties had very difficult reactions to things and stopped and started at different times. The Nemoria party (lanfykins, chrisvenus, Alistair and bateleur) were more directionless at the start while the Constructs party (quisalan, ao_lai, chrestomancy and bateleur) were fine at the start, but struggling with aims and plans towards the end.
- Memorable moments - There were loads, but for the Nemoria Party, I think the tragic battle at Jist and also the Preadith Pilgrimage particularly stick out in my mind. For the Constructs party I would go with the debate about the sword of Thearanda and also the Battle of
the campsiteOrcet Bridge.
Having completed a campaign, I'm now thinking about one-off plans for the next Con. Also, I can finally read Dark Heresy without worrying about it influencing my Meteor campaign.
Playing
Seventh Sea re-started on Tuesday and this time we set off across the land of
Computer Games
I promised a write-up of the two Darkness Within mystery/horror point-and-click games when I finished them. The short version is that the story was interesting (inspired by Lovecraft), the atmosphere tense/scary in places but that the gameplay was awkward and I constantly needed a FAQ. For a longer version:
There were originally supposed to be three games in this series, but the company finished the story in two games (which can be bought together) and, as far as I can tell, then stopped being a company. The two games they produced had some good elements, but I could also see why they hadn't get excellent reviews.
On the plus side, the story was genuinely interesting and there were a number of unexpected developments and scenes. The first of the two games (In Pursuit of Loath Nolder) in particular had some great surprise moments - such as the appearance of the poet (I won’t say more). Also, the inclusion of nightmares along with the day-to-day world was a nice touch. Every time I moved to a new night or day I was very keen to see where I now was.
I liked the two main characters - Harold (the protagonist) and Loath Nolder (who mainly appears in the second game, The Dark Lineage) - which particularly brought home the rather gruesome fates they suffer. Perhaps it's in keeping with the genre, but one thing that stuck out is that the main character does seem to make what Bea would call "poor choices". Example: Exploring the house of the murder victim? Go alone and do some rope climbing in the dark! Howard never told his friends anything and never asked for help. Perhaps that’s a mark of a bookish police detective, but it left me scratching my head and blinking at the screen several times. That said, his friends didn’t seem that bothered about him either.
The big problem with the two games was the gameplay. The main part of the game is usual for the genre - wandering around the environment reading things and interacting with objects. However, the game also has a couple of other elements - the first is a process for examining documents and the second is about combining items or ideas - both are nice concepts, but rather irritating in practical terms. The process of examining documents is that when faced with a new paper, letter or book the game gives you the option of underlining key words and sentences. Trouble is, some key sentences are really obvious and others are not. I found I wanted to underline everything, a few lines at a time, to process a document into clues. The combining items feature appears in many games in the point and click genre. What makes Darkness Within different is that this is also used for ideas. This is a lovely thing in theory - you combine some of the thoughts your character has and then reach new conclusions. However, in practice, you need all the associated thoughts to be able to use the mechanic and this is frustrating when you have only some of those needed. Also, in the second game, I’m not sure there were many places where the combination feature could be used for ideas (I don’t recall finding any).
Outside these two features, the game has other problems. The main ones being missing hotspots, huge areas and needing scenes to activate objects. The missing hotspots issue is caused in part by the screens scrolling up and down as well as right and left. There were several occasions when I missed something on the ground and it was really annoying. The huge areas were just painful. Whenever I was stuck, the next thing or stage could be anywhere in a huge range of locations as the character was almost never restricted in movement and the resulting plodding around was extremely frustrating. Finally, the inactivated objects were a nuisance because it meant I wandering around looking for things only to discover what I needed was something I had already examined, but could not previously pick up.
The overall result of the system was that the game had some nice ideas, but these were somewhat drowned in the inevitable plodding from place to place re-examining everything. So, I found it was just about worth playing - with a FAQ to hand.
Films
We've seen two more films - Fire Walk With Me and The Raid. The former was rather disappointing, but the latter was excellent.
- Fire Walk With Me - We finished Twin Peaks last year, so this seemed like a good idea. In addition, Mark Kermode had thoroughly recommended it (although responses were mixed). So I watched it, and was disappointed.
My huge complaint was that there was little or no new information. The dark fate of Laura is already known and this film shows very little of anyone else. Yes, Kermode is right and Sheryl Lee is excellent as Laura, but that simply isn't enough in itself for me. I think the most telling comment I read was that Lynch apparently said he made because he was in love with the character of Laura Palmer and, if so, yeah - that's what it looks like. Like most other people, I would have liked a sequel (I knew in advance this wasn't) and the couple of lines alluding to Dale's fate simply were not enough. I gather two more films were planned to complete the Twin Peaks sequence but these were cancelled when this film flopped. A shame, but I can also see why. - The Raid - Subtitles or not, this is excellent.
The characters are interesting, the plot works and if the action is a combination of realistic firefights and unrealistic martial arts - well, even they kind of work. I loved this and I want to see the sequel (in production). Apparently the Americans are remaking it with the original director.
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no subject
Date: 2012-10-14 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-14 08:47 pm (UTC)There were a lot of memorable moments, and while thinking about it I agree with Dawn's analysis of the flaws of the campaign, they were far outweighed the awesome. After all, the six-week gap between games wouldn't have been a problem if we hadn't always been desperate for the next session :)
no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 07:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-15 08:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 07:22 am (UTC)I'm now waiting for either Bracken Tor or The Last Crown to get an actual release date and I'm playing Resonance which is actually awesome (a review when I'm done).
no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 08:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 05:43 pm (UTC)