Candid thoughts on pixels, polyhedrons, and paper.
I’m gonna come right out and say this, I have some pretty low expectations for the next installation of the Neverwinter PC game series. However it’s not because it’s hard to live up to or come close to standards set by the Bioware/Black Isle folks when it comes to PC RPG’s. Any company can come out of nearly nowhere and blow us all away with an outstanding title, video games a bit less often though because of costs involved in making one. Nevertheless I’d really love to root for the underdog here and hope that Cryptic pulls off a winner, but so far that’s looking to be a dismal prospect.
Cryptic’s past titles have been mediocre at best, and this is where my suspicion lies. It’s also worth mentioning they probably should get their lore right, before they go attempting to win over hardcore FR fans. While I may have started playing D&D when I was 13, I’ve been playing video games since I was 5 – which means I can honestly say “20+ years of experience” when it comes to this subject matter. When the announcement for “Neverwinter” was made, like many of us I was pretty excited at first glance. I’ve always beeg a huge fan of the series and the Forgotten Realms world, but a lot about this title (so far) seems iffy.
Given a projected quarter for it’s launch date, already having determined it’s 5 classes (via the front page graphic), the creation tools being announced and more, yet they still don’t know what the hell the games core genre will be other than an RPG?
First go read “Burning down the tavern” over on @rjschwalb’s blog to understand where I’m stealing this concept from. Go on….go. Okay now that we’re on the same page allow me to introduce the cast of my Monday night one shot coming up next week. I had originally planned to have a good friend of mine (@danjbailey) who’s never played D&D come over for a night of beers and some role playing boot camp but after realizing I’d only have two players I put some calls out.
I only expected maybe 3 of the 6 people i contacted to respond with a possible yes but instead I got all of them. Turns out when people don’t get their D&D fix they pull out all the stops to get together for a game – either that or my exquisite DM’ing skills are just that alluring (just kidding, I’m terrible).
Anyway, I decided to ditch the tavern for the first time in a while and opt for something more predetermined on my behalf and chosen to go for the ‘band of traveling entertainers’ option. Hey, anything beats that awkward “uh yeah so we’re all in a tavern, we have drinks and become friends – can we kill stuff now?” I’m pretty excited about running this one shot because it’s going to be the first one shot I’ve done in a long while and because of the following:
I’ve come up with a light background and personality trait or two for each character to help in adding flavor and since the players will all have the option to pick whichever character they want I think they are unique enough everyone should feel they have a specific role and there won’t be any squabbling over who get’s to play who. Since this is a first time for at least one of the players
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I’ve had a couple days to reflect now on this years trip to GenCon, mind you it was my first convention of any sort ever so I probably have a different and perhaps more romanticized perspective on things than others but hey, gimme’ a few years and maybe I can start being jaded….nah probably not.
I found GenCon to be a completely wonderful event, it’s a carnival of oddities and eccentricity while at the same time an organized event with something in mind for nearly every type of gamer. Even for those who aren’t even gamers , there are things to do and see and they should find plenty to intrigue themselves with. The presentation at some of the booths was just great but what really got me was the overwhelming friendliness of everyone I managed to bump into (often times literally) my son would trip and fall over countless people and not once did I get a scowl or a ‘damn kid” or anything like that. Perhaps it’s the common ground and understanding shared between gamers that made for such a great vibe, either that or miraculously the human race has started becoming more kind for unknown reasons which I highly doubt.
It’s great to be able to meet folks with a common thread and genuine desire to just get their game on in any way they can, the costumes are loud and fun and those who were performing in the hallways were phenomenal. You see costumes from video games and other things not nescessarily RPG or board game related but that’s because whether you play RPG’s, board games, video games, card games, TCG’s, hopscotch (the list goes on) you still have a place at gencon – because you’re a gamer!
Another thing I’d like to make mention of were the girls there at GenCon, particularly the ones in costume – there were a lot of girls that by societies shallow and ‘conventional’ standards were a bit too “thick” for the costumes they wore and my hat goes off to all of them (I don’t wear hats). I find it inspiring to see so many girls there were comfortable with themselves and perhaps even damn proud. Knowing that there is more than one size for beauty is something a lot of folks don’t have, but it seems those at GenCon did, which I think is awesome.
