Linkstew

While browsing VersionTracker the other day, I came across Crystal Ball, which is a D&D Dungeon Master tool for managing practically all aspects of running a D&D campaign, from keeping track of characters and NPCs, to randomly generating NPCs and monsters, to generating treasure and awarding experience, to keeping track of everything that can come up during a complicated melee. It made me sigh and say to myself "Wow, with this, the game would really be able to focus more on the story and less on the details of the rules. That'd be swell!"

It's a polished and very well done program, and it really makes me nostalgic to role play again. Of course, it's not like I have time between school and work, let alone do I know other people who have time, but it made me nostalgic all the same.

Oh, and better yet, it's a Mac only program (and better still, it runs well in OS X). So if you're a D&D player (or better still, a DM) and you have a Mac (better still, a PowerBook or iBook), you should definitely check this thing out.

Wow, this is right up my alley, and makes me wish I had a car. Hopefully my mom will actually give me some money towards a car one of these days.

(Link via Sumana)

"I don't know what I had, but I felt so bad that I couldn't even watch TV," I told a co-worker.

"Wow, that's pretty bad! You don't have a remote?"

"Oh... no no no..."

And I went on to clarify that I don't have a TV in my room, and that I would have had to get up, and go to the other room, and sit up for a long time, and the very thought of it made my head pound.

Though now that I think about it again, thinking about rolling over, or even thinking about not thinking made my head pound, so perhaps the fault was with the thinking rather than what I was thinking about... And in that case, TV would have been the perfect way to stop me from thinking too much.

But I digress. The point remains that I don't have a TV in my room. While I was walking home, I was thinking about how I used to have a TV in my room. And combined with the constant background hum of my building excitement about the Gamecube launch, I got to think about how I used to play games on the TV in my room.

And then, all at once, several things occurred to me:

1. Since August, I've only been playing my Game Boy Advance.
2. I've only been playing my Game Boy Advance because I've been playing it late at night/early in the morning, right before I go to sleep, so I can't use the TV in the living room.
3. I need a TV in my room.

And this explains why I haven't touched those playstation (note: not PS2, because no PS2 game since GT3 has even so much as sparked my interest) games I've been meaning to play. But, without a car, I can't put this plan into motion, so this is all just idle musing about why I've just been playing GBA games (which I've enjoyed immensely, mind you).

For those of you in Berkeley, Terry Pratchett is going to be speaking at Cody's Books (on Telegraph) on May 11 at 7;30pm. For those of you not in Berkeley, here is a list of when and where else he's speaking this time around. I've seen him speak before, and he's quite amusing.

Also, on June 27 at 7:30pm, Neil Gaiman will be speaking at Cody's Books on Telegraph. Better and Better!

Also Also, a new GURPS Discworld book has been released: GURPS Discworld Also. Good things come in flocks, it seems.

Yesterday at around 5 am I finally finished Chrono Cross. Thanks to class, work, girlfriend, selling my PlayStation and having to get a PS2, it only took me seven months, and for the most part it was worth it. Though the gameplay was incredible and never tedious, the story at times left me confounded and reaching for GameFAQs. Unfortunately, it didn't quite live up to the status of being a sequel to Chrono Trigger. In fact, one of my bigger complaints about the story is that the Chrono Trigger tie-ins seem forced.

The gameplay in Chrono Cross is not a simple Final Fantasy derived system. Sure, like Final Fantasy, Chrono Cross features turn-based, menu driven systems. But unlike Final Fantasy, Chrono Cross features an innovative system full of endless customizability, while at the same time keeping the gameplay perfectly balanced. Before I talk about it, I suppose a description of the system is in order. Each character has a stamina gauge which ranges from -7 to 7, and the stamina gradually grows back to 7 as the battle progresses. When a character has a stamina greater than 1, they can attack. When attacking, a character can attack. Each character character has a weak, medium, and strong attack, which consume 1, 2, or 3 stamina respectively. The hit percentage of strong attacks is lower than weak attacks, but as you perform more attacks the percentage of each category rises, because a follow up strike is easier to land than an initial strike. As characters successfully attack their opponents, they gain "level," which allows them to use "elements," which would be better called technology (I should really finish up my essay on culture and technology in Role-Playing games... It's a pity I can't use that as my Term Paper for my history of technology class). This system is incredibly well balanced. If a player just tries to use the strongest hit every time, they'll miss reletively often. In order to use magic, they first have to attack. There are no random battles in the game, and your characters gain "levels" as they are victorious in significant conflicts. I can't think of anything I would really change about the system -- I enjoyed just playing the game so much that the story itself wasn't that important, which isn't a common stance for to take.

