Genisis X wrote:

Giving Bioshock another whirl just to see the prettyness on my 8800gt, and damn is it pretty. Only in DX9 though, cos I don't have any need to downgrade to vista.

Heh - I've got Vista on my laptop, and neither Bioshock, nor the Crysis demo look any better in DX10 mode, and both run significantly slower.

I've also seen reviews and benchmarks which have said the same in general, so DX10 is another downgrade :/

I got a Nintendo Wii...its really cool I have Mario Galaxy and Legend of Zelda for it

and also a bookshelf of RPG books...though i havent played an RPG in over a year :(

My friends and I are developing a pen + paper RPG, and are nearing the end of it's alpha stage. It's called the Seasons Pass RPG, based in a world of some novellas I am writing.

The setting is a sort of combination of Shadowrun and World of Darkness, with as many mythological references thrown in as we could find (my mate's a History grad student, so I think we're getting pretty comprehensive). We've taken tidbits from every system we like and mashed them together to see what we get, and surprisingly, it's pretty fun. It still needs a lot of work before the document can be read without an interpreter, but we're getting there.

The world is about 200 years in the future, and through the course of 2 more world wars and interplanetary expansion, magic surfaced. No one really noticed the difference. Here's the introductory paragraph from the current version.

Be warned that the character narrating this uses explicit language.

Seasons Pass wrote:

Welcome to the modern world, boys and girls. You've lived your life so far on one side of the fence, whether here in the Western Sprawl under the benevolent yet enigmatic hand of Executive Governor Aces Wilde, or perhaps over in the parts of Europe that weren't ground to dust in World War IV, or maybe from the mechanical society of Free Luna out there on the Moon. Wherever you've been before, you're here now, and it's my job to teach you about the big picture. I'm gonna tell you what to expect out of this fine year of 2218.

Since the Fourth World War died down a decade or two ago, some pretty fucked up shit has come out of the woodwork. Psychotic necromancers trying to PEMP bomb major cities back to the dark ages, packs of feral shifters hunting on the streets, vampires who can suck the blood out of people's ears from across the room, cyborgs as big as apartment complexes stomping around downtown, even rogue creatures materialized from the Aether going around blowing shit up – you've seen it all on the news.

That's why you're here now. You're gonna be one of the poor buggers whose job it is to put a stop to shit like that, so that life is peachy for all the straights out there. Don't it give you a warm and fuzzy feeling inside?

It'd be best to start at the beginning, if there was one. Maybe when some bastard shot a duke of some eastern European nation and started a war which dragged the world along. Or maybe the Revolutionary War, where a bunch of dupes dressed up as Native Americans and threw tea into an ocean. Or maybe when a bunch of assholes who killed Ceaser and started the decline of the Roman Empire. Point is, there is no real point of origin for people like us, whose job it is to keep shit like that from happening.

I guess the real beginning for actual organizations like ours was back in World War III, when the Native Americans formed the first extraterritorial corporation by buying land off of the American government for depreciated prices. It was only the second time in history that the Injuns have successfully stood up to the government. From that, they formed the Waukheon Cooperative, which has become the number one weapons manufacturer in the solar system. On the land they owned, they offered not only employment, but citizenship for all that could prove Native American descendancy. That's extraterritoriality for you.

Just thought I'd pass this by youse guys who are gamer nerds like me.

Nice Ideas Mike, but be careful of getting it too complex too quickly. And as a side note when you get around to publishing the thign, might want to edit out the couarser language. It will sell better to parents and you can always be more creative with colorful language...8)

Fun Scene from the Sunday Star Wars Game;
My Gand Jedi in his vacuum-worthy armor caught in our ships tractor-beam after tumbling out of an open airlock, lightsaber in hand and attacking a passing Yuuzan Vong Coral-skipper (fighter) that was attacking our Ship and actually HURTING it...bet I scared and suprised the crap out of those Vong...8)
Awesome fun, THAT is the kind of Drama the Star Wars RPG is intended for...8)

Oooh! LOl that WOUDL be fun on my phone...wonder if ti runs on Windows Mobile though...but how would I control it?...my Blackjack ain't exactly ideal for gaming...8P

If you haven't played a lot of the old games then yeah you'll get more bang for your bucks and there ares till some very pretty older games out there (Xenosaga springs to mind and is one of my favorites) the problem is that most RPG's I know of tend to be single-player by default. It's very tough to find good simultaneous-play RPG's, at best you can settle for taking turns playing different characters or you each have your own game running.
Otherwise you're probably looking at multi-player rolling combat games that aren't so heavy on the RPG...8P
If you are good wiht taking turns theres a ton of really good PS2 RPG games out there. Unfortunately I can't reccomend much beyond PS2 as I relaly stopped buying new games arounf the time the over-priced PS3 came out. I have seen a lot of very pretty games for the 360 even if you don't play online (Lost Odyessey is SORELY tempting me to buy a 360!). I'm sure someone else here cna give you better reccomendations than I on newer Gen games.

