Card City Nights is frequently entertaining but I am not sure I would go so far as “good.” It is an interesting take on collectible card games with simple mechanics and an emphasis on strategic placement of cards. The difficulty is “trivially easy” until the beyond-Psychonauts difficulty spike for the end of the game. I played the PC version, which is an unusually good iWhatever port, a technical gem amidst the many sloppy ports.
Continue reading Card City Nights
Month: March 2015
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.[GW2] Desert Borderlands
At Rezzed, the game convention of London, ArenaNet just had a presentation (recorded Twitch link)Â regarding the Desert Borderlands map. This new map will replace the current Borderlands maps, and then some kind of schedule / rotation will be determined. In usual form the Dulfy Corp provides an excellent swath of notes on the very informative presentation.
There are three “corners” to the map: earth, fire, and wind. Each with a corresponding keep. It seems like in usual form the keep is the golden prize for each of the three teams, but the Desert Borderlands seems to more strongly emphasize that the Keep is resting on a pyramid of support. Continue reading [GW2] Desert Borderlands
[GW2] Press Demo Feedbacks and Overviews
A lot of press, ‘casters, and a few other media-types were invited to ArenaNet last week to check out a demo of the Heart of Thorns content. Just about everything they played was already revealed through ArenaNet’s Twitch channel, including the Revenant (up to two legends), a slice of the new map, the Verdant Brink, the wyvern boss battle, and the new PvP gamemode Stronghold.
The best aggregate by far is RandomUser’s well maintained megapost on the event at Reddit. There were a few surprises, for me. I didn’t know, for example, that Rock, Paper, Shotgun would attend. They always feel a bit flighty or uncontrollable for press events. Continue reading [GW2] Press Demo Feedbacks and Overviews
CRGE – Roleplaying Without a GM
I’ve finally released CRGE! It’s a complete, concise system for playing roleplaying games without a GM. CRGE has been worked on for well over two years. Possibly three or four, but I didn’t put true pen to paper until just over two. I have refined it as best I could. Polished it until my eyes bled, and playtested the heck out of it.
It’s tiered as a system, which is a design I am immensely proud of because I’ve found that solo roleplayers are immense tinkerers. For my playstyle I have built what I feel is my personal suite of tools for what I feel is a darn good roleplaying experience.
Back to the tiers. The first tier is a “yes or no” question answerer. Very simple in concept, but my idea was to keep pushing for the unexpected. For example, you could ask “is someone standing outside my window watching me?” and get an answer “No, but…” someone is definitely watching you. Or you could get “Yes, and unexpectedly…” the scene changes. It’s all about shaking things up, the way I feel a GM would.
The second tier is focused on making scenes and story threads mean something. It ties back to getting unexpected answers. So, you might learn that the next scene something big is going to resolved. It won’t be apparent until you land on that, but things are always being pushed towards meaning and resolution. Almost like a system built around Chekhov’s gun.
Finally, I try and put this all together in to a framework where you can play a concise story. I was always frustrated at my early attempts at solo roleplaying because I felt I was meandering in a sandbox. Things became too complex and too realistic (in that Sisyphean-type way). I wanted a story with resolution and meaning. I wanted to play in chapters, not endless tangents. Hopefully I conveyed a way to bring it all together.
Anyway, if you are like “how could this possibly work?”, download it for free, and there is a complete example in the appendices. If you like what you see feel free to leave feedback or throw a tip my way.
–Ravious