Very early in the game I got the impression that the story was a little incoherent, and by the time (which was around 4 am yesterday) Lucca spat forth a 20 page essay explaining everything that wasn't made clear in the game, I was more than a little irritated. The idea of the story itself was one that I still find very attractive -- A dramatic event occurs and two timelines diverge from one another. Some time later, the central character in that event accidentally ends up in the other world, and the differences between the two worlds and reasons for them are explored. Unfortunately, Chono Cross left that core idea behind pretty quickly, and polluted it with poorly executed philosophy about humans destroying the environment, being one with nature, and other things which were so poorly conveyed that I'm not sure what they intended. Almost all of these problems weren't related to the story itself, but rather how the story was conveyed. I'm not sure how long it took me to play the game, but I was told the whole story at four or five key places in the game. When I say told, I mean told. I didn't get to interact with the story -- what had been happening was just explained away. Why am I playing the game if I don't get to take part in the story? Because I didn't get to interact with the core of the story, I'm fuzzy on exactly what happened. In short, it was a good story which was told instead of shown, but told poorly. It's a damn good thing the game featured such finely tuned gameplay to save it.

The main reason I was so excited about Chrono Cross is because it was a direct sequel to Chrono Trigger, a game which I spent the second half of my sophomore year of high school enjoying several times. Ah, sweet memories. So how did this game live up? Where Chrono Trigger offered me five distinct times to travel to, each with unique features, Chrono Cross gave me two worlds which were very similiar and very hard to tell apart. Where Chrono Trigger offered me an interactive story with unfolding mystery and uncertain allies, Chrono Cross gave me a canned story and 40+ playable characters. Chrono Cross wasn't nearly as epic as Chrono Trigger, and yet Chrono Cross shoehorned Chrono Trigger into being a little event that was a small part of the bigger picture described in Chrono Cross. In fact, I'd say that Chono Cross was made a worse game by being a sequel to Chrono Trigger. Things really started to tear apart story-wise when the Chrono Trigger tie-ins started, and by the end of the game I really wished they hadn't even tried to tie the two stories together.

Despite a very confusing story, I played the game to the end, due in large part to how much I enjoyed the gameplay experience. Unfortunately, upon beating the final boss, I was presented with a lame excuse of an ending. My roommate told me that there was a better ending, and he told me how to get it -- So when a screen popped up with a list of my saved games, I selected the save right before the final boss, expecting it to load the game and allow me to fight the boss again. Instead, it saved over the game with a "finished game." This is good because it allows me to start a "New Game+," but at the same time it's very bad because I now can't get the good ending without either starting a New Game+ or playing through the six hours of game I played yesterday morning to beat it. Damn the man!

Chrono Cross wasn't without it's flaws, and poorly told story is usually enough to damn a game in my eyes. But by the grace of the best battle system I've ever seen, it earns a 4/5. Buy Chrono Cross now from Amazon.

Now on to Vagrant Story, which I'd like to beat before it's a year old... Some day, though, I'd like to give Chrono Cross another run through. I'm curious if maybe I thought the story so confusing because I played the game across seven months. So many other people regarded the game so highly that I feel I must have missed something. I'm also willing to give it another chance because a second play might be a completely different experience, what with the number of branching plot points the game offers.

I just finished disc 2 of FFIX last night, and I'm still enjoying it a lot. I just thought I'd share a couple of tips with you that'd make your life easier, though. First, as soon as VIVI learns the ability "Loudmouth", equip it on him and keep it there.

Second, and more importantly, if you don't know what on earth all of those strange abilities you keep learning do, hit "select" while on the ability screen, and balloon help will pop up with a description that says, for example, "Loudmouth prevents silence." Sheesh, I wish I'd known "Ability Up" lets me earn abilities faster sometime sooner than a couple of scenes before the end of disc 2. So remember, if you're confused about anything at all in the game, everything has contextual help when you hit select.

Good Interface: Providing a lot of context sensitive help.

Bad Interface: Not telling your user there is help available.