MMm Gauntlet...not RPG be but endless amounts of mindless fun....8)

Coming out later this year (hopefully) for both 360 and PS3 will be a game called Borderlands, which will be a four player co-op sci-fi RPG.

We just picked up Mass Effect for the 360, and that is a lot of fun, despite its flaws. It should have been multiplayer, but it's still fun. Flying around as an interstellar policeman and raiding space pirate enclaves is a lot of fun. It could've used slightly more refined controls -- grenade throw is the select button? I forget about them most of the time. A nonlethal melee attack is mapped to the same button that fires the gun?! I can't tell you how many times I had to reload the game when I put a rioting colonist down with a shotgun blast to the face instead of my elbow ("My finger slipped!").

Lost Odyssey looks like classic RPG fun right there. I should pick it up someday.

Co-operative multiplayer is highly limited right now. My friends and I are amusing ourselves with the Soul Calibur III custom character campaign, where we make ourselves as the characters, wearing jeans and t-shirts as though we had gone back in time, and each chronicle we go through we add or change a piece of clothing to more period stuff. I have fun with myself using the Soul of Nightmare.

Last edited by The Microphone (2008-05-08 19:13:43)

I just ordered me an xbox 360 controller for my pc. You'd be amazed at how little one actually plays driving games when one must set up his momo wheel every single time and then remove it after he is done thus enabling the continued use of his computer.

And it's wireless!

now if only I could justify buying that g9 to replace my mx518 all my input desires would be sated...

-X

I have some friends playing AoC and say its fantastic. Still got some kinks to work out but otherwise rockin...

In the RPG Front...
Our sunday Star Wars Campaign ended with a Bang in a big way...thats what happens when you scal thermal detonators to starship damage and drop 2 of them at once in an room...and then another PC has 12 more in a box with him...big badda boom...8)
At least we went out in style...well THEY did, my jedi was already down and unconscious so no pain...lol
...so next week I start running the Warhammer 40,000 RPG, Dark Heresy. Been looking forward to running this game for 15 years...had to wait that damn long for them to put the damn thing out...8P
Gonna be awesome!

Our Friday game is likely to end in the next session or two so we can start playing D&D 4th ed which comes out this week...NO ide what I'll be playing...8P

Got "Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom" a couple days ago for the 360. It kind of reminds me of Ninety Nine Nights, but with a bit more plot/storyline involvement. We'll see how it goes...

Quit playing WoW. Long story short: People suck and I hate them.

Also got back into NWN, doing an online game w/ boyfriend. Fun stuffs!

Reviews for Refuse: D&D 4th
This game is promising. Much of the quibbles I had about meaningless numbers on a character sheet have been handled, and the entire game has had an overhaul to make it better.

The all the classes have spells/prayers/exploits that are basically special moves. Wizards and suchlike are no longer limited to "Spells per day" and fighters and their lot now actually have more to do than bash heads in (or at least, they bash heads in creatively).

Skills and attack bonuses go up with your level (each adds 1/2 + Ability Mod). Instead of gaining "Skill points" every level, you gain Training in a skill which permanently adds a +5 bonus to that skill roll. Several trained skills are chosen at first level, and more can be gained with feats, and a further +3 bonus can be added to the skill with another feat. Attack rolls are determined by the power used to attack, and generally end up being Ability Mod + 1/2 level + proficiency (if you are proficient with a weapon, it adds a +2 or +3 bonus automatically).

Some people have been irked that the game give little leeway for making "unique" characters, that most classes have two build options and that's it. The same was true, if not more accurate, for the last edition. Making a character in any edition of D&D will result in a cookie-cutter character, and it's really up to the player to make these templates unique.

Also, as characters progress in levels, they will find more and more options open to them, in the form of new powers, as each level they may only select 1 out of 4 powers. Each one tends to lean in a slightly different direction, and most can be used by any of the builds to some effect. I admit that options at first level may be somewhat limited, but the higher level a character becomes, the more interesting and unique he gets.

Unfortunately, the entire game has made a shift towards Hex-Based Strategy, and now it really reminds me of Final Fantasy Tactics. All ranges and speeds are denoted in "Squares," which should end up being 5 feet across, but when was the last time you went walking down a series of twisting, mazelike, 5-foot wide hallways? The ones in my house are about 3 feet wide, and they feel spacious. 5-foot squares seem a bit too vast when the models are fitted in.

On another gripe, if a party gets into a situation which doesn't involve hack-and-slash, there are next to no class features or abilities that help outside of combat. Very few of the powers that players acquire will be used for other purposes than destruction.


All in all, it is a very good game, if a little heavy on the combat side. If you're not into long, arduous battles with complicated strategies and prefer a more subtle approach to gaming, then I might steer away from this one.

Our group, however, is having a blast roving around dungeons, being hounded by (and sometimes possessed by) demons, and trying to convince townies to invest in our Company (Blackstone Acquisitions and Security Solutions, Unlimited).

It's all in the perspective.

56 out of 64 gold stars!