After seeing Dungeons and Dragons, I left the theatre thinking that it was pretty safe to say that that Marlon Wayans was the best actor in the whole film. If this doesn't concern you, it should. You probably just haven't seen Scary Movie yet. (And on that side note, don't.) Honestly though, Wayans' character Snails was a bright spot in the movie. Sure, Snails' only purpose is to provide cowardly sidekick comic relief, and he's just another entry into the Jar-Jar category, but at least he appeared genuinely human and funny. Wayans obviously did the best he could with the material he was given.

I wish I could say the same thing about the rest of the acting in the movie, but if I did that, I'm pretty sure that would be a big enough lie all by itself to keep a person out of heaven. First, I'd like to find out when Thora Birch forgot how to act. Perhaps riding high on the success of American Beauty, Birch thinks she can continue to play every role as a sullen high schooler, but frankly I've seen better acting at a High School play. Admittedly, it's not the actresses fault that her character was writtten as an empress with a Queen Amidala complex and some spunky proletarian ideals. But while covering the emotional range from whiny and idealistic to whiny and pouting, Birch's acting efforts don't help. As an empress in a fantasy film, realistic lines are too much to ask for. But for the love of gods, try to deliver flimsy lines better than I can. It really hurt. Most of the other actors weren't much better, and neither was the ridiculous dialogue.

The plot was typical, but I wasn't expecting this to be brilliant, so I wasn't that upset by it. The fact that the hero actually had motivation to do what he was doing was a detail which I liked, even if his obligatory love interest was obvious from moment one. While there were reasons for some of the team to be doing what they were doing, there were a couple of party members who were tacked on apparently as an afterthought. While the dwarf and the elven ranger seemed to become friendly in a cold and sterile chummy sort of way, there was no development of the relationship, nor was there any reason for either character to hang around. It's too a shame that there was no on screen development of the friendship between the dwarf and the elf, because building a friendship between a dwarf and an elf -- two races which have more than a passing dislike of each other in the D&D universe -- would have been interesting character development.

While the dwarf and elf were effectively static characters, the other characters did receive reasonable development. Ridley is the hero of the tale, and is roughly a cross between Luke Skywalker from Star Wars and Neo from The Matrix. He and his partner in crime Snails actually seemed to be honest friends, and Snails was able to give Ridley honest motivation for completing his quest. The wizard was pulled into the party in a reasonable way (I always wondered why a wizard would leave her nice safe library and risk being exploded). And relationships were developed well for a movie based on a game, even if the dialogue was pretty bad.

The costumes were acceptable at best, ridiculous at worst. Aside from the princess pretty visibly ripping off Star Wars, some of Ridley's post-thief clothing, and the elfs breastplate, I didn't have that big of a problem with the attire, which managed to live up to D&D styles pretty well.

The computer animated graphics were good fun, and the dragon fight would have been the best part of the whole movie if they hadn't ruined it by deciding to have the empress try to ride a dragon while looking constipated. There was no reason for it, other than to interrupt exciting dragon scenes with shots of their big name actresses in agony with a stupid gold thing on her head shaking up and down. The computer generated skylines and castles looked great, even if the buildings we saw the actors next to looked nothing like them.

I think a lot of the movie could have been salvaged if they'd gone full CG, like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is doing. Then they could have had even more fantastic fights and made the actors as consistently bad as they'd liked without letting Marlon Wayans show up the rest of the cast.

While it failed, on the whole, as a movie, it did manage to live up to the game it was based off of. It had the anachronistic clothing, the bad acting, a couple of uninterested characters who'd rather be doing something else, and a bar fight. Perhaps the only point on which this movie was not a good interpretation of the game was that the hero had a good emotional motivation for his actions.

Despite all of it's bad points, I enjoyed seeing a movie which depicted it's source material reasonably well. Though other movie goers didn't enjoy it for that reason, I think more than a few of them enjoyed laughing at the bad acting and the serious folks in the audience who kept saying "Shh, I'm trying to hear the [really corny] dialogue!" And any D&D basher who sees this movie will leave wondering what they were bashing, unless they consider bad acting a sin, because the movie, much like D&D, was just a fantasy story.

As a movie, I'd give it a 2/5. And I'd like to give the directory of the movie a stern talking to, because this was the wrong project for a first time director, and apparently owning the rights since he was 20 was his only qualification. And the sequel hints at the end made me cringe, for fear I'd have to go through the movie again. But I'd like to thank whoever named the hero Ridley, allowing me to Riddle my Review with Ridicule of this Ridiculous movie. Good Riddance.

Sorry about the stutter, but I'm eagerly awaiting my fix... It's due tomorrow. I played Chrono Cross for awhile today in anticipation.

You should probably know that I call Final Fantasy Eight "fate", by slurring "f eight" together, and in the same vein, I've taken to calling Final Fantasy IX "fix". Yeah yeah, I'm a weirdo. Sorry. All the same, I'm looking forward to it, though I enjoyed playing Chrono Cross a lot, too. It's incredibly well balanced game. Really well balanced. Play it if you haven't already.

Gamers.com is running a feature this week, last week, and next week, on Dungeons and Dragons, 3rd Edition. All the improvements sound like good ones to me. Too bad I'm too busy to contemplate playing it, let alone do I have anyone up here to play with.

And on that D&D note, gamers.com also has this article which discusses Verant's... questionable actions towards their customers who've written fanfiction. I've never played Everquest and don't care one way or the other about the future of the game, but the idea of role playing and the free speech and exploration associated with it being squelched really caught my attention. Freedom to say anything and explore new ideas are definately an important issue, and they're getting more and more important. I get the impending feeling of doom that the U.S.A. is approaching the FSA (Federated States, as I vaguely recall) as depicted in Trinity, which isn't a happy depiction at all. And this article on SF Gate just supports that vision... We don't need a nation run by Corporations... Corporations aren't actually people!

Now I've got a good reason to not play Everquest besides the part where I don't have time... I've seen a lot of people sink an insane amount of time into that thing, and can't imagine doing so myself. Which is yet another reason I'm afraid of Final Fantasy X/XI...

Friday night, I went to The Great Kern County Fair to see Weird Al with Galatea and my brother, and after that I dropped my brother off, and Galatea and I went and listened to the band play the show post-game at west, then we went to Pizza Hut and hung out with various band people. I had a bunch of fun.

Weird Al's show was very well planned... It was a great live SHOW, and I enjoyed it, but I had to wonder where the planning stopped and the performance began.... Jedi Rock Band!

Saturday night I role-played with my cohorts.... It was cool, even if I had no clue about the deadlands setting or system. Oh well. It was still pretty cool.

To: Vampirism@vampireinc.com
From: Random_Joe_Malk@loony.bin
Subject: Bug Report

Dear Sirs,

I recently acquired your product, "Vampirism", as an anniversary gift from my girlfriend. For the most part, I am highly satisfied with your product. However, a major bug has come to my attention. Upon exposure to sunlight, painful burns are inflicted upon the user. These burns are severe, and are potentially fatal. This bug is REPRODUCIBLE.

This bug should be addressed IMMEDIATELY. Additionally, warnings should be placed on the product packaging and a notice issued to the users of your product, such that they can avoid this bug.

Additionally, the lack of an uninstaller is highly disturbing. I would recommend adding one as soon as possible. This would likely attract a larger user base to your product, possibly attracting customers away from the competing products of "Lycanthropy" and "Magick".

On a positive note, the integrated super powers of your product are excellent, however you might want to consider making them removable, so as to keep the DOJ off of your case.

Sincerely,
Random Joe Malkavian

To: Random_Joe_Malk@loony.bin
From: Vampirism@vampiresinc.com
Subject: Re: Bug Report

That's not a bug, it's a feature.

Additionally, no uninstaller is planned at this time.

Sincerely,
A. Caine, CEO

The stories White Wolf Publishing includes in its Changeling suppliments never fail to bring a tear to my eye, and The Tooth Fairy, featured in Inanimae: The Secret Way, was no exception.

This book is all about those fae who inhabit inanimate things instead of the flesh which the changelings we are familiar with inhabit. The writing here is excellent, and the content of the book is top notch. I would recomend it to any Changeling fan.

However... This book has quite a number of problems. There are numerous tyops in the book, which are by far the smallest problem. Some of the text from earlier in the book is copied word for word later in the book. The content seems rather repetetive, but it isn't. It just keeps talking about different aspects of the same thing, which keeps things interesting, but it also serves to make finding all of the info on, say, the Mannikins, difficult.

Speaking of finding info on Mannikins in this book, the other major problem was the fact that they left out about half of the rules for playing a Mannikin. Oops.

Despite the problems (more than lately for recent White Wolf products), I would highly recomend this book to anyone.

Buy Inanimae now from Amizon!,